The interior of the church was very spacious, high and wide. The sound of their footsteps reverberated as they walked on the ground. Light came in directly from the high windows on both sides of the church and fell on the pale faces of these terminally ill patients with death all over their faces. Their seats faced an altar with a cross that was more than one meter high. It was very common in a church building but Bai Liu squinted and discovered something was wrong.
In fact, religious elements were often used in horror games. Bai Liu had seen hundreds of images of Jesus being bound to a cross but this obviously wasn’t right.
This was clearly an inverted cross and the person on the statue wasn’t Jesus from Bai Liu’s impression. It was a teenager.
The teenager on the reverse cross was a bit older than little Bai Liu (6). He had his eyes closed and his hands and feet were bound by thorns. The Crucifixion of Jesus was said to be painful but the one bound on this cross was different from the usual suffering expression of Jesus. There was no expression on his face and it was almost like pure indifference. He seemed to feel nothing about his suffering.
The thorns on the wooden cross were wrapped around his ankles, neck and face. Bai Liu could almost see the shadow of his long eyelashes on his face, which was scarred by thorns. However, it was just a pure white statue and there was no such detailed carving.
Yet even if it wasn’t meticulously carved, it was still a beautiful statue. The limbs were smooth and beautiful and the proportions of his face were astonishingly superior. He lay in the thorns that grew out of the inverse cross, face tilted slightly to the side and nestled against his bound arms. The light coming from the window fell on his peaceful sleeping face and a holy brilliance glowed in the somewhat dim church.
It was like a sleeping god.
The dean stood in front of the statue and blocked Bai Liu’s observation as she looked at the seated patients. “Today, we are here to welcome the new students but the baptism is just the beginning. Killing children is forbidden in the church. All investors, please be calm and rest assured. Once you confirm that it is the child you want and make sure that the child can bring you new life, you can take them away.”
“Not all children can bring you a new life.” The dean looked at the people in the seats with a very deep gaze. She raised her arms and shouted, “Only children of pure blood can bring you a brand new life!”
The investors couldn’t help crying out excitedly, “A brand new fate!”
Bai Liu sat in the back row behind Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. Hearing this, Miao Feichi leaned over and complained to Miao Gaojiang, “Why did this game set up a safe house for the children? It is forbidden to kill children in the church. It will be inconvenient to catch the children if they run to the church.”
“It is normal. After all, it is a level 2 game and it can’t be cleared so easily.” Miao Gaojiang analyzed it. “Still, I think the key to this game is to catch the child. The blood purity should mean this. We have the same blood and only qualified children can meet the requirements to make the blood ganoderma lucidum we want.”
Then Miao Gaojiang paused slightly and added a sentence. “In accordance with a level 2 game, I think that one child’s blood won’t be enough to save one player. This way, the player’s mortality rate won’t be blocked. To be on the safe side, we should grab a few more children. It should be one player corresponds to two children.”
Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang chatted about how to deal with these children. After knowing about the life recovery medicine, they didn’t hesitate to place these children as their opponents and were already talking about how to deal with them. Now they were talking about how to draw blood from their child versions. Miao Feichi laughed and cheekily talked about buying an oversized juicer from the system to throw their children in. This way, more blood would come out.
Bai Liu listened silently in the back.
He wasn’t surprised that investors couldn’t act against the children today. According to the song and his consistent understanding of the baptism, the children before the baptism were guilty, impure and couldn’t be used to have their blood drawn.
There were two highly dangerous players, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang, participating in the baptism today. If they could directly attack the children, the children wouldn’t be able to resist at all. Then Bai Liu would’ve had Bai Liu (6) try to take the other children to escape with him yesterday night.
Soon, the dean led the investors to receive a few prayers before bringing out the children. They were barefoot and wore wide coats and robes that were pure white to the ankles.
There was a slight stirring from the investors in the room and they all had the same expression on their identical faces. They were wildly and greedily surveying these children led by the dean, these children who exuded a steady stream of the breath of life.
This was their new life.
Even Miao Feichi sat upright from where he was leaning on the chair. He looked at the children like he was a juicer and they were fruit about to enter him. He was filled with a cruel excitement and the greed to crush them as his nose sniffed twice and he made a somewhat intoxicated expression.
“These children smell really delicious.” Miao Feichi looked like an animal about to eat. He kept licking his lips as he stared at the children walking in line. “That little Bai Liu (6), his skin is really soft and tender. I haven’t eaten a child all at once in a long time. I might be able to do so with him.”
Little Bai Liu (6) wore a large white robe that dragged to his ankles and no shoes. His head was lowered as he held a burning candle. The firelight swayed over his calm face as he walked at the end of the line of children, standing on the platform under the guidance of the den.
The children received the command of the dean and stood in a horizontal row on the stage. Little Bai Liu (6) raised his eyes. There were many identical faces under the stage. They were thin, pale and smiled strangely. Under the shaking candlelight in the children’s hands, their faces seemed to distort and twist in the hot air, turning into crying shapes that lunged at them with open mouths.
Little Mu Ke was standing next to little Bai Liu (6) and raised his head secretly, only to lower it again in fright. Meanwhile, little Bai Liu (6) scanned the people below. Finally, his gaze fell on Bai Liu’s body and he didn’t move it away. It was obvious he had found Bai Liu among the group of investors.
Bai Liu raised his eyebrow slightly in surprise. All the investors now looked like ghosts. How did this little kid recognize him?
Someone brought in a bathtub, or what looked like a bathtub. The dean explained that this tub would be used to baptize the children. It was filled with shaking water and a ring of residual blood around it that couldn’t be wiped off.
The bathtub was placed in front of the children.
The dean stood in front of the children. She raised her hand and made a gesture to make the children look up at her.
She smiled very kindly. “Now children, let’s sing the hymn once. Then I will start baptizing you one be one. Remember to add your own name to the hymn at the end.”
The uneven children’s song rang out. They sang with childlike and clear voices, the flame of the candle they held in their hands leaping brightly in front of their innocent eyes.
“Born on a Monday,
Christened on a Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
This is the end of Bai Liu (6) (the name of each child).”
“Very good.” After the weird opening song, the dean opened the register in her hand. She lowered her head and started to read out the names. “Next, I will let every investor baptize his sponsored child. It is very simple. You just need to immerse your child in this clear water tank. However, the water can only wash off the bacteria these children brought from the outside world. Oh, sorry, it isn’t bacteria. My mistake. It is sin. This water isn’t enough to wash off the sin on them—”
The dean looked up, her eyes sweeping over the children while her smile became grim. “After washing with the water, you will take a portion of the child’s blood to cleanse them of their sin. The blood will be taken to the hospital to identify if there are other sins on them. If not, you can come and take them away on Wednesday, adopting these children.”
Bai Liu’s eyes moved slightly.
No wonder why there would be a ritual like a baptism here. It turned out that these investors were afraid of other viruses in the children’s body. They had to use this ritual to wash away the ‘disease and filth’ from the children at the spiritual level. Then some of the blood would be taken back for examination to confirm from a physical level that there was no problem with the blood of these children—for example, bacteria or infectious diseases.
These investors were quite careful. They thought that these children from the outside world were dirty from a spiritual and physical level. This was why they set up this baptism to screen the blood quality of the children in the welfare home.
This was equivalent to a pre-matching test. Then the children could officially be taken away on Wednesday.
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Proofreader: Purichan
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