Chapter 144: 143 A False Life

"Tell me about what happened these past few years?"

Though she was extremely reluctant to answer the question, after glancing back toward her younger brother and sister's room, Anna couldn't help but bite her lip, then nodded with some difficulty.

"Alright… where should I start?"

"Start from when you got the thing."

The black-robed figure said calmly:

"Six years ago, when your parents passed away, I came by to deliver the developed photos, and afterward I discovered that you possessed a certain kind of 'potential.' I then casually did you a small favor. May I ask what happened after that?"

What happened after that…

Hearing this, Anna bit her lip again and said, her face somewhat pale:

"After that… I really did, just like you said, regain my family, but… but it wasn't the kind I wanted…"

"Oh?"

The black-robed figure raised an eyebrow with great interest, then pressed on:

"Could you go into more detail?"

"It's just… when I spoke my wish to that photo, wanting my family to come back, what appeared at home wasn't my parents, but a boy about my age."

After recalling the situation back then, Anna said with a complicated look in her eyes:

"When he saw me, he said he was my brother. I thought I'd run into a madman, got startled, and desperately drove him out, then kept on talking to the photo you gave me.

What I said was, I wanted my parents to come back, to let me have a family again. But what appeared was still not them—it was a pair of swaddling clothes wrapped around two infants…"

"I see… it seems that back then, you didn't fully believe what I told you."

The black-robed figure shook his head upon hearing this and said with some regret:

"You were a slightly precocious child, with a calm and rational mind. You had already deeply understood the meaning of death, and knew that your parents could never come back.

Even though I told you that family portrait was an unparalleled miracle, capable of giving you a family again, and demonstrated part of its power before you, you still didn't fully believe me. Deep down, you still felt it couldn't bring your parents back.

Because of the doubt and distrust in your heart, the seed I left in that photo didn't hatch toward summoning your parents back, but took an unknown new direction. The final anom… ah… the final effect ended up deviating. What a pity."? ！！！

After hearing the black-robed figure's words, Anna felt a wave of dizziness, and a heart-wrenching, bone-chilling coldness slammed into her heart.

"So… if I had believed it enough back then, could I really have brought them back?"

"Sorry, that's equally impossible."

The black-robed figure shook his head again:

"Life and death aren't entirely irreversible, but the conditions required are unimaginably harsh. Keeping someone 'undead' isn't difficult, but bringing back someone already dead is astonishingly hard.

And although your 'talent' is quite outstanding, it's still not enough to break through the barrier between life and death. However, if you had believed me enough, it might have summoned the lingering shadows your parents left behind, or perhaps created a pair of puppets or something like that."

"Then… isn't that still fake?"

"It is fake, that's true, but you weren't even ten years old back then. Even if it were just two empty-shell puppets with your parents' appearance, that should still count as fulfilling your wish, so I wasn't lying to you."

After answering Anna's question without changing expression, he discovered that the "test subject" seemed to have gone wrong. The black-robed figure, who had originally been quite courteous, instantly took on a visibly colder look.

Glancing toward the inner room, looking through the wall at the two children inside, the black-robed figure frowned slightly and said with some displeasure:

"It seems not just your brother, but the other two also have no blood relation to you whatsoever. And they're not false creations either—they're all genuinely complete human beings.

So the thing you got, hatched from a seed numbered within ten, just ended up finding a few

children who looked similar to your parents, then forcibly wiping their pasts, stealing their original lives, and making them play house with you?"

"I… I didn't want to! I never meant to do that!"

Hearing the black-robed figure's "accusation," the guilt buried deepest in her heart was violently torn open. Anna's face instantly went deathly pale, the color draining from her cheeks in an instant.

"After I realized something was wrong with that thing, I tore it up right away, then took my brother and Melanie and the others to find the police, wanting to help them get back to their original homes. But… but everyone's memories seemed to have been altered!"

Dizzy, she grabbed the doorframe to prop up her body that could collapse at any moment, and Anna bit her pale lips as she struggled to explain:

"The police asked the neighbors, and they said our family really did have four children. The municipal people checked the records and said they really were my siblings. There were even baby supplies at home, and even in the old photos, three more children had appeared!

I… I didn't mean to steal someone else's family, I really was trying hard to explain! But not a single person believed me. They all thought I'd gone crazy from grief over my parents dying in the war. And I couldn't find their original families either, so… so then…"

Municipal records, neighbors' memories, traces of daily life… everything had been altered?

Hearing this much, the black-robed figure's tightly furrowed brow actually relaxed slightly.

Although the effect had clearly gone awry, and was completely unlike the anomalous object he had originally envisioned, something that could directly intervene in existence itself and forcibly rewrite someone's life should be of an extremely high standing. It wasn't a waste of the power of Seed Number Seven.

However, although this test subject's standing met the standard, its ability still wasn't what he wanted. And the time for "that" was drawing near—there was at most one year left.

If within a year he still couldn't create the corresponding anomalous object, even if he successfully dealt with the red-haired woman of the *** Bureau and destroyed what she had sealed on the top floor of the *** Bureau, it would all still be for nothing in the end!

"Forget it…"

Thinking this far, the somewhat listless black-robed figure shook his head, then put his hat back on properly and said to Anna with polite indifference:

"I have no other questions. Sorry for disturbing you today…

Oh, and since you've already lost the thing I gave you, when I find it and take it back directly, you shouldn't have any objections, right?"

"I…"

Hearing the black-robed figure's words, even though she clearly knew the other party possessed a power she couldn't resist, the sickly girl still mustered her courage and, gripping the doorframe, asked:

"If you take the thing away… then… then Li Ang and Melanie and the others…"

"Naturally they'll return to their original homes, and the memories of these years will be erased. Apart from you, no one will know anything happened."

"!!!"

Looking at Anna, who had thudded to the floor, the light instantly gone from her eyes, as if she had become a fragile shell with merely a human appearance, the black-robed figure's cold, hard, tear-streaked face finally showed a sincere smile.

"Don't worry. Once I get the thing, I'll help you correct the mistakes you've made. Isn't that what you wanted?"