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Chapter 36: Nowadays, everyone wants to have daughters. Who wants to have a son? What’s the value of a son?
Zhang Yirou was stunned.
The bizarre and splendid vegetation on the mural seemed to come to life for a moment. The edges of the plants became jagged, as if reaching out with hands and feet, spreading in a strangely grotesque manner. The half-masculine, half-feminine child under the tree in the painting took steps toward Zhang Yirou.
Why was her body so stiff? Zhang Yirou wanted to move to cover the painting with her hands, but her arms were trembling, barely able to lift.
In that moment, the child in front of her multiplied into countless identical ones. They simultaneously made sounds, standing densely on the grass, constantly asking.
“Sister, do you like boys or girls?”
A suffocating feeling crawled up from her cold feet like creeping vines, tightly wrapping around her gradually chilling body, almost freezing her blood. Zhang Yirou forced herself to ignore this suffocating feeling, struggling to give an answer.
“I… I like both.”
“Liar!!” At the moment she answered, the children in the painting screamed with a piercing sound, like the noise of nails scraping across metal. “You only like girls! You only like girls!”
As the children screamed, the blue overall pants on them gradually disappeared, turning into red skirts bit by bit, and the short hair gradually became long, reaching shoulder length.
“No, I like both!” Zhang Yirou frowned tightly, speaking earnestly. “Whether it’s boys or girls, you are all precious angels.”
Perhaps her words had an effect. The enraged expressions of the children in the painting gradually cleared like the sky after a sudden rain.
“Really…” Their questioning seemed lacking in confidence. These faces were clearly painted, but their empty eyes pierced into Zhang Yirou’s heart.
“Of course, it’s true.” Zhang Yirou repeated it once again. She felt a slight pain in her neck, and speaking felt like leaking air. So, she raised her hand and pressed it against her neck.
The children in the painting turned back into boys, but they all fell to the ground at the same time—no, they fell into white capsules resembling cryogenic chambers. Then, at the same time, they disappeared underground.
This strange process inexplicably made Zhang Yirou feel a sense of familiarity. Her spreading thoughts touched on unfamiliar memories that seemed not to belong to her but were so clear, as if she saw the scene every day—numerous identical bodies, cryogenic chambers, and herself in a white coat.
No, this shouldn’t be herself; it should be E06 in the containment center.
The children in the painting disappeared, leaving only an empty lawn, but a key appeared out of thin air.
Zhang Yirou, as if possessed, reached out to try and grab that golden key, touching the flat paper and lines with her fingertips. Surprisingly, she really picked up the key!
“Zhang Yirou, Zhang Yirou…”
Hearing the call, Zhang Yirou suddenly woke up from her immersion in the painting.
“Your complexion is terrible.” Yang Erci stood beside her, extending her hand to touch her forehead with the back of her hand, checking for a temperature.
“I’m not running a fever…”
“I’m fine.” Zhang Yirou lowered her head, and indeed, there was a golden key in her hand. She showed it to Yang Erci with some excitement. “I just found this in the painting.”
This should have been a strange event, but in this place, nothing seemed strange anymore. With a key, there must be a corresponding room. After trying each one, the key accurately matched the room at the corner.
It could be inserted, but the key wouldn’t turn.
Wu You thought for a moment, “We need Josh for this.”
After saying that, he glanced at Nan Shan, who had no choice but to shout Josh’s name loudly, calling him over.
When Josh took the key in his hand, it indeed worked.
A sentence appeared on the door: [Welcome back, D03. Please remember to complete today’s friendship report.]
Josh didn’t understand. What was a friendship report?
And why did they have to write a report on making friends?
He had thought that this room would be like the sleeping room downstairs, possibly filled with creepy children. Zhang Yirou was still a bit traumatized by that experience. However, upon opening the door, it was quiet and dark inside.
Nan Shan found the switch and turned on the light, brightening the room considerably.
It was just an ordinary archive room. The walls were clean, and a semi-transparent screen hung on one wall, currently showing no projections. There was a folding chair and two large file shelves, creating a small space. Walking over, there was a glass cabinet containing items.
“I’ll go over there later.” Josh followed Yang Erci to the cabinet. “I’ll take a look and tell Wujiu when I go over later.”
Nan Shan seemed to lack the curiosity for exploration. He leaned against the wall, his complexion a bit pale. “You all seem to really like An Wujiu.”
Josh felt a bit embarrassed and scratched his fluffy brown curls. The freckles on his face gave him a special youthfulness and shyness. “It’s not exactly liking, more like trust. Don’t you feel he’s very reliable? I’ve never encountered a player like him in other games at the Holy Altar. I really want to be teammates with someone like him.”
Nan Shan nodded. “Yeah, he does give off that feeling. If it weren’t for him boosting everyone’s morale from the beginning and leading us to decode together, with half of the people not knowing each other, we could have done things separately or even opposed each other. Thinking about it, he’s indeed a great guy.”
Zhang Yirou was on the other side of the file shelf. While flipping through the documents, she spoke softly, “That’s because you haven’t seen his other side…”
“His other side?” Nan Shan was curious.
“His other side is also great.” Wu You deliberately said, “Even more reliable than now.”
Yang Erci did not participate much in their conversation. She found many strange medicine bottles in the glass cabinet, but with no labels. Wanting to see what they were, she went out and brought a metal folding chair, directly smashing it into the glass cabinet.
The huge sound of breaking glass suddenly interrupted the conversation of the others. Josh was once again startled by this decisive and resolute Ice Queen.
“Be careful with the broken glass.”
Yang Erci reached in and took out a medicine bottle, unscrewing it. Inside was a transparent, sampling plastic bag containing an orange pill.
Josh noticed that there was a label on the sample bag with chemical terms he couldn’t understand—Cyproterone Acetic Acid, along with a long molecular formula—C24H29ClO4.
Yang Erci opened another bottle, and inside was another sample bag with a yellow pill with another name on it.
She continued to open several more bottles, each containing a different pill. Until she found the last bottle and a printed report placed in the cabinet.
[After investigation, the drugs taken by the birth mothers of this batch of abandoned infants include, but are not limited to, the following, and all were voluntarily taken by the mothers. The reasons are yet to be investigated. The infant physical examination results are expected to be available next Monday and will be analyzed in conjunction with the examination report.]
The strangest part was that the person in charge of this report was signed as A02.
In other words, it was the result of An Wujiu’s character investigation.
“What does this mean? The mothers of the children took these drugs?” Josh picked up a bottle. “What are these drugs, anyway?”
Yang Erci put down the report, her expression heavy, “These are anti-androgens and estrogen. If it’s as stated in the report, the commonality among these abandoned children is that their birth mothers took a large amount of estrogen and anti-androgens during pregnancy.”
“Why would they take these?” Zhang Yirou found it incredible. Although she was just a synthetic body doctor, she understood the basics of pharmacology. “Taking excessive hormones during pregnancy is very dangerous and can easily lead to miscarriage. If it’s a male fetus, it might even…”
She suddenly stopped talking because she thought of the hysterical screams and shouts of the children on the mural just now.
“Might what?” Wu You sensed something was wrong. On the side, Nan Shan felt like it was time to recite his death chant again.
Seeing Zhang Yirou in an uneasy state, Yang Erci answered for her, “It increases the risk of fetal deformities. The deformities here are different from rainbow babies; it’s the feminization of male fetuses.”
Upon hearing this result, the others were all stunned.
Zhang Yirou felt that her hands were a bit stiff and cold. She stared blankly, rubbed her hands, and then suddenly remembered a file she had ignored earlier. She searched through the files on the shelf again, finally finding it again, flipping through page by page, and discovering a miniature hard disk tucked inside.
“This one has a label attached to it.” Zhang Yirou turned and walked toward the semi-transparent screen, plugging the disk into the socket on the wall. “The label says ‘Feminization’ in English.”
The screen lit up, and everyone gathered around her. Josh readied the permissions required. After he followed the instructions, the disk did open. Inside were some video reports. Upon opening, there was a long black screen at the beginning.
Just as the playback was starting, there was a knock on the door. Zhang Yirou turned around to see Shen Ti and An Wujiu entering.
“You two aren’t impostors, are you?” She was very cautious and shouted their names outside, but there was no response.
“It’s really us.” Shen Ti put one hand in his pocket, looking very lazy. “It’s starting to rain the rainbows again over there. We were bored, so we came over.”
“Not bored, actually,” An Wujiu corrected. “We wanted to see if we could help while that side couldn’t pass.”
Yang Erci carefully examined them and then asked, “Did you find anything over there?”
An Wujiu paused for a moment, “The door won’t open, but there are some strange phenomena. For example, the orange label on the last round of orange tin cans now says ‘green’ when it reappears this time. The purple label turned into an orange label. Besides that, there are no usable clues.”
These subtle changes were often the key to solving puzzles, but with too few clues, no one could directly solve them.
“I feel like we’re going to spend some time on this level.”
Just as Wu You finished speaking, the black screen on the image report ended, turning into clear and specific visuals.
What surprised everyone, however, was that the person in the video was An Wujiu, with the same voice and body as him.
“Is this you?” Josh turned his face towards An Wujiu.
An Wujiu remained relatively calm, “It should be A02.”
In the video, A02 with An Wujiu’s appearance was not inside the containment center. It was evident that he was outdoors, in a dilapidated environment that did not match his own image. There were no towering buildings, only makeshift “houses” constructed from rubble and plastic waste fabric. Even the air was murky, and the passing children were dressed in dirty, old clothes.
It was a bona fide slum.
A02 walked briskly, and a child grabbed his sleeve, hoping he could give them something to eat. He had to stop, and, at this age without cash, he took off his expensive tie and handed it to the child before quickly leaving.
When he was about to leave the area, he finally began to speak.
[Just now, I visited some families in the name of a charity foundation that might abandon those children. A common observation is that many of them decided to abandon their child at the age of four or five. Presumably, it’s because that’s when they discovered an unexpected problem with the child’s genital development.]
Watching his own face appear in such a scene, An Wujiu felt somewhat awkward.
[And I found this.] A02 in the video took out a small bottle.
[It is said that there is a powerful divine doctor here. The residents have been spreading rumors about the miraculous effects of his medicine, even reaching the outside world. But when I found the shabby room where the divine doctor lived, it was already abandoned. I only found these medicines among a pile of garbage and debris, waiting for me to bring them back for analysis.]
A02 collected the medicine and walked across the street, and the sound of the wind was loud, like a thin, soft knife scraping on his worried face.
The video ended, and Josh opened the second one, labeled “Follow-up.”
This video was different from the previous one. Upon opening, the screen showed a male resident of the slum, Southeast Asian in appearance, probably in his thirties, with dark skin and a very mature tone.
[Nowadays, everyone wants to have daughters. Who wants to have a son? What’s the value of a son?]
Following that was An Wujiu’s voice, which was A02’s.
[Why only want daughters?]
The man smiled as if A02 had amused him, displaying the attitude of an experienced person.
[There are fewer and fewer daughters now. Our environment here is getting worse and worse, and city folks can’t even have children. The ability to have children has become a scarce resource. Although there are artificial wombs and surrogacy technology, the poor can’t afford it. Besides, they say that the babies born from artificial wombs have poor physical fitness and won’t live past twenty.]
[The number of little girls is decreasing. Everyone is going extinct. Boys are good for continuing the family line, but if there’s no one to give birth to them, how can they continue the family line? One day, when the big scientists invent new technology for men to give birth, there’s no need to eagerly wait for daughters. The uterus is such a scarce resource; it’s all money!]
As he spoke, the man threw a candy-like object into his mouth, grinning.
[Hey, handsome guy, what about you? Do you want to have daughters too?]
A02 remained silent for a moment.
[Do you have any methods?]
[Sure, my two daughters came out like this. You don’t know, but in our seemingly dilapidated place, there are hidden talents. Go and inquire. There’s a very powerful foreign doctor here. He sells a kind of transmutation pill ① that guarantees you’ll have a daughter.]
[Really?] Although it was a question, A02’s voice became colder.
[Of course, if you don’t believe me, go and find out for yourself. Why would I lie to you? Many people want to continue their family line, and everyone is trying to create opportunities for them.]
Hearing these words, everyone felt as if they had fallen into an ice cave.
No one had expected such a reason.
A02 didn’t respond, and the screen shook for a while, cutting off.
An Wujiu found it strange.
Before watching this video, after experiencing the bizarre events on the first floor, like everyone else, he believed that this institution was not as clean and decent as it appeared on the surface. At least, it didn’t seem like the charitable cause the founder claimed in the initial video, entirely for the sake of the poor children.
After all, no charity organization would have a morgue.
But now, the actions of this A02 seemed to contradict his assumptions.
He seemed to be genuinely verifying and seeking the truth for these children harmed by the transmutation pills.
If that were the case, the specific process might involve the containment center receiving these forcibly deformed fetuses. Due to the large number, A02 was alerted, leading him to come to the concentrated abandonment site of abandoned infants to find answers.
A02’s actions seemed too contradictory to this mysterious containment center.
Josh opened the last video, still an A02 video report. In this report, he did not appear himself.
When the voice appeared, everyone paused. It was Josh’s own voice, or rather, D03’s.
[May I ask if it’s possible to adopt baby girls here for a fee.]
D03 did not appear in the footage; the miniature camera seemed to be attached to him. The image was a bit shaky, showing a chubby middle-aged man with sparse hair, and his dirty undershirt was about to burst open due to his belly.
[Adopt it yourself.]
[I’m asking on behalf of my friend. He doesn’t have time to come over, so he specifically entrusted me. Are there many here? What’s the price approximate range?]
The man took out a tablet, and his thick black fingers slid over it: [Take a look for yourself. These are all photos and prices. All are high-quality goods. Take your time to choose.]
D03’s fingers appeared in the video, sliding the screen a few times and asking a question that surprised the other party.
[I heard you have some… not quite normal baby girls.]
The man paused for a moment, then suddenly revealed a strange smile. [Oh, you mean those.]
Soon, he tapped a few times, revealing another categorized list with the title “Double Perfect Angels”.
[I thought no one would want them. A while ago, a lot of them were born and then abandoned. In the end, I don’t know where those kids ended up. Let me tell you the truth; we’re all business people, so let’s be straightforward. I acquired these before in a daze, thinking they were valuable girls. It turns out they’re freaks. Raised them, and they ended up growing that thing men have.]
Disgust was evident on his face.
[If you want them, I can pack them up and give you a discounted deal.] —
The author has something to say:
① Based on recent news about “transmutation pills,” but in reality, they guarantee “female to male” or “only male births.”
Here, it is ironic, hence the reversal. In reality, of course, there is no such thing as male-to-female transformation. The story portrays the desire for females as an attempt to exploit reproductive value for profit, not a genuine preference. In reality, some people are driven by their ideological biases, preferring to believe in scientifically unfounded pills just to have sons and genuinely disliking daughters.
Searching the news will reveal that most cases involve taking pills for gender transformation, with many ignorant individuals still placing hope in these unknown pills, even if they risk miscarriage and deformities.
There are even people in blog posts and forums queuing up to express wishes like “hoping for a boy,” truly embracing a cyberpunk-like quest for offspring. Even though parents from the 1990s are now the main demographic, many families still refuse to have daughters.
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