# Chapter 168: The Aging White-Dressed Girl
Xu Huo lifted the light-blocking cloth from the cage, revealing not only a cat corpse but also a sticky ball-shaped puppet figure.
The other players, including Tao Chengxin, stared at him in surprise.
"Found it in the secret room of the Bear Claw Restaurant. Poisoned to death." Xu Huo said to the white-dressed girl.
"I see." The white-dressed girl sighed and shook her head. "I've already taught it not to eat random things. The faint toxins in cannibal player corpses are deadly poison to ordinary small animals."
After speaking, she glanced at the puppet figure and chuckled, "Who would have thought you'd use this method to deal with the Smiling Puppet."
"Just lucky." Xu Huo said. "This puppet seems to have quite a background."
"Just from the craftsmanship, it's very crude—worse than the worst Artificer in the game. But its owner is very powerful. If you're going to use this puppet, you'd better not let its mouth curve upward." The white-dressed girl looked at the sky outside. "It's dinner time. I need to cook. What would you like to eat?"
"No need!" Sun Jirou immediately said. "We all ate before coming."
"Don't be nervous, little girl. I'm just making some vegetable soup." The white-dressed girl's voice was slightly hoarse. She stood up and walked outside, where there was a small vegetable patch in the yard.
"I'll help." Xu Huo followed her out, with Tao Chengxin close behind.
As soon as the three of them left, Wang Qiao and Gao Baimei immediately stood up to keep watch, then turned and nodded at Tang Yuan.
Tang Yuan produced a vial of medicine from his hand, quickly dripping two drops into the teapot.
"What are you doing?" Sun Jirou asked in a hushed, surprised voice.
Tang Yuan made a shushing gesture at her. By the time they sat back down, Xu Huo and the other two had just pushed the door open and returned.
The open kitchen was right behind the sofa. Tao Chengxin and Xu Huo helped wash vegetables while the white-dressed girl chopped and made soup.
With her back to everyone, she suddenly said, "Sitting around waiting is boring. How about I tell you a story?"
The people behind her changed expression slightly, but Xu Huo responded without changing his face.
The white-dressed girl told the story of the king and the knight while chopping vegetables.
Sun Jirou and the others exchanged glances, unsure if there was a hidden meaning in her words, but ultimately decided to endure it. Meanwhile, Tang Yuan quietly tucked the access card into the gap between the sofa cushions.
They had also heard the story of the king and the knight during the day. So when Sun Jirou heard her describe how the knight hesitated about whether to reconcile with the king after driving away the foreign enemies, she said, "What good would it do to fight the king at this point? Ordinary people would still be the ones to suffer."
"They still suffer?" Tao Chengxin disagreed. "When the knight was driven away, no one spoke up for him. Instead, they repeatedly reported and attacked him, colluded with the foreign enemies, and harmed their own people. Do these people deserve pity?"
"Why? Because there are more of them?"
"Ten people's lives are lives, but one person's life isn't?"
"That's true, but what does the knight gain by continuing to resist the king? Nothing but perpetuating the hatred." Sun Jirou said. "Enemies and friends are divided based on immediate interests. If hatred continues through generations, to put it bluntly, an entire race could go extinct."
"I have a question." Xu Huo turned to look at Sun Jirou. "If you found a bear in the wild that had killed a person and was eating the corpse, what would you do?"
"Kill it, of course." Sun Jirou said without hesitation.
"Why?"
"Because the bear killed a person. What other reason is there?" Gao Baimei retorted.
"There's a theory that once a bear has eaten a human, the instinct that 'humans can be food' becomes imprinted in its genes, and its offspring will also eat people. So this gene cannot be allowed to continue." Sun Jirou roughly explained, then realized what Xu Huo meant, and said, "In this story, most people were swept along by circumstances. They didn't truly want to do evil."
Xu Huo made no comment, turning back to help the white-dressed girl with the soup.
Sun Jirou waited a moment, then couldn't help saying, "What exactly do you mean? Just say it clearly!"
"What do you think of the people in Fairy Tale City?" Xu Huo asked.
Sun Jirou fell silent. Although the people in Fairy Tale City didn't directly eat people, eating things grown from the bodies of absorbed Xenomorphs was essentially the same as cannibalism. As fellow humans, they showed no compassion for their former kin, even using this as a selling point to develop tourism... They were intelligent beings—continuing this "cannibalistic" gene was far easier for them than for animals!
The room fell silent. After a while, Tang Yuan picked up the teapot. "We've been talking for so long. Have some tea."
Yang Sheng helped bring the cups over to the white-dressed girl and Xu Huo. But as he approached, he suddenly noticed that the white-dressed girl had a lot more white hair. Just as he was wondering about it, she turned around, and he stumbled back two steps in shock. "You've gotten old!"
The white-dressed girl, who had looked barely over twenty, now appeared to be at least forty or fifty. Her smooth skin had developed spots and wrinkles, her eyes were no longer clear, and the whites were filled with bloodshot veins.
"Player trait." The white-dressed girl, whose voice had aged along with her appearance, pointed at the cup he had broken on the floor. "Clean it up."
The other players hadn't yet recovered from the shock of her sudden aging, but Yang Sheng had already unconsciously picked up a broom as she instructed.
The remaining few felt their eyelids twitch. Tao Chengxin quickly grabbed Xu Huo as he started walking toward her. "Don't go over there!"
Xu Huo showed no particular reaction to the white-dressed girl's "reverse aging" ability. He touched the teapot, lifted the lid, and poured out all the remaining tea. "It's cold. Let's brew a fresh pot."
Tang Yuan and the others in front were practically grinding their teeth, but the white-dressed girl chuckled and said, "The soup is ready. Have some soup."
"What should we call you, Auntie?" Xu Huo asked casually as he helped out.
"My surname is Bai. You can call me Granny Bai." The "white-dressed girl," who was still gradually aging, said.
"And the old man we saw during the day?"
"My cousin. He's been mentally unstable after some trauma. He goes to bed early at night."
"Do just the two of you live here?"
"That's right. All our family and friends are dead. Just the two old relics are left. In about ten more days, he'll die too. Then it'll be just me."
"I noticed a lot of flowers planted outside. Did you used to run a flower shop?"
"My husband and I both liked growing flowers. We used to have a flower shop, but after he died, I closed it. Now I only plant a few in my own yard."
"Haven't you thought about going out to see the world? Fairy Tale City is too small."
"I can't leave here. I can only wander around nearby."
Several bowls of soup had been served. When the old woman turned around again, her face had changed once more. Sun Jirou suddenly stood up. "You're the old woman from the tour bus!"
Granny Bai smiled warmly as she placed the soup on the table. "Little girl, your eyesight isn't good. The young man traveling with you recognized me long ago."