doll city

"Scare me, do you know who I am? Just give me a call, and your family won't be safe—well."

The man had a bad mouth and kept yelling. The M82 people couldn't bear it anymore. After being knocked out by two slaps, they found a wallet from him that read "Shi Yuansong, male, born on February 2rd." , 3 years old" and other information, several usury IOUs, and several business cards with sexy women printed on them.

The clothes and shoes he was wearing were all famous brands. When he turned on the phone, there were still 6 missed calls and text messages hanging on the lock screen.

【A Song, stop hitting me, I know I was wrong, I dare not divorce—】

Alcoholism, gambling, and whoring, you don't need to know deeply to know that you are a bad person.

"Scumbag, just looking at it makes me angry."

He Ming yelled, and threw the phone aside. Like everyone else, he thought viciously in his heart, being dragged into this hellish place today and being watched by living dolls is true, and the retribution is not good.

"I remember that only seven people were invited on the invitation, and our number is just enough. Why is there one more person now?" Based on his experience in the Lion Dance Hall last time, Yan Ge guarded that this newcomer was also a hunting ground. part, asked cautiously. "Has he got an invitation?"

The person in charge of the body search checked Shi Yuansong's belongings again, and shook his head: "No, maybe it was by accident."

"There are still four hours, we can't guarantee that he will be asleep all the time, if it will implicate us, I will do it." He Ming rolled up his sleeves and said.

There are many uncertain factors in the hunting ground. Sometimes one impulsive person can bring down the whole team. Some teams that are ruthless will choose to deal with the troubles at the beginning.

Xiao Yi's eyes widened: "But wouldn't it be bad for me to kill someone?"

The man from M82 froze for a moment, smiled and took out a large box of white pills from his bag, and poured out three: "Don't worry, it's Valium, enough for him to sleep until tomorrow."

"Wait a minute." Seeing that they were about to stuff sleeping pills into the mouth of this man named Shi Yuansong, Li Ya, who had been silent since just now, said, "I remembered that I should have met this man last time. In the paper man alley hunting ground, he has already died."

"what?"

Everyone was stunned for a moment, and then Li Ya took out an old account and whispered to a blank page. After a while, a square outline appeared on the page, and gradually, the same person appeared. An image of the front and back of the ID card.

This ID card is a bit older, and all the addresses and issuing agencies are the same, only the validity period is different, which was obviously changed in February.

"Let me explain it this way. A month ago—that is, in February of the Living Doll City, 2-year-old Shi Yuansong was arrested and died once. In the real world, the 40-year-old has disappeared, but at the same time, Our timeline in Puppet City is backwards, so at 40 he's still alive—that's right now."

Yan Ge sorted out his thoughts and said, "Can the same person be pulled in twice?"

"Rarely, but it still exists. Even if I die now, there will be a certain probability to return here in the form of a stranger—but I will not have the memory of knowing you, which is equivalent to subjectively erasing my existence Went out."

He spoke of death in an understatement, as if it were a trivial matter.

Everyone didn't think so deeply, and the people from M82 only said that they had heard of it, but they hadn't seen it before thinking about the relationship between Shi Yuansong and this hunting ground.

"Then did you gain anything from him last time?"

Li Ya said: "Last time he was directly beaten to death by the B-level team that was completely wiped out, and I couldn't find out any details. The first time can be said to be an accident, but the second time, he was still pulled into the hunting ground ...I think he should be the clue given by this hunting ground."

"Then what? Shake him awake?"

It's easy to stun and hard to wake up, just when they took out mineral water to wake him up for questioning, there was a whimpering cry not far from them in the "ancestral hall" made of bricks Voice.

Hearing the sound, it was the cry of a young woman, weak and hoarse, intermittent, and the sound was constantly amplifying.

Li Ya listened carefully for a while, raised his hand and snapped his fingers again, and said softly, "Do it again."

This time everyone understood, and it was still the same as before, one person lined up next to the other, and the last person temporarily sealed Shi Yuansong's eyes and mouth with tape and carried it on his back.

Everyone stood against the edge of the wall. After a while, in the line of paper figurines welcoming the bride, a faceless golden boy and jade girl slowly floated to the adobe wall in front of the ancestral hall, and raised their pointed paper fingers.

Although the finger is fragile, when it is inserted into the crack of the brick, it is like a knife. With a light pull, a brick is pulled out. Soon, the crunchy clay bricks are piled up next to a small pile of bricks. The front door of the house is also exposed.

Afterwards, the golden boy and jade girl floated in, opened the rotten door of the ancestral hall, and got in.

The woman's crying stopped.

The moment her crying stopped, Yan Ge suddenly felt a sharp heartache, mixed with extreme fear, pain and other emotions, which unexpectedly attacked his spirit.

When he reacted, his eye sockets turned red.

--What's wrong with me?

Li Ya in front of him turned his head slightly, and whispered in the voice of only the two of them: "Don't 'empathize' with the doll so easily."

After confronting Luka, Yan Ge found that he seemed to "empathize" with other people from time to time. For example, Xiao Yi had a nightmare two days ago and scolded her fiancé who abandoned her, and he suddenly felt annoyed for no reason in the middle of the night. When making materials, he looked at the photos on his mobile phone and thought of his wife, and he also felt a feeling of nostalgia.

Then when he was sleeping, he dreamed of a figure playing the piano from behind, which woke him up again.

Now this situation has spread to the living doll, just like now, for no reason, he feels that a living doll in the ancestral hall not far away is in despair.

Yan Ge couldn't help but glanced to one side, and about 5 minutes later, the golden boy and jade girl appeared again at the hole in the brick wall of the ancestral hall. This time their hands were raised high, carrying a woman in a red wedding dress. bride.

Amidst the rustling sound of paper rubbing against each other, Yan Ge heard the thin breeze blowing past the body of the "bride".

It was a paper bride.

The golden boy and jade girl carried the paper bride and floated all the way into the red soft sedan chair with a pointed roof. After a while, the paper figurines started to move again, revealing a little joy as they swayed, and slowly left with the bride.

But at this time, the last paper man in the team with Shi Yuansong's face stayed behind and turned his head to stare at the unconscious Shi Yuansong. When Li Haobai and the others left with the team, the paper man followed behind Shi Yuansong, almost It was the face stuck near the back of his head.

"..." The M82 teammate who was carrying Shi Yuansong on his back was pale and under tremendous psychological pressure.

"Don't make a sound, don't look up, just pretend you didn't see it."

They followed the team, stopped and stopped along the way, and walked around the back-shaped alley for more than 20 minutes. When they returned to the entrance of the ancestral hall for the third time, the paper figurine stopped, and Li Ya also stopped, signaling to everyone I can move now.

"Fuck, this thing is too hell..." The team member carrying Shi Yuansong immediately threw him off, away from the paper figurine behind him.

The paper figurine stood next to Shi Yuansong motionless, with that realistic face just quietly looking down at Shi Yuansong, without doing anything.

"What exactly is it trying to do?"

"Leave him alone, even if something happens, it will happen to this person surnamed Shi."

Yan Ge grabbed the clothes near his heart and looked at the dark ancestral hall frequently. After a while, he said: "The invitation card didn't indicate what specific tasks we need to do, and there is a high probability that we can only find clues by ourselves. Why don't you find them outside?" Wake up this person, I will go into the ancestral hall to see if there are any other clues."

He Ming and the others had no objections, they lent Yan Ge two light sticks, and they split up to act.

The taboo of the entire Paper Man Alley is "avoiding fire". Yan Ge and the others didn't dare to turn on the flashlights. Relying on the faint light of the fluorescent sticks, they bent down and got into the dark ancestral hall.

"What did you empathize with just now?"

When Yan Ge turned his head, in the shimmering green light, he saw Li Ya following behind him step by step, as if he was very curious.

"Didn't you feel it?" Yan Ge asked suspiciously, "I thought it was the spiritual radiation of the paper man."

"Not everyone has such a strong empathy ability. This has something to do with the choice of a person's own skills. If I choose a profession that relies purely on logical thinking like 'mathematician' when I advance, I may I can't even sense your reaction."

Yan Ge groaned, recalled for a while, and said, "Just now, I felt for a moment that the paper figurine in the bridal gown was very desperate and painful."

This reminded him of a very beautiful female classmate in their film school. When she was threatened with death by her ex-boyfriend for half a year, she suddenly collapsed when she played a kidnapped woman in an acting class.

It must be a kind of mental pain that only women experience.

Thinking firmly, Yan Ge crossed the high threshold, and the fluorescent sticks illuminated the ancestral hall full of cobwebs and wood chips. After entering, a rotten smell of living things hit his nose, and Yan Ge covered it. Mouth and nose, frowning and looking at the surrounding environment.

The facilities here are simple, with crooked tables, tattered futons, bamboo strips, torn paper, dried paste jars and other things.

"What are these chips?"

"...these are not pieces of wood, they are 'tablets'."

Relying on the faint green light, they pieced together the nearby pieces of wood and found that most of the names on these tablets were surnamed "Wu".

"This also makes sense. According to the information provided by Mr. Dai, the paper making crafts in Paper Man Lane are all inherited from Wu's shop. They are also experienced craftsmen. Later, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, other shops learned from From the Wu family."

It’s just different from lion dance skills to win prizes. Paper sacrifices involve some traditional funeral culture. In this era, especially after the Ciling post-war economy has recovered very well, the people’s awareness has been renewed, and they are no longer like In the past, the funerals were organized as much as before, and the Wu family, a small clan formed by the paper business, disintegrated early in the tide of the times.

They searched for about 5 minutes, and suddenly picked up a fairly new medical record under a corner of a table.

This medical record is not very formal. It seems to be opened by a small unknown clinic. It says that there is a girl named Wu Yun who suffers from serious mental illness. She hurt others at home and caused her brother to be blinded. They were all rejected, and they were imprisoned in the ancestral hall by their family members.

Although he didn't understand what this had to do with living puppets, Yan Ge carefully flipped through the medical records at the back. There were not many contents in them, and the handwriting was illegible. It probably said that the girl named Wu Yun was dumb because of emotional reasons. Had a miscarriage and went crazy a few years later.

Yan Ge looked at it and frowned.

"Even if the local psychiatric hospital refuses to accept them, they can still be sent to other places. The date and time were about 14 years ago. At that time, the medical conditions were not so bad that people had to be locked up in the ancestral hall, unless the family was financially ill. Conditions are not good."

But after thinking about it, Wu's shop has been open for more than 100 years, and it will never be so tight that people are locked up... Or is it because of other reasons?

"Yan Ge." Li Ya called him suddenly, "Look here."

As he spoke, he half closed the door of the ancestral hall.

Yan Ge turned his head, and with the light of the fluorescent stick, what he saw made his pupils shrink.

On that wooden door, there were traces of fingernail scratches everywhere, and those traces went all the way down, some blood seeped into the scratches, and one sentence could barely be recognized in the irrefutable handwriting.

"Dad, I'm hungry..."

Li Ya's voice cooled down.

"This girl named Wu Yun was probably imprisoned here and starved to death."

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