Su Bai sat in the living room by himself with a cup of tea, which was served by Litchi. Then Litchi and the fat guy went to the study and had their discussion there. Now Su Bai looked more like a guest in this house.

Even Su Bai himself felt a little absurd and confused. He took a sip of tea, stood up and went to the southward room on the first floor. He opened the door. Unlike his expectation, there wasn’t any stifling smell of dirt; on the contrary, the air was quite clear and fresh. On an altar, the photos of his parents were cleaned up and so was everywhere around it.

The housekeeping company was informed not to enter this room, so the personnel wouldn’t have made such a mistake. Besides, judging by the trace, it has just been clean up in the last few days.

Su Bai felt odd. Could it be Litchi?

There was a new censer, and the incense in it hadn’t finished burning yet.

Su Bai hadn’t offered any incense or worship to his parents yet, not even during the first day when he was home; in fact, he didn’t come into this room.

Outside, Litchi and the fat guy must have finished their conversation. The fat guy was walking while bowing and nodding with flattery.

Litchi stopped in front of the door, then pushed it open and saw Su Bai standing there.

"I helped with some cleaning up," said Litchi.

The fat guy stood beside her with an iconic smile. Su Bai knew about the fat guy’s ability; he could control that bronze chest, so he must be very capable. But even the fat guy was displaying full courtesy as a good boy, which indicated Litchi’s identity and status.

Ego had also changed his attitude utterly after he found that Su Bai and Litchi knew each other. Therefore, maybe Su Bai still couldn’t feel how terrible Litchi was, because he was not familiar with this community, but others could, especially those seniors.

"None of your business." Su Bai replied. Then he took the censer and threw it into the dustbin.

Litchi frowned.

The fat guy was dumbstruck, thinking, ‘This guy must be freaking awesome.. He dares to offend her; that’s great and respectful. But it’s better if he’s not killed the next second.’

However, what happened next surprised him even more. Litchi didn’t punish this impolite guy, just asked:

"Why?"

Su Bai shrugged, "My mom said in her testament that she didn’t want to be worshiped. She hated the smoke of my dad’s cigarettes throughout her life, so she didn’t want to be put on a altar for more smoke from the incenses."

Litchi nodded and smiled. "Sounds like her."

"In fact, my mom also said that she wouldn’t agree if I put her photo here. She thought she’d look bad in black-and-white photos."

Su Bai said with a smile. Although his parents died long ago, they did leave a strong impression on him. His mother was still kind of innocent like a little girl, even after she had got a son. There was one time, when he was still young, she dressed him up like a princess, and his father was really unhappy about that.

"I’ve gone too far. Sorry." Litchi apologized to Su Bai.

"That’s alright. So, you knew my parents?"

Su Bai asked. If Litchi knew his parents, then it could explain why Litchi helped him. Besides, there were so many buildings here, Litchi was so capable that she could have picked any one, but she chose to stay in his place. Must be of the same reason.

"I’m an orphan." Litchi said, "I was raised up in an orphanage sponsored by your mother."

"The orphanage was shut down, right?" Su Bai asked.

"Yeah. Not long after your parents passed away. Due to shortage of funds. But by that time, I was already old enough to leave the orphanage."

"I’m sorry."

Su Bai apologized. His parents did not only leave him a tremendous number of real estates and bank savings, but also stock shares in many companies. Now everything was under Su Bai’s name. Su Bai was not out of money; even though he didn’t do anything, his fortune was still increasing. However, after what happened to Su Bai’s parents, he left Chengdu and went to college in an eastern coastal city, paying no more attention to what his parents had been doing, including funding schools and orphanages.

It was not because he didn’t know anything about it; in fact, many salvage service agents including schools and orphanages had managed to reach out to him for more funds, but Su Bai turned them down. At that time, Su Bai was disappointed because tragedy still happened to his parents after all those good stuff they had done.

Litchi stood next to Su Bai, looking at the two photos on the altar:

"Aunt Xu was nice. I liked her."

"Thank you."

"I won’t stay here for long. I will be away for quite some time; six month, a year, or maybe even longer."

"OK." Su Bai was calm. He wasn’t planning to get any extra help from Litchi after learning of her relationship with his mother. If he did, it would be disrespectful to his mother.

"I’ll leave Lucky with you, ‘cause I can’t bring it with me." Litchi went on, "Zhang Bayi’s also a Chengdu resident; you can come to him for help if you need anything."

The fat guy immediately stood upright: "Of course! No problem!"

Litchi turned around and looked at Su Bai. "In fact, when I was young, I saw you once when you were just a little boy. You were sitting in the car. Your mother asked you to go out and play with us, but you refused."

Su Bai smiled.

"I can’t help you any more. Actually if I can stay, I will be able to help you a lot, even guarantee you survival. But I have to go. If I make too much influence on you, the Dreadful Radio may count it in, and in your next story world, your degree of difficulty will be increased, thus making it.. harder to survive, but by that time, I will be gone, and I will not be able to help you solve it.. It will only do more harm to you."

"I understand. No need to explain."

"You’d better go back to the sanatorium. I’ll leave tomorrow. Take care of Lucky for me."

After saying this, Litchi bowed slightly to the picture of Su Bai’s parents and then left the room.

Together, Su Bai and the fat guy left his house, which was temporarily overtaken by someone else.

They stood by the gate of the housing area. The fat guy held a cigarette in his mouth, played with a lighter and said with pity, "Shame on you! A beautiful and powerful pair of legs ready for you[1], but you got no chance to hold it. Tut, what a shame!"

Su Bai looked at the fat guy; then he looked down at his leg. The fat guy immediately shook and said embarrassedly: "My legs are not as strong as hers.. No no no, mine are stronger than hers, and with heavy hair."

"You heading back?" Su Bai asked.

Fat nodded.

"I’ll get you a cab."

"Great!"

After what happened, the fat guy’s attitude towards Su Bai had clearly improved a lot.

Just when Su Bai was ready to call the taxi, he suddenly felt a pain in his chest, and he could barely breath. Then he crouched down with his hands against the ground. He was sweating heavily.

At this point, Su Bai suddenly realized that the fat guy was crouching and sweating just like him.

Luckily, the pain soon disappeared. They both fell down and breathed heavily.

The fat guy looked at that housing area with anger: "Sh*t! This woman knew! She pulled me in to babysit you!"

Su Bai took out his cellphone. As he had expected, there was a private message:

[Story World]: Death’s Taunt

[Story Attribute]: Struggle in Death

[Audience]: 20 ———— Ego, Zhang Bayi, Su Bai, ...

[Main Task]: Unknown

[PS]: The story world starts in three days after this notice is issued.

There was also a picture of some barren mountains.

However, among all the recruited audiences, Su Bai could only see Ego, Zhang Bayi and himself while the others were all vague. Su Bai looked at the fat guy’s cellphone screen and found more visible names than on his. Must be people that the fat guy had already known.

The fat guy covered his face with both hands and howled:

"F*ck you! A group task for 20 people!"

The fat guy had introduced to Su Bai that the more people there were in a story world, the higher the death rate it would have, which meant the more dangerous it would be.

Su Bai looked at the fat guy and said, "Take it easy."

The fat guy turned around, looked at Su Bai and then the housing area, sniffled and nodded. But the look of "that was hard to bear" on his face was still very obvious.

Just then, Su Bai’s phone rang. It was a strange number from Chongqing. Su Bai didn’t pick it hurriedly; he searched this number in his mind and eventually found some trace— he had exchanged his number with someone in the last story world.

"Hello?" Su Bai picked it up.

"Hey, is that Su Bai? Come help me."

"Where are you?" Su Bai frowned. But Ego’s voice didn’t seem so urgent.

"I was driving from Chongqing to Chengdu to visit you today. But the f*cking Dreadful Radio sent me a damn task notice! I drove into a gutterway!"

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Hold someone’s legs: It’s a Chinese metaphor for "riding on someone’s coattails".