The hostess came home early the next morning.
Gu Meng heard the sound of a car outside while she was about to wake up. At first, she didn't realize what was going on, until there was a faint sound of opening the door downstairs. Gradually, the woman's shouts from far and near floated up through the floor : "Is anyone there - Lena - are you there?"
At this point, Gu Meng woke up suddenly from her sleep, staring at the ceiling, her brain couldn't keep up with her body's reaction speed.
After a long time, two women's conversations sounded downstairs again, which was indistinct.
Gu Meng immediately lifted the quilt, got up and got out of bed with a grunt, stepped on the slippers, and jumped to the door of the room with one foot.
Peter Pan was woken up by his movement, closed his eyes and complained: "Brother, you don't sleep so early in the morning, why are you making so much noise?"
"The seventh day is here." Gu Meng took a coat from the hook behind the door and put it on, and opened the door while saying, "The mistress is back."
"That's not enough to be so excited..." Pan Peter didn't care, smacked his mouth twice, turned over and continued to sleep.
After holding the quilt in silence for two seconds, Peter Pan suddenly opened his eyes wide, and yelled "Damn it" in a low voice.
Rolled off the sofa directly, then crawled towards the door with all hands and feet, and followed Gu Meng out.
On the stairs, more than a dozen people all wore pajamas and sat along the steps from top to bottom.
They leaned against the wall quietly, their expressions were still dazed when they first woke up, and they listened to the conversation in the kitchen next to them through a wall.
"Is the master coming back in the afternoon?"
It was Reina's slightly coquettish voice.
"He played cards with those people all night last night, and missed the plane this morning." Lily exhaled angrily, and said, "It's only in the afternoon, so there's no need to prepare lunch for him."
Reina asked: "Do you want to hold Xiuyi and Xiaozhi down?"
"Are you crazy?" The hostess' voice suddenly turned cold, and she seemed to be smiling.
The high-heeled shoes slammed on the floor a few times and stopped.
The hostess said displeased: "Or, are you deliberately mocking me?"
"Sorry, absolutely no offense intended." Reina reassured in time.
"Boom!"
A group of people sitting on the stairs were shocked by the sudden movement, and at the same time, they became more awake.
After the hostess slapped the table hard, she said to Reina angrily: "Then be smart, don't let those two stupid dolls appear in front of me!"
Gu Meng turned her head and stroked her forehead, thinking: Sure enough, the hostess' attitude towards the twins can be called disgusting.
At this moment, he felt a pat on the shoulder, and when he turned around, he saw Peter Pan rubbing his eyes sleepily.
The little boy said: "Brother, Lily is back, can we still use the refrigerator openly? I'm so hungry..."
Gu Meng pushed his hand towards him, indicating that now is not the time to discuss these matters.
Afterwards, everyone heard the tone of the hostess change, and she said: "I've been busy with entertainment outside these days, I'm exhausted, it's better to go home, I'll take a shower and sleep, and make lunch later, when the time comes calls me."
Hearing the sound of high heels walking towards the stairs, most of the players were unavoidably nervous, they couldn't help but put their legs away and curled up, their backs straightened.
"It's okay." Bo Ye reminded casually, "I can't see it anyway."
Just at this moment, the hostess came out of the kitchen, and was about to go upstairs while holding on to the railing, but stopped inexplicably.
The hostess looked up and down the more than ten steps, her gaze precisely scanned the faces of each player, and then she frowned displeased.
Everyone who suddenly had a sense of presence: "..."
Even Tang Zhi became nervous.
He sat on the next step of Bo Ye, leaning against the man's arms, grabbed Bo Ye's hand uneasily, and said, "She... really can't see?"
"... It should be." Bo Ye sat upright.
"Lena—"
The hostess grabbed the railing, leaned back towards the direction of the kitchen, and shouted, "Why is there so much dust on the stairs? Did you clean it every day during your holiday?"
Reina responded in the kitchen.
Only then did the hostess step up the stairs "thump-thump-thump" while taking off the earrings on her left and right ears.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Sitting on the top step, Zhou Chengshuo finally felt a sense of urgency, and asked downwards, "Is today the last day? The twins are all safe and sound. They have been taken care of according to the requirements of the game. We can leave now." ?”
Bo Ye didn't turn his head, and said flatly, "Go and try."
"Then... this..." Zhou Chengshuo also knew it wasn't that simple, so he had to brazenly ask Bo Ye for a solution, "How do we get out of here?"
"First step..."
Saying that, Bo Ye stood up from the steps.
All eyes turned to him.
Until now, some players are still at a loss about the game, so there is inevitably hope in the eyes looking at Bo Ye.
Bo Ye walked downstairs leisurely step by step, and said, "Let's have breakfast first."
"..."
There is definitely more than one person who wants to kill him.
Because the hostess came back, it was a surprise, so everyone kept a low profile.
After scavenging some food from the fridge, they settled straight over the kitchen island.
Gu Meng said: "You have also seen the attitude of the hostess towards the twins."
Tang Zhi wiped the biscuit crumbs from the corner of his mouth, took a sip of milk, puffed up one cheek, and said, "Even though they are just two dolls, they have to be treated like real children, and they have to be treated by my husband for many years. It must be very disgusting to cooperate with acting in front of you."
"Excuse me..." Zhou Chengshuo had been paying attention to their conversation, and the more he listened, the more confused he became, and he couldn't help asking, "What dolls are you talking about?"
Gu Meng didn't bother to explain, she just said to him: "Listen first, if you really don't understand, ask last."
Enjin took out a piece of paper from under a certain dinner plate on the island, pushed it to the center of the island, and said, "I found this from the female corpse in the basement yesterday, and it's in her hand."
"What?!" Zhou Chengshuo was taken aback, "There is a female corpse in the basement?!"
The guy who killed Matt couldn't see it, and said to Zhou Chengshuo impatiently: "Hey, I'll go, so don't interrupt, just listen to what they have to say, keep interrupting, keep interrupting, is it interesting?"
Being pointed at by a non-mainstream, Zhou Chengshuo felt uncomfortable, and was about to argue with him, but Gu Meng and the others on the other side had already continued the discussion, and did not pay attention to their situation at all.
Zhou Chengshuo shut up embarrassingly, and quickly listened attentively.
Gu Meng said: "I went to the basement to look at it yesterday. The corpse was sealed in cement and fused with the concrete floor. It couldn't be separated, but from the exposed part of the ground, it can be seen that the corpse belonged to that female ghost, or It's Xiuyi and Xiaozhi's mother, the original real mistress of the family."
"As for the pattern on this paper..."
Gu Meng brought over the torn paper, on which some kind of symbol could be vaguely drawn—
Like a snake swallowing its tail.
He continued to explain: "Enjin guesses that it may be some kind of cult."
"A cult?" Bo Ye lowered his eyes to look at him, and then looked at the black sign.
Gu Meng said: "An organization that promotes psychics, soul transformation, and resurrection from the dead."
Tang Zhi pondered for a while, guessing the whole story, and said: "After the male owner's original wife had a miscarriage, because it was difficult to accept the reality, he found another way and made two dolls, trying to seal the soul of the dead fetus inside. Raise them as your own children."
Peter Pan grabbed a biscuit and stuffed it into his mouth, he couldn't understand: "Could it be that the original partner was stimulated and went crazy? Dolls are dolls after all, how can they believe in the words of a cult and raise them as children?"
"The pain of bereavement is not something you and I can understand." Gu Meng said, without further comment on the matter.
Peter Pan understood Gu Meng's meaning, quickly shut up, and said, "Then what happened to Lily and the original partner?"
Gu Meng thought for a while and asked him, "Want to hear a story?"
Peter Pan nodded.
A woman used to have a happy family, her husband doted on her and loved her, and her life has always been smooth. Coupled with her pregnancy, everyone was immersed in the joy of welcoming a new life.
If it weren't for the intrusion of outsiders, happiness might have continued like this.
Outsiders are a woman's best friend.
In the beginning, the girlfriends only visited occasionally, but later they used the reason of accompanying the pregnant woman to go in and out almost every day, and soon formed a strong friendship with the husband and wife.
Most of the rich are kind, and women are so kind that they are almost naive. They never doubted the true purpose of their best friend, and never thought that the world would harbor ill will towards her. Until a week before she was due to give birth, she went to the hospital with her best friend, accidentally fell and died. He fell down more than 20 steps and fell unconscious on the spot.
Waking up again, the words "miscarriage" and "paralysis" made her almost breathless.
After being discharged from the hospital, the woman suffered from depression, but her husband still loved her, and besides that, she was more distressed.
In order to comfort the injured woman, the husband learned about a special organization through a friend's recommendation, and ordered two dolls the size of a child, and sent them to the woman.
He said that the child's soul has been parasitized in the doll, and this is our child.
That day, the woman showed her first smile in a long time.
The best friend still came every day, always looking guilty to death, crying pear blossoms with tears, apologizing over and over again, saying that she couldn't forgive herself for not protecting the woman well.
The woman had doubts at the time, and felt that someone pushed her from behind on the day of the accident in the hospital, but she would never suspect her best friend. She was even deeply moved because her best friend was willing to take care of her paralyzed self.
What makes the woman feel relieved is that her best friend did not look at her and her husband with strange eyes, but treated the two dolls as living children just like them.
A year flies by.
Only then things got out of hand.
A woman finds that there are many small interactions and details between her best friend and her husband, which makes her feel very uncomfortable.
Until that day, when she dragged her paralyzed body by the window and took pictures of her best friend and her husband coming back from get off work together, she felt that she could no longer deceive herself.
She confronted her husband with the photo, who thought she was unreasonable, and the two had their most violent argument ever.
After calming down, the woman recalled the past, her best friend's every move had a different interpretation in her eyes, and she began to feel hatred.
The day when her husband left on a business trip, her best friend locked her in the basement when the disguise was torn apart.
Ironically, if it weren't for the actions of her best friend, the woman would not even know that this house has a basement for asylum.
I don't know when it started, my best friend knew this house better than her, knew her man better, and was more like the hostess of this house.
Three weeks later, the woman died in the basement.
Before she died, she tightly held the symbol of the mysterious organization, and her strong resentment made her curse that she would stay in this house forever and let the person who ruined her life pay for it with blood.
At the same time, motherly love made her pray that the two children would still be cared for after death.
The moment the woman died, the puppet came back to life, but the stillborn soul lived inside.
Stillborns have memories of when they died, and feel pain and blood every night.
Every night, Xiaozhi would complain in confusion: "It hurts...it hurts, why did the big house collapse...why can't I get out, why don't you let me out..."
"Obviously, the 'person standing behind you' is Lily." Gu Meng concluded, "If you want to completely get rid of the caged bird game, you have to let Lily be a ghost forever."
This is the method Xiuyi told him yesterday.
It took some time for Peter Pan to recover from the story just now. He shook his head and said, "Then we need to pull Lili into the game?"
Gu Meng was tired from standing, half sat on the high chair, and said, "It should be like this."
"This can't be done!" Zhou Chengshuo caught up with the train of thought and was the first to shout, "First of all, we are ghosts, and Lily can't see us. Even if we take a step back, we have a way to contact Lily and see that there are more ghosts in the room. A few strangers, she must not be scared crazy? Willing to play games with us? Well, let’s take another ten thousand steps, how are you going to get Lily to stand behind you, and then let her read nursery rhymes? So in summary As mentioned, it's impossible!"
After listening to Zhou Chengshuo's words, Pan Peter thought about it, and it was indeed difficult.
He couldn't help sighing, put his hands on his cheeks, and said, "I can't figure it out, my head is bald..."
At this time, Bo Ye beside him tapped his head lightly, and said flatly: "You believe what others say, so how can we rest assured and leave you alone."
"..." Peter Pan looked up at Bo Ye, dazed for a while, then suddenly remembered that after this round, his brothers would enter the seventh day, and he would be separated from them...
Thinking of this, the little boy lowered his head, remained silent, and became depressed by himself.
After twelve o'clock, the big clock on the first floor of the villa struck twelve.
All the players are in the basement, forming a circle in the corner, facing the dead body of a woman.
The corpse was horrible, the surface was covered with mottled cement, but everyone who had been ravaged by the female ghost had developed immunity at this moment.
Little Freckles was trembling with fear, and said eagerly, "When can I go out?"
"Why do you want to go out?" Lulu squatted by the wall biting her black nails, only a rough outline remained in the darkness, and said with a silly smile, "Isn't it good to stay here?"
"Yeah, hehehehe." Gang Yamei also laughed, "Isn't it good to stay?"
The little freckle immediately silenced and hid beside Zhou Chengshuo.
Zhou Chengshuo ignored the two crazy girls, and said to Little Freckles, "Don't worry." Then he looked at Gu Meng and the others, and said, "It's already noon, what are your plans?"
Enjin glanced at him, squatted down, and put the candlestick in his hand close to the ground next to the corpse, and said in a soft and lukewarm voice: "This basement was originally used for refuge, and it was hidden very secretly, so the mechanism will be in the kitchen. Behind the cabinet door. Since it is used for evacuation, there must be a tunnel leading to the outside, I guess, the tunnel is the escape exit of this instance."
Zhou Chengshuo's eyes lit up, and he said, "Are you sure?"
Enjin glanced at him and said, "Not sure. Very uncertain. I'm talking nonsense, so don't believe it."
Zhou Chengshuo: "..."
"The escape route you mentioned..." Tang Zhi saw a shallow gap in the concrete next to the corpse, and asked Enjin, "Is it under the corpse?"
Enjin nodded and stood up from the ground.
He said: "I will go upstairs with Gu Meng later, you stay here."
Bo Ye asked: "No need to help?"
Enjin said: "Two people are enough."
The basement was dark and oppressive. Bo Ye looked around and asked Enjin, "Are you ready to summon the shadow?"
Enjin responded.
Bo Ye raised some candlesticks and looked at Enjin again.
The flickering candlelight cast a halo on the wall behind Enjin, and in the middle of the dim halo, there was a black shadow of a man.
"So fast?" Bo Ye was slightly surprised and raised his eyebrows.
Just now, the shadow still didn't exist.
"Shadows act on will."
Gu Meng next to him opened his mouth to explain.
Angela hugged the clown puppet, and said to Enjin worriedly: "You summon shadows casually, aren't you afraid of female ghosts coming to mess with you?"
Gu Meng and En Jin looked at each other without making a sound.
They were also not sure if it would trigger the female ghost's attack, but this was the only way now.
Suddenly, Angela turned her head to look back and down, and asked strangely, "What's behind me?"
Just as she was about to take a step, she tripped over something on her heel and almost fell.
"What, what?" Peter Pan held a candlestick and shone behind her, muttering, "Don't be suspicious, it's scary..."
Before the words were finished, the dim candlelight reflected a disheveled head on the ground, with gray skin faintly visible behind the long hair.
That thing is lying on the ground like a giant white spider, who is it but a female ghost
Peter Pan tried his best not to scream, but someone screamed before him.
The sudden appearance of the female ghost turned the basement into a mess, and Gu Meng, Bo Ye and the others took a step back and dispersed with solemn expressions.
Zhou Chengshuo, little freckles and Shamat boy reacted the most, yelling and fleeing with their heads in their arms.
The place was already empty, and the screams came and went, bumping back and forth, irritating the eardrums to hurt.
Gu Meng frowned, feeling a headache from the noise, she had to raise her voice and shouted: "Stop making noise!"
That sound did the trick, drowning out all the noise and all the screaming.
Gu Meng said: "The shadow is behind me and Enjin, we hang up first if we want to hang up, why are you so excited?"
"..."
Zhou Chengshuo and the others looked at each other in blank dismay, thinking so too.
They suppressed their fear and did not run away again, but they also refused to approach their original positions, and hid far away against the wall.
With this calmness, everyone realized that the female ghost was just lying there quietly, and did not move her position during the whole process.
Gu Meng felt relieved, knowing that at least at this moment, she would no longer cling to the player with shadows.
The basement fell into silence, and everyone watched the female ghost vigilantly, lest she suddenly go berserk.
But three minutes passed, and the female ghost was just lying beside the corpse, only the terrifying head was moving back and forth, as if looking at her body before she was alive.
After a while, the female ghost slowly climbed onto the corpse fused in the concrete floor on all fours.
Everyone watched helplessly as the female ghost melted like a ball of white solution and penetrated into the cracks in the cement.
"Disappeared?" Peter Pan stared in disbelief.
With a dull "click, click" sound, the stiff hand on the corpse on the ground slowly grasped, as if exercising its muscles and bones.
Enjin pulled Gu Meng back a step.
Cracks opened around the cement that sealed the corpse, and a person crawled out of it, but the person was covered in pits and lumps of cement of various sizes, like a monster made of stones.
As the monster crawled forward, a pull-tab resembling was revealed in the shallow pit left in place.
Bo Ye stepped forward, squatted down, brushed away the lime powder accumulated in the center of the shallow pit, and found a wooden board underneath.
"A passage appeared," he said.
Enjin and Gu Meng walked towards the first floor together, leaving the others and the woman who faked the corpse together.
"How are you going to lure her in?" Gu Meng asked.
If Enjin went out to face Lily in such a grandiose manner, she might be frightened to the point of fainting.
"Both the crane and the tortoise slipped and fell," Enjin said.
Gu Meng: "???"
Seeing Gu Meng's confused expression, Enjin smiled slightly and said, "You might want to avoid it later."
Gu Meng didn't understand at first, but five minutes later, when he saw Enjin in the kitchen about to screw off Xiuyi's little head, he finally understood what he meant.
He squeezed Enjin's hand and said in horror, "Are you sure?"
Enjin's hand was still on top of Xiuyi's head.
The child tilted his head and was sandwiched between the two, looking from one to the other with wide eyes.
Gu Meng really couldn't bear it.
"Can you handle such a cute child?" he asked.
Enjin reminded: "In my opinion, he is just a wooden doll."
Gu Meng was still a little confused.
He knew that for the player who had obtained the shadow, the twins had returned to their original appearance, but in his eyes, Xiuyi was still that juicy, flesh-and-blood child.
As if afraid that Gu Meng would not believe it, Enjin turned the puppet over, pulled down the back neckline, and pointed to a small light-colored lettering on the wood grain on the back of the neck.
He said, "This doll is still made in China."
Gu Meng took a closer look, and saw a line of tiny characters on Xiuyi's delicate nape—
[Made in China].
"..."
This game is too detailed.
The author has something to say:
There is nothing to say, I wish you all a happy Mid-Autumn Festival in advance.