Faced with a group of vicious people, the girl had volunteered to stay behind and let the others seek help.
If they had known nothing, Linton and Iris might have thought the girl brave. But now that they knew her mind was filled with boundless malice, they had no choice but to interpret her actions in the worst possible light.
"A bad feeling?" Caven looked at them strangely. "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell? I have some leftover herbs at home—"
"We're fine." Linton raised his eyes slightly. "Caven, what kind of child is Bella in your eyes?"
He still wanted to confirm it once more.
"Huh?"
The question stunned Caven, sending him into a long silence.
After a while, he finally spoke slowly. "Bella... she's a little stupid, but she's actually a very good person."
Caven's description left Linton and Iris stunned again.
"Tell me, is your intuition actually reliable?" Iris eyed the man suspiciously. "You said Bella's head was full of bad intentions. I almost thought she deliberately got her parents killed. But this kid says she's a good child. Help, I feel like my brain is breaking."
"You should trust a necromancer's sensitivity to the state of souls." After pondering for a moment, Linton asked Caven again, "Bella is stupid? I thought she was pretty clever."
"Not at all!" Caven complained. "She'd fall into the river while walking by it, get caught by terrifying beasts whenever she went into the mountains, climb trees but be too scared to come down... There are lots of things like that. Don't you think she's stupid?"
"..." Linton wanted to ask more, but the girl beside him suddenly tugged at the corner of his clothes.
Linton took several pieces of candy from his bag and handed them to Caven and the others. "Thank you. I'll take care of these flowers. Go play."
"Okay!"
"Wow, this candy is sweeter than the merchant's!"
"Thank you, big brother!"
Once they had left, Linton crouched down and stared at the girl, who kept her head lowered and dared not look at him.
"Bella?"
Bella raised her head, her expression sorrowful. "Big brother, I remember now."
"You were right. I'm the one who got Father and Mother killed."
"I didn't like them, so I lied to Caven and the others. I told them vicious bad people were chasing us and made them go find my father and mother. Then... I really led them right to those bad people."
"They said I was stupid, but I did it on purpose every time."
"I deliberately fell into the water, then made someone who couldn't swim come save me. I lured those vicious beasts over myself too. While they were saving me, I hid behind them and watched them get bitten to death. When I climbed trees, I hid rocks up there. Whenever someone waited below to catch me, I threw the rocks down..."
"—I'm the real bad person."
"You..."
Iris's face was filled with disbelief.
Now she understood just how immense the malice Linton had described really was.
A child had actually used others' kindness to commit such utterly heartless acts.
Linton's instincts had not been wrong. Bella truly was a wicked person filled with malice.
"Why?!"
Bella's eyes were somewhat numb. "I hate them. I hate all of them! I hate that they have things they like."
"Father and Mother liked flowers, so I broke all their flowers. They liked exploring, so I got them killed on the way to an expedition..."
"Seventeen people in total. Four adults and thirteen children. I got every one of them killed like this!"
"—All because I hated them."
"Just because of that?"
Iris felt as though something had clenched her heart, making it hard for her to breathe.
She raised a trembling finger toward Bella. Her lips moved, but no words came out.
Even if she exhausted every word she knew, it would be difficult to describe a crime with such a simple motive.
"There's something wrong with what you said."
Iris and Bella both froze. They turned to look at Linton, who had suddenly spoken.
The necromancer said calmly, "Every time someone died because of you, didn't they suspect you? The people here may be kind, but this happened at least seventeen times. Unless they were mindless puppets, they should have noticed something strange about you."
"I don't know why." Bella's voice was flat. "Even when it happened right in front of them, they still believed I hadn't done it on purpose. Even if it was their own child who died, they still thought it was an accident."
"And you still believe she's innocent at a time like this? You still want to clear her name?" Iris asked in confusion. "She admitted it herself. That's seventeen lives!"
Linton shook his head and fell into thought.
After a long while, he slowly said, "I'm not trying to deny what she did. I'm just thinking... Iris, don't you think this village is strange?"
"What do you mean?" The girl froze. "Other than the villagers being somewhat simple and kind, what's strange about it?"
"They're kind in a strange way." Linton sighed. "Welcoming strangers without reservation; refusing to accept compensation deliberately left behind by guests—I can understand that as kindness. But if your own child dies before your eyes and you still defend the murderer, that cannot be explained by simple kindness alone."
"Also, don't you think these children are far too easy to deceive?"
"Huh?"
What Linton had said before did make some sense, but Iris had never felt that way about this point.
He fooled her every day, after all.
"Shall we run an experiment?"
Seeing that the girl did not seem to believe him, Linton walked out on his own.
"Wait."
Iris scratched her beautiful golden hair.
Weren't they holding a condemnation meeting? How had it suddenly turned into an experimental discussion?
After hesitating briefly, she was about to go after him when she glanced at the numb, rigid girl again. Then, like she was carrying a chick, she dragged Bella outside with her.
"What experiment are you going to do? Prove that this girl is actually innocent?"
Linton shook his head without answering.
He looked around. When he spotted a man weeding in a yard, he walked straight in.
Seeing how recklessly he barged in, Iris immediately shouted, "Hey, isn't it a little rude to barge into someone else's home without saying anything? Huh?"
She watched blankly as the necromancer apologized, then shoved the man who had been weeding to the ground.
"What are you doing?"
Her confusion quickly deepened.
The fallen man dusted himself off and got to his feet, asking Linton with concern, "Are you okay?"
Linton shook his head. "I did it on purpose."
"No, no, how could you have done it on purpose?" The man waved his hands repeatedly. "Was the ground outside my door too slippery? You must have stepped on it by accident while passing by, slipped in here, and pushed me over. How could it possibly have been intentional?"
Iris's pupils suddenly contracted, and a chill ran down her spine.
A stranger suddenly barged into your home, pushed you down for no reason, and then you turned around to ask whether they were hurt and even made excuses for them?
She finally understood why Linton said this kind of kindness was abnormal.
The necromancer returned to Iris's side and said indifferently, "I thought back on everything since we entered the village. Whether it was the owner of the house where we stayed and the old woman, or those children, all of them kept assuming the best of us. They never believed we had any ill intentions."
"I said we were travelers and Bella's friends, and they believed it without the slightest suspicion. Bella does not actually like flowers; she only likes destroying things her parents liked. Yet in everyone else's eyes, she broke flowers because of a physical condition. Those children simply thought she broke flowers because she liked breaking them. Even when I deliberately pushed someone right in front of him, he still tried to make excuses for me."
"No matter what we did, they never believed we were in the wrong. Even if we were, they believed there had to be circumstances beyond our control."
"I hadn't noticed this before. I also thought it was simply the kindness and innocence I imagined. But once I began to doubt that goodwill, I realized this village was full of problems."
"But didn't you say... you had come to this village before and investigated it, yet found nothing wrong?"
"Because I did not stay here long back then, and Bella was not with me."
Linton said quietly, "Iris, I said before that Bella had her other emotions suppressed while her malice was magnified. Then is it possible that everyone else in this village is the opposite?"
"If Bella's actions represent extreme, pure evil, then perhaps they stand at the opposite end of it."
"—Extreme good!"
He looked up at the sky, staring at the empty quest panel.
Seek, Void Bubble Seek, seek.
Was the second quest, the one that required exploration and unraveling mysteries, this pair of opposing abnormal phenomena?
Thanks to "Zang Zhi Ti Kui" for the 1,500 Qidian Coins donation. Thank you so much! orz!
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