Chapter 116: Color

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Ji Linmo turned to the next page of the newspaper.

The date printed on it was August 2.

“Urgent Search for a Missing Person! Who Was the Meteorite’s First Contact, and Where Did They Go?!”

—Latest news: The meteorite’s supposed first discoverer, “Ji Xiaoling,” is suspected to have been fabricated. According to the Ji family, residents of the town, their daughter Ji Xiaoling is still away from home and has not returned. The person who first discovered the meteorite was someone else.

August 3

“The Meteorite Virus Is Spreading! Isolate Your Family Members Immediately!!!”

—Latest news: Experts have discovered that the fallen meteorite carries an unknown virus. If the whites of your family member’s eyes turn purple, contact the relevant authorities at once!

After looking through the three newspapers in his hands, Ji Linmo frowned.

He remembered that his “younger sister’s” name was Xiaoling.

The first discoverer mentioned in the newspaper before him should have been his “sister.”

However, the meteorite had landed at the stadium, which was quite far from the center of town. It would take several hours to drive there.

Yet the meteorite virus had broken out in less than three days. What had happened in between?

Ji Linmo went back over the newspapers before him, pondering carefully.

On the first day, the report stated that his sister, “Ji Xiaoling,” had discovered the meteorite, and experts had demanded that she be quarantined.

On the second day, his “parents” claimed that someone else had discovered the meteorite, and that Ji Xiaoling was still away from home. She was not the one who had touched it.

On the third day, the virus broke out.

Ji Linmo immediately recalled his sister’s corpse hidden in the attic above his parents’ bedroom.

If they had hidden her there, no outsider would have been able to find her.

A bold hypothesis surfaced in the man’s mind.

What if his “sister” really had been the first person to come into contact with the meteorite?

The moment she touched it, she had been infected with the virus. But his parents had not wanted her to be quarantined, so they hid her in the attic and told the media that the person who had discovered the meteorite was not Ji Xiaoling.

Could that very decision have caused the virus to spread, infecting the entire town?

Ji Linmo shook the newspaper in his hand.

Perhaps that was why the meteorite’s Purple-Eye Syndrome had spread throughout the town in a mere three days!

[Mission 1: Discover the cause of the younger sister’s death.]

[Congratulations, player. You have discovered the first mission clue!]

[Discarded Expired Newspaper]

[Item Quality: Inferior]

[Item Description: Hey! Do you know what an expired newspaper is called? Trash!]

[Current Clues: 1/3]

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“Could it be… that my parents were infected by my sister, causing their personalities to change drastically, and that was why they killed her after hiding her in the attic?”

Ji Linmo began to speculate once more.

But without knowing the full picture, everything was merely conjecture. If he wanted to learn the truth, he would have to return home and search for the remaining clues.

“Let’s go…”

Seeing that there was nothing else to search for in the abandoned stadium, Ji Linmo suggested that they head home.

Qin Feng did not answer. He was staring intently at one corner of the meteorite, as though examining something.

“Qin Feng?”

Sensing that something was wrong, Ji Linmo frowned and walked over.

At that moment, he saw a faint purple glow in the boy’s eyes.

“Qin Feng!”

Ji Linmo hurriedly grabbed the boy by the shoulder, but the boy slowly turned his head toward him as though he were sleepwalking.

“Look. It’s beautiful…”

The boy pointed at the meteorite and murmured softly. His eyes, fixed on the man, were filled with tenderness.

“Qin Feng?”

Ji Linmo instinctively backed away, but the boy suddenly stepped closer. He lifted the man’s broken arm and used the limp, fractured hand to stroke his own cheek.

“So warm…”

After saying that, the boy rubbed his cheek against Ji Linmo’s limp palm like a puppy.

In an instant, pain twisted across the man’s face.

“Let go…”

Ji Linmo tried to pull the boy away, but the boy’s strength was astonishing. He could not break free from his grip at all.

The struggle only aggravated the pain in his already aching, fractured right arm, making it nearly unbearable.

“Ah… you’re hurt. Does it hurt?”

Suddenly, the boy seemed to notice something. Concern filled his handsome eyes.

“It must hurt terribly. Let me help you…”

With that, the boy carefully supported Ji Linmo’s broken right arm and began blowing gently on it.

“Whoosh~ It doesn’t hurt anymore, it doesn’t hurt anymore. The pain has flown away~”

“…”

Ji Linmo was rendered speechless. He was so speechless that the veins on his forehead seemed ready to burst.

That right hand and arm of his had been broken by Qin Feng himself.

“Hey! You little lunatic! Snap out of it!”

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Watching the boy’s bizarre behavior, Ji Linmo could not help but slap him on the head.

But that slap only made matters worse. Qin Feng suddenly seemed to go mad, wrapping his arms tightly around him.

“You said you’d take me to the amusement park… You promised…”

“Why didn’t you take me? You’re not allowed to go with anyone else… You can only go with me…”

The boy was incredibly strong. He kept muttering without pause, as though reciting some kind of spell, trying to crush the man in his arms into his very bones.

Finding it difficult even to breathe, Ji Linmo drove his knee into Qin Feng and kicked him away.

“What nonsense are you spouting, kid? Wake up. You’ve mistaken me for someone else!”

Ji Linmo hurriedly put distance between himself and the boy, who seemed to have lost his mind, and walked toward the other side of the meteorite.

Yet the boy’s sudden strangeness continued to trouble him. Unable to resist, he looked in the direction the boy had been staring.

At the bottom of the enormous meteorite, a small section of its rough outer shell had curled upward, like a cicada shedding its shell, faintly revealing what lay within.

Hmm? What is that…?

The man cautiously approached the raised edge. But in the next instant, it seemed that some voice was softly calling to him, urging him to look inside the meteorite.

Rustle—rustle—

Brilliant light pulsed at regular intervals from the exposed opening, shining faintly like a lighthouse on the surface of the sea.

Something is wrong! Something is wrong! Close your eyes!

Ji Linmo hurriedly tried to shut his eyes, but it was already too late.

That radiance was so warm and bright that it brought tears to his eyes. Like a mother standing outside her home on a bitter winter night, calling her child inside, it opened its warm arms to the man.

Ji Linmo could scarcely control himself. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he gazed into the exposed interior of the meteorite.

In that instant, Ji Linmo saw the most beautiful color in the world.

The scene before him was composed of colors so magnificent that words could never describe them.

Black, dazzlingly multicolored, rippled through the meteorite like flowing silk.

The hues were more splendid than a rainbow, bluer than the vault of heaven, greener than a lake—colors beyond the power of human language to describe.

This was a miracle! A miracle that could never have been born in this world!

He had to… He had to offer everything he possessed to this miracle, even his own flesh and blood!

[Do not look, Ji Linmo.]

A pair of gentle hands covered Ji Linmo’s eyes.

The man’s eyes widened. He turned his head and saw a smiling girl standing before him.

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