The sky is getting brighter and the mist is like steam. The morning sun, as thin as a silk ribbon, shines through the window lattice into the room on the second floor of the mansion.
Tang Yu and Lin Chen woke up in bed at the same time.
Last night they entered the same room as the little old lady asked, and not long after, the door was locked from the outside.
With the experience of the first night, they quickly completed the division of beds and division of labor.
Lin Chen slept on the bed next to the door, guarding the two lanterns to prevent them from falling over.
Tang Yu was sitting on the bed by the window, holding various weapons and props, guarding the window to prevent the ghosts outside from breaking in.
Towards midnight, screams erupted from the pile of corpses outside the window, and smoke condensed by ghosts and monsters rushed across.
Fortunately, the players had sufficient reserves of props, and the terrain of the mansion was easy to defend and difficult to attack. The two finally resisted the ghosts outside the mansion, and waited until the "Third Update at midnight" Voice.
The ghosts receded layer by layer like a tide, and the two people in the room also fell asleep under the influence of the copy mechanism. When they opened their eyes again, it was daytime.
Lin Chen immediately contacted Qisi through the soul blade: "Brother Qi, are you okay? Nothing happened last night, right?"
Two seconds later, Qisi's feeble voice sounded faintly: "I am still alive, and I have made quite a discovery. Let's talk about it when we meet. Please wait a moment. If no one opens the door after fifteen minutes, I will open it for you."
Lin Chen breathed a sigh of relief and said, "We are not in a hurry here. We waited for half an hour yesterday before the door opened."
"Well, then you just wait."
......
On the empty and deserted avenue of Yanghua Town, Qisi held the watch gong and walked slowly towards the direction of the residence.
It only takes fifteen minutes at most to get to Dishe from where he is.
Based on the situation yesterday morning, it would take at least half an hour for the old man who manages the mansion to open the door for the locked player.
He didn't have to worry about returning late and Lin Chen and the others would find out that he was not in the house, thus exposing his identity as a rogue.
What Qisi is more concerned about is what he discovered last night.
The moment it was midnight, he entered the Black Soul Scroll as planned, and was carried by the black shadow ghost summoned by the black umbrella, shuttling between wooden buildings, courtyards and alleys.
The specific details were vague. He only remembered that the originally pitch-black night sky faded at a certain moment. The white light rising from the east spread in all directions with the refraction of the fog. The entire Yanghua Town disappeared in just a short time. In a few seconds, it is covered with a layer of milky white glaze that belongs to the morning.
It’s dawn.
At the moment when time passes midnight, the darkness reaches its peak and all creatures fall into deep sleep, the day comes without any warning or transition.
The townspeople lying like dead corpses on beds, stone slabs and other corners turned into white-faced and red-cheeked scarecrows at one moment, and then returned to normal in an instant, stood up unsteadily, and walked out of the room. door, gathering on the street.
Qisi remembered that Qiu Xin had passed out on the street in the middle of the night last night, but woke up the next day unharmed. He expected that these townspeople should not be able to see the player's presence.
He ordered the black shadow ghost to carry the black soul scroll back to the ground and stand in the middle of the crowd. As expected, it did not attract any attention.
All sights passed through him as if they were penetrating nothing. The townspeople coming and going walked past his body, and no touch was produced. It was as if he was completely isolated from the world and belonged to the townspeople forever. Another layer that does not intersect.
He stood for a while and suddenly felt something in his heart. He followed his heart and raised his hand to knock the gong.
"Bang——"
The clear sound of bangs exploded in the crowd, and all the townspeople turned their heads in unison and looked in the direction of the sound.
"Did you hear it? It's a bang!"
"But isn't it daytime? How can there be a bang?"
"I heard it, that's where the bang came from. ! But why is there nothing there?”
“Damn it, I always feel like there’s someone there that we can’t see...”
The crowd was noisy and gradually became indistinct.
The effective time of the Black Soul Scroll ended, and Qiss fell heavily to the ground.
When I woke up again, the time on Destiny's pocket watch showed six o'clock in the morning.
......
At a quarter past six, Qisi arrived at the residence on time and went up to the second floor.
It was exactly as he expected. The person managing the residence had not arrived yet, and the iron lock was still tightly hung on the wooden door of the room where Tang Yu and Lin Chen lived.
He directly pulled out the wire from the bracelet, reached into the keyhole, and pried the lock open.
In the room, Lin Chen and Tang Yu were sitting on the bed, relatively speechless.
Hearing the sound of the door opening, the two stood up almost at the same time and walked to the door.
Tang Yu was the first to ask: "Lin Wen, how are you? Did you find anything?"
Qisi took out a stack of photographic films from his sleeve and handed it to Lin Chen behind him. .
Lin Chen took the photos and followed Qis's instructions, placing them on the wooden bed near the window and arranging them in a row.
Under the misty morning light, the black photo reflects the broken light and slowly develops color in the whirling light and shadow.
The first two photos show the scarecrow sleeping in the house.
These are probably two poor families. Seven or eight scarecrows are squeezed into the cramped little house, covered with quilts like living people, some lying on their sides, and some sleeping on their backs.
Without exception, they don’t look much like humans. They have big heads and wide bodies. Although they are scrawled, the shape can still be seen in full - they are tigers made of straw!
"The scarecrow is really shaped into the shape of a tiger. No wonder the shadows of the townspeople are tiger shadows. Is this to ward off evil spirits or to scare people?"
Tang Yu complained, and looked at the photo again, He was amazed: "What kind of prop is this? If we had taken it out earlier and clicked it in all directions, we might not have to go to the east of the town to know the true identities of the townspeople."
" These are the negatives of Teacher Luo and the others. I asked them to send them over last night." Qisi chuckled, "No one would have thought of wasting props on taking landscape photos in the copy before realizing that the townspeople might be scarecrows. Isn't it?" He lowered his head, reached out and fiddled with the photos, dividing them into several sections in groups of two.
Tang Yu came closer, picked up a photo with two fingers and looked at it: "Teacher Luo and the others can send things over, which means that the props can travel between different spaces?"< br>
"It seems so. Sound, props, text, many things can be the anchor points shared by the two spaces."
Qisi said vaguely, raised his hand and pointed at a group of photos in the middle, signaling to Tang Yukan.
That is a group of terrifying photos, the whole body is dyed gray and black like midnight, but if you look closely, you can find that it is not the original color.
Every corner of the photo is filled with distorted gray faces. It is after this superposition that can inspire people's trypophobia that the color of the picture is visually enhanced. Thick black as ink.
Looking carefully, you can also find that the faces are distorted because they are moving at high speed.
After clarifying this point, we can then glimpse its movement trajectory from the deeper outlines——
In several arcs like dragons and rainbows, they emerge from the scarecrows stacked like corpses on the ground. Out, rushing in the same direction, breaking through the edge of the photo, not knowing where the end point is.
Qisi waited for Tang Yu and Lin Chen to finish reading this set of photos, then silently pushed them aside and pushed a new set of photos in front of them.
This group of photos is also darkened by the crowding of faces. The moving trajectory is similar to the first group of photos, but in the opposite direction.
They come from outside the painting and pour into the tiger-shaped scarecrow on the ground like a rainbow.
In the latest set of photos, the cast scarecrows stand up and bathe in the morning light.
Time turned from night to day in an instant!
“In this way, the mechanism of this copy will be clear.” Lin Chen murmured and concluded, “When the time comes, all the ghosts in the scarecrow’s shell will change at the same time, some will leave and some will enter.
“They may not have that much time to choose a specific scarecrow, or they may not have the memory and consciousness to choose, so they are basically possessed at random.
“The same ghost may change its shell every day, and the identity and memory come with the shell. So from our perspective, the identities of the townspeople change back and forth.”< br>
Qisi nodded, and simply told the half-truth and half-false story of last night's experience, erasing the existence of hatred, and focused on the situation of Yanghua Town ushering in the day after midnight.
He looked around the two of them and said calmly: "I don't know if you still remember that when the night was approaching, the ghosts outside the residence turned into black smoke and wreaked havoc. The next day, we were in the residence in the east of the town again. Later, the same mountain of corpses was discovered.
“I suspect that the ghosts lingering on the corpses are the source of the ghosts possessing the scarecrow. The ghosts in the west of the town become townspeople after Zi hour, and the ghosts in the east of the town are active before Zi hour.
"At midnight, the original ghost of the scarecrow flew to the east of the town and took up residence in the mountain of corpses in the east of the town; the ghosts in the west of the town ran out from the mountain of corpses, possessed the scarecrow, and lived like a living person , enjoying their day.
He lowered his eyes and stroked his fingers: "From this point of view, all the townspeople are ghosts, and they need to use scarecrows as their bodies to pretend to be living people. All it takes is a fire and it can be burned clean easily. ”
Tang Yu frowned and asked: "It's understandable that those ghosts want to live like living people, so they possess the scarecrows. But why are they divided into two groups and take turns to possess them? Can't we make more scarecrows?"
"There is not enough space." Qisi raised his eyelids and looked at the ceiling, "Whether it is before or after Zi Shi, the activity space of the townspeople is in the west of the town, and the east of the town is the mirror space belonging to Xiyi.
"And the number of townspeople is only a lot more, and it is almost enough to occupy the entire Yanghua Town. Since half of the town was given to others, they could only feel aggrieved and live in batches. "
Tang Yu: "The urban planning of this town is really thoughtful. "
Lin Chen thought for a moment and asked: "Xiyi is silent and colorless and generally does not interfere with other existences. Why should they be placed alone in Zhendong? ”
"Who knows? Maybe some people are afraid of Xiyi..."
Qisi said casually and changed the subject: "There is one more thing that can be made clear: this copy is shrouded in a huge illusion, not only us Unable to see the real world, the ruins are used as bustling towns; those townspeople are also confused by illusions and cannot see something that a certain being does not want them to see.
"They can't see. After arriving at the mansion, the corpse could not see the scene for the other half of the day; after midnight last night, the townspeople who had newly possessed the scarecrow could not see my presence.
“Why do you think this is?”
“For stability.” Lin Chen blurted out.
He pondered for a moment and read in a low voice: "I remember it was written in the Tao Te Ching: 'The good people in ancient times did not make the people enlightened, but they would make them stupid. The people are difficult to govern because they are wise.' The less the people know about the truth, the easier it will be to manage and prevent unrest."
He paused and looked at Qisi: "By the way, Brother Lin, 'turning a blind eye is called Yi, listening. This sentence also comes from the Tao Te Ching. I don’t know if there is a connection between the two.
“But now I have a strong feeling that this copy seems to be. It is to build a peach blossom garden hidden outside the world in accordance with the ideas of Taoism's "Tao Te Ching".
“Ghosts, monsters, and foreigners can all exist, and they do not interfere with each other and enjoy themselves; the highly respected Master Meng has not appeared for a long time, living a simple life, governed by inaction; the identities of ghosts and monsters are randomly swapped every day, and let nature take its course. .
“But many clues are contradictory. In the letters we found on the first day, whether it was the belief in resisting foreigners or the subsequent decision-making to strengthen the walls and clear the country, they were all Confucian ideas. In order to avoid the war and join the tiger's danger, it is in line with the purpose of "tyranny is fiercer than the tiger"..."
Lin Chen said everything that came to his mind like a bamboo tube pouring beans, which earned him a look of awe from Tang Yu next to him.
"You know a lot, how did you do it? Even if you prepare outside the dungeon and specify the dungeon for immersion, it's not so exaggerated, right?"
Lin Chen smiled sheepishly : "Maybe it's because I'm still a college student, and the school library has relatively complete information, so I just memorize it when I have nothing to do. In fact, I don't know much, and I haven't memorized many things yet..."
"...you Are you sure you are a college student and not a high school student? I remember when I was in college, I even gave back my high school knowledge to the teacher."
"Haha, isn't this just for a weird game..."
While the two were arguing, Qisi put away the photos scattered on the wooden bed, turned around and walked out of the room.
He went downstairs unhurriedly and walked towards the main door of the residence. He saw an old man in black raincoat and a scholar in green walking in one after the other.
The old man was carrying a bunch of keys. It seemed that he came to manage the mansion after the little old lady who died, and there was a high probability that he would not survive tonight.
The scholar has an unfamiliar face, but he looks familiar to the players.
He carried a jar of wine, put it on the table in his residence, and smiled at Qisi: "My lord, Li Yi, Master Meng asked me to deliver good wine to a few martyrs. I'll give it to you later. I also need to lead a few people to find the tiger demon’s lair.”
He undoubtedly has the memories of the first two scholars, but his personality is different.
Chisi gave him a friendly smile, walked past him and walked out of the mansion gate, looking towards the east.
Not long after, a figure wearing a purple skirt appeared at the intersection, holding a lantern and walking towards the residence.
Qiu Xin, who had been away from the team for nearly two days, arrived on time as agreed with Qis last night. (End of this chapter)