Madame Butterfly didn’t head towards any other rooms, but with a single wave of her hand, two interlocking circular metal gears appeared in front of her.
Xu Huo had seen this kind of gear once before, a step closer to the core of Madame Butterfly’s Spiritual World than a chain.
The two gears meshed and turned together, and with a few clicks, the rooms that had been growing outwards began to collapse towards her position from afar, and then the doors on all four sides of the room started to vanish, leaving only one.
She stepped forward and pushed open the door, but instead of the library corridor, a new spiral staircase appeared.
"Your progress is not small," Madame Butterfly hummed with a laugh, lifting a finger, and the number of gears geometrically increased, quickly covering the space where the staircase was. Once all the gears began to turn under the drive of the central gear, the darkness and the staircase shattered like fragments, revealing before her the snow-white library corridor and the white staircase standing at the center.
Madame Butterfly elegantly opened the door to the adjacent room and the next second, she appeared at the bottom of the library, looking at the materialized objects still on the desk, and said indifferently, "Giving up so soon, how uninteresting."
Xu Huo walked out from a room on the first floor, smiling, "I was afraid you’d tear down my place."
Madame Butterfly glanced at him and only sat down next to the table before saying, "Mr. He Pu did not choose the wrong person, you have your excellences."
Xu Huo sat down opposite her, "I came to Rose Castle by chance, just happened to meet Mr. He Pu’s standards."
"It wasn’t by chance." Madame Butterfly propped her cheek in her hand, looking at him with a somewhat drifting gaze, "Mr. He Pu had a prophecy tool that could judge based on his needs. His arrival in Zone 011 had a purpose, to wait for a suitable heir."
"So that’s me?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow, "If I may be so bold, there should be no shortage of players who can see through the fake Mr. He Pu’s identity."
"But only you took his lighter," Madame Butterfly said, "That’s fate."
"Establishing a connection through an item?" Xu Huo pondered for a moment, "Is there really such a tool?"
"Of course," Madame Butterfly’s attention returned to him, "Us sitting face to face right now is the evidence."
Xu Huo knew she wouldn’t say much about this topic, so he changed the subject, "What’s your relationship with V Fan Xiao?"
"He took care of me for a while." Madame Butterfly revealed a smile, "I was quite young then, going around starting fires with him, it was rather fun."
"An adoption relationship?"
"He did want to be my dad, but it’s a pity my dad is still alive." Madame Butterfly shrugged regretfully, "I’d call him ’uncle’ at best. Before he fell ill, he was a handsome uncle, but illness ravaged him so much, it’s a pity, I don’t even want to look at his pictures."
Xu Huo’s gaze lingered on her face for a moment, "Is there really a player called Madame Butterfly?"
"A notorious Cannibal Player." The fake Madame Butterfly, Bai Kou, said with a smile, "Using her name to do some bad deeds."
Xu Huo also began to laugh, "I still don’t know your name."
"Bai Kou, Fan Xiao calls me Kou Kou," Bai Kou said.
Xu Huo reviewed the name in his mind, "Is that your real name?"
Bai Kou laughed out loud, "Of course not, the names are all made up to deceive him."
"Kou Kou," Xu Huo called her name, appraising it seriously, "It sounds nice."
Bai Kou fixedly looked at him for a few seconds before getting up and leaving his spiritual world.
Xu Huo returned to his room, the smile on his lips not fading away.
It was clear that Bai Kou had feelings for Fan Xiao, her casual recounting a veil over her true emotions. After a moment’s thought, he went to the terrace and said to the neighboring room, "Would you like to listen to some music?"
"You play?" A voice came from the room after a while.
"No, let’s just stream something online," Xu Huo replied succinctly.
Bai Kou’s response was even more straightforward, as she swiped through the air to open the glass door.
Nevertheless, Xu Huo still took out his communicator and selected a few sleep-inducing music tracks to play.
He left the communicator on the terrace and went back to his room to sleep.
The music did not stop all night; it was not until Mr. Dong knocked on the door and came in the next morning that he picked up the communicator and informed Xu Huo that Bai Kou had left in the middle of the night, her whereabouts unknown.
Xu Huo nodded to indicate he understood, then drew a tube of blood for storage. After breakfast, he took out the glasses and turned them over to print out the materials regarding Dr. Wu that he had taken pictures of.
Dr. Deng had previously mentioned that the biological characteristics Dr. Wu left at each place were different, hence people conjectured that "Dr. Wu" might be a title rather than just one person. Indeed, these materials meticulously recorded several identities used by Dr. Wu, one third of which carried no family connections, their social networks only established after taking a position.
Two thirds of the disguises included family; as for how these family members were acquired, they were usually impersonated—a difficult thing to discern. If it weren’t for the biological characteristics differing from the impersonated individuals, it would be nearly impossible to confirm they were not the same person.
If it was possible to deceive close friends and family so perfectly, mimicking the same biological characteristics wouldn’t be hard. Dr. Wu didn’t do this, though, probably not wanting to implicate the families of those he impersonated.
Dr. Wu often worked in fields related to potions, whether pharmaceutical companies or private labs, rarely assuming other identities, which suggested from the documents that he continued potion research even while evading the Game Government.
Of course, Xu Huo believed his intention was to purposely spread the Perfect Evolution Potion, but it couldn’t be certain there were no side effects. Moreover, evolution potions had different levels, so perhaps later versions hadn’t been developed yet.
With this in mind, he couldn’t help thinking about the items V Fan Xiao left behind in District 001. Since Bai Kou said he had deliberately settled in Zone 011 to wait for an heir, could what he left behind be a potion?
With V Fan Xiao’s capabilities, finding the Perfect Evolution Potion wouldn’t be surprising, especially since he had been researching potions since experiencing evolutionary side effects. Although he found no more information about the Perfect Potion in his files, the lack of data could also imply a problem from another angle.
He called for Mr. Dong and asked him outright if he knew about the Perfect Potion.
"Mr. He Pu once searched for it, but found nothing," Mr. Dong answered.
Xu Huo wondered whether Mr. Dong was lying—whether Fan Xiao really hadn’t found it, or if Mr. Dong was in on the deception.
After dismissing him, Xu Huo continued to look through Dr. Wu’s information.
He saw that the most crucial information in the encrypted file, just two pages in, was that Dr. Wu may have had a daughter who had died.
He had already heard this news from Dr. Deng.
"Ding ding." A message arrived on his communicator. He opened the projection to find it was from Dr. Deng, telling him he had found a job with room and board included and had accessed a laboratory, making it very convenient to test potions.
Xu Huo glanced at the address; it was the largest potion subsidiary of Rongxin Group.