doll city

Chapter 48

"Hi, hello, my 'me'."

"Don't be afraid, I'm not your split personality, just a role you play."

"No, you didn't die—you just experienced a more thorough 'decomposition' than death."

"Afraid? It's okay, you can escape to me."

"What, I look like a funny lunatic? No~ no, on the contrary, I am the most real."

"Ah~ You still want to face them by yourself? Very courageous, as expected of me."

"Okay, welcome back to the crazy world."

When the focus of Yan Ge's eyes narrowed, he saw himself in the mirror mounted on the ceiling.

His face was so pale that it reminded one of unused paper in the trash can.

This is a bedroom, the decoration around it is mainly in gray tones, and outside the floor-to-ceiling windows is the misty sky of Ciling.

The dim lights play one of the few functions in the corner, and a few pieces of battered clothes can still be seen beside the bed.

He should have been lying down for at least a few hours, but there was no warmth in the quilt.

During these few hours, he experienced a complete spiritual death.

He remembered what happened after meeting Luka last night, but he couldn't think about it carefully, and the frontal lobe began to hurt sharply when he thought about it.

Yan Ge crawled to sit down, lowered his head and tugged at the black pajamas on his body—it was obviously worn by someone else, and the buttons seemed to be crooked a row because of his impatience.

"?" Question marks were written all over Yan Ge's face.

He got out of bed and looked around. The bedroom was monotonously furnished. He thought that Li Haobai had found a random place last night, but when he turned around, he found two books on the bedside table.

"The Other Side of Good and Evil" and "Ciling County Chronicles".

Yan Ge picked up the "Ciling County Chronicle" casually, and found that there were many things between the pages, some were old newspapers, some were old photos, and there were quite a few sticky notes, which seemed to indicate something.

He flipped through it, and soon saw a page of familiar notes - it was a yellowed page, the account book of the Lion Dance Hall.

Yan Ge gently took out the sticky notes written with a pen next to him, and read in a low voice:

"The last record of the Zhao family's lion dance team was 55 years old..."

"After the founding of the People's Republic of China, I only received nine lion dances..."

"Going forward, during the period of the Republic of China, there were an average of more than [-] shows per year. Among them... there were [-] families who took over the marriage and did it in Ciling."

"Fourteen families, the ones with the most ostentation and contacts with foreigners include the Xu family of the official kiln, the Chen family of weaving and dyeing, the Meng family of the salt merchant, and... the Gu family of the porcelain king."

Porcelain King Gu's family?

Yan Ge woke up completely. He knew that his grandma's mother's family used to be a giant in the Ciling ceramics industry. In the current Old Porcelain Street, almost all the local residents' ancestors were kiln workers from the Gu family.

The so-called Porcelain King, Gu's family, don't think otherwise.

"No, it's not just the Gu family, he also investigated other big families in Ciling. These are all performed by the Zhao family troupe in the Lion Dance Hall..."

It turns out that this house was not found randomly, it was originally Li Haobai...the residence of the virtuoso named L2 in Ciling.

He actually has a home in Ciling?Or have you lived in Ciling before?

While Yan Ge was muttering, he suddenly remembered the day when Li Haobai was imprisoned in the Lion Dance Hall. He should have something he wanted to investigate in the Lion Dance Hall, and it seemed to be this ledger.

"But what is the purpose..."

Yan Ge hugged the county annals and walked barefoot to the door of the bedroom, when he suddenly heard a soft sound of the piano.

He opened the door, walked through the wide living room with the same gray tone, followed the sound of the piano to an opposite door, opened a small crack, and the first thing he saw was the stave filled with frantic notes, and In the center of this "music room", there is a figure in front of a black grand piano.

The man was wearing a casual white shirt and was sitting in front of the piano. His slender fingers slid across the bass range, and elegant, soothing, and hidden magic music flowed out from his fingers.

When the note of a bar was finalized, he seemed to hear the subtle sound of the door opening behind him, took off the earphones and turned sideways, his amber eyes slightly bent.

"How did you sleep?"

Yan Ge was half a beat behind before he nodded and said, "It's okay."

Then, he asked again: "...Who did you entrust my sister Gu Lili to?"

"Leave it to Xiao Yi. When you recover, go find them."

Li Haobai briefly explained the situation, moved half of the piano bench away, and motioned for Yan Ge to sit down.

"Sorry, I'm not used to having a lot of seating in the instrument room."

Indeed, this musical instrument room is full of various musical instruments. Yan Ge only glanced at it, and saw at least four kinds of guitars hanging on the wall, several large and violins that looked expensive, and other There are countless unpopular instruments such as flutes and accordions.

There were stacks of sheet music stacked on the few two chairs that could be sat on. Yan Ge walked over naturally without hesitating for long, and sat next to Li Haobai.

Fortunately, the piano bench is not too short, allowing him to keep a finger's distance from the opponent's body.

"Have you read this county annals?" Li Haobai asked while tangling the headphone cable.

"Well, are you looking for clues in every hunting ground?" Yan Ge put the county annals on the piano, his dark pupils reflected his profile, "Are these clues related to Luca?"

"Why do you think so?"

"You were at No. [-] Middle School, and at the end you were asking how to kill Luca." At that time, Molière's plaster statue's answer was not difficult to understand. Kill Luca's beloved princess, and Luca will die together.

For a long time, Yan Ge couldn't understand why these Ciling organizations couldn't work together to hunt Luka, but now he realized that it couldn't be done by manpower.

Luka didn't even show any subjective malice, just a staring sight, and his spirit collapsed, like... a grain of sand crashed into the entire universe.

He deeply realized that compared with Luca, those seemingly daunting second-tier characters are not at the same level at all... Is this the "king" of living puppets?

He said something completely irrelevant again.

"Hey, can you play the piano?"

piano?

Yan Ge shook his head: "No, I don't have cells in this area, I can sing very badly, and I was kicked out of the classroom by the music teacher."

"Try it." Li Haobai signaled him to put his hands on the piano keys with his eyes, "give me a chance to become an enlightener."

Does "..." mean anything?

Yan Ge, who had never touched a musical instrument since childhood, gave him a strange look.

Li Haobai raised a smile: "It's not a good thing to push yourself to a dead end all the time. What you need is to relax——I don't want my good teammates to collapse again when they get ready."

Yan Ge stared blankly at the black and white keys in front of him, stretched out his hand and hung over the keys, as if he didn't know which key to start pressing.

"Press any one, even if you close your eyes." Li Haobai said, and put his hands on the other side, which is a few octaves higher.

Yan Geyiyan touched the cold keys and hesitantly pressed a heavy bass.

The next moment, Li Haobai's hands moved over the keys on the right side, playing a series of smooth notes... It sounded as if they had melted into a complete piece of music.

"Go on," he said.

With a slight curl of his fingers, Yan Ge pressed the second bass... It seemed a little higher than the last time, and Li Haobai followed it up perfectly for the second time, and encouraged:

"It can be faster."

A strange and unfamiliar feeling slowly filled his heart. Yan Ge pressed the black and white keys disorderly, but no matter how absurd the notes he dropped, the other side of the piano could round them with ease.

...like he tenderly hugged a madman last night.

Yan Ge thought a little confused, if his heart was made of ceramics, there would undoubtedly be a crack at this moment, and he hid in it, calling his name, and he jumped into that crack without hesitation.

"I've always had a question." Yan Ge asked, "Why didn't you say your real name?"

"There are many people calling me by that name. I hope that if I get lost one day, at least, I want to remember your timbre among the voices of 1 people."

He smiled at him, pointed to his ears, and then pressed to his heart.

"I think, now I should fully remember."

Yan Ge lowered his eyes and pursed his lips, raised his head, showing a rare softened look.

"Hello, Li Ya."

"Hello, Yan Ge."

……

Sunday.

It was supposed to be a day for the children to relax, but Gu Lili sat on a chair, facing the coffee table that was temporarily used as a homework table for her, and sighed long.

"Brother Ge..." Gu Lili bit the tip of her pen, watched Yan Ge pass by with a thick quilt in her arms, and complained, "Isn't the school empty, why do I still have to do my homework?!"

"Because your brother loves learning, I hope you will inherit this spirit."

Yan Ge threw the thick quilt into the side room on the first floor, turned to Xiao Yi and Dai Chengze and said, "This yard is very big, there are six bedrooms upstairs and downstairs, all of them have been cleaned up, you just need to live in peace of mind."

This is Old Porcelain Street, their own home, and the first stronghold of the C-level team "broken chapter".

At first they didn't plan to go back to Old Porcelain Street. According to Yan Ge's impression, Old Porcelain Street was crowded with handicrafts from all walks of life, and it didn't seem like a good place to get along with live puppets.But after going to the field, I discovered the beauty of this place.

Different from the live dolls in other areas, most of the live dolls here are small and miscellaneous, and the probability of blue-eyed live dolls is high. This is like a firebreak in the vicinity, and the large live dolls wandering in other areas are not Dare to invade Old China Street.

And Yan Ge also has a secret weapon - door god painting.

Pasted on the door of Gu's old house, the whole yard suddenly looked like an iron barrel.With double protection, even if an A-level organization comes to the door, it may not be able to knock on it.

In this way, they can go to the hunting ground without worrying about Gu Lili's safety.

"Your house... used to be a place to burn ceramics?" Xiao Yi raised her head and looked at the blue-eyed eaves beast on the eaves. After the latter bounced away, she was still a little uncomfortable.

"This street is called Old Porcelain Street. In the old days of the Republic of China, every household would make porcelain with their own hands."

Yan Ge tidied up the house, fried a few dishes casually, and brought them to the table of the Eight Immortals in the main hall.

I don’t know if it’s because he and Gu Lili belonged to this family. The dolls in the old house of Gu’s family—at least as they’ve been discovered now, are all friendly blue-eyed dolls. Just now, Yan Ge’s cook Sometimes, a rattan "monkey god" quietly came to help choose vegetables, and went back to the attic after finishing the work.

"Then, as a phased result - the stronghold of the 'Broken Chapter' free exploration team was temporarily established. In the early days of the establishment, the team members were just a few of us..."

"I understand the truth." Xiao Yi sat down, and still couldn't help looking at Li Ya who sat down to hand out chopsticks, "Isn't he wanted by various organizations? Why is he here?"

"Yes." Yan Ge finished serving Gu Lili's meal, then glanced at Li Ya, whom he had changed his name to, "Don't you live in Tingxi? My old house doesn't even have heating."

Li Ya sat down firmly next to Yan Ge, and replied: "I am in charge of the town house."

It's quite self-conscious.

"For some time in the future, M82 and Elephant Valley will be very popular, and no one has the energy to take care of me." Li Ya said leisurely. "Besides, I'm not idle. There is one thing that needs your professional skills to help me."

Yan Ge had a difficult expression on his face, with an expression that Jae Jie couldn't escape, lest he would be forced to sing in front of Gu Pin after he wrote the rap.

But Li Ya didn't mention this. Instead, he pushed aside the plate and put down a journal-like diary on the table.

"I have the same problem as you. My family also lost a child, but the situation is more complicated."

"It happened to be his birthday when he was killed by a living puppet in one of his hunting grounds. What's more, that day and that moment happened to be at midnight on Sunday. Time went back and he became a minor again."

The people at the dinner table stared wide-eyed, looking at the open notebook, a few words in blood slowly appeared on the blank pages.

[We met for the first time, I'm this guy's cousin, my name is Yi Ziang... This year, uh, now, I'm 17 years old. 】

Li Ya saw that the writing on the account was still spreading, and closed the cover unceremoniously.

"It's like this, whether it's alive or dead, I need to retrieve the body of this little boy from that hunting ground."

Yan Ge digested the information for a while, and asked, "Which hunting ground are you talking about?"

Li Ya glanced at him and said, "Have you heard of the 'Paper Man Alley' on Changge Street?"

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The author has something to say:

Here is a famous quote from Beyond Good and Evil:

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.

……

Underworld The author has been single for too long and will not write emotional dramas, but he is already talking about it. Wait for the author to sum up his feelings about love before writing the article (I hope to lose my kidney directly, but the green jj forces me to lose my heart and fall)