Chapter 70: The Child (Part VII)

"Need to pee?" Wen Xiaoxiao, who was similarly lacking in experience in caring for children, paused for a moment. "Youyou, the second floor..."

Her inquiring words came to an abrupt halt. What she originally wanted to ask was whether there was a second bathroom on the second floor.

However, she could not ask.

Her current identity was Youyou's mother, the female master of this house.

How could she possibly not know whether there was a bathroom on the second floor?

Once she asked, it would be tantamount to denying her identity as a mother, and at that time, the troublesome skeletal evil spirit would appear again.

Wen Xiaoxiao glanced at Zhou Ke, who was alone in the corner facing the wall deep in thought, and did not go to disturb him. She knew that figuring out a way to escape from here right now was the top priority.

The longer she stayed in the house, the more dangerous their situation became.

It was not worth wasting precious time on such a trivial matter.

Furthermore, she had always been a person inclined to solve problems independently.

"I have to use the Truth again."

Wen Xiaoxiao looked at Youyou with a trace of reluctance in her heart as gray mist spilled from behind her.

No matter how much the examiners praised her Truth, she could never grow to like it, because if she was not careful, it would plunge the people around her into trouble.

"I have witnessed all the terrors contained in the universe, and after that, even the spring sky and summer flowers became poison in my eyes."

Within the distant and endless gray mist, continuously twisting and changing tentacles wriggled silently, and the smallest and weakest among them quietly attached itself to Youyou's neck.

Youyou was struck as if by lightning, and her young body trembled violently.

She looked at Wen Xiaoxiao and repeated in a daze, "Mommy, I want to pee."

"Alright, Mommy will take you."

This time, Wen Xiaoxiao did not hesitate. She took Youyou's small hand, but the direction she walked in was the stairs to the second floor.

Regarding this, Youyou, who had brushed past the first-floor bathroom, felt that there was nothing wrong with it.

If one could enter Youyou's current perspective, they would find that everything before her eyes was chaotic.

The layout of the house, the positions of the objects, the distance of the footsteps—everything was covered with a layer of bizarre colors never seen before, and everything was changing on a per-second basis.

So much so that she thought she was taking a step forward, but in reality, she might be taking ten steps backward.

Yet Youyou, situated right in the middle of it, could not feel that anything was wrong at all.

This was not a Truth that created illusions like a "mirage." Rather than an illusion, it was more akin to mental manipulation.

The affected subject could see a mountain, but they would feel that it was not a mountain; they could not see a river, but they would feel that everything was a river.

She seemed to have become an unwitting puppet, with every move dancing to the rhythm of Wen Xiaoxiao's fingertips.

"The longer the Truth affects someone, the easier it is for problems to arise. I must hurry." Seeing that the Truth worked on Youyou, Wen Xiaoxiao felt a mixture of relief and worry.

She exchanged a few words with Zhou Ke, then quickly led Youyou up to the second floor.

She figured she would first look for a second bathroom on the second floor. If there wasn't one, she would just have to wrong Youyou a little bit.

She would use the power of the Truth to make Youyou perceive just any room as a bathroom.

The advantage was that she wouldn't need to rack her brains searching for a bathroom, Youyou wouldn't notice a thing, and it wouldn't leave any childhood trauma.

The disadvantage was—cleanup would be required afterward.

Wen Xiaoxiao acted with extreme efficiency. First, she returned to the corridor of Youyou's room, and after seeing that there were no other rooms here, she immediately turned to the other side.

Unlike Zhou Ke, the energy-saving faction who preferred not to use his brain if he could use his limbs, as long as she had a specific goal, she possessed an endless stream of perseverance and motivation to push forward.

A task that could be completed today would never be procrastinated until tomorrow.

A task that could be completed in thirty minutes would never be extended to an hour.

Described from Mr. Zhou's lazy philosophy and values of life, this kind of person was terrifyingly efficient, practically a terrifying robot reborn as the Terminator!

If the final boss of many shonen anime was replaced by Wen Xiaoxiao, the protagonist would most likely not survive past the second episode.

If the editor responsible for chasing manuscript deadlines in her past life was replaced by Wen Xiaoxiao, Mr. Zhou would have hanged himself that very night.

Click.

Pushing open another door, she found a utility room inside.

Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, old clothes, and other sundries were piled up inside. Specific details could not be described, after all, she was not a freak like Zhou Ke with a super-strong memory.

She only knew there was no bathroom inside, so she turned and headed toward the adjacent room.

Click.

Hard work pays off. In the third room on the other side of the corridor corner, she found the bathroom.

This was the master bedroom, which had an en-suite bathroom.

Wen Xiaoxiao opened the bathroom door, confirmed there was no danger inside, and quickly lifted the Truth, letting Youyou, whose rationality had returned to normal, go inside to use the toilet.

She wiped the sweat from her cheeks and watched as Youyou anxiously locked the door from the inside, a smile involuntarily blooming on her face.

The next moment, she immediately realized something was wrong, channeled the Truth to dispel her distractions, and quickly gathered her focus.

"Just now, I had immersed myself into the role of Youyou's mother, and my own thinking was also affected." Wen Xiaoxiao supported her head, recalling the speculation Zhou Ke had shared with her while she was bandaging his wound.

This kind of influence shared similarities with her Truth; both were equivalent to a kind of "pollution" specifically targeting the mental world.

It was just that her approach was more forceful and direct, and the implanted chaotic consciousness would cause people to lose most of their autonomy.

Meanwhile, the influence inside the house was subtle and imperceptible, making it very hard to detect. Once it took root in one's thinking, it would grow and cover everything along the paths of memory, making it impossible to ever wake up.

"Actually, living on being deceived like this doesn't seem so bad... at least for me."

Wen Xiaoxiao stared at her palm for a long time, the lingering warmth of holding hands with Youyou still resting on her skin. The last time she had physical contact with another person must have been God knows how many years ago.

"But I cannot be so selfish. Zhou Ke definitely still has family waiting for him to return in the real world. I cannot bring trouble to others."

She lowered her palm, and when she raised her face, the lingering attachment had vanished entirely.

The ink-colored silk cloth faced the wall at the head of the bed, where a wedding photo hung.

Bizarrely, there was only one person on the right side of the photo.

It was her, overflowing with a happy smile—which in itself was already extremely eerie.

And even stranger was that the left side of the photo was completely blank, as if a chunk had been violently carved out.

"This is my room! This is my house! Get out! Get out of here!!" The man's hoarse, angry roar came from all directions of the bedroom.

Wen Xiaoxiao was not misled by the sound. Her senses were sharp and her movements swift, and even while wearing slippers, she easily avoided a blood-red arm reaching up from the floor.

"You know what?"

As she spoke, a tentacle broke through the mist and stabbed straight into the floor.

Yet the blood-red arm was also extremely fast, retracting back into the ground before the tentacle arrived, forming a dark shadow that crawled and slithered across various parts of the bedroom.

"I am very special. I awakened the Truth the moment I was born."