Chapter 27: The Child That Wouldn't Let Go

As the group discussed matters in the lobby, a barefoot child suddenly ran out in a panic. Upon spotting Lu Li sitting there, he immediately lunged into her arms.

Her neck was encircled by warm, small hands, and a fuzzy little head rubbed against her shoulder—a sensation that felt entirely foreign to her.

"Oh my! Look at the time," the woman exclaimed, glancing at the wall clock. She slapped her thigh and jumped up. She nudged the man beside her. "Let's go! Get to sleep quickly; there’s a huge crowd coming to pick up goods tomorrow. Little girl, you should take your brother to your room and get some sleep too! The shop is busy from dawn till dusk. Even though we put your room as far back as possible, it’s hard to avoid the noise."

As she spoke, she locked the main door and ushered Lu Li toward her quarters.

Once in the room, Lu Li set the boy down on the cot and picked up a pen and paper. Scribbling quickly, she wrote: "What is your name, little one? Where are your parents?"

The boy looked at the paper and tilted his head.

*Don’t tell me he’s illiterate?* she thought. *At his age, even in a normal world, he shouldn't know many characters, right?*

How was she supposed to communicate with him? Should she just make zombie noises?

She pointed to herself, carefully enunciated her lip movements, and wrote "Lu Li," then gestured toward him. Uncertain if he understood, she was just beginning to worry about how to proceed when the boy took the pen. He leaned over his lap and wrote, in wobbly characters, "YU Bai."

*Oh! Still using pinyin to write his name.* Lu Li smiled at the novelty of the shaky, phonetic handwriting.

"Yu Bai?"

The boy took the paper, furrowed his brows, and finally nodded.

Lu Li circled the word "parents" and added a question mark, then wrote "Go home."

The boy shook his head.

"Go to the welfare agency tomorrow?"

The boy continued to shake his head.

Noticing he hadn't spoken a word, Lu Li pointed to his mouth. "Can’t you talk?"

The boy didn't answer; he simply buried his face in her chest.

*A mute as well?*

Unable to get any answers, Lu Li retrieved the three hidden puppies and tucked them into the boy's arms.

Upon seeing the three little ones huddled together, tears welled up in Yu Bai's eyes. He tremblingly reached out with tiny paws smaller than the puppies themselves to stroke their fur.

Sensing a familiar scent, the puppies suddenly stirred. They waved their hairless, pink little paws and wiggled toward the boy, beginning to suckle on his fingers. The boy burst into laughter through his tears, his long lashes glistening with crystal drops as he gazed up at Lu Li with wide, joyful eyes.

Lu Li was taken aback, her heart softening. The little black puppy was nudged away by the other two, rolling onto the cot and bouncing a few times as it began to tumble off the edge. Lu Li quickly caught it. Feeling the small, warm weight of the puppy—which felt like a furry stress-relief toy—she felt a pang of worry. *Can these things really survive?*

There was no point in overthinking it. Lu Li picked up the pen and paper again. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Yu Bai placed the puppies on the bed, gripped the pen, and crouched on the floor to write his "essay." Watching him struggle and grunt as he labored over the characters, Lu Li smiled and began organizing the supplies she needed to buy tomorrow.

By the time she finished, Yu Bai was still writing. Lu Li leaned against the cot, watching the child sweat from the exertion; she found it strangely delightful. *Is this the satisfaction one gets from watching a primary schooler do their homework?*

Finally, Yu Bai handed over a page that was barely legible. He curled up on the cot, hugging the whimpering puppies and pretending to be asleep. Noticing his eyes darting beneath his lids and his occasional peeks through slits, Lu Li didn't call him out. She began the laborious task of deciphering the essay, which was riddled with pinyin.

He had a mother who died young, an absent father, and an aunt’s family who frequently beat and scolded him. He had been raised by a speed-type mutant dog his mother left behind.

After that family had looted everything he owned, they set their sights on his dog. They used every trick to lure it in, and once they crippled its legs, they sold it for breeding.

When he finally saw her again, she was covered in wounds, her belly swollen as she became a mother. When he saw them force a hood over her head and lock her in a cage, he quietly climbed into their vehicle and followed them outside the safety zone. He watched with his own eyes as the mother dog refused their orders and was eventually mauled to death by porcupine quills.

His cousin coldly declared the experiment a failure and abandoned the mother dog, then dragged him out of the trunk and threw him away.

Batterered by mutant plants, he managed to crawl his way back to the mother dog. She was covered in spikes, and he didn't know what to do as he watched dark red liquid gush from her wounds, while three wet, fleshy balls squirmed beneath her.

She licked her pups and fed them one last time before nudging them into a pit. When he tried to stop her, he was pushed in as well.

He couldn't climb out of the pit, and the puppies crawled all over him. He was panicked and desperate, but too terrified to cry for help.

His last memory was of Lu Li jumping down like an angel to save him.

Looking at this tragic history, Lu Li’s heart ached. She let him drift off to sleep while clutching her arm.

Once she was sure he was truly asleep, she pulled up the interface. "Hey, System, are you sure this character isn't in the original book?"

She tapped on the essay and clicked her tongue. "Isn't this the textbook definition of a villain's descent into darkness?"

"Look at this. It's clearly on par with Jiang Linyi's backstory."

[Host, there is no character named "Yu Bai" in the entire book. Please stop questioning us high-dimensional beings!]

"Hmmph. What should I do with a kid like this? Still hand him over to the welfare agency?"

[Host, I told you not to save him in the first place. It was useless!]

"He’s just a child! Do you have no empathy at all?"

[Host, I am a Villain Salvation System. I only care about villains. Everything else that hinders my mission is a virus or trash that needs to be cleared.]

Lu Li hummed dismissively. "No, you’ve been exiled. You’re a retirement system now!"

Throughout the night, Lu Li bantered with the system and discovered a new, free feature: her system could bypass firewalls and hack directly into the main brain's knowledge base to access information from various worlds.

This discovery led Lu Li to shower the system with praise, eventually coaxing it into giving her a cultivation technique from a xianxia world: the *Chaos Ten Directions Mystic Art*.

She was so excited that she started practicing, accidentally waking the child up. She quickly patted him to signal she was just having a nightmare.

Once she lulled him back to sleep, she sneaked off the bed, opened the window, and sat under the moonlight, eager to master her divine power. But no miracle occurred; she sat there in the cold wind until Uncle Liu woke up.

"System, this is the 'divine power' you were bragging about?"

[It is indeed a divine power, perhaps it just isn't compatible with this world!]

"Haha!" Rubbing her already stiff legs—which were now completely immobile—Lu Li lost all interest in cultivation.

Just as she was about to toss the book aside, she remembered the single sheets she had wastefully ordered the system to print yesterday; they were blank on the back.

Looking at the thick book, Lu Li let out a dry, raspy laugh. It would be enough to give her something to talk about for a while.