Chapter 92

The unique nature of Jiao Meiqi’s experience captured everyone’s curiosity.

They urged her to quickly explain exactly what had happened in the Illusory Realm.

Jiao Meiqi could barely stand to remember; she closed her eyes in pain. “I didn’t have the heart to watch the whole thing. It was too cruel. That man came home drunk and went berserk. He hit her mother, then he hit her. The man calmed down for a bit after that, but then he heard the kid telling her mother to get a divorce, started going crazy again, and eventually beat her to death.”

Jiao Meiqi wasn’t a sadist. When the Illusory Realm happened, she hadn’t been able to stomach watching closely.

When the alcoholic stepfather was abusing the little girl, she felt as if it was happening to her own body—pain all over.

Only when the little girl died did she take a look, and she couldn’t help but cry. What a poor child. There wasn’t a patch of good flesh on her entire body; the skin had been beaten to a pulp.

It was only then that Jiao Meiqi understood what the skin graft surgery was really for.

The three who had listened to Jiao Meiqi’s rough account mulled it over, then felt something was off.

Zhu Ming said, “From the moment we entered this dungeon, everything has revolved around the parent-child relationship. It’s certain that the little ghosts’ obsessions are all tied to their parents. The Illusory Realm reflects both the child’s cause of death and what they really care about. According to your description, this little girl’s mother didn’t abuse her. She was a victim, just like the child. The girl should resent the father figure far more.

Yet, while you performed better than your teammate… you got eliminated first. It’s still very strange. Can you elaborate? I think you might be overlooking something.”

Jiao Meiqi had no choice but to recall it again. The sequence was just that—an alcoholic stepfather, a weak mother, and a pitiful stepdaughter.

“I didn’t overlook anything. Their family seemed very ordinary. They were all ordinary people.” Jiao Meiqi was very distressed. “He just threw a drunken fit and accidentally killed someone. What else could there be?”

Zhu Ming said, “I don’t mean the specifics of their identity, background, environment, or relationships. What I want to know is, within this process, regarding the mother—what was there that would be utterly unacceptable from the child’s perspective.”

Jiao Meiqi began to ponder deeply: Hmm…

Seeing she couldn’t pinpoint the anomaly for a moment, Yin Yu smiled and gently touched Zhu Ming’s hand, signaling her to be patient. She suggested, “How about this: you narrate every single one of the three people’s words and actions in extreme detail from the start of the Illusory Realm. We’ll help you look for it.”

There was no other way. Jiao Meiqi nodded and began to give a detailed account:

The Illusory Realm sequence was actually very simple.

It was nighttime. The little girl was doing homework at a desk that was a bit too high for her. Two plates of food were laid out on the dining table, already cold. The mother went back and forth reheating the dishes, and in her spare moments, went to do the laundry.

It was very late, and the man of the house still hadn’t returned.

The little girl’s stomach was growling with hunger, so while her mother wasn’t looking, she sneaked two bites of braised pork head.

Everything was utterly mundane, as long as you ignored her painfully thin frame and the bruises on her arms.

Then, the man of the house returned, dead drunk. As soon as he came in, he bellowed the woman’s name. When she, her hands still wet, came to help steady him, he started his drunken rampage.

First, he shoved the woman down, cursing her for not knowing how to dry her hands. Then he kicked her twice, saying the sight of her unlucky face annoyed him.

The little girl was probably used to this. While he was running wild, she quietly packed her homework book, wanting to go back to her room.

But the drunkard saw her back, grabbed her and yanked her back. He slapped her, cursing her as a little ungrateful wretch who saw her old man and ran off—had the guts to get out and sleep on the streets.

The little girl burst into great wails. The drunkard snatched up a fly swatter and lashed her with the hard stick.

The woman came up to stop him but was roared at by the drunkard: “Get lost! Don’t I have any say in this house anymore? Or should I just leave!”

The woman dared not block him anymore and could only watch her daughter get beaten. She stood helplessly off to the side, wiping her tears, saying: “Juanjuan, quickly apologize to your father.”

The house was in utter chaos. Having caused enough ruckus, the drunkard collapsed onto the sofa and fell asleep.

The woman, meekly sobbing, cleaned up the mess, then carried the food into the room so her injured daughter could eat first.

Waiting all evening only for the plates to be knocked over, the meat dish neither she nor her child had dared touch much of now scattered all over the floor—this feeling made the woman’s heart ache with misery, and she wept.

The little girl ate a few bites, but seeing her mother wiping tears beside her, she truly couldn’t eat anymore. She asked her mother: Could they get a divorce from him? She didn’t want this father anymore.

The woman said: Silly child, how can a family not have a man? Daddy hit you today because he was drunk. He didn’t mean it. Let’s forgive him, okay? From now on, Mama will make sure he drinks less. It’s fine, alright? Things will get better.

But…

Clutching her chopsticks, the little girl’s heart ached as she said: “He’s always beating you, too!”

The woman said: “Mama is fine. Having a father for us to rely on makes this family whole. And you, you should be closer to Daddy normally. Don’t always make him unhappy. You upset him, so of course he hits you. Stop constantly going against him.”

The little girl said aggrievedly: “I’m not upsetting him! He’s the one who’s bad, clearly!”

The woman chided her gently: “Look at you, this child, always saying bad things about Daddy. How can your heart be so small?”

The little girl couldn’t take it anymore. She cried, “I just don’t want this dad! Mama, throw him out! This is our house!”

The crying and shouting woke the drunkard, who hadn’t been sleeping deeply. His face dark with malice, he kicked the door open and rushed at the little girl with a terrifying expression, pummeling and kicking her.

“You little bastard, I knew you were no good. Eating my food, drinking my drink, and still being an ungrateful snake. I’ll teach you to be ungrateful! I’ll teach you to be ungrateful…”

The woman’s weeping, the young child’s wails, and the man’s brutal curses mixed together, weaving a grotesque and distorted symphony.

The woman was also slapped a few times and shoved out of the room.

She stood outside the door, her back hunched, peering through the crack at her beaten daughter, her heart aching so much that tears streamed down her face.

The little girl instinctively sought help from her mother. In this world, a mother was supposed to be the person who loved and protected a child the most. How could she not come to save her?

But her mother guiltily averted her gaze, because the man had said: If she dared to stop him, he would leave this broken home.

The woman thought to herself: Once tonight is over, things will be fine. You can’t blame the man entirely—it’s just that the girl talks nonsense and is too infuriating.

And how could a child not have a father? Their family needed a man.

The woman chose to turn a blind eye. After all, he was the child’s father now; disciplining a child was only natural and right. Although it broke her heart to see her daughter beaten, still… still, there was nothing to be done. Life couldn’t be lived without enduring some hardship.

Later, the little girl gradually fell silent.

Having vented his fury, the drunkard locked the door from inside, preventing the woman from going in to check on her.

“If you care about her, then let her really learn her lesson!” That was what he said, cursing and grumbling as he told the woman to heat up the food—he was hungry again.

As for exactly when the little girl died, neither of those two knew.

Instead, it was Jiao Meiqi, the bystander, who knew more.

Recalling the mother’s utter devastation upon discovering the little girl’s corpse, Jiao Meiqi couldn’t help shedding a few tears herself. How could such a tragic thing happen? It was simply too pitiful.

Jiao Meiqi lifted her head, wanting to share a few emotional words with her roommates, only to find the three of them looking at her with strange expressions.

Jia Xiao and Zhu Ming were the most obvious—their strangeness mixed with a frustrated urgency, like they were scratching their heads desperately, dying to say something but not knowing how… Maybe they’d been angered by the man in this tragedy.

Yin Yu was less obvious, just smiling, but her smile was very subtle.

For some reason, Jiao Meiqi found it hard to meet Yin Yu’s smile. Having heard such a pitiful story, how could she still smile?

Jiao Meiqi avoided Yin Yu’s gaze and asked them instead: “There shouldn’t be any omissions. Although I didn’t have the heart to stare at it, I heard their dialogue. In your opinion, where is the problem?”

Zhu Ming cleared her throat awkwardly and said, “The problem is simply your bad luck—you happened to run into a child with this kind of experience.”

Jiao Meiqi was dumbfounded. “Huh?”

Jia Xiao chuckled dryly and said, “Let me ask you, then: who do you think was the most awful in that situation?”

Jiao Meiqi answered without hesitation: “The stepfather, of course!”

Jia Xiao: “And what about the mother?”

Jiao Meiqi said, “She was a bit weak, but she couldn’t help it.”

Jia Xiao said, “Thinking that way as an outsider is normal. But if you were that little girl, who would you care about more?”

Jiao Meiqi answered: “I’d definitely still hate the stepfather more.”

“I’m asking you who you’d care about more!”

Jia Xiao couldn’t help scratching her scalp again. God, it was so itchy.

Seeing Jiao Meiqi still didn’t get it, Zhu Ming asked a different question. “When you and your teammate took the assessment together, did you take special care of him? No matter how poorly he did, you were very understanding of him?”

This was inferred from Jiao Meiqi’s personality.

Jiao Meiqi thought back and said, “More or less, I suppose. It’s what I should do.”

Zhu Ming prompted her. “Since your performance was so good, what about his? Tell us in detail. Did he do anything that would have made the child unhappy?”

Jiao Meiqi thought for a moment. She wasn’t completely certain. “At the beginning, he wasn’t great with children. Clumsy and awkward, and he had a bit of a short temper. But he never directly clashed with the kid. And later on, he mostly hid away. No matter how impatient he got, he didn’t irritate the little girl.”

“If he didn’t irritate the kid and always hid away, how do you know he was still so impatient later on?”

Jiao Meiqi said, “Because we kept in contact later. We divided the work. I took care of the child in the hospital and handled the surgery; he was outside figuring out how to raise money. Oh, right, Zhu Ming, he copied you to raise the money.”

Zhu Ming ignored that last part, zeroing in directly on the crucial point. “So, he lost his temper at you.”

At the mention of this, Jiao Meiqi empathized from a distance. “He was just getting upset and anxious because he was worried about not passing the assessment. You can’t blame him… Mm. Are you saying the kid noticed him losing his temper at me and resented me for it? That logic is a bit strange, isn’t it.”

Zhu Ming said, “First, tell me about him losing his temper at you. The details. Just focus on that last day.”

Jiao Meiqi said, “That morning, I was still hesitating about whether to go through with the surgery. I thought maybe we could pass the assessment without it. But he was afraid we couldn’t, so he pressured me to find a way to do the surgery. We talked about it a bit, and maybe he got worked up, raised his voice, and the kid overheard.”

Zhu Ming was starting to scratch her head now too, just like Jia Xiao. “And then?”

Jiao Meiqi continued to recall. “Late that afternoon, I was in too much physical pain and forgot to go home to cook. He got anxious and angry again.”

Zhu Ming: “…?”

Seeing Zhu Ming’s bewildered expression, Jiao Meiqi hastened to explain:

“Don’t misunderstand. It was just that I had always cooked at the dungeon home and brought it to the hospital before, to show my motherly love for the child. He was worried that if I didn’t do it tonight, the kid would resent me. He was angry out of consideration for me. But I rushed back and cooked, so I don’t think that was the problem.”

She had performed so perfectly. She truly couldn’t figure out why she was the one eliminated first.

Zhu Ming laughed bitterly and thumped her head against the wall. “You’ve explained it all so clearly, yet you still don’t understand? Miss Jiao, I suggest you never have children in the future.”

Jiao Meiqi: “…”