Kaleidoscope of Death

Lin Qiushi rushed downstairs, and the ghastly white arm sticking out of the hat upstairs also followed directly down. When he saw this, he didn't dare to stay in the house for a moment longer and rushed outside.

When the owner of the grocery store saw Lin Qiushi rushing out in a panic, he wore a little confusion on his face: "Why did you run so fast, what happened?"

Lin Qiushi panted heavily, and pointed his finger inside.

The boss looked puzzled and wanted to take a look, but Lin Qiushi took out his cell phone and typed a few words: is your son really your son?

The boss saw these words and froze, "What do you mean by that?"

Lin Qiushi decided to tell the truth: his head fell off.

When the boss saw this, he immediately turned around and was about to enter the house, but Lin Qiushi couldn't stop him. But when the boss opened the door, Lin Qiushi actually saw the child whose head had fallen to the ground earlier, sitting on the sofa and playing with toys - the same picture as when he first entered the house.

"What the hell is going on?" When the boss saw that his son was safe and sound, he turned back to Lin Qiushi, confused even more.

Lin Qiushi looked at the child, then at the boss, shook his head, and finally didn't say anything, turning around and walking away. I don't know if it was his illusion or his nerves were too sensitive, but he always felt that the kid's eyes were almost glued to his back, watching him leave with great resignation.

After leaving the grocery store, Lin Qiushi went to a few other places in town where there were children.

During that time, they met other teammates who didn't seem to have much affection for Lin Qiushi, a mute girl, and didn't even say a single greeting. Only a girl who seemed to have a milder personality spoke to Lin Qiushi for a while.

"We didn't see any children, those children are hidden." The girl's name seemed to be Dong Tianwei, "Don't you go, it's useless."

Lin Qiushi was a bit strange: what did hiding mean?

Dong Tianwei said, "It's just hidden ah, this town is very closed, if the child is gone the whole family is finished, and it seems that the town has a rule that you can't divorce, you can only simmer with guilt for the rest of your life."

Lin Qiushi was stunned for a moment when he heard this, and he thought of something: can't divorce?

Dong Tianwei: "Right." She said, "Where's the guy with you? Why doesn't he stay with you, you're so weak, what if something happens to you."

Lin Qiushi ignored Dong Tianwei's question: is there an exception?

Dong Tianwei thought to herself, "No, right? Anyway, the two noisy families I went to didn't even leave."

Lin Qiushi nodded his head and thanked Dong Tianwei, turning around and walking away.

Dong Tianwei looked at his back and stopped talking, but his male companion beside him said strangely, "What are you doing talking to her so much?"

Dong Tianwei sighed, "Wouldn't it be nice to have one more person alive?"

The male companion did not reply.

Lin Qiushi's goal this time was to head straight to Lauren's house, which he had visited before.

He arrived at that home, knocked on the door, and saw Lauren's father, a middle-aged man who looked like he had a terrible temper and reeked of alcohol all over his body.

"Can I help you?" Lauren's father asks questions and has a very bad attitude.

Lin Qiushi: I would like to ask, when did your daughter go missing?

My father didn't answer, a little irritated: "Isn't the missing person's notice hanging in the square? You're not going to go over there and ask me?"

Lin Qiushi: I'm just trying to get more clues from you.

After he finished typing this, he suddenly remembered that he seemed to be wearing women's clothes, so he followed Ruan Nan Candle's example of deliberately making a chutney look, thinking that he didn't know if it would work.

Who knew that this expression actually worked, and Lauren's father looked a little looser: "It seems like two days ago..."

Lin Qiushi: Where did she disappear?

Lauren's father said, "At home, I guess."

Lin Qiushi heard the uncertainty in his voice: are you sure it's at home?

Lauren's father thought, "I'm not sure, I only found out then long after she disappeared, who knows when she disappeared."

Lin Qiushi: Then can I take the liberty of asking when your wife will be back?

Who knew that at the mention of the word Madam, Lauren's father immediately showed a fierce expression, not only did he not answer Lin Qiushi's question, he also cursed and slammed the door heavily.

Lin Qiushi looked at the closed door and pondered, he had a very horrible suspicion.

After walking around town for a day, the sky was already a bit dark, so Lin Qiushi planned to go back to the hotel before making any plans.

On his way back to the hotel, Lin Qiushi passed by the small square he had just arrived at again. Only the notice board with the missing person's notice on it stood out in the middle of the square.

Lin Qiushi walked over to the notice board and carefully read the missing person's notice on it.

There were a total of four search notices now, three of which were from before and one of which was posted up yesterday.

Lin Qiushi didn't know what to think as he suddenly reached out his hand and uncovered one of the earliest missing person notices from above the notice board.

The poster wasn't glued too securely and was easily removed, Lin Qiushi looked down at the poster in his hand carefully and suddenly made a new discovery... He discovered that the poster was actually double-layered.

That's right, the poster was actually two pieces of paper stuck together.

Lin Qiushi tried to separate the two pieces of paper, but in the end, he only failed to pull off one corner. He was a little annoyed, but after thinking for a while, he simply tore off all the posters and put them in his pocket, then walked away as if nothing had happened.

Of course when he tore it off he took a cursory look at it and found that all the posters were double-layered.

Quickly returning to the inn, Lin Qiushi saw Ruan Nanzhu sitting on the sofa in the reception area on the first floor as soon as he entered, looking at his expression he seemed to be thinking about something.

Lin Qiushi walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder.

Ruan Nan Candle looked up: "Back?"

Lin Qiushi nodded and pointed upstairs.

Ruan Nan Candle smiled, "Sleepy? Well, let's all go back to bed."

The person sitting next to them cast a strange look at them.

Lin Qiushi communicated with Ruan Nam Candle with his eyes: could you not say something so misleading.

Ruan Nan Candle shamelessly pretended he didn't see it.

They returned to their own room on the second floor, and after closing the doors and windows Lin Qiushi was finally able to speak, he couldn't wait to say, "I tore off the search notices in the square and checked them, and found that they were two layers, let's see if we can find a way to peel off another piece of paper." He said pulling out the paper from his trouser pocket.

Ruan Nanzhu took a look at it and pondered, "This one should be able to be separated with a bit of water, I just don't know if the handwriting will be blurry."

Lin Qiushi: "Let's try separating one sheet first."

So they went to the toilet and after receiving some hot water they soaked the paper in it and waited for it to soften so that they could separate. While this was going on, Lin Qiushi asked Ruan Nam Candle if he had found anything else at the cannery.

Ruan Nam Candle looked at the basin of water in front of him, was silent for a while, and said, "I almost picked up that bowler hat."

Lin Qiushi was shocked to hear, "Huh?"

Nguyen Nam Candle said, "I was examining it when the bowler hat suddenly fell off the treetop. That thing didn't know what kind of magic it had, and I put my hand on it, but in the end, I was lucky to endure it."

Lin Qiushi was only relieved: "Good thing you didn't pick it up."

Ruan Nan Candle nodded, "In the end, it's the sixth door."

Nguyen Nam Candle then describes the traces he checked out at the cannery, saying that Lin Qiu Shi was lucky he didn't eat the canned fish, and that he now suspects that the missing children were all canned. Because he found fresh flesh and blood in the machine that made the canned goods. Also on another dead tree, he saw the body of a child who was hanged.

Of course, Ruan Nam Candle didn't dare to touch the corpse and just pretended not to see it.

"What about you, what did you find?" Nguyen Nam Candle said.

"I feel as if we're heading in the wrong direction." Lin Qiushi told Ruan Nam Candle what he had encountered at the grocery store, "What do you think that kid is?"

"Definitely not human," Nguyen Nan Candle said, "The paper melted away." He reached out his hand and fished out the paper from the water basin.

The glue between the papers was melted by the hot water and the two papers were easily separated.

Lin Qiushi froze when he saw the paper behind it, only to see that the paper behind it was actually also a missing person's notice, the font was a little blurry to see clearly, but the photo Lin Qiushi recognized... it was the photo of the person in their team who had disappeared wearing a bowler hat.

The remaining three search notices were also separated one by one, they were currently missing three people, all three pictures were pasted on it, the only difference was Lauren's sister's search notice, the paper behind it was a blank sheet of paper.

Ruan Nan Candle frowned at the three pieces of paper.

Lin Qiushi said, "In other words... we haven't seen the child since we arrived in this town, right?"

Ruan Nan Candle looked back at him.

Lin Qiushi gave his guess based on his findings, "The only two I've seen are Lauren's sister and the son of the grocer I saw today."

Nguyen Nan Candle: "There is something wrong with that Lauren's sister." He said, "There's something strangely off-putting about her."

Lin Qiushi: "And one of the guys on the team told me today that this town is very closed and hardly ever gets divorced. Do you remember Lauren's origins...?"

Ruan Nan Candle said, "Well, his mother was married for the second time."

"That's very strange." Lin Qiushi sat on the sofa and looked at the three search notices, "Do you think it's possible that there aren't any in this town..."

Ruan Nan Candle took Lin Qiushi's words, "There are no children at all."

Their gazes met, and they both saw a similar look in each other's eyes.

"Actually, there still are." Ruan Nan Candle put these search notices posted on the back on the table and spread his hands, "Isn't the role we're replacing the child."

Lin Qiushi: ".......a bunch of hundred pound children?

Ruan Nan Candle: "Who isn't a little princess yet."

Lin Qiushi: "Alas, now that we know that we're actually the poor, weak and helpless children, what's next, what does this mean? Where the hell is the key?"

Nguyen Nan Candle's fingers tapped on the table, "If the town kids meant us, did those fake kids stand in for something else?"

Lin Qiushi: "Such as?"

Ruan Nam Candle: "The noodle man."

Lin Qiushi immediately remembered the grocery store owner's brainless and happy-looking son, and was silent for a moment: "It's possible."

Ruan Nam Candle: "But there's still something that doesn't make sense, if those kids are the Noodle Man, then what happened to their bodies? Forget it, it's dark, let's sleep first."

Lin Qiushi looked at the heavy night outside and agreed to Ruan Nan Candle's proposal.

Staying up all night outside the gate world was called cultivating immortality, and staying up all night inside the gate world might directly become immortal the next day, no need to cultivate at all, it was very hassle-free to do it in one step.

Lin Qiushi wished that he could sleep safely and have a dreamless night.

But there were some things that couldn't be done just by thinking about it, and although very reluctant, Lin Qiushi still woke up in the middle of the night.

He heard the sound of a child crying.

Its sobs, like a complaint, drifted to Lin Qiushi's ears from outside the window. He sat up in bed and saw that Ruan Nan Candle was still sleeping. Somehow there was the ghostly feeling of an insomniac wife who wakes up at night and sees her husband sleeping in a mess. Of course this feeling was also fleeting as Lin Qiu Shi poked Ruan Nam Candle up.

Ruan Nam Candle opened her eyes in confusion: "Hm?"

Lin Qiushi: "I can't sleep."

As soon as Ruan Nan Candle's hand reached out, he grabbed Lin Qiushi's neck and pulled him into his embrace: "Be good, come here."

Ruan Nan Candle's arms were wide and warm, and there was a faint scent on his body that helped him sleep.

But the cries were getting closer and closer, and Lin Qiushi finally couldn't hold back and took a glance towards the window.

This glance almost made him sit up in bed in shock, only to see a child lying on his window. The kid ignored gravity and stuck to the glass like a gecko. His arms and legs began to slowly stretch out, as if trying to find a crack in the window to crawl in from the outside - seeing this, Lin Qiushi was secretly glad that he and Ruan Nanzhu had the good habit of having to close the window every night.

Lin Qiushi was watching attentively, but he felt himself Ruan Nan Candle gently pressed his back and then rubbed it: whispered: "Don't look."

Lin Qiushi: "Mmm..."

Ruan Nan Candle reached out and broke his face back, his tone somewhat unhappy: "If you can't sleep, look at me."

Lin Qiushi raised his eyes.

Ruan Nan Candle: "Is there anything better to look at than me?"

Lin Qiushi didn't speak.

In a natural movement, Ruan Nan Candle rested his chin on the top of Lin Qiushi's head, then slowly rubbed against it and muttered, "Sleep."

Almost Lin Qiushi's entire body was wrapped up in Ruan Nan Candle, and Ruan Nan Candle was like a male beast that had seen his cubs, his body full of protection. Lin Qiushi felt a strange sense of security, and he tried to close his eyes to ignore the disturbing cries, finally drifting into a silly sweet dream.

When he woke up the next day, the two of them were almost hugging each other.

Lin Qiushi opened his eyes and saw Ruan Nancandle's sleeping face with his eyes closed, he had to admit that Ruan Nancandle was extremely good looking, whether it was inside or outside the door, it was very eye-catching. His long eyelashes were slightly rising and falling with his breathing, just like a black phoenix-tailed butterfly that was about to spread its wings.

Lin Qiushi poked and prodded for a while, but he couldn't resist and was about to reach out his hand to touch it. Who knew that as soon as he reached out his hand, Ruan Nan Candle opened his eyes, which didn't see any sleepiness, but instead contained a little faint smile: "Good morning."

Lin Qiushi quickly closed his hand and pretended that nothing had happened: "Good morning."

Ruan Nan Candle let go of the hand holding Lin Qiushi, yawned and slowly got up: "How did you sleep last night?"

Lin Qiushi: "It's fine." He got up from the bed and went to the window, unsurprisingly finding a lot of children's palm prints on the glass, and it seemed that yesterday's cries and images were indeed not a figment of his imagination.

They shuffled off to the dining room and found that the team, again, was missing one person.

This time the person missing was more familiar to them, it was Wang Tianxin's female companion, the girl he had hooked up with.

When Lin Qiushi discovered that the girl was missing, Wang Tianxin was still leisurely eating breakfast, he typed on his phone: Wang Tianxin's female companion was missing.

When Ruan Nan Candle saw the font on Lin Qiushi's phone, he directly stood up and walked over to Wang Tianxin.

Wang Tianxin was shocked by Ruan Nan Candle, he had been blasted and hammered by Ruan Nan Candle before, the whole time he was powerless to fight back, at this time, although he pretended to be calm, but the trembling tone of voice and glancing around exposed his fragile heart: "You, what are you doing."

Ruan Nan Candle looked at him condescendingly, his tone cold: "Where is your female companion?"

Wang Tianxin swallowed heavily, weakly looked at Ruan Nan Candle and whispered, "Isn't one of him enough?" Can't you be satisfied with such a horrible ladies' man?

Lin Qiushi heard it from beside him, and his expression twisted for a moment... God damn him one wasn't enough.

Ruan Nan Candle: "Are you asking me or am I asking you?"

Wang Tianxin quickly said, "I don't know, she didn't come back yesterday."

Ruan Nanzhu: "Didn't come back and you didn't even say?"

Wang Tianxin: "It's no use talking about it...this, this is obviously gone." He seemed a little disgruntled and muttered quietly, "I've told her not to go to the cannery, I won't listen."

The cannery? Hearing this keyword, Nguyen Nan Candle knitted her brows: "She went to the cannery yesterday? When did you go?"

Wang Tianxin: "She went there in the morning and never came back."

Ruan Nanzhu: "I was also at the cannery, how come I didn't see her."

Wang Tianxin dryly laughed: "How would I know about that... Maybe she went a different way?" That was just pure bullshit, the town was so big, there was basically only one way to get anywhere. Besides, the cannery wasn't so big that two people couldn't meet in it, unless, of course, she was the one who'd had an accident on the way to the cannery.

When Ruan Nanzhu asked him if he had seen anything unusual, Wang Tianxin thought carefully about it and said that when she was sleeping the night before, she had been looking out the window and said that there seemed to be a child crying outside.

Lin Qiushi thought of the child who was lying on their window.

"But I didn't hear it." Wang Tianxin said, "I have very good hearing, yet I didn't hear anything, she must have just been too nervous to mishear..."

Lin Qiushi didn't think that she had misheard.

Ruan Nanzhu: "Is there anything else?"

Wang Tianxin shook his head, "Nope."

Lin Qiushi stood up and walked over to Wang Tianxin, Wang Tianxin was even more scared when she saw him, her smile barely seemed like she was going to cry.

Lin Qiushi typed: she only went to the cannery during the day yesterday?

"It seems like he only went to the cannery." As soon as Wang Tianxin finished speaking, Dong Tianwei, who was next to him, stood up and pointed at Wang Tianxin, "He's lying, Liu Ya didn't even go to the cannery yesterday!"

Liu Ya was the name of Wang Tianxin's female companion.

Wang Tianxin immediately defended herself after being accused, "I'm not lying, she did tell me to go to the cannery!"

"Bullshit, we clearly saw Liu Ya yesterday when we went to check on the other kids in town, and she had a seventeen or eighteen year old girl with her!" Dong Tianwei said, "The two of them are holding hands and look like they're on good terms! Don't tell me you don't know!"

Wang Tianxin raged, "What are you talking about, I didn't know - I was just repeating what she told me, she obviously said she was going to the cannery, how was I supposed to know where she ended up!"

They argued heatedly, and it was clear from their determined attitudes that neither of them should be lying.

Liu Ya's destination was indeed the cannery, but on the way there, she encountered something else...like, a strange girl.

Lin Qiushi thought of the grocery store owner's brainless son was a shiver.

So who the hell was that little girl? Lin Qiushi asked typing on his phone.

"I don't know, I'm not very sensitive to western looks... "Dong Tianwei was a bit embarrassed, "But I remember her hairstyle, it was like she had a ponytail and was wearing a pink dress, she looked pretty cute! The."

Lin Qiushi suddenly thought of something, he pulled out some search notices from his pocket and then really found what he wanted on them - a picture of the fourth lost child, Lauren's sister.

As soon as Dong Tianwei saw the photo, she looked startled: "Yes, it's her." She saw the four words of the search notice on it, "She, she's one of the missing children? Then why is she showing up again...and holding Liu Ya...where is she taking Liu Ya..."

Who knows, the child who shouldn't exist is holding the current world in tow, and it's not a pleasant location to think about bringing it around.

Everyone looked at the photo in silence.

"We now suspect that there are no children in this town at all," Nguyen Nam Candle voiced some information, "so you'd better be careful when you see children."

The crowd made noisy comments.

"And don't just bring anything back." Ruan Nam Candle said, "That thing could be a life reminder."

As he spoke, Lin Qiushi looked towards the window and immediately stood up from his chair. Seeing a sparse jungle not far from the restaurant, there was a tall, thin figure standing at some point, the figure was hidden in the fog, somewhat hard to see, but the outline of the figure could still be seen as belonging to a long, thin ghost.

It stood there quietly, seemingly gazing and keeping watch.

Obviously, this thing had no eyes, but Lin Qiushi was hardwired with the illusion of being observed.

He reached out and pulled Ruan Nanzhu's sleeve, gesturing for him to look outside the house, yet by the time Ruan Nanzhu turned his head, the thing had already disappeared.

"What?" Ruan Nanzhu asked Lin Qiushi.

Lin Qiushi typed: just now that thing was standing outside watching us.

Ruan Nam Candle: "Just now?"

Lin Qiushi nodded.

Ruan Nanzhu: "Oh, just look at it, this thing normally can't get into the house anyway." He spoke indifferently, as if this was nothing more than a trivial matter, "If he can really blend in, it's considered that he's capable."

Lin Qiushi looked at Ruan Nanzhu and didn't say anything.

The others were not as calm as Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nan Candle, they looked out the window, and in most of their eyes, there was a strong fear.

No one knew when exactly they would be able to leave this horrible hell.