Chapter 90.2: Love Welfare Institute (1/2)

According to yesterday’s routine, Bai Liu (6) should hang up neatly at this time. However, today he didn’t hang up after speaking.

Bai Liu could hear his breathing as he ran on the empty ground. Behind him was the laughter of the children chasing him and little Mu Ke struggling to suppress his gasps and cries. The sound of running gradually slowed and the sound changed from stepping on rustling dirt to hard concrete. The eerie laughter of the children behind them also faded away. They should be heading back to their rooms.

Little Mu Ke struggled to run with little Bai Liu (6). This guy had been dragged by little Bai Liu (6) all night. Due to his bad heart, his face was purple but he still gritted his teeth and ran. He seemed to know that little Bai Liu (6) was pulling him to run for his own good.

It was because little Mu Ke knew that if Bai Liu (6) hadn’t pulled him to run, he definitely wouldn’t have been able to call his investor tonight. If there was no way to notify his investor, the investor wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony tomorrow. This was a serious matter for the children of the welfare home and he might be punished. Tonight, if it wasn’t for little Bai Liu (6)’s investor telling Bai Liu (6) to help him then the indifferent Bai Liu (6) wouldn’t care about Mu Ke’s life or death.

Little Mu Ke glanced at the phone in little Bai Liu (6)’s hand. Why did this kind investor have little Bai Liu (6) help him? In addition, why hadn’t little Bai Liu (6) hung up the phone? They had already entered the room where they slept. He would be scolded if he was seen by a teacher.

“Is there anything you want to say?” Bai Liu opened his mouth with great interest. “Aren’t you back in your room? Why aren’t you hanging up? Do you want to make more money from me?”

“…These few minutes won’t be counted.” Little Bai Liu (6)’s breathing wasn’t completely smooth yet. His voice was really low and he spoke quickly like he was hiding something. “The two horror games you spoke about tonight were good enough to offset this.”

Bai Liu raised his eyebrow with surprise. “You are so good to me tonight? Rounding down and offset…”

“Beep beep.”

The opposite side hung up.

Bai Liu, “……”

This was clearly praising him for playing games well. Did he have such an awkward personality when he was 14? Wow, it was disgusting.

Bai Liu put away his phone and his eyes fell on the wet straw bed.

Tonight, he had smelled a rotting smell from the plant patient. His attention had been focused on fighting Miao Feichi so he hadn’t checked what type of smell it was. He only thought it was a decaying plant smell like rotten straw but there was another type of smell hidden under the strong scent of straw.

Bai Liu touched his bitten neck where there was still mucus from the plant patient. Bai Liu scraped it off with his fingers and placed it to his nose to smell it. There was the smell of his blood, the smell of damp and rotten straw and a very light smell underneath the smell of straw…

Bai Liu calmly put his finger into his mouth. There was a very light mushroom flavor in the mucus. He couldn’t smell it but he could taste it. The children here didn’t eat mushrooms but the patients ate mushrooms?

The only thing that the patient in the ICU ate was the ‘medicine’ that the nurse sent to each ward. However, the medicine obviously wasn’t a mushroom because it was a liquid. It couldn’t be ruled out that the liquid contained mushroom ingredients but Bai Liu felt that another possibility was higher.

Bai Liu’s eyes were fixed on the straw bed in front of him.

He stepped forward and circled the straw bed. The more he looked at it, the more he felt something strange. This thing did look like a bed but there was dim light, uninterrupted 24 hour water vapor and straw that was too thick and moldy. These conditions made Bai Liu feel that this place was more like a standard mushroom culture room and this bed was the mushroom culture medium.

Bai Liu’s hand lifted the white sheet and revealed a large area of yellowish straw. He randomly fiddled with it and could see the sprouting mushrooms attached to the rotten straw. Bai Liu had seen these mushrooms before. Some could be eaten and some couldn’t. Generally speaking, they were common species and couldn’t prolong life after eating them. Some were poisonous and would kill instantly. There was a child in Bai Liu’s welfare home who had eaten some by mistake and couldn’t recover.

Bai Liu’s fingers rummaged through the mushrooms sprouting from the straw. He confirmed that the mushrooms growing on the bed were common species and thought about it. Those patients shouldn’t be eating these mushrooms that Bai Liu could see. So what exactly were they eating?

Bai Liu’s gaze once again fell on the straw bed. Previously in the ICU, the plant patient had been lying motionless on the bed. Bai Liu’s health wasn’t good so he didn’t go to disturb this patient. He searched under the straw bed where he was sleeping and found that they were also the common type of mushrooms.

Now it seemed that everyone’s ‘mediums’, i.e. the beds to grow the mushrooms, weren’t the same. The main point was: why were they different? What type of mushrooms did they grow?

Bai Liu felt that all the answers were hidden in what the system called the ‘life recovery medicine’.