Lantern Sister is still very capable.

Chapter 110 Old Memories

Pei Hanxing was plunged into darkness, her consciousness constantly rising and falling in her memories, unable to shake off those bitter recollections.

The young boy huddled outside his parents' bedroom door, listening to the argument coming from inside, where his mother, Wen Lulan, and father, Pei Shimu, were blaming each other.

"I've had enough! Can't you be a little more ambitious? What's the point of staring at those useless things all day?!"

“You don’t understand, this is God’s guidance to me. I’ve finally discovered it… As long as I can get investment, Hanxing’s illness will have money to be treated.”

Young Pei Hanxing stared at the closed door with his bright eyes. He didn't understand some of the technical terms his father used, but he knew that he might be able to get rid of his illness, and his heart was filled with hope.

So he waited expectantly for the good news his father would bring.

But instead of hope, what awaited them was a complete massacre.

The moonlight flowed quietly like water. Young Pei Hanxing couldn't fall asleep because of chest tightness. He heard the sound of the combination lock and thought it was Pei Shimu, who often came home late at night, returning home. He quickly closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

Sure enough, the door to the parents' room was opened.

"Ahhh!"

A brief scream and the sound of a heavy object falling to the ground made Pei Hanxing open her eyes abruptly.

"mom!"

He ran barefoot out of the room, only to see his mother's figure lying on the ground in the moonlight and several thugs with knives.

An unfamiliar voice suddenly rang out, "There's a child."

"Take it away."

After deciding Pei Hanxing's future with just two sentences, one person easily grabbed Pei Hanxing, while the other two orderly dispersed to search the bedroom.

Hearing his mother's gradually weakening heartbeat and increasingly feeble breathing, Pei Hanxing's eyes widened, his mouth was covered, and tears streamed down his face. He felt as if his own heart was beating along with Wen Lulan's.

"Thump thump—thump thump—thump..."

"boom!"

Blindfolded and taken to an unfamiliar environment, Pei Hanxing developed a fever. There were several other people in the room besides him, and the boy and girl stared blankly at him as he was thrown on the ground.

After only two days, Pei Hanxing kept running a high fever. His weak body and terrible environment made him look extremely bad, but his life was even more tenacious than when he was carefully cared for in the hospital.

He did not die; instead, he witnessed the two children leave and never return.

"They're all dead, drained of blood, their brains opened, eaten," the short-haired girl murmured. She was much older than Pei Hanxing, the older sister in the house, and the first person to take care of Pei Hanxing.

"It would be better if you died here, at least you'd have a whole body."

Pei Hanxing's face was flushed, and his breath was hot. He stared at the short-haired girl in a daze.

The short-haired girl treated Pei Hanxing like a sick younger brother in a house game, and herself as the older sister who took care of him. She learned to use physical methods to cool Pei Hanxing down. This was her only game here. Being alone and lost in thought, yet powerless to do anything about it, only made her feel frustrated.

Her game lasted only two days before it ended, and she became the next person to be taken away.

After the short-haired girl left, no one paid any attention to Pei Hanxing. The eldest sister also left, and the remaining children fell into a silent panic.

Pei Hanxing lay dirty in the corner, his consciousness constantly fluctuating. When he opened his eyes again, he only saw another long-haired girl sticking her wet clothes to his forehead.

She silently looked into his eyes, and after a while, she wiped Pei Hanxing's face with a dirty towel, then kept staring at him.

The long-haired girl would wipe his forehead from time to time; this small act of thoughtfulness provided Pei Hanxing with more psychological comfort than practical benefit.

After enduring this for a day, the door opened, and Pei Hanxing saw for the first time, fully conscious, that the children were being chosen.

In just two minutes, the three children were silently tied up and taken away. The person who came had no empathy whatsoever; no one with a conscience could do such a thing.

"Will we be next?" the long-haired girl suddenly asked.

Apart from her, the entire warehouse was deathly silent, with only faint breathing sounds. Pei Hanxing felt as if only the two of them were awake.

Pei Hanxing opened her eyes wearily and looked at her, but she struggled to raise her finger and tapped Pei Hanxing's brow. "You're so weak, they definitely won't choose you. You won't get the gem."

gem?

Pei Hanxing didn't understand, but the long-haired girl had been there longer than him and might have overheard some information.

Of course, Pei Hanxing was a lamb to the slaughter, and the reason she hadn't been chosen was probably because of her body.

Unexpectedly, the disease he had hated for ten years became his talisman.

Not long after the three children were taken away, Pei Hanxing heard hurried footsteps outside the warehouse, and he heard the guards' footsteps gradually fading into the distance.

One by one, people's breathing became heavier.

After a while, the gate opened, and the children scurried away in a panic, like frightened deer, staring at the gate in terror, not understanding why the executioner, who usually wouldn't return for two or three days after someone was taken away, would reappear.

But this time, they were met not with swords, but with rescue.

"...Their physical condition is quite poor, due to long-term use of sedatives. This one is even more pitiful, already ill... Apart from a few who have already awakened, the other children need to be slowly recuperated..."

"Have you contacted the parents? The court also needs their cooperation in filing the lawsuit..."

"We've made contact with most of them, but a few families have special circumstances. The worst case is Pei Hanxing's. His father is missing and his mother was killed by the Cosmic God Cult. He already has few relatives, and everyone he could contact has been killed. The cases are spread across different provinces. We hadn't made any connections before, but now it seems that the Cosmic God Cult was behind it, and it's related to his father."

“He needs to be protected, but he's too young and needs a guardian. We should probably choose someone from the base, but he doesn't have any special abilities. We should assign a knowledgeable volunteer…”

Thus, Pei Hanxing had parents again. Her adoptive parents, who were researchers, took over her care but were engrossed in the laboratory. She lacked nothing materially, yet Pei Hanxing never spent any of her adoptive parents' money.

The government-issued pension and the insurance money after his mother's death were all placed in his name. His adoptive parents gave it all to him. Pei Hanxing used some of it initially, but as his health gradually recovered with age, he tried to make money through holographic games and stopped using the money generated from his grief. Every time he used it, it felt like a cut was made in his heart, causing him a dull ache.

From the age of ten to seventeen, Pei Hanxing painstakingly searched for clues from that year.

He printed out the first edition of the Shangyuan Villa fire report and fell asleep while reading it word by word many nights. After the villa was unsealed, he would go there from time to time.

It was there that he met Chu Deng.

The victim girl who appeared with the fire butterfly.

The photo that caused a sensation at the time led to the photographer being convicted of using someone's portrait rights without permission, but the photo was preserved by someone, including Pei Hanxing, who also had the photo in his collection, which is why he recognized Chu Deng.

Pei Hanxing saw Chu Deng's name again on the ranking list after the first monthly exam. He couldn't quite describe how he felt at the time, but he couldn't help but start paying attention to her.

She was the first companion he had met in all these years.

They were all victims of the Cosmic God Cult, and were reborn in the same fire.