This meant that the children had no childhood, or rather, their childhood was not one of happiness since it was filled only with learning and competition. There were many kids who they saw along the way and they were all less than six years old.
Weirdly, every child had overgrown their usual height for their age, but that was not the scariest giveaway. That would be their eyes. Every child should have a face of innocence, but these kids, there was barely any life in their eyes. There was no crying or laughing, antics common to children. Even a three-year-old was scarily mature and adult-like…
Whenever Xinghe met their dark, soulless eyes and expressionless faces, her heart tightened. Even He Bin had a hard time believing the things that they were looking at. However, Deqing rattled on happily. There was a hint of pride in his voice, like these children were the best of his experiment results. Occasionally, he would also allude to 'that place'.
From his words, Xinghe and He Bin understood the best orphans would be sent to that place. The requirements of that place were exceptionally high, only the best orphans would be accepted, the rest would be shown the door. Therefore, to raise the perfect orphans, Deqing had been perfecting his cultivation techniques for over a decade. The techniques that he invented were increasingly cruel and extreme…
He even managed to use technology to induce growth in the children's brains. He would use electromagnetic waves and the like to excite the growth of brain cells in the children's skulls…
"Uncle Huang, using this technology, how many geniuses has our orphanage managed to cultivate?" He Bin asked excitedly, but under his apparent excitement was a cruel iciness that was bubbling.
Deqing missed the emotion in his eyes and laughed. "It is not that I want to toot my own horn, but over the years, I have managed to create over twenty perfect geniuses!"
"So many? Uncle Huang sure is a genius himself!" He Bin praised.
Deqing was feeling extra smug himself. It was hard to get their hands on natural geniuses, but through his method, he had managed to gift the He Lan family about twenty geniuses, he was instrumental to whatever sick plot the He Lan family was cooking.
"Have you tried increasing the number of geniuses?" He Bin asked.
Deqing replied, "Of course we have, but most of the kids cannot survive the inducement, their brains go into paralysis and shut down. We directly remove useless seeds like these."
"Indeed, keeping them alive would be a waste of food, it is better than they return to the earth itself," He Bin said with a smirk, but there was a shred of deep hatred in his eyes. There was never a moment where he hated the He Lan family more than this!
He was raised as an assassin ever since he was young, and he thought his life was already cruel. Who knew he should be thankful that he was not sent to this orphanage because they had it even worse than him?
The cruelest thing was how they treated the so-called useless seeds. Once the children had outlived their uses, what awaited them was a fiery death! That crematorium must have consumed many an innocent young life.
No one knew the He Lan family had been doing such unscrupulous thing. He Bin suddenly felt deeply ashamed that he had the He Lan family's blood flowing in his veins. Facing this situation that opened before him, he felt extremely suffocated.
He was a trained killer and even he was deeply affected by this news, so he was worried about Xinghe. However, when he snuck to look at her, he realized there was no apparent display of emotion on her face. She was like a robot quietly following them, she was so quiet in fact, she could easily melt into the background.
Her eyes were same color of darkness, there was no ripple of any emotion. She maintained eternally unreadable.
Witnessing this, He Bin secretly reminded himself to maintain his composure and to not show any signs of weakness or suspicion.