The dim light from the staircase shone upon the basement, where a small wooden bed was placed in the center of the room.
Lying on the bed was a little girl who bore a striking resemblance to the character played by Xu Dengming.
She was dressed in clothes made from burlap sacks, much like the ones worn by the body Xu Dengming had taken over.
However, she was noticeably older than the body Xu Dengming had used.
The little girl lay motionless, her expression serene, with a faint gray hue on her face, as if she had already lost her life.
Xu Dengming quickly ran to the bedside—it felt as though she wasn’t controlling the body, but rather the body was propelling her forward.
She then took out a small vial, popped the last pill into the girl’s mouth, and carefully poured a little water down her throat.
“Come on, wake up,” Xu Dengming whispered into the little girl’s ear.
“Guo Jiajia, wake up.”
The pill took effect swiftly.
Shortly after the water was administered, the girl’s eyelashes fluttered, and she coughed a couple of times.
Guo Jiajia opened her eyes, and a face filled with worry, akin to that of a doll, was clearly reflected in her pupils.
Her doll had come to rescue her.
As soon as Guo Jiajia regained consciousness, Xu Dengming immediately lost control over the body.
From the perspective of the game’s main controller, she switched to that of a bystander, and her body returned to its normal adult form.
Xu Dengming understood.
This was called a game cutscene.
Xu Dengming watched as Guo Jiajia picked up the doll and forcefully swallowed the three pieces of unknown objects, which resembled cured meat, that the doll had brought.
She then ran back to the first floor at the fastest speed she could muster.
Guo Jiajia must have already considered the possibility of escape.
She dragged her grandmother, still tied to the wooden chair, to the center of the living room.
The elderly woman, sensing the change in the surroundings, reached out, but Guo Jiajia had already darted away before she could be touched.
The door to the master bedroom began to shake violently.
Guo Jiajia flung open the front door of the house, and a refreshing breeze blew in, with sunlight illuminating her and the doll’s faces.
Almost at that very moment, a loud crash echoed from behind them.
The door to the master bedroom finally burst open.
Xu Dengming was still watching, but the game’s screen froze at that moment.
[Third loop ended, player achieved [A Ray of Hope]]
[System: Congratulations to the player for completing the solo game [Playing House] ]
The completion prompt turned into gibberish halfway through—Xu Dengming stretched out her hand and made a motion as if she were opening a box.
When playing the role of a character in the game, Xu Dengming was unable to use her own abilities.
It was only when she returned to herself that she could clearly see the threads of fate around Guo Jiajia for the first time.
The game prompt was correct.
Even after escaping the house, Guo Jiajia was still shrouded in misfortune; she truly had only a sliver of hope left.
[Playing House] was just a game set in an era right after a major catastrophe.
Everything that had happened was already in the past, and the [Box of Destiny] could not bring back the dead.
Nevertheless, Xu Dengming still wanted to do something.
She closed and then reopened the box of fate, transferring Guo Jiajia’s misfortune onto one of the characters in the room.
As her ability took effect, the frozen game screen began to flow again.
It was as if a miracle had occurred.
In the living room, the frail old woman, in a last burst of energy, sprang up from her wooden chair.
She lunged forward with all her might, and her aged body unleashed an enormous force, clutching tightly onto her target.
The old woman’s sharp nails pierced through the target’s skin, embedding themselves deep into the flesh.
The target’s artery was severed, and warm blood gushed out uncontrollably, splashing onto the old woman’s lips and chest.
The old woman greedily swallowed the blood, mechanically calling out a name: “Jiajia……………”
Outside the house, Guo Jiajia’s running speed increased.
She did not look back, and with her doll in tow, she strode towards the distance.
[Third loop ended, player achieved [Another Possibility]]
[System: Congratulations to the player for completing the solo game [Playing House]. The rewards for this instance have been automatically added to the user’s backpack.]
[System: Upon detection, User 009-000’s ability value has broken through, and the maximum testing interval for the game has been extended to thirty natural days.]
The [Playing House] game, which had tormented the tester for three loops, finally came to an end.
The game screen faded, and Xu Dengming returned to the living room of her apartment.
This time, the watery light floating in mid-air and the cracked plaster-like seats had all vanished, and the world returned to normal once again.
She first savored the feeling of standing on solid ground before opening the system panel to check her current status.
[Spirit Value: 57/120 (Moderately insane, continuously improving)]
Although Xu Dengming’s remaining spirit value was indeed quite low, after successfully escaping the instance, the debuffs hanging over her began to dissipate.
As usual, even without using any items, a good rest for two days would be enough to recover.
Xu Dengming went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water.
The cool water slid down her throat and into her stomach.
The throbbing in her temples persisted, but the buzzing in her ears began to weaken.
The various trivial sounds of human society drifted into Room 403 through the window, making Xu Dengming more acutely aware that she had left the instance.
She put down the water glass and reflected on her actions in the game.
The ending of the third loop proved that Xu Dengming’s guesses were not too far off.
Each loop did not begin from the moment she woke up in the children’s room—the game had already started running the moment Xu Dengming pushed open the wooden door.
Direct evidence was that during the three tests, the time on the wall was different each time Xu Dengming opened her eyes.
Xu Dengming originally thought this was because the player’s exploration time would continue to decrease with the increase in the number of test loops.
However, the situation in the last loop directly refuted the original assumption.
Xu Dengming thus concluded that her waking moment was related to the duration of her interaction with Guo Jiajia.
In the first loop, Xu Dengming spent the shortest amount of time with Guo Jiajia, so she woke up at six-thirty.
In the second loop, Xu Dengming lingered for a long time with Guo Jiajia, and as a result, she did not open her eyes until seven-thirty.
The little girl, Guo Jiajia, was the key to the entire game.
Only when she chose to initiate the test would the player take on the role of the doll accompanying her.
—This was a game played by the player and the little girl together, a [Playing House] journey for the two of them.
In the first loop, Guo Jiajia had demonstrated the game in front of Xu Dengming, expressing her gratitude to her doll for preparing dinner.
Xu Dengming actually did not witness the process of preparing the dinner.
She merely assumed, out of habit, that the piece of vegetable leaf had been placed in the plastic bowl by Guo Jiajia in advance.
But thinking about it in reverse, since she had not seen the preparation process, why couldn’t it be that the vegetable leaf was truly placed there by the doll?
Non-mystical cognition was never a necessary choice for clearing the instance.
Xu Dengming’s worldview had already been reshaped time and time again during her job-seeking process.
Looking back, even before the role-playing began, Guo Jiajia had already hinted to the tester through her act of expressing gratitude that her doll possessed a certain degree of autonomous behavior.
The Xu Dengming from before obtaining the system might have thought it was just a child’s fantasy, but she now knew that there were believers in “flesh and life” in this world.
The followers of flesh and life wanted to create life.
They subtly propagated their views, leaving various clues in books like “The Origin of Life,” and even in sections on how to make vegetable puree, they inserted all sorts of personal opinions.
Xu Dengming suspected that the “husband and wife” were also believers in flesh and life.
Judging from the situation in the basement, the couple had likely already begun their attempt to create life.
Guo Jiajia was probably not their biological child, but rather a product of their abilities.
However, in this house, it was not only the man and the woman who attempted to create life, but also Guo Jiajia herself.
Guo Jiajia frequently went in and out of the basement, which was her activity area.
From the child’s appreciation and reading habits towards books, it could be seen that she had a strong thirst for knowledge.
In her reading, Guo Jiajia naturally absorbed the content of the books and even accumulated some knowledge about creating life.
Coupled with the experimental equipment casually placed in the basement, Guo Jiajia had ample conditions to conduct experiments.
Guo Jiajia’s experimental subject was her own doll.
Her outstanding talent enabled Guo Jiajia to achieve far greater success than the two adults.
The doll was no longer an inanimate object; it gained the ability to move and think because of the little girl.
Guo Jiajia created a brand-new life with her own hands, and this life became her loyal companion.
Like many real parents, the woman and the man were completely unaware of many things the child did.
The arrogance of adulthood made them entirely dismissive of the little girl’s toy.
During this time, Guo Jiajia might have inadvertently revealed that her doll could help prepare meals, but it was all taken as mere child’s talk.
Unbeknownst to them, Guo Jiajia had acquired exceptional life and flesh-like powers.
Even her diary showed that when Guo Jiajia referred to the doll, she used the pronoun “she,” and called the act of taking cotton “treatment.”
As for the other people in the house, Xu Dengming was unsure about the old woman’s situation and could not make a judgment.
Among the “husband and wife,” at least one was a person with special abilities, and it was also possible that both were.
Considering that “The Origin of Life” always added personal opinions in the recipes, the woman in charge of buying groceries seemed more like a fanatic.
However, in Xu Dengming’s judgment, apart from the three people mentioned above, there should be another entity with awakened special powers in the instance.
—The fourth person with abilities was Guo Jiajia’s doll.
Xu Dengming propped her head up with one hand, a thought emerging in her mind.
She muttered to herself, “So it’s a precognitive ability, isn’t it?”
According to the diary, on September 4th, the doll had already been torn apart.
The timing of the death event was clearly after the tearing incident on September 4th.
The already-destroyed doll appeared in a space and time that did not belong to it, and did everything in its power to save the little girl.
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