The Gentleman at the End

Chapter 179: Chapter 178 Qualification

“`

Buzz! Buzz!

The ‘mother’ corpse on the table didn’t bleed out any blood, instead, flesh-eating flies squeezed out from the rotting neck in increasing numbers, reaching up to a thousand.

They seemed to possess a collective consciousness, quickly forming a human-shaped black shadow heading toward the Second Floor.

The swarm of flies had not noticed that the natural gas pipeline in the house had been cut and all the doors and windows were tightly closed.

At the parents’ bedroom door on the Second Floor, the flies converged, stuffing their physical bodies into the keyhole and filling it up… Click! The lock opened.

Inside was a biological nest-like “birthing room”.

As the swarm of flies entered and touched a biological flesh-bubble switch, a pair of brand-new ‘parents’ began to be remade. Eventually, they slipped out from the fleshly pod, wearing completely identical clothes, their hairstyles, and the coffee in their hands remained unchanged.

“William, my precious son! Where are you?”

The parents pretended as if nothing had happened, smiling as they walked down the stairs.

Just as they were about to look for traces of their son, they found Yi Chen standing outside the window,@@novelbin@@

dragging a black suitcase in one hand, while waving goodbye with the other.

[Leaving home] was absolutely not allowed.

Source: , updated on 𝑛𝘰𝘷𝗴𝘰.co

Seeing their son standing outside the front door, both parents instantly showed their fierce appearances. The mother’s mouth tore completely, unleashing a swarm of blood-flesh-devouring flies from within, while the father’s body began to swell and exude a large amount of acid from his pores.

All their attention was on the outside door, completely oblivious to the plant trap set at their feet.

Snap!

The mother was first to break the tender green roots set up in the corridor,

The external force snapping the roots caused a chain reaction, eventually leading to the igniter on the stove.

The parents’ rebirth took a full half-hour,

and due to the house being completely sealed, the concentration of gas inside had long exceeded the critical value.

Before they could rush out of the house,

there was a gas explosion,

Boom!

All the doors and windows in the house shattered, even the roof was blown open, with flames reaching into the sky.

Yi Chen, only eight years old, had already pushed his suitcase out of the front courtyard, sitting on the roadside, seemingly waiting for something in the dark night, completely undisturbed by the explosion and the building being engulfed in flames behind him.

Snap! Snap!

Two bodies landed with a thud.

Quite coincidentally,

the ‘parents,’ freshly reborn with bodies still tender as children’s, were impacted by the explosion and landed right beside Yi Chen, even emitting a strange smell.

Before long,

a bus appeared from the dark end of the street, more fittingly described as a school bus.

The bus stopped right in front of Yi Chen,

as the doors opened, the driver turned out to be the postman who had previously delivered the mail, dressed in a suit and wearing a top hat.

He didn’t immediately invite Yi Chen aboard, but instead was shocked by the bizarre spectacle of the raging fire, quickly reversing the school bus and getting out personally.

The burning house, Yi Chen sitting on the roadside, and the postman in the middle of the road were perfectly aligned.

The postman framed the scene with his hands as if capturing a picture, framing this beautifully macabre family scene.

His mouth painted with bright red lipstick curled into a perverted smile, he took off his top hat and pulled out a Polaroid camera.

“`

Because he took off his hat, Yi Chen was able to clearly see the mailman’s true face.

The face, long and with clearly defined cheekbones, was purposefully coated with a layer of white foundation, and both eyebrows and lips were painted red, while the eyeballs were pitch-black.

“Smile! Cheese!”

Considering that he would be interacting with this person in the future, Yi Chen also complied by revealing a sickly smile.

The ‘parents,’ charred and dismembered from an explosion, had just happened to fall on either side, facing the camera with expressions of agony.

Click! A sound snapped, followed by a blinding flash, and then the shattering of an ampoule bottle. A cascade of colors poured onto the thick, glossy paper, forming a warm family portrait.

The mailman, satisfied, tucked the photo along with the camera back into his top hat and put it on again.

“What an unexpected harvest, get on the bus now! You’ve already obtained the [Orphanage Qualification]. Tonight, I still have to pick up a few more ‘orphans’ who have qualified, and I’ll send you all to the orphanage first thing tomorrow morning.”

As soon as Yi Chen stepped onto the school bus, a pale silver arm raised from the last row to wave at him, and at the same time, a familiar magnetic voice came through:

“You’re so slow, William~”

“It can’t be helped, I didn’t dare make a move without understanding the rules first.”

His gaze turned toward the last row of the school bus.

The teenager, Lorrian, dressed in a Winnie the Pooh patterned, white hooded sweatshirt sat in the middle, paired with jeans and a pair of white sneakers.

This was indeed a far better image than his appearance in hospital garb in reality, not just healthier, but even quite handsome.

However, Lorrian’s right eye was still covered with a bandage.

There were a few other ‘orphans’ on the bus, some with a fierce appearance, some snickering madly, while others curled up in corners, sharpening their nails or blades. Only Yi Chen and Lorrian appeared somewhat normal.

Yi Chen too took his place in the last row, sitting by the window.

The school bus drove down streets that seemed to have been ‘copied and pasted’; there was no end in sight, stopping at each house to pick up new recruits who had received the [Orphanage Qualification].

During the ride, Lorrian took the initiative to move closer, draping his arm over Yi Chen’s shoulder,

“William, the architectural style here, the everyday items, and this bus using special fuel—none of them match the world we are from… No wonder the Duke said some strange things when he saw us, mentioning how we don’t belong to two different worlds or something.

Did you originally live in such a world? How did you come to our side?”

It was impossible to bluff in front of Moon Scar.

Yi Chen, supporting his chin with one hand, his eyes constantly flickering past the buildings outside the window, honestly responded to Moon Scar’s question:

“I don’t know the specific reason, only that I accidentally died in this world.

When I woke up again, I had already arrived on your side, in a sick world, waking up inside a cemetery worker who appeared to be about my age, build, and even looked similar; he had also happened to die from poisoning.”

“Consciousness transfer between deceased individuals with similar affinity at the same time? It couldn’t possibly directly transcend different worlds, right?

You really are interesting. No wonder your behavior and some of your life’s details are fundamentally different from the gentlemen here. No wonder I found you so intriguing from the first glance.

Say, how could someone like you die… What kind of terrifying thing killed you?”

“A certain group dedicated to studying [Knowledge]; I died accidentally during the course of forced knowledge assimilation.”

This statement made Moon Scar narrow his eyes, becoming exceptionally serious, “Some evil group seeking special knowledge, huh? Extracting the brain from the body and infusing knowledge non-stop around the clock.

It’s very plausible that it could burst a brain. Maybe what you went through was even more horrifying, or maybe you didn’t die completely and just happened to transcend to our side by a stroke of luck.

Such knowledge-seeking groups are indeed dangerous. Is our upcoming gamble related to this?”

“No… This happened after I grew up.

The memories the Duke uses for the gamble are my ‘childhood memories,’ that time also nearly killed me, and it was a miracle I managed to escape alive from the orphanage back then.”

“Sounds fascinating. Lucky for you, I decided to join this bet on a whim.

I can see a change in your eyes, an unusual glint of slaughter that’s not commonly seen. You seem to have a big problem with the orphanage we are about to visit~ Don’t worry, I’ll be happy to help.”