doll city

"The wooden pagoda in the middle of Zhiren Lane used to be the Yizhuang of Ciling Tingdong."

"At that time, the people in the vicinity would come here to hold funeral ceremonies, cremate the corpse after a period of rest, and finally put half of the ashes in the wooden tower, so this wooden tower has another name, called' Tower of Bone'."

Carefully recalling the information about the Tower of White Bone provided by Dai Chengze, Yan Ge took Leon's hand and stepped into the threshold.

This is a [-] ping square courtyard, with a small three-story pure wooden tower standing in the center.It seemed to be a Buddhist pagoda at first, but it was burned down once due to the war, and after it was rebuilt, the Buddhist niches inside were occupied by the ashes of the people.

Yan Ge didn't have time to think about it, because he also saw that in front of the White Bone Pagoda, there were all kinds of paper figurines standing on the left and right sides of the bluestone pagoda.

As if they sensed someone coming in, the paper figurines all looked in the direction of the door.

Stared at by hundreds of pairs of red eyes, Yan Ge originally thought that there was a tough battle to be fought, but found that those red eyes were all fixed on Leon.

None of the live puppets dared to take the initiative to attack, they just stayed in place quietly, watching Leon lead Yan Ge slowly towards the wooden tower.

On the way, Yan Ge heard the whispers from the paper crowd again.

They lowered their heads, and the faces on their heads were constantly changing with the whispered words... none of them were kind.

"When something like this happened, there should be no other way but to kill myself..."

"If this matter had happened to me, I would have settled the matter with Bai Ling long ago, so as not to ruin the family style like now!"

"I'm a woman, and I don't think it's right. If you don't go out in the middle of the night, you'll be fine? You deserve it."

Sentences of filthy words were like sulfuric acid, falling drop by drop on the heart, slowly corroding holes one by one.

"Are they waiting for that 'groom'?" Yan Ge asked.

Leon replied calmly: "The dragon is coming."

When stepping on the stone steps in front of the wooden pagoda, Yan Ge heard another burst of crying from inside the pagoda - he was very familiar with this cry, he had just heard it in the ancestral hall, sometimes mixed with Shi Yuansong's hoarse roar.

Yan Ge's eyes sank, but Leon opened the door first.

All the clan members of the Wu family were inside. The paper bride in red was kneeling in the middle of a pile of firewood, sobbing softly. Beside her, there were several paper figurines holding Shi Yuansong paper figurines.

Shi Yuansong, who had heard the whispers of the paper figurines all the way, seemed to believe that all this was caused by Wu Yun's ghosts, and roared under the collapse of his mind——

"Bitch! It's not easy to live after death! Your body is really precious, just because of you, how many fucking years have I been the grandson of Ma Zhaojun?!"

Following his scolding, the paper bride in the middle of the firewood covered her face and trembled. The paper doll faces that had been painted by her became fierce again as her trembling intensified.

Together they stood on the "high ground" of morality and accused her of being careless and frivolous.

"Go to the underworld, cast a good baby in the next life, this is the last favor your family will give you..."

"Burn her, burn her, burn her..."

... It's not right, no, she's not wrong.

Yan Ge's thinking became confused again. He thought that the living puppets were the hunting ground formed to avenge Wu Yun, but now it seems that this is not the case - most of the living puppets themselves do not have the ability to judge good and evil. The basis for action comes from the human beings who made them and gave them existence.

Yan Ge clenched his hands, and was about to break through the encirclement of those paper figurines and take away the paper bride who represented Wu Yun.

But he knew that it was useless. The entire Paper Man Alley was almost centered around Wu Yun's death. It could be said that everything here, whether it was good or bad, was the projection of Wu Yun's spiritual world.

It was she herself who could not get out of this cage that trapped her until she died.

Perhaps, this is the real lesson that the paper dolls left for adventurers like them.

Yan Ge couldn't help asking: "Is this the real hurt she felt?"

Leon pressed the brim of his hat and said:

"Those gossips are just the condiments of the meal for some people, and they are forgotten after they are eaten. But they don't know, and they don't care what the consequences of these vicious words will have on an innocent girl."

"That's why I'm here - the spirit of rebellion is a weapon only the living have, but this lady lost her personality in the final hunger, and her paper doll loved her, but also, trapped in Her self-blame before she died."

Yan Ge was silent for a while, and said, "You...why did you explain so much to me?"

Leon nodded slightly, turned to him and said, "It's not accidental that I'm attracted to you. You have a very charming noble quality, and it's rare to have the determination to punish evil... Among you, your "prototype" is the most gentle. It is also the sharpest. I want to see how, if it were you, you would unravel this desperate girl."

This is it!

The appearance of this gentleman "Lyon" will test each of them in turn who meet the requirements of the second stage of advancement. Unfortunately, he was drawn first after placing the order... No, no.

Yan Ge looked down at the dried fluorescent liquid on his palm, and then looked behind him. The fluorescent liquid seemed to be cut off by a smooth knife at the threshold.

Maybe... In fact, at this moment, they are all accepting Leon's test at the same time.

……

"Who are they?"

After stepping into the courtyard of the Pagoda of White Bone, Xiao Yi turned her head and saw that several people from M82 had disappeared. She was dumbfounded and thought she was alone, but seeing Li Ya was still there, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The courtyard of the Pagoda of White Bone was empty all around, and it was impossible to see the whereabouts of the welcoming team just now, Xiao Yi thought they were lost.

"There is no tracking, they just entered the lost person's own skills."

Li Ya stood at the entrance of the White Bone Tower, leaning slightly, staring at a point in the void, as if there was something there that made him want to kill him on the spot.

"You mean, Di...just the uncle of the chairman of their M82?" Xiao Yi thought of Diana, her face darkened, "Her uncle is lost, why doesn't she deal with it herself?"

"Too many high-level people gather in a hunting ground, which will attract orphan-level existences." Li Ya said, "According to the ones I met when I was shopping at night, there are four sun-swallowing golden toads, velvet flower empresses, and gloomy wooden root carvings nearby." Beasts and other orphans who like to wander at night."

Xiao Yi felt a chill in her heart, remembering the last time the ceramic lions entered the lion hall, she glanced out in horror: "Then they won't come into the hunting ground, right?"

"Normally not, the living puppets will instinctively keep a little distance, unless—" Li Haobai said here, his words froze, and his pupils widened slightly.

He stretched out his hand and pressed it against the void in front of him, his knuckles bent slightly, as if scratching a blackboard, he suddenly scratched down.

An ear-piercing hum suddenly exploded, and the air in front of him seemed to have an invisible plastic film, and when he grabbed it like this, five long gaps were pulled out at once.

Xiao Yi suddenly felt a numbness in the back of her head, and then, she heard an intermittent sound inexplicably.

"...they are all shy, only you are bold."

"The appearance of eradicating evil is really very...beautiful."

"You are truly special and I can't wait for you to accept my heart."

Who is speaking?

Why so ashamed?

The overly blunt words made Xiao Yi stunned for a while, and then she heard Yan Ge's voice.

"I am very honored to be recognized by you."

"Ha~ wait a minute, it seems that someone wants to disturb us, I need to 'fix'."

Immediately afterwards, those weird conversations disappeared with this sentence.

Xiao Yi had noticed the weird atmosphere between Li Ya and Yan Ge before, and Xiao Yi was not surprised, she looked at each other with some pity.

"If you want to live well, you have to have a little green on your head. Who would have thought that a lost person could be so flirtatious?"

Li Ya pushed his glasses with a slightly stretched hand: "You think too much, jealousy is the most time-wasting thing, and I have always been a pragmatic person."

Xiao Yi: "I never said it, you said it yourself."

Li Ya asked again: "As a digression, when it comes to 'heroes', what is the corresponding character that you ordinary humans can think of?"

Xiao Yi was puzzled and said: "Beauty...a hero deserves a beauty since ancient times."

Li Ya: "Shouldn't they be teammates? Just like the pure relationship between Holmes and Watson..."

Xiao Yi became serious: "They are true love."

Miscalculation.

I thought that Yan Ge's cleverness and vigilance would easily win Leon's approval, but... the situation seems a little different now.

Li Ya took out the journal from his pocket, and handed it to Xiao Yi together with the matching pen.

"I have something to do. Please take this diary into the White Bone Tower. It's probably on the third floor. There's an urn—that's my brother."

Xiao Yi lowered her head and saw several trembling blood characters appearing on the notebook.

【Don't throw me... I can still save you...】

"What do you mean? Leave it to me?" Xiao Yi said in a daze, "Then why are you going?"

"Go and meet the 'lost' just now, he has a unique skill, he can use his avatar as a unit, split different spaces in the same area within the same period of time, and then choose one of them to access Reality."

Li Yaxu pointed around: "Originally, the courtyard here was not empty. Those paper figurines were enclosed in other spaces. After Leon decides who will inherit the mantle, they will annex this place."

Xiao Yi recalled it for a while, and said: "But... I just heard that he should be quite friendly, just like a human being."

"Humans? They were originally human, but they failed when they advanced to the next level. The second-level ones are fine. Once the third-level ones get lost, they will be very, very difficult."

He used two "very" in a row, and Xiao Yi couldn't help becoming cautious, "How did the lost ones come into being? Is it just a third-order powerhouse going crazy?"

Li Ya moved his fingers, and said very coldly:

"All the lost are tools of martyrdom."

"Wherever they go, they will spread the spirit of the path they have chosen, and those who are bewitched by them will become their fellow travelers like they have been infected by a zombie virus."

"But not everyone is as powerful as them, without exception, they will die soon on the way to seek the way."

Xiao Yi's scalp tingled when she heard it: "Why is this happening?"

"The topic they chose is too broad, such as 'hero', which is essentially a concept given by the public. No one has ever become a hero by calling himself a hero, and this road is often linked to sacrifice."

"People who become heroes have lost the fear of death. For them, dying well is the highest value."

Speaking of this, Li Ya let out a long breath, as if remembering something bad.

"To give another example, about a few months before you came here, there was a criminal who saw through the red dust and wanted to become a 'saint' at the third level. After he lost his mind and body, he became extremely holy. In order to absorb Sin, on the contrary, became the object of everyone's lust, torture, and release of darkness, and finally the people who devoured him became his believers, and because they could not face the crimes they committed, they committed suicide collectively."

Xiao Yi gasped: "Then they..."

"They are all ready, but I'm sure that among them, Lyon will definitely favor Yange the most."

"why?"

"——Choosing one's own skills is a road full of dangers. Only the life experiences that one has walked through, enjoyed, and suffered with one's heart and soul are the most practical. And the lost are rootless duckweeds. This grounded feeling is obsessed.”

……

Tower of bones.

The Octagonal Beast squatted on the beam, its small eyes reflected the figure of Leon, and Yan Ge who finally pushed aside the crowd of paper and stretched out his hand to the paper bride.

He explained it in an elegant, line-like tone——

"You should smile."

"From the beginning to the end, you have never hurt anyone because of the unfairness of fate, even if your ignorant relatives insult you with those old dogmas that have already been buried in the ground."

"Even if you are walking in the mud now, you can still proudly represent the brightest humanity in this world. You don't need to feel the slightest bit of shame, and my bullets are willing to kill those despicable people for such you, Do not hesitate to die."