Chapter 2: Who's Your Mom? You Don't Have One!
"So? What were you planning to do next? You had no identity, no place to live, no water, and no food."
After finally coaxing Lin Li back, "Lin Li" spoke.
"Um... I wanted to find Mom."
Lin Li said cautiously.
"Find Mom? Which mom? Who was your mom?"
Hearing Lin Li's words, she was a little confused.
"Mother Bronya..."
"Heh, she was just a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old brat. Could she even take care of you?"
"Lin Li" said with some dissatisfaction.
"I should be able to enter Quantumization now, so Mother Seele..."
"Hah? Were you trying to make me laugh?"
"Putting aside whether you could enter the Sea of Quanta, that timid little girl needed to hide in a box and cry herself. What could she possibly amount to?"
"You're not allowed to talk about my mom like that!"
Lin Li instinctively rejected her words.
"Fine, fine. In any case, don't think about finding them. They should worry about taking care of themselves first."
"Lin Li" showed no mercy toward anyone other than Lin Li, her tone sharp.
Walking down the street, Lin Li looked around curiously. Her silver-gray eyes sparkled like those of a child who had discovered countless interesting toys. Like Seele's, her hair was dark blue on the outside and translucent ice blue beneath, making it especially beautiful.
Combined with her young and adorable little face, nearly everyone who passed by could not help glancing at her.
"Hey, don't wander around so innocently. Someone had their eye on you."
"Lin Li" warned her.
Although she did not want to admit it, Lin Li's current appearance was so young that even she sometimes could not help becoming absorbed in it.
She was a little too adorable.
Because of that, "Lin Li" had the urge to make her keep her face covered at all times.
"But... I'm a little hungry..."
Lin Li clutched her stomach, looking aggrieved. She did not want to wander around either, but she had no money for food and nowhere to stay.
"Couldn't you Quantumize? Just take whatever you wanted. No one would notice."
She said it casually.
"You can't. That's wrong."
Lin Li puffed out her cheeks and immediately corrected her mistaken idea.
"..."
"Lin Li" realized that the current her seemed quite different from before.
It was late autumn, though winter had not yet arrived. The people on the streets had more or less put on extra layers, while Lin Li had only a thin outer coat over her close-fitting clothes.
Dusk drew near, and the previously cool breeze gradually became biting.
"Haa..."
Lin Li pulled her clothes tighter and slipped into an alley, squatting in a corner.
"Why didn't you accept it? I saw plenty of shops that welcomed you. Some even offered you food for free."
"Lin Li" asked in confusion.
"But I don't have money. I can't just take things from other people. Mom said so."
"But had you ever seen your mom?"
"Lin Li" did not understand. From before her transmigration until now, she probably had never seen her own mother.
"..."
Seeing her fall silent and realizing she had said something wrong, "Lin Li" could only change the subject.
"It wasn't safe to stay here, and it would be cold at night."
"Lin Li" glanced at several people in the distance pretending to pass by, her gaze turning cold.
"But we had nowhere else to go. It was fine. My body was very healthy, so I wasn't cold..."
Looking at the girl whose nose had already turned slightly red, "Lin Li" sighed softly.
For the first time, she felt that living with such a high moral bottom line was truly exhausting.
"Then just freeze."
Unable to persuade her, "Lin Li" vanished directly and returned to the space of consciousness.
"Freeze to death, starve to death..."
She stomped her feet and paced back and forth in the space of consciousness.
"Compared with the influence of consciousness on the body, was the body's influence on consciousness more direct?"
Judging by Lin Li's behavior during the day, there was no doubt that she truly regarded herself as Bronya and Seele's daughter.
"Honestly, she didn't have any sense of caution at all."
After quite some time, sensing that Lin Li had really fallen asleep in the corner of the alley, she sighed faintly.
"I really couldn't do anything about you."
After confirming that Lin Li was completely asleep, she took control of the body. Her hair, which had originally faded into ice blue, gradually turned crimson.
Her silver-gray eyes also became wine-red. However, she did not open them, merely trembling her eyelashes slightly as her clenched fists loosened a little. Quantum fluctuations slowly emerged.
"That little thing fell asleep. I watched her all day. She looked like an orphan, sleeping in an alley."
"She was quite pretty. She should fetch a good price. Get the things ready..."
At the corner where the alley met the street, the whispering voices were quiet, yet exceptionally clear to her ears.
After waiting for a while, rustling footsteps gradually approached.
"Only two?"
When they were only four or five meters away, she opened her crimson eyes.
"Perfect. There were two trash cans nearby."
The two men who had just approached were startled when they saw her crimson eyes, but their shock was immediately followed by delight.
"Those eyes... they'd be worth quite a bit..."
Though a pair of crimson eyes was somewhat frightening in the darkness, she was only a child. What was there to fear?
"Little girl, are you cold? Do you want something to eat? How about coming back with Uncle?"
One of the men hid his hands behind his back, with sedatives and cloth already prepared, and smiled warmly.
"Heh..."
The only response he received was the girl's mocking gaze.
"This little brat!"
The other man, who had been keeping watch, could not stand her look and walked over, intending to make a move directly.
"Wait—"
The man who sensed that something was wrong wanted to stop his companion, but the warm liquid spraying onto his face the next second left him too terrified to speak.
His companion was torn to pieces before he could even scream.
"Spare... spare me, please..."
The man collapsed to the ground and instinctively dropped to his knees to beg for mercy.
"Was this your first time doing it?"
"Lin Li" spoke for the first time.
"..."
The man fell silent for a moment. Just as he was about to speak, warmth spread across his neck.
"Then it wasn't."
Setting down the bloody scythe in her hand, "Lin Li" sighed.
With a casual wave of her left hand, she used crimson claws to toss the pieces of his corpse into the trash cans. After thinking for a moment, "Lin Li" still used her claws to pinch several bills from their pockets.
"Let's sleep in another alley. And buy a blanket while we're at it."
Glancing at the bloodstained alley behind her, "Lin Li" rubbed her hands, stiff from the cold.
"Liar. It was obviously very cold."
P.S. New author, new book, amateur writing. Please go easy on me and support me, meow.
Chapter 3: "Lin Li": I Don't Care About Her!
St. Freya Academy
"Headmaster, the nearby security bureau received a report at three in the morning. Someone found two dismembered bodies with purple markings on them. They did not dare act rashly, so after reporting it up the chain, it eventually reached us."
An assistant in the Headmaster's office reported.
"Death Soldiers or Honkai Beasts?"
Upon hearing about the obvious purple markings, Theresa knew very well that they were a typical sign of Honkai corruption.
"Neither. Although the bodies were cut apart, the investigation showed that they could all be pieced back together."
"Was there anything unusual?"
Theresa continued.
Whether they were Honkai Beasts or Death Soldiers, the remains they left behind would more or less be missing some parts. This was indeed unusual.
"The first unusual point was that we found ropes and specialized sedatives at the scene. Based on the fingerprints, they belonged to the owners of the bodies. However, the local surveillance cameras had been out of repair for a long time, so we could not retrieve any further information. Still, we could roughly determine that the deceased were not good people."
"The second unusual point was that, during the police investigation, they discovered that an especially adorable little girl had appeared on the streets yesterday. She looked like an orphan, and she refused food even when people offered it to her."
"A pseudo-Herrscher?"
Hearing the key information, Theresa's buried memories began assaulting her again.
The disaster at Chiba Academy remained fresh in her mind.
"I'll investigate this personally."
If it really was a pseudo-Herrscher, why had it only killed those two people?
Theresa took Judas with her, thoughts constantly churning through her mind.
Early morning
When Lin Li opened her eyes, she looked at the blanket covering her and the loose change by her feet, tilting her little head in confusion.
"This is..."
"Enough. Now that you had money, you could go buy something to eat, right?"
"Lin Li" appeared beside her, narrowing her wine-red eyes slightly.
"No. This belonged to someone else."
Lin Li turned over the blanket, then picked up the loose change and examined it several times, as if searching for information about its owner.