Chapter 1195: Invitation from the Hat Player
After entrusting the matter of Rose Castle to Mr. Dong, Xu Huo went up to the third floor alone.
Tan Qi was waiting for him outside the study.
"Is something the matter?" Xu Huo opened the door.
Tan Qi followed him inside and stood by the entrance after entering. "Aren't you going to ask me about Dr. Zhang?"
Xu Huo sat down behind the desk, organizing the notes on it as he said, "Is there something you want to say?"
He kept his head down, making it hard to read his expression, so Tan Qi tilted his head to watch him for a while. When that yielded nothing, he imitated Xu Huo's posture and spoke with his head lowered. "You brought me out, wasn't it because of Dr. Zhang? You can ask me."
"That's part of the reason." Xu Huo looked up at him. "You can live an ordinary life like Xiao Yuan, go to school in District 011, and choose whatever you want to do in the future."
"I can help you," Tan Qi said. "Are you planning to go after Dr. Zhang? Give me a few more years, and I'll be able to work for you."
Xu Huo smiled faintly. "I've seen your experiment records. You were very sensitive to Dr. Zhang and the medication during the experiments. Was that an act?"
"To protect myself," Tan Qi replied. "If they knew everything about Dr. Zhang, I might have died."
He paused, then added, "I'm not exactly a successful experiment."
"Did the lab doctors tell you that?" Xu Huo asked.
"No." Tan Qi walked to the opposite side of the desk and met his gaze. "Dr. Zhang told me."
"Before he administered the drugs to me and the other children, he told us we were failed samples."
"But he also said he wanted to cultivate a finished product from among the failed samples."
"Dr. Zhang never took anyone away, so we're all failures."
Xu Huo was silent for a moment before asking, "Do you have a medical condition?"
Many children in District 002 were born with congenital diseases, and many died young, but Tan Qi appeared perfectly healthy.
"Dr. Zhang cured our illnesses." A glimmer of light returned to Tan Qi's eyes.
"If that's the case, then Dr. Zhang seems like a good person to you. How can I trust that you'll side with me?" Xu Huo stopped what he was doing.
Tan Qi didn't fabricate any other lies. Instead, he said bluntly, "You're no match for Dr. Zhang."
"I see." Xu Huo nodded. "You're saying I lack the strength to do anything to Dr. Zhang, so your stance is irrelevant."
That wasn't Tan Qi's main point, but he didn't correct Xu Huo's deliberate misinterpretation.
However, Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. "You can consider yourself insignificant, but what standing do you have to have this conversation with me now?"
"As you said, you're a failed sample. Dr. Zhang certainly wouldn't reveal more information in front of you, and his cultivation methods for failed samples aren't even worth referencing. To me, that's useless information."
"It's not useless information," Tan Qi insisted. "You can't even meet Dr. Zhang face to face. You can only learn about him through me. Otherwise, why would you bother bringing me here?"
"You want to prove your worth." Xu Huo gave a slight nod. "Unwilling to be an ordinary person?"
"I want to become a player." Tan Qi looked him straight in the eye.
His mindset was actually easy to understand. If everyone lived in hardship, then hardship was bearable.
But once you knew there was a better way to live in this world, no one would be willing to keep suffering.
Dr. Zhang had opened that door for him, and he wanted to walk through it on his own.
"As I said earlier, you're free to choose. Whether you want to be a player or live as an ordinary person, it's up to you," Xu Huo said calmly. "You don't have to sacrifice anything to earn it. I'm just supporting you for a few years. You can pay me back in the future."
Tan Qi firmly believed there was no such thing as a free lunch, so he stood rooted to the spot.
"How about this," Xu Huo added. "You can look after Xiao Yuan."
"How?" Tan Qi didn't understand. "At the welfare home, I could give her my food and the candy others donated, but there's no shortage of food here."
"Not in terms of basic necessities. Like an ordinary kid, help her with her homework." Xu Huo explained, then added, "But you can't do it for her."
Tan Qi stared at him with an expression that clearly said, "I may not have gone to school, but I still suspect you're insulting my intelligence."
"Go on." Xu Huo had already buried himself in his own work.
"What about the person outside?" Tan Qi asked again, offering a suggestion. "I can lure him in."
Xu Huo didn't even look up. "Go to bed early if you have nothing to do. Kids who stay up late don't grow tall."
Tan Qi left, defeated.
After he left, Xiao Yuan came knocking with a tray of milk and snacks. "Uncle Dong asked me to bring these."
Xu Huo gestured for her to set them down. After placing the tray, she hesitated before asking, "Is Tan Qi a good person?"
"For now, yes," Xu Huo replied.
Xiao Yuan breathed a sigh of relief. "Then do I have to go to school with him?"
"He's never been to school either. You've been studying a bit longer than him, so you can help each other out." Xu Huo didn't hide things from her just because she was a child. "But you need to be careful. Don't trust him completely."
"And you don't have to hide that from him."
With children, honesty was better when they didn't spend much time together.
"But what I say isn't necessarily right. You can judge for yourself."
Xiao Yuan nodded seriously and obediently left the study.
Xu Huo finished watching the last batch of video footage he'd brought back from the lab at three in the morning. After stretching, he turned off the lights and went to his bedroom.
Nothing happened that night.
The hat player had waited outside the castle for a while before finding a place to stay in the old city district. By morning, he came back to the castle carrying a basket of fruit to pay a visit.
Xu Huo had Mr. Dong let him in and got straight to the point. "Do you remember the fortune-telling on the train?"
The hat player grinned. "Of course I do. That's why I came to find you."
Xu Huo invited him to sit down.
"I think we're pretty fated, you know? On the train, you saved my life by accident, and we got off at the same station. Then, by coincidence, we ended up heading in the same direction... It's practically destiny!" the hat player said cheerfully.
Indeed, since he wasn't in an instance now, he could use his ticket to leave if danger arose, so he felt emboldened.
Xu Huo didn't point out that the hat player had followed him to the castle. Instead, he said, "Let's get to the point. What do you want from me?"
"I know about an instance with extremely generous rewards, and I want to invite you to come along," the hat player said immediately. "Don't rush to refuse. This instance might ultimately yield an incredibly powerful item worth as much as a living person."
"You know what I mean, right? Most items have no autonomy and depend on how the player uses them, but this one can even actively cooperate with the player in battle!"
(Chapter End)