Chapter 246: Shadow Puppets and Lamplight (12)
Song Ci and Lu Xingxing had turned the room upside down, searching in every possible direction.
They had tried every possible way out, but not only was the window fake, the door was also fake.
All their hopes, which they had been eagerly waiting for, were shattered into an abyss.
The repeated flickers of hope followed by disappointment only made the already irritable young master more agitated. Even his search became impatient, his frustration apparent as he grabbed a painting hanging on the wall, as though taking out his anger on it.
— Yes, every possible exit leading to the outside world was nothing more than a meticulously crafted painting.
The broken window turned into a picture of a sunset. Behind the cracked wall, the red bricks were perfectly aligned, with black ink lines tracing across them.
They both seemed trapped in a world of paintings, yet couldn’t find their way back to reality.
But from Lu Xingxing’s perspective, things looked a little different.
He saw the window turn into a curtain. The candle holder fell, and the flames set a corner of the curtain alight. The roaring fire then turned into a golden-red sunset on the horizon.
Behind the shattered wall, there were no red bricks.
Instead, it was a pile of flesh and blood.
Human bodies were cut into pieces, each carefully sliced along the muscle lines, and the pieces were used as bricks to build the wall.
The blood acted as the mortar, and the eyes were the embedded stones.
The hollow, muddied eyeballs, unable to rest, stared directly at the people outside the wall.
Lu Xingxing instinctively took a step back, shocked.
The young master scolded Lu Xingxing angrily, calling him a coward who couldn’t even match up to Zhao Zhen.
But Lu Xingxing, upon seeing the young master’s emotionless expression as he looked at the wall, realized something.
He pointed at the wall and, in shock, asked Song Ci, “What do you see here?”
Song Ci, noticing Lu Xingxing’s serious expression, furrowed his brow and glanced at the wall.
Nothing had changed; it was still just red paint filled between the black ink lines, nothing that would even remotely deserve to shock or frighten Lu Xingxing.
Lu Xingxing’s unusual attitude caught Song Ci’s attention, and his mouth slowly dropped into a frown. Expressionless, he began to explain everything he saw in the scene to Lu Xingxing.
However, as Song Ci spoke, Lu Xingxing’s face grew progressively more serious.
“Paper people? Paintings? No, that’s not it!”
Lu Xingxing furrowed his brows tightly. “What I saw were bodies! I wasn’t lying when I told you my mouth disappeared earlier.”
Lu Xingxing’s expression turned grim. “For a period of time, my mouth really did disappear.”
Song Ci was stunned. “Your mouth disappeared??”
Lu Xingxing nodded: “Exactly what I mean, it wasn’t like the mouth was just numb or something. It was really gone, like I was born without it.”
Both of them realized that something was wrong after hearing each other’s and their own descriptions.
So, continuing to look for anything useful in the room, they kept discussing what they had seen and comparing what they had witnessed.
And then, they discovered something.
— What Lu Xingxing saw was so real it felt like it was happening in the physical world.
While what Song Ci saw was nothing more than a false alarm, a passing moment of panic.
Whether it was paper people or red paint, after the initial shock, one would immediately realize that it was just a trick of the eyes.
“So that’s why you were so scared…”
Song Ci said with sudden understanding, his gaze softening a little toward Lu Xingxing. He no longer looked at him with disdain.
Based on Lu Xingxing’s description, Song Ci could almost imagine it: a strange person with stiff, bizarre features chasing after him, his mouth gone, and water ghosts chasing him on the ground. That would indeed be terrifying.
It wasn’t so hard to understand why Lu Xingxing had been so scared.
After all, Lu Xingxing wasn’t some exceptional person like Brother Yan, and it was understandable for him to be frightened by such bizarre occurrences.
Song Ci even looked at Lu Xingxing with a hint of sympathy in his eyes.
Lu Xingxing, a bit speechless, shrugged and said, “Young Master, you come from the Song family, and you’ve mostly seen enlightened Taoists and high monks. Your standard for judging Taoists has always been on a heavenly level. While other people measure things in a standard of one dollar, you already consider them worth ten thousand.”
“But now you’ve met Brother Yan, and that’s another level entirely. Even within the Haiyun Temple, one of the three main Taoist temples in the country, the only ones comparable to Brother Yanare probably his master, Hermit Chengyun, and my grandmaster, Taoist Li.”
“I know you don’t think much of my abilities. Though I admit, I’m just a beginner at Haiyun Temple, but—”
Lu Xingxing tilted his head, a self-assured smile on his lips as he said with cheeky confidence, “If you look around, how many Taoists and exorcists spend their whole lives without ever truly starting their journey in cultivation? Most people only meet blind fortune tellers on the street.”
“Even a small-time figure like me, who isn’t worth mentioning in front of the real big shots, already has quite some skill.”
While Song Ci was stunned, Lu Xingxing walked over nonchalantly, slinging his arm over Song Ci’s shoulder, and pulled him into his embrace, his lips curled in a carefree, swaggering grin.
“Don’t worry, young master. We’ll find a way to get out of here.”
“Before Brother Yan finds us, I guarantee you won’t lose a single hair.”
Lu Xingxing lowered his head and winked at Song Ci. “I swear on my life.”
If Lu Xingxing’s fans had seen this scene, they would have been screaming in awe at his cool and reliable appearance.
However, there were no split-screen shots here, nor any fans of Lu Xingxing.
There was only a young master, who would dare to scold anyone when he was displeased.
Song Ci was initially stunned but soon scowled, expressionless, raising his hand as he reached toward his ear, where his hair had fallen in loose curls, under Lu Xingxing’s confused gaze.
He separated a single strand of hair with his slender, fair fingers, twirled it around his finger a few times, and then suddenly gave it a hard yank.
“Tss—”
The delicate and frail young master let out a cry of pain, his pretty eyebrows furrowing tightly.
Lu Xingxing: “!!!”
He stared at Song Ci in horror, completely clueless about what he was trying to do.
Then, the young master stretched out the strand of hair he had just pulled and held it in front of Lu Xingxing, showing it to him.
“Liar.”
The young master looked at him with disgust. “Didn’t you say not even a single hair would be harmed? And now I’ve lost one.”
Lu Xingxing was stunned: You can play it like this?! Young master, what kind of brain circuitry do you have?
But no matter how Lu Xingxing struggled, he had said the wrong thing and now had provoked the ill-tempered young master. He had no way out.
So, just when Lu Xingxing had finally managed to act cool for three whole seconds, he was once again forced to kneel under Song Ci’s oppressive aura, and all the swagger and rebellious charm from moments before vanished without a trace.
All that was left was a husky-eyed look of grievance, filled with tears.
“After making bold claims, shouldn’t you show some real skills now, Master Lu?”
Song Ci’s tone was icy. Though he called him “Master,” the mockery in his voice was unmistakable.
Lu Xingxing nodded with teary eyes, crouched in a corner, curling up to examine the bloody and grotesque corpses and faces on the ground and walls.
However, the moment Song Ci turned around, his previously cold face softened instantly. A smile lit up his eyes, and even the corners of his lips curved up.
This Xingxing, always overestimating himself.
The young master shook his head. Even when he cursed Lu Xingxing in his heart, he did it with a smile.
Being cared for and protected—it was, after all, something that brought joy and touched the heart.
Whether Lu Xingxing truly had that strength or not didn’t matter. What mattered was his heart and the actions that aligned with it. The young master appreciated that.
He couldn’t help but think back to the time when he had just returned from Mount Nanming and was recuperating in the sanatorium. His silly older brother had asked him back then whether he was having fun and if he’d made any good friends.
He remembered that he had unhappily snapped back, saying that everyone in the program team—except for Brother Yan—was an idiot, and maybe Zhao Zhen could barely count as normal. As for the others, no way would he consider them friends.
His brother had looked emotional and said his little brother was growing up, slipping away from his grasp, and already had his own close friends and little cliques.
He had even tried to pat the young master’s head.
—Of course, that ended with the young master slapping his hand away in displeasure.
But now, when Song Ci thought about it again, he suddenly felt that treating Lu Xingxing as a friend wasn’t so bad after all.
One more or one less doesn’t make a difference anyway.
The young master snorted and lowered his head again to study the floor, which had been covered over with white paper.
Once the two of them had compared notes and realized the discrepancies in their visions, the situation suddenly took on new life.
Wherever Lu Xingxing saw traces of blood, if he let the young master check it out, they would surely find those flimsy wall hangings as thin as paper.
Lu Xingxing took on the job of pointing out those strange spots, and Song Ci was responsible for tearing down the paintings and tucking them under his arm, carrying them as they walked along.
Since these rooms were connected one after another, and no one knew where they ultimately led, nor whether they’d end up back in the same room on the return path, it was better just to carry them along.
Luckily, the paintings weren’t heavy, so Song Ci simply carried them all together.
Ghosts and monsters might be terrifying.
But what if those ghosts and monsters were just images in a painting?
Whether in terms of damage or danger, the level dropped dramatically.
So, an odd scene unfolded between the two.
Lu Xingxing, with a pinched nose and a disgusted look, pointed out the creepy spots, while Song Ci calmly walked over and lifted what appeared to Lu Xingxing as blood-soaked corpses, gave them a shake, and then stuffed what he saw as paintings into the crook of his arm.
It looked more like Lu Xingxing was the normal person and Song Ci the seasoned Taoist.
Even though Lu Xingxing knew those things were just paper in Song Ci’s eyes, from his own perspective, he still felt Song Ci was far too composed—unrealistically so.
The young master’s refined features showed no emotion. He turned slightly with the corpse of a ghost that had died with its eyes open in his arms and asked calmly, “Next one?”
—He looked like a mentally unstable yet eerily calm serial killer.
Lu Xingxing only dared to mutter that to himself in his heart. There was no way he would ever say that out loud. After all, the young master looked especially dangerous right now.
More importantly, he hadn’t forgotten the pain of losing his mouth earlier.
He was scared—terrified that if the young master got annoyed again, he’d take his mouth away once more.
“Why are you spacing out?”
The young master furrowed his brows suspiciously. “Are you cursing me in your heart?”
“No, no, of course not.”
Lu Xingxing hurriedly jogged after him.
With their teamwork, their efficiency skyrocketed. Soon, they had taken down all the ghost corpses that could pose a threat to them and piled them onto the young master’s arm.
If any of the paper-transformed corpses resisted capture, refusing to be caught obediently, Song Ci would wrinkle his brows in distaste and crush them into crumpled balls, then throw them like bowling balls at the wall, pick them up, and throw them again…
After a few rounds, the paper creatures gave up and let themselves be caught.
Lu Xingxing’s eyes were filled with horror.
From his point of view, this was no joke.
What he saw was Song Ci folding blood-drenched corpses into giant meatballs. Even the dull, lifeless eyes of the corpses were squeezed out of their sockets during the folding.
The scene was nothing short of terrifying.
Lu Xingxing gulped. He silently added another name to his list of people not to mess with.
Lu Xingxing: If I’m going to make the young master mad, I’ll wait until we’re out of here first… right now? Not a chance.
By the end, the stack of paper tucked in the young master’s arm had grown dozens of centimeters thick.
If his strength hadn’t mysteriously increased, he probably wouldn’t have been able to carry it all.
“So, the reason my strength increased… was for this?”
The young master rolled his eyes at Lu Xingxing. “If Brother Yan were here, I wouldn’t have to suffer like this. I’d just sit back and wait for victory.”
“Yes, yes, alright, it’s all my fault.”
Life was hard. Xingxing sighed.
If anyone else had said that to him, Lu Xingxing would’ve snapped back without hesitation.
But unfortunately, it was the young master who said it. Lu Xingxing knew his place and knew he was in the wrong, so all he could do was coax him.
In Lu Xingxing’s eyes, the current Song Ci was like an invincible compressed file—mountains of corpses and seas of blood had been reduced to a stack of paper just a few dozen centimeters thick, effortlessly carried in one arm, all while wearing a disinterested and languid expression.
Lu Xingxing: Not someone to mess with.
As Song Ci carefully examined each of the hanging scrolls, he too noticed the problems hidden within them.
“Xingxing, do you remember the first room we visited when we entered the museum? It was filled with unfinished shadow puppets.”
Song Ci lifted the paper figure in his hand and hesitated. “If this were made of leather instead of paper… wouldn’t it look almost identical to those shadow puppets?”
Hearing that, the usual laid-back attitude vanished from Lu Xingxing’s face.
He quickly walked over to take a closer look and realized that what Song Ci said was true. The painting style of these paper figures was strikingly similar to the ones on the shadow puppets hanging in the first room.
In the world of painting and calligraphy, an artist’s brushwork was like their fingerprint. Once someone reached a certain level of mastery, they naturally developed a unique style—something that couldn’t be replicated by others.
That style often became the key to authenticating a piece, a fingerprint left behind by the artist in their work.
And now, the brushwork on the paper figures in front of Song Ci was unmistakably similar to that on the wall of shadow puppets in the earlier room.
Though the young master from the Song family had always disdained the so-called art and aesthetics praised by this circle, he had still seen more than his fair share of exhibitions and artworks.
Even though some of those works were merely filler, many were also the concentrated blood and soul of true artists.
After seeing so much, Song Ci had naturally learned how to distinguish brush techniques. He could identify an artist’s authenticity from the subtle linework and the controlled looseness of dry brushstrokes.
And now, it was clear: the stack of paper figures cradled in Song Ci’s arms and the full wall of shadow puppets in that first room had all been created by the same person.
What’s more, what the two of them had found wasn’t just paper figures. There were many objects that Lu Xingxing had initially seen as blood-covered murder weapons, but in Song Ci’s eyes, they were simply paper props.
Whether it was gold and silver jewelry, scholarly tools, chairs or stools… all of it felt like playhouse props, background decorations meant to complement the characters.
Song Ci suddenly recalled someone he had met before in this circle—a third-generation rich kid, a full-blown shut-in who had no interest in sports cars or yachts like the rest of the elite. His only obsession was with virtual characters.
That young man’s room was packed with figurines of 2D characters, as if trying to bring these fake screen images into real life, something he was deeply obsessed with.
He even used to post online, claiming that when he woke up in the morning, he saw his “paper figurine husband” move, that the props around the figure had shifted, and the wrinkles on its clothing were different from how they looked in the photo the night before.
Every time Song Ci saw posts like that, he would roll his eyes and scroll past them as if he hadn’t seen them.
But when he visited that young man’s home, he did see an entire villa filled with figurines and miniature setups.
Inside glass cases, besides the figurines, there were fake flowers and trees, scaled-down tables, chairs, and folding screens—an intricate diorama designed to make the paper figurines look like they lived in a real environment.
Now, that memory resurfaced in Song Ci’s mind, and began to overlap with what was currently in front of him.
Song Ci was silent for a few seconds before hesitantly speaking. “If these paper figures are shadow puppets, then what about all this…”
He looked at Lu Xingxing and asked softly, “Could these be props used in a shadow puppet play?”
Neither of them knew anything about shadow puppetry, but thanks to Song Ci’s association, they had accidentally stumbled upon the truth.
The moment he said that, a chill ran through Lu Xingxing.
“Young Master, don’t you think something’s off?”
Seeing Song Ci about to flare up, Lu Xingxing quickly waved his hands. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. What I mean is—if everything I saw, the corpses and objects, were actually shadow puppets painted on leather, and all the rest were just stage props meant to complement them, then…”
Lu Xingxing asked seriously, “What are we?”
Song Ci froze. “What do you mean?”
Lu Xingxing pointed at the window. As he looked straight at the setting sun, he instinctively squinted. The stinging glare caused dazzling halos to blur his vision, making everything unclear.
“You said it yourself, the props are used to enhance the characters. If we coexist in the same space as the shadow puppets, and what I saw weren’t shadow puppets but actual corpses, then doesn’t that mean we… might also be shadow puppets?”
Lu Xingxing spoke in a low voice, “The sun we see isn’t really the sun—it’s candlelight. The window we see is actually just a curtain.”
“Even the two of us are just shadow puppets, manipulated by someone’s hand behind that curtain…”
Lu Xingxing turned his head back to Song Ci. “We’re like paper figurines in a glass case, meant for the audience to admire. Everything around us exists to complement us. The corpses were just tools to chase us, to panic us, to make us run.”
Song Ci opened his mouth, instinctively wanting to refute this ridiculous idea. But another voice rose in his mind, asking: Is Xingxing really just talking nonsense?
He lowered his head in a daze and looked at the thick stack of paper figures in his arms. In his mind, reality and illusion tangled together, and that voice slowly took over, echoing one belief:
Right now… we’re the shadow puppets being watched.
Maybe, beyond what he could see, the person pulling the strings and the audience watching from the front of the curtain were clapping and laughing at his panic and hesitation—treating him like a comedy show.
When he trembled in fear, the viewers only cheered in excitement.
He and Xingxing—right now they were just clowns on a stage, beasts trapped in an arena.
As Song Ci stood there stunned, Lu Xingxing reached out and clasped his pale, slender hand.
Warmth spread from Lu Xingxing’s palm, steady and reassuring.
Lu Xingxing smiled at Song Ci, his voice calm and comforting. “It’s okay, Young Master. Don’t be scared. I’m right here with you, aren’t I?”
“No matter how dangerous it gets, we’ll find a way out. Don’t be afraid. Trust me.”
He grinned wider and lifted his chin proudly. “I’m Yan Shixun’s junior nephew. I won’t embarrass that man. Besides, I’ve got my master uncle and aunt backing me up. If anything wants to mess with me, it better be ready to deal with them first.”
Song Ci laughed despite himself.
All the tension melted away. He lifted his foot and gently kicked Lu Xingxing, laughing as he scolded, “When it comes to being shameless, you really do take the prize.”
Lu Xingxing didn’t dodge. He grinned and took the kick without complaint.
Giggling, he leaned in closer to Song Ci and whispered his plan into Song Ci’s ear, barely audible.
Song Ci looked at him in surprise, but Lu Xingxing only nodded, encouraging him to move forward.
Holding Song Ci’s hand firmly, Lu Xingxing calmly led him to the window. Song Ci took a deep breath, and just as Lu Xingxing had said, he flung the entire stack of paper figures at the window.
In that instant, Song Ci leapt back while Lu Xingxing stepped forward and pressed his hand against the window.
Their gazes met, and their visions merged.
In Song Ci’s eyes, the paper figures whooshed toward the window, and in Lu Xingxing’s eyes, the candle flame ignited them with a flash.
The fire shot upward like a jet, roaring high and wide. In seconds, it engulfed the entire curtain.
Along with the acrid stench of scorched flesh came shrill, inhuman screams.
Lu Xingxing saw flames devouring the corpses. Their stiff fingers desperately clawed at the cracks between the bricks outside the fire, trying to crawl away and escape.
But in the end, the fire swallowed them whole.
Flesh and blood turned into solid charcoal, leaving only eye sockets glowing with fire from within. In that sea of gold and red, the skeletons stared straight at Lu Xingxing, as if trying to remember his face.
Before Song Ci could react, Lu Xingxing had already yanked him back and hid him behind his own body.
To Song Ci, the paper figures crumbled into ash, leaving only the scorched scent lingering in the air.
Although Lu Xingxing knew he wasn’t strong enough, he had remained on high alert in order to protect Song Ci. But suddenly, he felt something shift beneath his feet.
It was as if something had bumped the sole of his shoe—like a head.
Lu Xingxing looked down and saw the same ferocious ghost face he had seen before reappear beneath him.
It felt as if he were standing on the surface of an endless lake. All around, the walls and the room itself had vanished.
Even the curtain, once scorched black around the edges from candle smoke, had disappeared without a trace.
Thick fog gathered from all directions. A chilling cold pierced through his clothes and crept into his collar, causing goosebumps to rise across his skin and his hairs to stand on end.
Lu Xingxing ignored his body’s instinctive reactions and instead furrowed his brows, gripping Song Ci’s wrist tightly. He asked in a low voice, “Young Master, what do you see right now?”
What Song Ci saw was that the once-white walls and ceiling had fused together, forming a seamless sheet. There were no more paintings hanging on the walls, no windows, and no fake sunset.
Only the white paper beneath their feet, torn apart by their steps, remained scattered across the floor.
Beneath the fragments of that white paper lay the cold surface of a lake, half-covered.
And clinging tightly to the lake’s surface were countless grotesque ghost faces, now distorted and warped.
In Lu Xingxing’s eyes, those torn pieces of paper looked just like funeral money—paper offerings thrown skyward with the cries of grieving families—fluttering down to earth and covering the entire surface of the lake.
…
“Huh?”
Nan Tian suddenly let out a confused exclamation. Squinting, he leaned closer to examine the shadow puppet figure on the wall. He wanted to confirm whether his eyes were playing tricks on him, or if the edge of the puppet figure really was singed.
It looked as if some invisible flame was licking the edges of the puppet, making its originally vibrant colors curl inward and turn black. The scent of scorched animal hide hung faintly in the air.
Startled, Nan Tian quickly turned to Xie Lin on the other side of the room. “Brother Xie, come look! I think I’m going blind!”
How could flames suddenly appear out of nowhere?
He had been watching the shadow puppets on the wall the entire time, even narrating each one to the audience in his split screen. But he hadn’t seen when the fire had started.
A wave of panic surged in Nan Tian’s chest. Acting on instinct honed through countless shows, he quickly raised his hand to cover his split-screen camera, not wanting the audience to witness such a strange scene.
—He wasn’t Yan Shixun, after all. He couldn’t just look at the camera and calmly say “Trust in science” like it was nothing.
And even with such composure!
Nan Tian suspected that if their roles were reversed, and it had been him who confidently told the audience those ghosts were just puppets, he would’ve cracked immediately from the guilt.
Only after doing all that did Nan Tian finally let out a sigh of relief.
Even though the situation was still dangerous, at least he didn’t have to explain “science” to the audience on camera. That, at least, was a small mercy.
But what Nan Tian didn’t know was that even if he hadn’t covered his camera, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
—Because his split-screen feed had already frozen moments ago.
Not just his—Xie Lin’s feed had frozen too.
The two of them had a combined following of over ten million viewers. Now, the audience watching their screens could only see the two sitting back-to-back on the floor, as if taking a break. No one knew what was going on.
[Huh? Wasn’t Nan Tian just introducing each shadow puppet character? I was really into it—why did it suddenly stop?]
[That’s odd. Even if Nan Tian was tired and needed a break, he should’ve said something first. Why did he just sit down in the middle of the room without a word?]
[Probably acting like a diva. You guys don’t know Nan Tian’s a trash-tier celeb? Seriously, what kind of braindead fans does he even have? It’s the 21st century, and people still like him? He should just leave the entertainment industry already. Haven’t you heard how so many of his past collaborators said he threw tantrums and demanded room changes—wouldn’t even accept a dressing room with a broken lock or one facing the street. Pathetic.]
[That was because Nan Tian was afraid of ghosts, okay? And he’s clearly not anymore. You’re totally misrepresenting him—why not look at the facts before running your mouth?]
[You call that diva behavior…? But even the Song God sat down too. Why did they both react the same way all of a sudden?]
[Why are they sitting on the floor? Isn’t it freezing in winter?]
[Poor things. The production team is so careless—can’t they see the guests are exhausted? Can’t someone bring over a chair? What’s the backstage crew even doing? Useless! They should all be fired!]
[Ugh, fans, stop fighting for a second. Don’t you feel like something’s really off? Nan Tian’s not the type to do something like this. He’s been actively promoting cultural heritage lately. He was doing such a passionate job just now—why would he stop so abruptly?]
[Feels like something we can’t see is going on…]
[Hiss… This room feels super creepy when nobody’s talking.]
[Oh god. I think I just developed a fear of portrait art! These life-sized shadow puppets are everywhere. Look at it—it’s like dozens of people standing silently around the two of them, just staring. Creepy as hell.]
[But it’s strange. Even if those two are tired and wanted a break, not everyone should be tired, right? It seems like the rest of the cast is also resting.]
[Now that you mention it… That’s true. I’ve taken breaks while walking through museums, but I’ve never seen a whole museum full of people sit down at the same time in complete silence.]
[Ahhh! I wasn’t scared before, but now that you said that, I imagined it—and now I’m terrified. I don’t wanna go to museums anymore. sobs]
The first thing Nan Tian noticed was wrong… was when Xie Lin didn’t respond.
They were clearly standing in the same room, just a few meters apart. And Xie Lin had always been someone very attentive to people—he would never ignore a direct call.
But Xie Lin just stood there, back turned to Nan Tian, gazing up at one of the shadow puppets. He didn’t move a muscle.
Nan Tian hesitated, a chill creeping down his spine.
But in the end, his concern for Xie Lin outweighed his fear.
In the deathly silent room, Nan Tian cautiously walked toward him.
“Bro—Brother Xie?”
He called out hesitantly, “What are you looking at? Are… are you okay?”
By now, the distance between them was less than a meter, yet Xie Lin remained completely silent.
Nan Tian placed a hand on Xie Lin’s shoulder.
But the instant his palm made contact, a wave of icy cold surged up his arm, making him jump back and look at Xie Lin in shock.
…That wasn’t the temperature or softness of a human body.
After so many episodes of the show, Nan Tian was practically a half-expert. He knew what corpses felt like. He also knew the cold touch of someone extremely weak.
But what he had just touched… didn’t fall into either category.
If anything, it felt like… paper.
Nan Tian thought back to the sensation and realized it felt exactly like the surface of freshly printed paper.
But how could a person be made of paper?
Xie Lin had been right beside him just moments ago. Even before he’d noticed the puppet catching fire, they had still been chatting and laughing, with Xie Lin reminiscing about his difficult childhood.
How had everything changed in the blink of an eye?
Nan Tian couldn’t just leave Xie Lin like that. Even if what stood before him really was a paper version of Xie Lin, that only meant Xie Lin was in trouble and needed help. He needed Nan Tian to notice.
Thinking this, Nan Tian braced himself and inched forward, heart pounding, and leaned in to see Xie Lin’s face.
When he finally got a clear look, his eyes widened in horror.
Xie Lin’s formerly handsome, elegant face now lacked any proper features.
Instead, it had crude lines, like a child’s crayon drawing.
His eyebrows and eyes looked like badly drawn sketches. Two vivid red circles were drawn on his cheeks, and his lips were blood red—but his face was deathly pale, devoid of all color, like joss paper—giving off an eerie, terrifying vibe.
Before Nan Tian could react, Xie Lin suddenly crumpled and fell to the ground like a piece of paper.
Nan Tian instinctively reached out to catch him—but grasped nothing.
The paper figure that landed on the floor stared blankly up at him, its black-and-white eyes completely devoid of life.
But behind Nan Tian, unseen by him, the shadow puppet hanging on the wall began to roll its eyes and slowly twisted its gaping mouth into a malicious smile. Its limbs, nailed to the wall, began to twitch slightly.
Nan Tian stumbled backward in fright from the paper figure’s gaze. When he looked around in a panic, he realized—he was completely alone in the room.
No one else he could call for help. No visible way out.
The door, once clearly there, had vanished like ink washed away with clean water. All that remained was a blank, empty wall.
And on that wall, a new shadow puppet slowly took form.
But unlike the others, this one was entirely blank—no colors, no facial features.
Yet, upon closer inspection, one would notice… its silhouette bore a striking resemblance to Nan Tian.
In a panic and overwhelmed by fear, Nan Tian didn’t take a closer look. His gaze merely swept across the shadow puppets on the surrounding walls. It was as if all the puppets that had once hung lifelessly there suddenly came to life. The vivid features and expressions he had once praised for their liveliness now seemed to possess real vitality, filled with flesh and blood.
The leather, once carefully tanned and painted by artisans, now seemed to have skin and bone structures. All that was missing was flesh and blood to fill them, and they would be able to step down from the walls and become living beings.
But where would that flesh and blood come from?
The shadow puppets, hanging high on all sides, seemed to have their eyes fixed on Nan Tian at the center of the room. From every direction, they trapped him in place, leaving no way to escape.
Nan Tian felt like he was hallucinating.
Everything in his vision spun without a fixed point. Through the blur, the puppets seemed to twist and ripple, as if they were laughing and frolicking.
And the soft, scattered giggles—“hee hee, hee hee”—rang in his ears, one after another.
He couldn’t tell whether it was an illusion or something real.
…
Taoist Ma rushed toward the southwestern region at full speed. He hadn’t even caught his breath before hurrying toward the Baizhi Lake area.
But when he got out of the car, all he saw was an empty mountain road and an old, crumbling archway.
And a shadow puppet museum with peeling walls and a half-collapsed roof.
The cold winter wind blew through beneath the setting sun, kicking up a swirl of dust that swept past in front of Taoist Ma. The withered grass swayed slightly in its wake.
But there was no sign of the production crew or their convoy anywhere.
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