When Qin Nuo heard this, his expression froze for a moment. He looked at the empty lunchbox oable, feelily puzzled.

  How did she know?

  This level of supervision is terrifying. She even knows whether the lun the box has beeen or not?

  His mother squinted and smiled, repeatedly asking, "You did, did you?"

  As she spoke, dense corpse spots crawled over her slightly wrinkled face like maggots.

  The whites of her eyes gradually faded, turning pitch bck.

  "She's turning into a ghost again..."

  Qin Nuo's eyelids twitched. He stared at the lunchbox, pondered for a moment, and said, "I ate, but not pletely."

  "What do you mean?" His mother asked calmly, her cold gaze like a dagger of death pressed against Qin Nuo's throat, as if she wouldn't relent without a satisfactory expnation.

  "A cssmate named Huang Xia fot her lunch. I felt sorry for her, so I gave her all the food from my lunchbox."

  "Mom, didn't you say I should be a helpful child? You won't bme me, right?" Qin Nuo held his head, looking aggrieved and frightened.

  In truth, his heart was tight.

  He didn't know how she knew he haden the luneal, so he tried using this excuse to see if he could get by.

  His mother stared into Qin Nuo's eyes, and Qin Nuo lowered his head, using fear as an excuse to avoid eye tact.

  After a moment, his mother withdrew her gaze, her smile less horrifying and more filled with fort and affe: "Your iion is right, but don't do it agaiime. If you give your lunch to others and starve yourself, what will you do?"

  Qin Nuo quickly said, "I uand, I won't do it ime."

  "Good son, you must be starving since you did at noht?"

  "I'll make you more food today."

  Qin Nuo felt a bit embarrassed: "Actually, I'm not that hungry."

  "If mom thinks you're hungry, then you're hungry. Be good, eat all the fruit oable first." His mot up a into the kit.

  Qin Nuo watched her back, silent for a moment, trying to activate his system skill.

  Unfortunately, there was no response.

  "Sure enough, I 't trigger the Eye of Analysis. If it's reted to the main storyline, I 't get clues from NPCs."

  "Once I solve the mystery of Li Xiaoming's family, pying the role bees easy. The Eye of Analysis is too powerful. If it triggers 100%, I could breeze through the instance, clearing it in a day."

  "For now, it seems I only trigger it with some instaask NPot flig with the main storyline, and it's not a guararigger."

  As Qin Nuo murmured, the door opened, and Li Xiaodong and Li Xiaodie returned.

  Seeing the fruit in Qin Nuo's hand, one looked disgusted, the other envious.

  "Brother, is it tasty?" Li Xiaodie asked, drooling, looking eagerly.

  Before Qin Nuo could respond, Li Xiaodong pulled her aside, scolding coldly, "Don't look, we don't care!"

  Li Xiaodie, wary of her sed brother's words, nodded, g Qin Nuo, and said, "Brother, eat slowly. I heard a kid door ate a peach, actally swallowed the pit, and choked to death."

  Qin Nuo, biting into a peach, immediately tossed it bato the pte.

  He gred at her fiercely: "Shut your mouth, or I'll tear it off!"

  Li Xiaodie stuck out her tongue and ran back to her room.

  After finishing the fruit, Qin Nuo returhe pte to the kit.

  His mother, seeing the fruit pte, praised, "Good boy, you ate it all."

  Saying this, she picked up a pile of shredded meat, dripping with bck blood, and put it into a pot, turning the heat to maximum.

  The broth quickly boiled, the unknow rolling i.

  Qin Nuo frowned deeply as his mother added seasoning, humming a tuirring with a dle.

  "Mom, I'll go bay room to do homework."

  Qin Nuo said, but his mother, holding ay bottle, sighed, "We're out of soy sauce?"

  "Good son, you go downstairs to the neighbor and borrow a bottle of soy saue?"

  "Borrow soy sauce?"

  Qin Nuo hesitated, then the game notification sounded in his mind.

  "Ding, pyer has triggered a role-pying task!"

  "Li Xiaoming is an obedient child, always pliant with his mother. The upstairs neighbor seems to harbor malice towards his mother. Borrowing a bottle of soy sauce from her might yield ued results?"

  "Role-pying task: Borrow a bottle of soy sauce from apartment 403 upstairs, time limit 20 minutes!"

  "Borrowing soy sauce ts as a role-pying task?"

  Qin Nuo was a bit surprised. Neighbors borrowing small things like salt or soy sauce is on, but this task seemed to have a challenge?

  He noticed ohing.

  His mother asked him to borrow from downstairs, but the game directed him to go upstairs.

  There seemed to be something unusual here.

  The upstairs neighbht know something about Li Xiaoming's family.

  "Son, if you don't want to go, I go, but I'm worried the soup will overcook without supervision." His mother looked slightly ed.

  "It's okay, Mom. Borrowing soy sauce is quick. You wait, I'll be right back."

  With that, Qin Nuo left the kit.

  Leaving home, Qin Nuo headed upstairs.

  This building was old, decades old, with walls covered in moss, peeling paint, and dusty pipes aers.

  The light bulb hadn't been repced for who knows how long, leaving the pce pitch bck at night.

  Qin Nuo used a fshlight from home, navigating through the garbage-filled fourth floor, the air foul and suffog.

  Stepping over the trash, Qin Nuo checked the room numbers, finally finding room 403 at the end of the corridor.

  At the entrahere was an old iron gate.

  Qin Nuo knocked on the iron gate, waited, then knocked harder.

  "Is ahere? I'm the neighbor from downstairs."

  Qin Nuo called out a few times.

  Just as he fihe door suddenly opened.

  A middle-aged woman, around his mother's age, stood before Qin Nuo.

  Though simir in age, her hair was streaked with gray, and she looked more haggard than his mother.

  "Hello, Auntie. I'm from downstairs. We're out of soy saud I was hoping to borrow some." Qin Nuo smiled politely.

  In his notes, Li Xiaoming was a school bully, but at home, he pyed the role of a polite, well-mannered child, perfectly distinguishing his two personas.

  "Downstairs..."

  The middle-aged woman's face, somewhat numb, showed a hint of fusion, "You're the child from 303?"

  Qin Nuo nodded, "Yes."

  The woman squinted her eyes, tinuing to ask, "Who is your mother?"

  "Mo Fang," Qin Nuo replied with Li Xiaoming's mother's name.

  Upon hearing the name Mo Fang, the woman's demeanor visibly ged.

  Qin Nuo clearly noticed this shift.

  It was malice.

  JOSOLUNA