They were ghosts!
This thought didn’t make Kou Dong nervous, on the contrary, it made him feel relieved. Faced with such a situation, being a human being was even more horrifying than being a ghost. He raised his eyes and looked, and not surprisingly, there were no shadows of the snake man, vase man, rat man, bear man, and singing dog …… on the stage.
The stage was dark, so the shadow cast on it wasn’t conspicuous, if not that Kou Dong found traces after looking closely, it was impossible to find this subtle difference.
The big-headed doll’s thin fingers touched him, and the movement was almost gentle.
“You’re not like any of them,” he whispered, “you’re still human-”
At the end of that sentence, he paused, the corners of his mouth widening.
“It’s nice, you’re still human.”
“How many more days can you be a human being in that room?”
A final loud shawm sounded from the stage, this time more agitated than before. One by one, the audience stood up, so this was the closing song.
Ye Yanzhi was always staring at the stage, and abruptly said, “They are coming down.”
One by one, those exhibits stepped down from the stage and walked towards Kou Dong at the side.
One was fine, but with so many ghosts surrounding him, things became troublesome. Ye Yanzhi: “Right now, we have to go!”
Kou Dong came here to verify his suspicion that they were ghosts, and now that he had not seen any shadows, his idea had been confirmed, and he didn’t intend to stay in this place for a long time. He slightly inhaled, the big-headed doll was also distracted by the group of ghosts, he suddenly shook of his arm, pulled his legs and ran.
The big-headed doll was caught off guard, so he was able to break free from his arm, but he didn’t chase after him. Kou Dong ran to the door, turned around, and could still see the other party’s figure standing in the same place. Half of his figure was blocked by the screen, only half was still in his field of vision, that half of the human figure looked more and more bizarre and twisted.
He was still laughing.
Behind him, more of the cast showed their faces, half or all of them, all of them strange. They were framed in the tiny door, and remained staring at him stubbornly, motionless, until Kou Dong hurriedly stepped out of the room.
With malicious and prying eyes.
“Guess what,” a shrill voice dragged out the tone.
“He can still head there ……”
“How many more days will he be a human being?”
Kou Dong ran out the vermilion doors of the circus. There were signs hanging on both sides of the circus, one with the words “strange” and the other also with the words “strange”. Now, it seemed that the two mouths under those two words were like two big mouths, with the vermilion gate waiting to devour people.
He didn’t stop again, hurriedly taking steps. When he arrived at the tea house, Song Hong and his companion were already waiting for him there.
Seeing that he had returned unharmed, both of them breathed a sigh of relief.
“Fortunately,” Song Hong said, “I was worried that something had happened to you ……”
Luckily, he was unharmed.
The teahouse shopkeeper brought up a tea tray at this time, and a tealight was placed inside. In the eyes of the three people, the shopkeeper naturally picked up the tealight and put it in front of Kou Dong.
“Tired?” He asked, “It’s cold outside, drink something hot.”
Remaining two people︰”……”
“When you weren’t here, the shopkeeper’s attitude towards us changed,” Song Hong said in a heartfelt manner, “He wasn’t nice, and he felt like he was going to sweep us out.”
It was simply frightening.
Kou Dong sipped his tea and briefly told them what he had seen and heard in the circus, avoiding the part where the big-headed doll wanted to make a rabbit out of him. Song Hong listened in thought, especially when he heard the inference that the people were ghosts, he almost stood up in fear, but he was subconsciously relieved.
“Fortunately, fortunately ……”
He was thinking the same thing as Kou Dong, that in this situation, ghosts were far better than people. The malice of people was much easier to make them feel fear.
The little girl didn’t quite agree and shook her head, saying, “That still doesn’t make sense. For example, how did they become ghosts?”
Song Hong: “Judging from their appearance, they should have been in the circus before they died. So they were cut up before they died.”
The little girl asked, “Then they should hate the abductor, why would they help the abductor to harm other children?”
These words caused Song Hong to be stunned. Immediately, he shook his head and muttered, “Can it be that they are the abductors?”
–But that didn’t make sense either. They had seen abductors before, such as the Triangle Eyed man, and this group of people were strong and sturdy, not people from the circus.
If they were really abductors, they wouldn’t have had to torture themselves like this. After all, this was not a camp that could make people feel happy.
The little girl said: “It is understandable that they hate the abductor and the people of this town. They hate the abductor for harming them, and they hate the townspeople for coming to see them every day and letting them perform on the stage, but they don’t realize their pain at all……. But it doesn’t explain the other kids.”
There was still something strange here.
Song Hong: “If you become an evil ghost, will you not be able to distinguish between the people you hate and make others suffer the same pain?”
The little girl looked at him: “Exactly.”
“……”
Song Hong thought about it carefully, and felt sweaty. Yes, there was no singing dog in the circus in the first place, and if they really wanted innocent people to experience the same pain, the little fat man should have been made into a beauty snake, a big-headed doll, or something else.
And he wouldn’t have been given an unseen role.
In this way, all the claims couldn’t be justified, Song Hong’s brows knitted tighter and tighter, and he finally said, “There must be something else that we haven’t discovered.”
There was still an extremely important piece missing from their story.
After discussing the matter, the three of them took this day’s salary from the shopkeeper. The paycheck wasn’t much, but the shopkeeper felt sorry for Kou Dong and gave him a little extra, even putting silver coins in it.
Kou Dong didn’t want and asked the other to change into a string of copper plate.
The two men only thought that Kou Dong didn’t want to be too eye catching, they understood, and didn’t question this move.
When the sun was about to set, the pedestrians on the street were dwindling, and the familiar carriage stopped at the corner of the alley from which they had come. The triangular eyed man and a few men stood guard at the alley corner, counting the people one by one.
Kou Dong and several people boarded the carriage, then found that a person was in the corner.
Looking closely, it was an old acquaintance.
It was Xiao Yu.
She was hiding in a corner of the carriage, still shivering a little, obviously the scene in the daytime had scared her a lot. Ah Xue probed and looked at her bowl, and when she sat back down again, her expression was still calm and indifferent, making people unable to see any difference.
Kou Dong also looked and realized that there was actually quite a lot of money scattered in the other’s bowl. He was a bit surprised, he originally thought that after being scared, this girl shouldn’t have been able to beg for any money, he didn’t think that the other party could actually beg for so much.
After a while, the other children also boarded the carriage one after another, some were obviously relieved, some had a numb expression, and more were worried and pursed their lips without saying a word. The triangle eyed man pushed the last child into the carriage , and four carriages continued to move forward. Kou Dong calculated the route in his mind and realized that the carriage had circled several times in the town.
It was probably to prevent anyone from following them, and also to avoid these money-making beggars remembering the road to escape.
Kou Dong’s sense of direction wasn’t really good, plus the triangular-eyed men deliberately detoured around the road, so even if he had the intention to memorize it, he still remembered it in a cloudy, fuzzy way. He hugged his knees and curled himself up, trying not to stand out.
When the car arrived, they were herded in again like a bunch of chickenshits. This time the personnel changed again, but it was a good thing that the three men deliberately gathered in one place, and logically went into the same house, the same one that Kou Dong and the others had initially entered, and even Xiao Yu went into the same place.
The triangle eyed man left in a hurry, only threw down a sentence, that he’d come back later to collect money.
With this sentence, the room full of children were stunned, they hastily counted the few coins in their bowls. Kou Dong looked at his own bowl, and then asked Song Hong and Ah Xue how much they had in their hands.
The two were puzzled, but still told him. Kou Dong made a note of it. Kou Dong wrote down the amounts of the other people in the room as well.
Immediately, he counted out a fixed amount and stuffed it to Ah Xue.
Ah Xue was stunned, clutching those coins, confusion appeared on her face.
“What is this for?”
Kou Dong simply said, “The rule is already obvious, the one who gets the least money will draw the wooden man. Since that’s the case, why don’t we all share it and average it out. ”
Ah Xue: “……
Song Hong: “……”
Song Hong’s eyes widened, “Averaging? –That’s a good idea!”
They had never thought in this direction before. The one who suffered would be the one who got the least amount of money, most people would think about avoiding being the one with the least amount of money. Only then, less often, they would have to compete with each other for a coin or two, even to the point of setting up a theft to get away with entering the circus-so that there would be no friends in the house, and all that remained would be rivals.
Everyone was alone and on all sides.
Kou Dong’s approach, on the contrary, gave them a new idea and opened the door to a new world ……
Song Hong looked at Kou Dong again and said from his heart, “Have you ever worn Metersbonwe?”
Kou Dong: “…… What?”
Song Hong: “Not the usual way.”
Kou Dong: “……”
After counting the house, there were fifteen children and three hundred and forty-five coins, which was quite a lot to get rid of. Among them, Kou Dong had raised the average value of the whole room by himself, and he had the most.
The children who were given the coins had no objections, after all, Kou Dong basically didn’t ask for theirs, instead, each of them was given a little more or less. A little more was better than a little less, and those children were therefore grateful to him.
Xiao Yu was among them, and was given two copper plates.
She firmly held the coins in her hands.
Seeing her like this, Ah Xue looked at her twice more, and then moved closer to her. Xiao Yu was only focused on inventorying the money in her bowl and didn’t pay attention.
Before the meal, The triangle Eyed man came to the room again. He looked around gloomily, his voice was coarse and hoarse as he spoke, “I came to get the money.”
Just like yesterday, he ordered the money that all the children had paid one by one. Kou Dong stared at him closely, and after realizing that each child had paid twenty-three coins, a look of displeasure appeared on his triangular-eyed face.
“What’s going on?” He hissed, “All the same?”
No one answered him, and everyone in the room had an excellent understanding not to speak. The triangular-eyed gaze wandered back and forth among the various children, his demeanor growing more and more gruesome, his chest heaving up and down, obviously angry. But while he was angry, he didn’t take it out on the people in the room. Kou Dong then knew that he had made the right bet.
The one with the least drew the wooden man, this was really the rule set by the system. The triangle eyed man was just an NPC, even if he knew clearly in his heart that this was someone’s trick, there was nothing he could do.
As long as there wasn’t a minimum among them, he couldn’t do anything about the people present.
Many of the children also saw this, and the big stone in their hearts slowly dropped, slowly standing in front of him.
Twenty-three pieces.
Twenty-three pieces.
Still twenty three pieces ……
Kou Dong and the others also handed over, then quietly stood in the crowd. Fourteen people had already handed in twenty-three coins, and as long as this last one remained at that number, they would escape tonight’s round of wooden men.
The last person standing in front of The triangle Eyed man was Xiao Yu.
She looked a bit odd, like she was terrified or excited, and held up the bowl in her hand
Triangle Eyes put his hand into the bowl and counted them one by one.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen ……”
The values rose upwards little by little, and Xiao Yu’s expression became more and more strange. Her body trembled slightly, her eyes stared at the bowl without blinking.
Kou Dong looked at her and suddenly felt that something was wrong.
…… Wait.
An almost unbelievable conjecture surged in his mind.
If Xiao Yu deliberately hid the money-
Before he could finish his thought, Triangle Eye’s count had also reached the end. He poured out the bottom few coins in the bowl, raked them through his fingers, and counted, “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three ……”
“Twenty-three.”
He put the bowl down, his expression growing more and more huffy, his nostrils flaring wide with anger.
“Still twenty-three.”
“……”
He slammed the bowl to the ground. Pieces flew, and a child beside him gasped in fear.
“Am I easy to fool?” He sneered, sizing them up, “Am I stupid? Huh?”
No one said anything, and in the midst of such silence, the crowd was unanimous.
Until a female voice abruptly joined in, almost impatiently, “I still have money!”
It was Xiao Yu!
She hurriedly felt into her tattered clothes and loudly proclaimed, “I still have money! I …… have more than twenty-three coins!”
The room was in an uproar!
Kou Dong didn’t expect that his absurd premonition actually came true. In order to avoid going to choose the wooden man herself, Xiao Yu really hid the money.
As long as she took out other coins, she would be the only one in this room who paid the most money.
In other words, it was highly likely that all the rest of them would be asked to go choose the wooden man!
His blood froze a bit, and a rare anger flared up in his heart, he didn’t speak, only staring at the scene before him.
A dozen pairs of eyes stared sullenly at Xiao Yu. She felt it, and shivered at it, but she thought of the singing dog she had seen on the street, the singing dog that had been dragged along the ground, alive and dead …… She still dug her hand into the pocket where she had hidden the copper plate.
It couldn’t turn out that way.
She didn’t dare look at the other people in the house, but could only tell herself again and again in her mind.
It mustn’t be like that ……
She wasn’t wrong.
She just wanted to protect herself, and now that her boyfriend had been made like that, what else could she do?
All she could do was try desperately to preserve herself!
Almost warily, she felt her pockets. Fingers traced down the threaded opening, slowly feeling for-
Nothing.
As she realized this, Xiao Yu’s heart dropped heavily downward.
No!
Where was her money?
She just, clearly, hid a coin and didn’t hand it over. ……
Where was her money?
Where was her money!!!
Xiao Yu lost her voice and screamed out in disbelief, groping around. There was no …… no matter how much she touched it, it was empty, her copper plate, her copper plate had disappeared!
“Who took it!” She stared, snapping her gaze to the others in the room, “Who took it? …… Was it you?”
The child she was staring at was puzzled and shook his head.
Xiao Yu set her eyes on the next person again, viciously, almost screaming at the top of her voice, “Was it you!”
Song Hong couldn’t look away and said in a cold voice, “Calm down. Who would know that you secretly hid the money? You must have lost it yourself.”
Xiao Yu could no longer listen to this. She just hissed and screamed, “Thief! Thief!”
But her words slowly became incomplete, and she slowly fell towards the ground, letting out an almost desperate howl. Normally, a little girl crying like this would have inspired pity.
But now, no one pitied her. The crowd just watched with cold eyes, not even one person came forward to help.
Xiao Yu’s voice couldn’t come out anymore, she fell to the ground trembling. The man’s face squeezed in anger, seeing that she couldn’t take out the copper, he looked even more disappointed than her.
He picked up the bag without saying a word and walked towards the door. That was to say, the people in this room managed to escape today.
After he left, the children in the room looked at each other in shock, and finally couldn’t help but jump for joy. Kou Dong was also happy, but he still had some doubts, he didn’t think Xiao Yu was someone who would accidentally lose such an important coin.
Just then, Ah Xue waved at them, and when she went to the corner, something was silently came out of her sleeve.
The copper color that glistened on it reflected Kou Dong’s eyes.
A small copper plate laid in the palm of the little girl’s hand.
As the two boys stared at her in disbelief, the little girl calmly clenched her palm tightly and made her final summation.
“See,” she said, “I really do have some say in the evils of this world.”
After falling asleep this night, Kou Dong once again heard the familiar screams; on the previous morning it had been Little Fatty who had screamed like this; this morning it was Xiao Yu.
The circus members who came was not the beauty snake, either – that kind of movement was more like crawling on all fours, like dogs on the ground.
It was the singing dog.
Little Fatty dragged his girlfriend by his own hand, ignoring her struggles, and yanked her outward a little. At the doorway, a group of circus members were laughing happily, they looked at the scene in front of them, as if they were watching an absolutely beautiful love story.
“How wonderful ……”
They said, laughing harder and harder.
“–That’s quite a story.”
Thanks for the update