Explosion

Mi Chuchu sighed and looked at Lin Nieran and Qin Rang: "Then what can we do with these orphans..."

Lin Nieran, who was being stared at, stretched out her little hand to cover Mi Chuchu's eyes. "Can you stop looking at us like that, as if we're the ones who are suffering?"

Qin Rang nodded in agreement, and Mi Chuchu smiled shyly.

Wang Ding adjusted his glasses and said, "This Orphanage can't really be just a place where people adopt children out of pure kindness—"

"Boom--!"

A piercing explosion suddenly rang out, An Ying's white hair was suddenly lifted by a strong gust of air. A few strands of hair flew up and fell back down, covering most of his face.

Flames shot into the sky, and two people with golden light on their bodies were lifted high into the air by the blast, their screams seemingly audible amidst the explosion.

Lin Nieran and Qin Rang covered their ears together and turned around to look with the others.

Just as the two who had taken flight were about to fall onto the grid further away, the Vines behind Flower Language suddenly rushed over and caught them, pulling Tao Yuan and Mo Lan back.

As soon as the Black Cat's paws touched the ground, it moved far away from Tao Yuan, its blue cat eyes wide open as it stared at her, its footsteps silently moving towards Lin Nieran.

Tao Yuan stood there awkwardly, gave an embarrassed smile, and took the towel Wang Ding handed her to wipe the soot off her face and clothes. "Thank you for saving me, Miss Flower Language."

Flower Language shook her head. "It's only right that we act together."

Wang Ding asked, "Which square did you just move to?"

"It's my fault Mo Lan said to go left, but I thought it would be safer to go straight. I didn't expect to step on a bomb," Tao Yuan said. "Luckily, the defensive Weird Object triggered automatically, and Miss Flower Language pulled us back. Otherwise, if we had fallen into other penalty squares, it would have been very difficult to get out."

Behind her, Qin Rang and Lin Nieran were using the towel An Ying had given them to wipe the black grime off Mo Lan. After hearing her words, Mo Lan immediately said, "We should go to the left!"

Tao Yuan said, "I was wrong, I'll listen to you next time."

"Snort."

Seeing their disheveled appearance, Mi Chuchu laughed and said, "I'll continue from here. You two can take a rest."

Tao Yuan nodded. "Okay, be careful."

The two switched places. Mi Chuchu walked step by step to the square where Tao Yuan had just been standing, while Tao Yuan came to Wang Ding's side and they observed the drawing together.

On the grid diagram Wang Ding, the correct route is connected to form a straight vertical line, but at the end of the vertical line, it has a strange curve.

Wang Ding said, "It looks like some kind of shape or number."

Tao Yuan gestured on the ground with his hands a few times. "Is the date possible? What about the time? Or is it some strange writing here?"

"The exact time has fluctuated quite a bit, but it could also be an hour," Wang Ding said. "It's currently... a little past ten, almost eleven, but that's not impossible."

Tao Yuan asked, "What time did you arrive this afternoon?"

Wang Ding thought for a moment and said, "Around four o'clock."

Tao Yuan gestured. "That shouldn't be time. If it's a numerical riddle, the number four is unlikely to achieve this arc. This arc is more like 2, 3, 0, 5, 6, 8, or something like that."

Tao Yuan and Wang Ding were engrossed in writing and drawing, while Mi Chuchu was struggling with which square to move next, as every adjacent square looked dangerous to her.

Lin Nieran and Qin Rang cleaned up Mo Lan's fur and sat down again. An Ying continued, "You just told me the good news, so what's the bad news?"

"There are many bad ones..."

Qin Rang's tone turned serious. "Those of lower rank, if they don't have family members to take them home or adoptive parents to take them in before they turn 18, will have to follow the Orphanage Director's instructions to be assigned jobs."

"This job is for life; I heard you'll never leave the Orphanage."

An Ying said, "So dark."

Lin Nieran chimed in, "That's right, you can't lose any more points, or you'll have to stay in the Orphanage for life."

An Ying thought that if they failed to complete their mission and died here, it would indeed be another way of spending their lives in the Orphanage.

"Do you really have family members looking for their children here?" Wu Liang asked.

Qin Rang nodded. "Yes. Actually, many people here had Dad when they were young. It's not common for someone like me to be abandoned at birth."

Lin Nieran pointed to himself. "I wasn't an orphan before, I had Dad and mother."

An Ying asked Lin Yi, "Then how did you get here? Where are your Dad?"

Since he's a child with parents, why is he in Orphanage now, and then why is he in the neighborhood later?

He remembered that Lin Yi's Dad in the neighborhood said he had left Lin Yi with relatives to raise. Could it be that the relatives abandoned him?

Lin Nieran tilted his head, lost in memories. "Dad said Mom didn't like me anymore, that she didn't want me. Dad told me to buy Mom a cake. He said that would make Mom like me, so I went and bought it."

"After I got the cake from the shop, I realized my Dad hadn't given me any money, so I went out to look for him, but I searched and waited for a long time without seeing Dad. Later, I met my grandma, and she took me in."

As she spoke, Lin Nieran smiled and said to them, "But perhaps Grandma was too poor, so she sent me here."

Lin Nieran wasn't really clear on what exactly happened in between; he was very young at the time, and many things passed by in a daze.

All I know is that after everything settled down, he's been in this Orphanage ever since.

Although he didn't elaborate, the information he provided was enough for people to piece together the truth.

It's nothing more than that man losing Lin Yi, just like what they learned in the neighborhood back then. This man deliberately abandoned his child to keep his wife, creating the illusion of searching for him, deceiving Lin Yi's mother for her entire life.

But he never expected that the person he gave Lin Yi to would abandon him in the Orphanage again because of the money. He remembered that Lin Yi was in the third grade when he returned to the community, at most eight or nine years old.

Judging from Lin Yi's current appearance, he is not even seven years old, so he must have stayed in the Orphanage for at least three or four years.

An Ying mentally calculated the time and felt something was off.

The timing seems a bit off.

He remembered that in the Happy Residential Complex Instance, it was mentioned that Lin Yi continued his studies in elementary school. He had originally completed second grade, but after being brought back, he continued to third grade. Now Lin Yi was old enough to go to school, but judging from the state of the Orphanage, it was more likely that they wouldn't be allowed to attend school.

Most of them were adopted before they even started school, so who made sure Lin Yi went to school after that?

An Ying asked him, "Are any of the other children from the Orphanage going to school?"

Lin Nieran nodded. "Yes, those with high scores can go to school."

"Aren't you going to primary school?" Wang Ding also asked, recalling the news about Happy Residential Complex.

It's a school within the Orphanage, and also a primary school.