Chapter 110
After eting with Xu Jian, Bai Yi once again ca to the eastern suburbs of the city.
Unlike other areas that were becoming increasingly prosperous, this suburb seed to have hardly changed in the past fifty years. In this rapidly evolving tropolis, it was like an outdated component that didn’t fit in.
Large patches of sand-mixed soil spread across the open wilderness, still bearing traces of past wars. Occasionally, one could find rusted shell casings and tal fragnts when turning over the soil.
Large areas of trees grew wildly in this neglected wilderness. Beyond the layers of tree shadows, with the grayish-blue sky as a backdrop, one could vaguely see the gray-white walls of the Seventh Hospital.
Next to it was the Xingfu Orphanage, which was being rebuilt.
The roads in the suburbs were not easy to navigate. Bai Yi got out of the taxi near the road by the forest. He walked on the forest path he had traversed countless tis before. The surrounding trees cast shadows that blocked out all sunlight, creating a particularly deep and chilly atmosphere. At the end of the path, the gray-white walls of the Seventh Hospital, which hadn’t been renovated for many years, appeared in his line of sight.
He looked up, and the tree shadows fell on his eyelashes.
From his earliest mories, Bai Yi never thought he was particularly special. His birth mother’s identity, his birth at the Seventh Hospital, constantly hovering between dreams and wakefulness since childhood, constantly receiving ntal noise from others… All of this, in Bai Yi’s view, was perhaps how every child ca into the world.
For him, the “Seventh Hospital” was a microcosm of this world, with all kinds of strange patients, doctors and nurses in snow-white uniforms – they were the normal components of this world.
Therefore, it wasn’t until he was four or five years old and sent to kindergarten that Bai Yi discovered that the world wasn’t actually like this – in the eyes of the public, the place where he had grown up was actually an abnormal deviation from the norm. He had always been different from other children.
For adults, even if they had never been to a “ntal hospital,” just ntioning it would evoke chaotic, disorderly, and various negative evaluations.
But babies co into this world with a blank slate. Good and evil, black and white, normal and chaotic are indistinguishable in their eyes. They are probably the ones who can view all things most equally.
If you tell a baby from the beginning that fish fly in the sky, they wouldn’t be surprised and would naturally accept this as common knowledge. Although the director and the dical staff tried to isolate Bai Yi from the patients, his innate gift of sensing the rhythms of all things instinctively allowed him to acquire too much “common knowledge” from the patients.
When Bai Yi first left the Seventh Hospital, his “ho,” and entered the new environnt of the outside world, using what he believed to be “common knowledge” to communicate with other children, the discrepancies between their understanding of the world and “common knowledge” quickly made him “abnormal” in others’ eyes to a certain extent.
It was then that the old hospital director realized that Bai Yi, whom they thought had been isolated in a safe zone, had still been unconsciously influenced by the patients. The Seventh Hospital, as a growing environnt, had greatly hindered the child’s ability to establish correct perceptions consistent with the outside world.
Under the old director’s forceful correction, Bai Yi finally understood what was incorrect “common knowledge” and what was correct “common knowledge,” what behaviors were appropriate for a normal child and which were not. He imitated the normal children in kindergarten and quickly integrated into this “normal” world.
But the influence brought by his gift troubled him constantly. When he was in the noisy kindergarten, he “saw” the simple yet intense emotions from the surrounding children, like splashes of colorful paint all around. On the way ho, he passively sensed the thoughts of passersby, bright or gloomy, passionate or turbid. In the familiar Seventh Hospital, he habitually listened to the ever-changing, chaotic ntal fluctuations from the entire hospital… All of this reminded Bai Yi that he was still “abnormal.”
He not only didn’t fit into the normal world outside, but even in the Seventh Hospital, a world considered abnormal by outsiders, he was still the “abnormal” one that didn’t fit in.
So, he had to pretend to be even more “normal.”
This was simple.
Excellent grades and appearance, along with a well-behaved personality, made Bai Yi a good student in the eyes of teachers from an early age. Although so complications caused by long-term insomnia made this good student seem not well-adapted to the noisy school environnt, preferring quiet solitude, and long-term exposure to noisy environnts would negatively affect his ntal state… For every teacher who received similar diagnoses from psychologists or dical institutions, whether in elentary school, middle school, or high school, it was only natural to feel pity and care for this obedient and well-behaved student, constantly reducing pressure on him and often indulging his requests for leave.
Growing up in the Seventh Hospital and experiencing a wide variety of patients gave Bai Yi a clear understanding of what kind of behavior would lead psychologists to make the diagnoses he wanted.
He used this thod to carve out an alternative “quiet place” for himself in this “normal” world filled with chaos, noise, and pollution. When he needed to, he could temporarily distance himself from all of this and find solitude in a place where no one could find him.
The only connection to this world that he couldn’t sever was his mother, Bai Xin, who had been a long-term resident in the depths of the Seventh Hospital.
Although they were mother and son by blood, Bai Yi had spent less ti with her than with the old hospital director.
Her status as a ntal patient ant that her biological son couldn’t stay by her side daily or communicate with her long-term, as this would go against the universal values of healthy ntal and physical developnt for children.
In fact, if Bai Xin hadn’t been without any relatives to entrust with her care, if there hadn’t been absolutely no clue about the child’s father’s identity, and if the Xingfu Orphanage where Bai Xin had previously lived hadn’t been right next to the Seventh Hospital, allowing a child to grow up with his birth mother in a ntal hospital would have been considered unacceptable by many.
But society’s resources weren’t abundant enough to provide Bai Yi with a more suitable placent, and the old director was already his best option.
As a result, Bai Yi’s impression of his birth mother wasn’t very deep.
He had always thought that his mother was no different from other patients, all with thinking that deviated from the norm, forming part of the chaotic side of the worldview he had constructed from childhood.
During their rare interactions, her health always seed poor. She spent most of her ti resting in bed, quiet and cooperative with the doctors and nurses during examinations, doing whatever she was told, as if she didn’t care about anything in this world.
She was like soone standing outside a book, watching the characters inside. Or like a ga player facing NPCs with programd data in the ga.
Only when looking at Bai Yi did her eyes lose that vacant, detached gaze of an outsider. Instead, they beca bright, gentle, and full of expectation. But this emotion wasn’t just a mother’s love for her child; it was more like… as if he were one of only two real people in a world of book characters, one of only two players surrounded by data NPCs.
No, this expectation seed even higher than that.
When he was young, Bai Yi even had the illusion that Bai Xin was like an outsider who had fallen into a book, a player trapped in a ga unable to log out. And he was the author of this book, the GM of the ga, the only “god” who could help her escape the illusion and return to the real world.
Moreover, he was a “god” worthy of expectation, not yet fully grown.
A mother viewing her own son as a deity.
This sounds strange. But from another perspective, it might not be so odd. After all, many parents in this world, when at their lowest point and covered in the muck of a turbid world, often view their children as the hope for their redemption, fantasizing that when they grow up, they will lead them to glorious heights.
Perhaps Bai Xin’s expectation was that Bai Yi would one day be able to take her out of the Seventh Hospital to have a freer life?
Whenever they saw Bai Xin’s particularly special attitude towards her son, the doctors and nurses at the Seventh Hospital couldn’t help but think this way.
Bai Yi’s thoughts were different from theirs.
Before he could even form mories, he had told his mother about how he often dread of becoming many different people and entering many different worlds, and about how he couldn’t control his ability to sense other people’s emotions and thoughts.
For a child who didn’t yet understand most of the world’s common knowledge, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with him. He just thought every child was like this, and that perhaps when they grew up, they would no longer have those dreams or feel those strange emotions.
Bai Xin told him not to ntion these things to others, or else he would be locked up in the Seventh Hospital forever.
ntal patients aren’t always in a state of illness, and Bai Xin’s warning during a lucid mont was taken to heart by the young child.
Although at that ti, he didn’t think being confined to the Seventh Hospital was such a terrible punishnt – this hospital was already a big enough world for him. But having seen patients being taken back to their rooms during episodes, their daily outdoor ti limited, and having seen the unappetizing dicine his mother had to take… Bai Yi certainly didn’t want to experience this treatnt.
When he grew a little older and beca aware of his own uniqueness, his mother’s gaze, seemingly always full of expectation and hope when looking at him, took on a different interpretation.
He knew the reason for his mother’s hospitalization: delusional disorder.
Undoubtedly, Bai Xin, with her delusional symptoms, must have firmly believed in the things he had told her. Perhaps she even saw him as a protagonist with superpowers like in novels, which would explain why her way of looking at the world and at him was so special.
This was what Bai Yi had always thought.
It wasn’t until the Nightmare Ga system descended that too many overlooked details erged, and he suddenly realized that perhaps he had missed sothing, that there were still secrets about Bai Xin that he hadn’t uncovered.
As for whether or not to uncover the truth, Bai Yi was indifferent at heart. But since the system’s arrival, the hints it had given at certain monts were undoubtedly guiding him towards uncovering the truth.
So, what harm was there in going along with it once?
He had already determined that he was the creator of this ga system. And in this world, there was no one more trustworthy than himself.
Casting aside his many doubts, Bai Yi t with the old hospital director as pre-arranged and obtained from him all of Bai Xin’s dical records from nearly thirty years ago, after her admission to the hospital.
Rustle, rustle.
Amidst the sound of flipping through dical records, the old director rambled on. “This child seed to like reading from a young age. When she was at the orphanage, she liked to carry fairy tale books around every day, often believing the stories to be real. Later, she began telling her own fairy tales to the children at the orphanage. They say her stories were particularly vivid, and the children loved listening to them. The teachers at the orphanage even thought she had a talent for storytelling… But later, everyone realized sothing was wrong.”
“…She started believing her own stories were real.”
“…She treated the characters in those stories as her good friends. No, I should say, she treated the entire world in the stories as her friend. She began to beco neurotic, constantly saying that her friends were dying, that sothing bad was happening, that the world in the stories was about to be destroyed. She begged every child, every teacher, every volunteer at the orphanage for help, asking them to save her friends, to save those worlds that were about to be destroyed.”
“It wasn’t until then that the orphanage realized sothing was wrong and sent her here for diagnosis, but it was already too late.”
Bai Yi silently flipped through the dical records, listening to the old director’s narrative with split attention. The director’s summary basically matched what was written in the records, only the records were more detailed and specific.
The familiar font of the system began to appear in midair.
[Obtained 1 important clue for the special reality task.]
[Special reality task has been triggered.]
Bai Yi blinked gently, lost in thought.
He recalled that deep sea like thick ink, the star fragnts densely filling the deep sea, and that lone suspended star…
“Perhaps, everything she said was true. She was really… begging for help for her friends?”
A fleeting image of his mother’s pale face on the childhood sickbed flashed by, followed by those eyes that shone brightly with hope when looking at him. He seed to understand his mother’s expectations of him for the first ti.
An emotion he had never felt before slowly erged in his heart, and for the first ti, Bai Yi had a thought of wanting to achieve a certain goal.
“…Am I the savior she’s been waiting for?”
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