Chapter 129: They, the people who had lost everything, were gathered together to taste their own brokenness.
Probably because he went to bed too late, An Wujiu rarely slept so deeply, as if he had sunk into a large, warm whirlpool, sinking deeper and deeper until he reluctantly woke up around noon.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Shen Ti’s face right in front of him, filling him with a huge sense of security, so he instinctively leaned into his embrace and wrapped his arms around his waist.
“You look like you slept well,” Shen Ti said gently, stroking his hair.
An Wujiu heard him, but his first reaction was, “Did you wake up so early?”
Shen Ti hummed, “I didn’t sleep much; I felt a bit too excited.”
An Wujiu found this unusual, “You used to get sleepy very easily.”
Indeed, Shen Ti thought about it. He used to need a long sleep to feel rested, but recently he found himself sleeping less and feeling more energetic.
“Maybe it’s because happy events make people feel energized,” Shen Ti also hugged An Wujiu, like a child hugging their beloved and only stuffed toy.
“You’ve learned quite a bit,” An Wujiu teased, then anxiously checked his information panel, seeing messages from Wu You and Yang Erci. Both said they hadn’t found a girl who looked like his sister yet.
“That’s okay; we still have a few more places to check,” Shen Ti comforted, “Let’s go now.”
He told An Wujiu, “I have a feeling, I think your sister is still alive.”
An Wujiu had already dressed and tied up his hair, “Did you see it with your Divine Eye?”
Shen Ti laughed, “It’s strange, I feel it with my heart.” He placed his hand over his chest as he said this.
You don’t even have a heart. An Wujiu thought to himself.
But he was still willing to believe in Shen Ti’s intuition.
“I’ll miss this place,” Shen Ti said seriously before closing the door.
An Wujiu was amused by his serious demeanor and joked, “If you like it so much, why not come back tomorrow?”
Shen Ti raised an eyebrow and said, “Sure, we’ll come back tomorrow. We won’t go anywhere else, just stay here.”
Time was tight, so they left the hotel and resumed their search for his sister. There weren’t many names left on the list, so An Wujiu and Shen Ti started visiting each one, from the nearest to the farthest.
Like yesterday, they knocked on each door with hope, only to end up disappointed.
In fact, this was the first time An Wujiu had met so many different girls. It seemed like heaven had given him a chance to see these strong girls.
Most of them lived in dire conditions but worked very hard, extremely hard.
Each girl on this list had been reported missing, like the second-to-last girl they met today. She was optimistic, but by the time she was found, she was already an adult. During her long years of being missing as a minor, she wandered and suffered greatly. When her parents found her, she felt like a stranger sitting down to eat with them, even though both she and her mother cried.
Listening to her, An Wujiu felt his heart being tugged by a thin, resilient string, leaving him speechless.
He wondered if his sister was going through the same thing.
But back then, he had no choice. If he didn’t try every means to help her escape, her fate would be the same as his, perhaps even worse, becoming a “failed” experiment.
The girl could see the anxiety on An Wujiu’s face, so after some hesitation, she said to him, “You can tell me about your sister. I know many people and might be able to help.”
Maybe it was because of this empathy, An Wujiu told her, even though he guessed the hope was slim.
“I’ll ask around for you,” the girl said to him, “Please don’t give up. I’m sure she really wants to be found by her brother.”
An Wujiu nodded and left the girl’s home.
Shen Ti put an arm around his shoulder, silently offering support, and even joked, “I don’t think I’ve ever really seen your sister.”
“Really?” An Wujiu smiled. When he first summoned Shen Ti, it was always late at night when his sister was already asleep.
Well, there was one time.
“No,” Shen Ti remembered, “I think I heard her voice and saw a bit of her through the door. Her voice was sweet, very cute, and she was holding a cotton and cloth bunny.”
An Wujiu was surprised at how vividly he could recall.
At that time, he had summoned the “god” according to the incantation, falling into an irresistible infatuation as if his soul were being taken, but his sister’s call from outside the door suddenly woke him up.
Or rather, it was Shen Ti who woke him up.
“She was very scared,” An Wujiu said softly, “She was still young then, didn’t understand why Dad was gone, and missed him a lot. That night she was so scared she couldn’t sleep, so she came to my room to find me, and we slept together.”
That night, his sister shed many tears. She was so young, yet it seemed like she understood everything.
After An Wujiu told her that their father had gone far away, she would ask him if their father was never coming back.
All he could tell her was that he would come back, that one day they would meet him again.
But in the end, he couldn’t even meet his sister anymore. An Wujiu couldn’t imagine how she would survive alone in this dangerous world. She was so small, so pure, and so innocent.
An Wujiu couldn’t think about it any longer, or his last bit of hope would be destroyed.
There was only one person left on the list.
Shen Ti remembered that night, when the equally frightened little boy played the role of a reliable big brother, comforting his sister.
He suddenly thought of the false memories An Wujiu had described to him before, in which his sister had run away from home.
“Who do you think could have implanted those new memories for you?”
As they approached the new address, An Wujiu heard the question and hesitated for a moment in the elevator.
“I’ve considered many possibilities, even you,” An Wujiu said to him. “For a while, I wondered if it was you who did it, but you also forgot.”
Shen Ti understood what he meant. “You think that whoever implanted good memories for you did it with good intentions, right?”
“Yes, but then I thought about it, and it shouldn’t be you,” An Wujiu said. “Our first encounter was in the Red and Black instance, and you didn’t have the opportunity to do it.”
Shen Ti indeed didn’t remember manipulating An Wujiu’s memories, but he was curious about who this manipulator was.
“Maybe it was just a control experiment.”
Before the elevator doors opened, An Wujiu adjusted his clothes on the mirrored wall, as he did every time, wanting to present a good image and state when meeting her.
But this time, like every time before, it ended in failure.
“I hope you find your sister,” the girl said, just like every other one before her, generously offering her blessings to An Wujiu.
“Thank you.”
But An Wujiu was completely disheartened.
He knew that trying to find his sister among the vast sea of people with a list obtained by accident was a fantasy, and he had never had such luck.
After leaving the last person’s home, An Wujiu called the other two small teams. He tried to keep his tone normal as he reported all the information about his part of the list.
Like him, no miracles occurred for them either. None of the people they found were his sister.
An Wujiu hung up the phone and stood quietly by the roadside. The sun was unusually bright that day, drying up all the rainwater and reflecting illusions in the hazy air.
He saw his younger self secretly hiding candy for his sister, which made her teeth hurt and cry in his arms. They picked small tomatoes in their father’s glass greenhouse and watered flowers that never bloomed.
He wondered if she had ever seen real peonies. If not, would she ever see him?
In the bustling crowd, some were busy with money and life, some were enjoying themselves, some were fervent cultists wantonly destroying everything, and some were indifferent passersby.
Only An Wujiu was detached from everything.
Thinking back now, he too had grown up in a glass house, but it wasn’t a greenhouse—it was an abyss, a hell.
Under the scorching sun, Shen Ti hugged An Wujiu, silently offering him final comfort.
An Wujiu thought that he might have committed a grave sin in his past life, so God pressed a button and took away all the happiness he had ever had.
The only thing he had now was something that God couldn’t control.
An Wujiu quietly watched the people coming and going.
“I really want to see what she looks like growing up.”
“Maybe the list is incomplete, and she might not be in Country A,” Shen Ti gently stroked An Wujiu’s back. “My intuition isn’t wrong, trust me.”
The missing sister, like the unresolved return date from the altar, was a glaring guillotine hanging over his head, and An Wujiu didn’t know when it would fall.
As dusk approached, they returned to Yang Erci’s apartment. Everyone was there, and they all acted very positively and cheerfully. When An Wujiu entered, they were cooking, and the kitchen was lively. Even the kitchen hazard, Zhong Yirou, was allowed by Wu You to stay and juice fruits.
“Wujiu! You’re back? We have a lot of good food today!” Zhong Yirou was overly enthusiastic.
An Wujiu smiled at her, “What good food do we have? Do you need my help?”
Zhong Yirou was stunned.
He was acting too normal, which made everyone uncomfortable.
“Ah… they…” Zhong Yirou turned to look at Yang Erci, then turned to An Wujiu, “Why don’t you join me in making some juice?”
An Wujiu nodded.
“Then I’ll go check on Noah,” Shen Ti said, and walked to the master bedroom. Before entering, he suddenly felt something strange.
He couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, but the feeling lasted only a second or two before it dissipated.
Shen Ti opened the door and saw the child covered by a blanket on the bed.
He called out Noah’s name and walked to the bedside. “Are you alright?”
Noah didn’t respond.
Shen Ti walked over and lifted half of the blanket.
Underneath the blanket was not Noah but a pillow.
He frowned, turned around, and saw Noah standing behind the door.
The moment they locked eyes, Noah burst into laughter.
“I tricked you!”
Shen Ti was not An Wujiu; his empathy for humans was centered on An Wujiu and diminished from there. An Wujiu was the most important person to him, and no one could compare. Next were the people An Wujiu cared about.
From the first moment he saw this little girl, Shen Ti felt a natural, subtle repulsion, but he feared An Wujiu would find him odd and dislike him, so he didn’t show it.
Noah put her hands behind her back and tilted her head to look at Shen Ti. “You don’t seem very happy. Is it because I tricked you? But you like to trick people too.”
“Yes,” Shen Ti said, stepping closer, placing his hand on the door handle behind her. He lowered his head, and his green eyes were filled with rare intimidation and pressure. “You can trick me, but you can’t trick him.”
After saying this, Shen Ti smiled gently again, like a true older brother. “After all, he treats you so well, right?”
Noah nodded. “Of course, Wujiu-ge is the best.”
Shen Ti’s suspicion was not just based on intuition; many details seemed odd to him.
No matter how smart Noah was, the Altar wasn’t just about mental games. Surviving so many high-intensity physical game instances was a miracle in itself.
Moreover, many times it seemed like Noah disappeared from their sight.
This was the conclusion Shen Ti reached in the previous game. As a civilian without special abilities, he could only judge each person’s identity through their words and actions to plan his strategies. During that time, he particularly observed them, and the strangest one was Noah.
Many times, she wasn’t with them, and her whereabouts were unknown. Yet, Shen Ti never caught her dealing with anyone else, except occasionally walking with Zhou Yijue.
Zhou Yijue was her enemy in the casino.
These doubts made it impossible for Shen Ti to see Noah as a good person, at most a neutral one.
After dinner, the sun had completely set. They drank some wine, and Zhong Yirou started talking about many past events.
“I was actually quite happy as a child. We had plenty of money then.” Zhong Yirou’s cheeks were a bit flushed, her long hair casually tied up with a chopstick, giving her a tipsy, endearing look.
“What did your father do?” Wu You asked casually.
“He…” Zhong Yirou thought for a moment. “Something like me, working with these things. As a child, I watched him make prosthetics and all kinds of things at the table.”
She spoke somewhat incoherently. “He said it was very hard work, and he had to make more money so I wouldn’t have to do it in the future.”
“But I ended up doing it anyway.” Zhong Yirou smiled.
Yang Erci frowned, seemingly recalling something. “What about your father?”
Zhong Yirou, feeling dizzy, took another sip, nearly dropping the glass. “He was burned to death.”
She lifted her long skirt, revealing the replaced and re-grafted skin, showing it to everyone. “Here, see? The fire was huge. I was the only one who escaped. My mother protected me, letting me escape. I don’t know why the fire started.”
The room suddenly fell silent, and a few alarms sounded outside, piercing the air.
But alarm sounds were common here, and no one paid attention. Zhong Yirou pointed out the window. “Listen, even the police don’t know.”
“Then you were alone?” Nan Shan asked softly.
“Yes,” Zhong Yirou said, “I was already a teenager then, better off than Wujiu, but making money was really hard. They forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, so I kept running away. Later, I studied hard on my own… But without a license, I could only be an underground doctor.”
Zhong Yirou tilted her head back and took a deep breath. “But I worked hard to treat everyone. My patients liked me very much.”
“Of course,” Shen Ti said with a smile, clinking his glass with hers. “Who wouldn’t like you?”
Zhong Yirou smiled and clinked her glass with Yang Erci’s, losing her balance and falling into her lap with a soft “ouch.”
Yang Erci held her, her face pale. She looked across the table at An Wujiu.
Just that one glance, and An Wujiu understood.
Her parents were likely like theirs; the fire wasn’t an accident but a premeditated act.
How many families had been shattered because of that so-called returning evil god, An Wujiu didn’t know.
The fact they could gather here was a blessing, a fortune built on countless heartbreaks.
It seemed like a huge, terrifying magnetic field was drawing together all these people who had lost everything, making them taste each other’s brokenness.
The meal ended with Zhong Yirou completely drunk.
Yang Erci helped her back to bed, while Wu You, Nan Shan, and Noah cleaned up the dishes, and An Wujiu and Shen Ti cleaned the kitchen.
Just as they finished gathering all the trash, An Wujiu suddenly received a phone call.
“Hello, do you remember me? You came to see me today.”
An Wujiu suddenly thought of the girl who promised to help him, his back tensed up. “I remember. Do you have any news?”
“Yes,” the girl paused, seemingly hesitating, but encouraged by someone nearby, she continued, “Actually… I was sold to a place where there were many girls like me. I stayed there for about six months and met a well-connected sister.”
“Today, I asked her about it, and coincidentally, she told me that there indeed was a girl who moved through many cities and eventually ended up with them. The sister remembered her because that girl kept frantically repeating that she was looking for her brother.”
“Most of the time, she spoke very clearly. The sister is sure that the girl hadn’t been brainwashed at that time,” she emphasized before continuing, “But because she said her brother was in Sha Wen, everyone thought she was crazy. You know, for people like us, it’s unthinkable to have a relative working in such a big company.”
Shen Ti couldn’t hear his phone conversation, but he felt a sharp pain in his heart, as if a thread was transmitting it to his chest.
He reached out and held An Wujiu’s cold hand.
“Are you still there?” the girl asked softly. After receiving a confirmation, she continued, “I’ll send you the address that the sister gave me. It’s the most recent place she could find. She might not still be there.”
An Wujiu said a difficult “Thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I can’t be sure it’s her, and I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I thought you should know.” The girl paused, “Your sister is also trying very hard to find you. I really hope you can meet tomorrow.”
“Me too,” An Wujiu thought. He wanted to see her tonight.
After hanging up, he received a message with an address.
An Wujiu enlarged the virtual map, and then enlarged it again, then stood there in a daze.
“This place…”
Shen Ti frowned, “Isn’t it Gabriel’s nightclub?”
