As soon as Xin Meng heard this, he curiously leaned over to take a look, and was immediately startled!
He saw that the front yard, which had just been empty, was now filled with more than a dozen children!
He looked up and saw that the sun had completely risen.
Sure enough…
These more than a dozen children, both boys and girls, were all quite young. Some were in the kindergarten’s lower class, walking unsteadily, while others were in the upper class, running and jumping around with great agility.
The little girl in the red dress that Xin Meng had seen before was among them.
However, this time she looked just like any normal child.
They were like curious little kittens, darting around the kindergarten yard, moving nimbly in all directions. Some were digging in the sandpit, while others ran to swing on the swings.
However, several of the older children had a clear objective; they were lying at the slide’s exit, sticking their heads into the tube, searching for something one by one.
“Fortunately, no one is hiding in the slide; they would be found immediately,” Xin Meng said with relief.
He wanted to take a closer look, but was suddenly pulled down by You Yi!
“What’s wrong?” Xin Meng was startled.
“Someone is looking this way.” You Yi bent down and took a couple of steps to the side of the window, then straightened up and carefully looked outside, with Xin Meng following closely behind.
“What’s the situation now?” Xin Meng whispered.
“They’ve entered the building,” You Yi said, pulling Xin Meng closer to him so that he could also see the scene outside.
The more than a dozen children found nothing outside and began to bounce around, entering the main door of the first floor one by one.
“Will they search room by room?” Xin Meng speculated. “Isn’t it more dangerous the lower the floor?”
The first to be affected would be the first floor’s Jiezi.
“No,” You Yi said firmly, unexpectedly. “If they searched from the bottom up as you said, they could search all the rooms and reach the top floor in less than a day. No player could escape; the difficulty would be too high, so it wouldn’t be set up that way. They should split up as soon as they enter the building, and which floor they appear on will be random.”
Xin Meng trusted You Yi completely and had no doubts about the correctness of his speculation. He nodded directly, “So should we find a hidden place to hide, or engage in guerrilla warfare?”
You Yi weighed it and said, “We can’t stay in one place for too long. If something unexpected happens, it’s easy to get trapped. We should try not to stop, find several hidden spots to take cover, just in case.”
“Understood.” Xin Meng nodded.
The two first went to the place where Xin Meng had woken up, which was a children’s activity room, now covered in dust.
The space inside was quite open, with only a pile of tables and chairs, and a floor full of broken toys. There were no cabinets or hiding places, making it unsuitable for them to hide.
After taking a glance, they were about to leave, but when Xin Meng turned around, his foot accidentally kicked something. He looked down and saw it was a ragged doll.
The doll was also tattered, with several holes in its dirty body, and the cotton inside was exposed, equally filthy.
The two eyes, originally black buttons sewn on, had one of its threads come loose, causing the button to dangle down, about to fall off.
“It feels like this place has suffered some kind of disaster,” Xin Meng couldn’t help but say. “Everywhere is filled with broken toys, dolls, toy cars, and even picture books are torn to shreds. And it doesn’t look like it was done by someone else; how powerful is the destructive force of these little kids?”
This doll was already considered relatively intact; the other toys were even more tragic.
Xin Meng didn’t pick it up and walked around the doll, saying to You Yi, “I don’t like kids at all.”
“Oh really?” You Yi said lightly.
Xin Meng paused for a moment, pursed his lips, “You… you must like them a lot, right?”
Hearing the odd tone in his voice, You Yi turned his head to look, and he understood, unable to help but smile, “That depends on who it is.”
“What do you mean?” Xin Meng didn’t understand; does it depend on the person?
“I once had a child I really liked,” You Yi said, “but he has grown up now. I don’t like other kids.”
Xin Meng felt a pang in his heart; he had liked a child… but You Yi had never said he liked him!
“Then he…” jealousy surged, Xin Meng pressed on.
But You Yi interrupted him, “But if you could give birth to one for me, I would like it.”
Xin Meng’s mouth twitched, and he protested with wide eyes, “I’m not a woman; how can I have a baby!”
“That’s not necessarily true,” You Yi said with a meaningful smile.
Xin Meng felt a chill run down his back and immediately changed the subject. “Let’s hurry to the next room and take a look; we don’t want them to find us!”
You Yi maintained his smile as he watched him rush into the second room next door.
It wasn’t until Xin Meng entered the room that he realized he seemed to have been sidetracked by the man…
But the moment had passed, and asking again would make him seem persistent. Even if he was unwilling, he could only wait for another opportunity to ask.
The second room was not a classroom but a storage room filled with clutter.
It was very chaotic inside, with all sorts of things, but most of them were broken: bare broom heads, a plastic bucket missing a piece, a floor covered with broken brushes, easels, tables and chairs with broken legs, and mops with separated handles, dirty rags piled in the corner like moldy seaweed, while the sticks lay haphazardly nearby, covered in dark brown stains.
Against the wall were a few broken cabinets with drawers that were about to fall out, but they were too small to hide a person.
Xin Meng walked over, pulled open a drawer, and rummaged through it, unexpectedly finding a few newspapers inside.
The newspapers had already yellowed, and naturally, there was no date on the top.
Xin Meng held the newspaper and looked at it with You Yi, who had followed him.
In the center of the front page was a black-and-white photo that looked very familiar; it was the main entrance of the kindergarten they were currently in.
In the photo, the kindergarten’s main gate looked very new, adorned with ribbons and banners that read, “Warm congratulations on the official completion of Original Sin Kindergarten!”
A few female teachers stood in front of the gate, dressed in formal A-line dresses, standing straight and facing the camera, but their faces were all pixelated, making it impossible to see their features.
“This is news from when the kindergarten was just built; it looks quite normal,” Xin Meng said, glancing at other areas but finding no textual reports, seemingly only this one photo.
Flipping further back, there was no useful information; most of it was advertisements or legal pages.
Xin Meng looked at it; it published some ongoing cases in a block format, but they weren’t detailed, and some looked like made-up stories.
He put down this newspaper and flipped through the rest, but there were no other reports about this kindergarten.
On the last newspaper, with Xin Meng’s careful observation, he discovered a small, inconspicuous corner of the legal page that contained the following report:
“The day before yesterday, at a certain kindergarten in our city, a bizarre incident occurred where a five-year-old child accidentally entered the storage room and unfortunately passed away after being struck on the head by a tool. The specific case is under investigation.”
Although it was called a report, it was merely a short sentence, and there was no follow-up.
But Xin Meng knew that this “certain kindergarten” must be this Original Sin Kindergarten, and the storage room was precisely the one they were in now.
“A child died here,” Xin Meng said. “Struck on the head by a tool… it’s not impossible; it’s so messy here. But I can’t understand why this newspaper is here and why it lets us see it; what’s the use?”
You Yi, however, was wandering around the room, occasionally picking up something and then throwing it away. Xin Meng curiously asked, “What are you looking for?”
“A tool,” You Yi said.
“You mean, to find the tool that killed that child?” Xin Meng understood his meaning immediately, a flash of inspiration hitting him, “Could it be a prop for passing the level?”
“Not sure yet.” Unexpectedly, You Yi shook his head. “But although the content of the newspaper is sparse, there must be some useful information. Since there are no children’s corpses here, the only thing we can try to find is the other thing mentioned—’the tool.'”
Xin Meng nodded, suddenly having a clear line of thought.
No wonder he didn’t know where to start; this kind of game of searching for items and then unraveling clues was something he was experiencing for the first time.
He suddenly felt a bit excited and immediately began rummaging through the room as well. In the end, both of their gazes fell simultaneously on a pile of mops in the corner.
To be precise, it was the wooden sticks of the mops.
The stains on the sticks looked very much like blood, and they were the only items in the entire room with such marks.
You Yi picked up one of the sticks, gently wiped his finger on the dark brown area, and smelled it under his nose.
“It’s blood.”
Confirming the “tool,” Xin Meng looked at the pile of sticks and instinctively counted them; there were exactly six.
Each one was covered in irregular bloodstains.
“Struck on the head by a tool…” Xin Meng felt a bit perplexed. “Struck on the head by a mop stick, and it killed him?”
How could that be possible?
No matter how small a child is, at five years old, their skull can’t be that soft, right?
Moreover, when he picked it up and weighed it, these mop sticks were even lighter than those sold in the market. Even if six of them struck down at the same time, it would still be somewhat difficult to kill a child.
Not to mention, mops are generally stood upright; who would place such things on top?
However, You Yi looked at the distribution of the bloodstains on the stick and said, “It wasn’t a strike that killed him; he was beaten to death.”
“Huh?” Xin Meng was taken aback.
“Someone used this stick to beat that child to death,” You Yi pointed out to him. “The position of the bloodstains and the splatter marks indicate that it was a heavy blow, and on this end, you can still see a few bloodstained fingerprints.”
Xin Meng looked down, and sure enough, there were indeed two or three fingerprints, also dark brown, but because they had been smudged, they were somewhat blurry, yet the general outline could still be seen.
What chilled him was that these blood fingerprints were very small, definitely not belonging to an adult.
“Six sticks, six children, beat another child to death.” Xin Meng felt a chill run down his spine, as if he could see the scene of that day, their small arms waving the sticks, surrounding a barely conscious child, frantically beating and smashing, blood splattering everywhere.
“That’s terrifying…” Xin Meng murmured.
