Kaleidoscope of Death

In a flash of lightning, Lin Qiushi's body jumped on it before his brain could react. Although the wick was extinguished, the oil lamp fell to the ground with a crisp sound, and the oil dripped on the floor.

Lin Qiushi kneeled halfway beside the window, and suddenly had a very bad feeling--there was a rustling sound of fingers fondling the window paper above his head, and this rustling sound was incessant.

Through the weak moonlight, he saw countless pairs of children's hands patting and gouging on the window paper. The next moment, there was a cracking sound from the window, and Lin Qiushi clearly saw a pair of white-white hands belonging to a child, piercing through the thin layer of window paper and sticking out from outside.

As if it was a signal, those tiny hands started to try to make a hole in the window paper, and behind the hole, there was a pale child's face revealed, and the child opened its bloody mouth and cried out miserably.

Its eyes were black slits, its pupils invisible at all, its skin white and soaked and swollen, not what a human should look like.

It stretched out its arms and tried to crawl into the house through the hole where the window paper had broken, seeing that half of its body had already been squeezed in from the outside, and was about to enter the house completely.

Lin Qiushi involuntarily retreated a few steps, but the little child's cry reminded him of something, and he quickly recalled the words in the clue, and quickly recited: "In fear of heaven, in fear of earth, there is a crying boy in my house.

Lin Qiushi quickly recited the second and third times, and when he finished the third time, the brat that was about to crawl in finally stopped moving and froze motionless on the other side of the window paper, as if he was asleep.

Lin Qiushi's heart was relieved. When he had seen the small town's people reciting this phrase during the rituals by the river before, it was to act as a protection that he had dared to read out the clue, but he hadn't expected it to be so useful.

The little ghost's body was stuck on the window, no longer entering inside for a single minute.

Yet Lin Qiushi didn't dare to move, in fact he could still see the tall black silhouette of the woman outside the house through the windowpane.

She was walking around outside the window, fidgeting and waiting for something.

However until she fell into an extreme rage when she noticed that the brat stuck on the window no longer seemed to be moving, Lin Qiushi saw her reach out and drag the brat's body back a little bit, then the white face appeared behind the window, peeking angrily towards the room, and even cursing in a low voice.

Lin Qiushi half squatted under the window, not daring to move.

This was just the dead end of a window, and he definitely couldn't be seen from the woman's angle. The woman's black eyes turned around in the room, and after not finding what she wanted, her mouth erupted in a series of angry low roars, like an enraged beast.

Lin Qiushi pretended he hadn't seen or heard anything.

For a long time they were in a standoff, but the woman didn't leave, and neither did Lin Qiushi.

The woman seemed certain that someone in the house had woken up, and stood by the window for a long time without moving, until a clear rooster crowed in the courtyard, and then Lin Qiushi heard the sound of footsteps coming from outside. Only the footsteps were accompanied by the sound of a sharp instrument dragging along the ground - Lin Qiushi thought of the long knife he had seen the woman use to chop up the corpse in the courtyard yesterday, and he suspected that the woman was carrying it in her hand.

There was no doubt that if he hadn't reacted quickly enough, the person might have been gone by now.

Lin Qiushi looked towards Gu Longming who was sleeping soundly on the bed, and couldn't help but respect him to some extent, but also confirmed his thoughts at the same time.

The place where Gu Longming was sleeping, the woman could be seen from outside, if she could do something to Gu Longming who was lying on the bed, probably Gu Longming would have been cold long ago.

In other words, the conditions for a woman to kill someone had to be at least two, one was that someone was awake, and the other was that she saw that awake person.

Lin Qiushi had been sitting beside him all night, and now his legs were a little numb, so he staggered to his feet, rubbed his numb thighs with his hands, returned to the bed, and saw the pale morning light there through the broken windowpane.

It was almost dawn, but Lin Qiushi hadn't slept a wink all night, so he lay back on the bed and took a short nap before he felt the movement of Gu Longming getting up.

"Fuck, fuck." Gu Longming, who woke up from his dream, saw the broken window paper on his side at a glance, and uttered a few screams, he quickly shook Lin Qiushi up and said, "Lin Lin, Lin Lin, the window paper is broken! The windowpane is broken!!!"

Lin Qiushi opened his eyes, a little helpless in them, "I know."

Gu Longming was surprised: "You know?"

"Well." Lin Qiushi said, "Last night, both the kid and the woman came."

Gu Longming: "......." he looked at Lin Qiushi with dull eyes on top of his messy chicken head, his newly woken brain still unable to fully process the information Lin Qiushi had said.

Lin Qiushi then leaned against the side of the bed and briefly told Gu Longming what had happened last night.

Gu Longming's expression was very complicated after hearing it, and he held it out for half a day to say, "Bull ah you." Then afterwards, "Then wouldn't she have just stared at me outside the window all night?" Gu Longming shuddered at the thought of that pale face staring gloomily at him through the windowpane for the entire night.

"Right." Lin Qiushi said, "Just stare at it, you have nothing to lose."

Gu Longming said, "Don't say that, after all, I'm a poor high school girl who didn't turn eighteen."

Lin Qiushi: ".......A muscular high school girl of over one meter can be okay.

Gu Longming and Lin Qiushi took the time to wake up and discuss what happened last night. Lin Qiushi incidentally told Gu Longming about the operation where the clue could put the kid to sleep as well.

Gu Longming tsked after hearing it and said, "You're too bold, what should you do if this clue reads out to be fatal?"

Lin Qiushi: "Dare to assume, be careful to seek proof well. If this sentence is a curse, then the people inside the small town definitely won't read it, and since they all dared to read it, and it's fine if they did, then it shouldn't be a negative effect."

Gu Longming knew it was like that, but those who could react and read it out before the accident, he felt that it was definitely rare, and then looking at Lin Qiushi's calm face after what he went through last night, he couldn't help but admire him: "Worthy of being an Obsidian, bull."

Lin Qiushi: "...It's okay." He was actually shocked at first, though he quickly calmed down later.

"By the way, who do you think replaced the oil lamp in our room?" Lin Qiushi suddenly asked.

"I don't know." Gu Longming said, "I think there are two objects of suspicion, either the mistress or someone from our team."

Lin Qiushi pointed to the ground, "The oil lamp you stole out yesterday was knocked down by me without a heartbeat."

Gu Longming waved his hand, "It's fine, let's go to the other room and see if there are any other oil lamps."

They went out the door after a simple wash and went to look around the unoccupied rooms first. But to their comparative surprise, most of the oil lamps in these rooms had actually been replaced, and the original oil lamps boiled with human oil were actually all gone.

"Where are the lamps?" Gu Longming said, "Did someone take all the lights?" He analyzed, "Could it be that Yan Shihe did it? The only ones I saw retaining the human oil lamps seemed to be him and us and the other team."

Lin Qiushi: "He shouldn't do that."

Gu Longming: "Why?"

Lin Qiushi: "The conditions of death are still not completely certain, if human oil oil lamp is a condition of death, wouldn't he die faster if he took them all away, unless... he's already got more clues about the oil lamp."

Gu Longming said, "More clues about the oil lamp?" In the meantime, he was a bit puzzled by this speculation.

Lin Qiushi shook his head and didn't say any more, he had many thoughts inside, but they lacked actual evidence to support them, so he didn't bother to say anything to add to Gu Longming's troubles.

Gu Longming was also a smart man, seeing that Lin Qiushi didn't say anything, he didn't ask a hard question, he just sighed, "Then what do we do next."

Lin Qiushi said, "Let's go have breakfast first and see if the team is missing anyone." To make sure if there was an accident for those who didn't use oil lamps yesterday.

At the mention of food, Gu Longming's spirits were much better and he said happily, "Yes, yes."

A few minutes later, they showed up for breakfast.

Breakfast time was important, almost everyone would come because it was the first time of the day when they could be sure if there were any dead people last night. Lin Qiushi began to look around to count the number of people as soon as he reached the house, Yan Shihe was right next to Lin Qiushi, and he seemed to be smiling after seeing Lin Qiushi's eyes, "No need to count, seven people, no one is missing, why did you guys come so late today, I thought..."

Lin Qiushi looked at him, "And you thought we were dead?"

Yan Shihe spread his hands and admitted, "After all, this is a world where anyone can die."

Lin Qiushi didn't answer.

There were a total of nine people in the house plus him and Gu Longming, excluding the three who died a few days ago, which meant that no one had an accident last night.

Lin Qiushi found a place to sit down and grabbed something to eat while thinking. Was it because the accident that happened in their house last night had attracted the attention of the ghosts and spirits, resulting in no attrition? While he was thinking this, a man sitting in the corner of the house suddenly stood up and started vomiting non-stop.

They weren't familiar with this man, they didn't even know his name, but Lin Qiushi vaguely remembered that he teamed up with the unlucky man who had been pulled into the water the first day he went to see the river festival.

"Vomit, vomit..." the loud vomiting sound made the others around him look disgusted.

"Big brother, are you alright." Gu Longming put down the food in the middle of the week and stood up to go over to ask, but Lin Qiushi grabbed his arm.

"What?" Gu Longming revealed a puzzled look.

Lin Qiushi: "Don't go over there, something's wrong."

Gu Longming: "What's wrong?"

Lin Qiushi: "I don't know... there's something about this person..." in fact while the person was vomiting, he heard a very subtle sound coming from the person's body Out. There was something about the sound like something tearing and chewing, and although it was subtle, it was still caught by Lin Qiushi's ears, and he was able to be very sure that the source of the sound was the man in front of him, even though he wasn't eating anything. And looking at the reactions of the others, it was clear that they hadn't heard the sound.

Not long after Lin Qiushi had stopped Gu Longming, the man in front of him who had vomited up his breakfast began to vomit blood, large mouthfuls of blood mixed with broken internal organs vomiting out of his mouth.

Most of the crowd's faces changed, clearly shocked by the scene.

"Ah!!! Ahhh!!! Help, help!!!" The man then began to roll over on the ground, he seemed to be going through some extreme pain, covering his abdomen with his hands and screaming incessantly.

This scream only lasted a moment before it stopped, and the man's breath grew faint, eventually laying on the ground never to move again, and just snapped.

The silence in the crowd was awful.

Some people couldn't stand this scene and turned around to leave the house, but Lin Qiushi stood still, standing next to him with an expression that was somewhat similar to his was Yan Shihe who had exchanged clues with Lin Qiushi and the others yesterday.

"He's... dead?" Gu Longming, "How did it suddenly..."

In the meantime, Lin Qiushi didn't say anything, his gaze fell on the man's abdomen, and in fact that chewing sound continued to come from the man's abdomen, even though the man was out of breath.

While Lin Qiushi was puzzled, he saw that the man's abdomen began to squirm abnormally, as if something was struggling to come out of it.

This scene was so obvious that everyone present saw it.

Gu Longming laughed dryly, "This, this isn't going to give birth, is it?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he saw the skin of the deceased's abdomen being stretched out in the shape of a palm, and judging from the size of the palm, it clearly belonged to a child.

When Gu Long saw this change, he didn't dare to continue joking, instead he fell silent with Lin Qiushi.

The sound of chewing gradually stopped, replaced by a sound of flesh tearing, and Lin Qiushi saw the skin of the deceased's abdomen begin to bulge, and finally, as if something had been forced through it, revealing a red inner cavity.

A pair of small hands stained with blood stretched out from inside, then the owner of those small hands began to try to crawl out of it.

It was a small baby, covered in blood, but with a large head, and inside the open mouth were fine teeth, and now there were threads of broken flesh hanging from the top of the fine teeth.

After seeing such a thing, everyone involuntarily backed away, Gu Longming said, "Fuck, it's really born."

Not long after the baby crawled out of the deceased's abdomen, it just turned into a puddle of blood and disappeared before their eyes. Only the hideous corpse was telling the crowd that what had just happened wasn't an illusion, that someone else had died, and it was so horribly dead right in front of their eyes.

Just as everyone fell silent, Mistress appeared outside the house, she slowly walked up to the corpse, then bent down and grabbed the corpse's wrist, so she lifted the whole corpse like a cargo. The Mistress gave a strange smile to everyone before grabbing the corpse and slowly leaving.

Everyone remained silent as they watched her back, while Lin Qiushi thought of the scene yesterday when she was boiling the corpse oil.

Yan Shihe came in a nonchalant manner, "Oh, it seems that the oil lamp we talked about yesterday wasn't a death condition ah."

This statement woke up the dumbfounded crowd, and two people in the crowd showed signs of celebration, apparently the two who hadn't thrown away the oil lamp, while the rest of them got up and left, leaving in a panic, presumably to retrieve the oil lamp of the person who had thrown it away yesterday.

Lin Qiushi had thought that these people would be able to retrieve at least one or two lamps, who knew that a moment later, all the people who returned to the house were pale, while some started to rage like they couldn't control their emotions, Lin Qiushi listened carefully and realized that all the oil lamps they had thrown away had actually been collected and destroyed.

"Shit, someone wants us dead, someone wants us dead here-" someone was cursing furiously, "Don't let me find out who that person is!"

"It's too much, it's too much." Someone was crying helplessly, "What should we do."

Seeing this scene, Yan Shihe seemed to have no interest in what happened next, he stood up from his chair and politely took his leave of the crowd.

Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming looked at each other and also got up to leave.

The two of them went to a slightly secluded corner and began discussing what to do next.

"Let's go steal another lamp." Gu Longming said, "It seems like that's all we can do."

Lin Qiushi sighed, "It's all my fault, if I had been more careful last night, I wouldn't have knocked the lamp over."

Gu Longming shook his head, "I do think you're pretty good."

Lin Qiushi: "Eh?"

Gu Longming said, "To be honest, I rarely fall asleep...inside the world inside the door."

Gu Longming was a little embarrassed and embarrassed, "It wasn't until I entered this door with you and stayed in the same room that my quality of sleep improved, and I don't know what happened, but I slept old and ripe when I slept with you anyway."

Lin Qiushi: "..." he fell into a long, long silence after hearing Gu Longming's words, he felt as if he had misunderstood something from beginning to end, if what Gu Longming said was true, then Ruan Nanzhu wasn't a sleeping pill essence at all! ........

After Gu Longming was all a bit overwhelmed by Lin Qiushi's silence, Lin Qiushi let out a long sigh, "I thought your sleep quality was consistently like this."

"Hahaha." Gu Longming laughed dryly, "Although I know it's safer to fall asleep at night, my heart isn't that big. And if you really sleep at night, you'll miss some important clues instead."

Speaking of clues, Lin Qiushi remembered what happened last night, he said, "You can't sleep until dawn, that is, if there is a crying child in the night, the lamp will light up to attract the woman." He chanted, "But it seems that she can't come into the house, so she has to let the kid in, but the kid is afraid of that spell..." or even if she hears the spell, she will just fall asleep.

There are two conditions for death at present: first, if you don't use the oil lamp, you'll die whether you wake up or not. Secondly, if you use the oil lamp but don't fall asleep, there is still a chance of survival, just repeat three incantations when the kid enters the room....

"Don't you think it's a little weird that women and brats are related?" Lin Qiushi said, "If human oil lamps are a restriction for the Kid, then why did she boil so many people's oil lamps?"

Gu Longming thought it made sense, "Yeah, and she didn't provide us with that many people to oil lamps, instead it was like..."

They both uttered the same phrase: "They're using it themselves."

After thinking about this, Lin Qiushi suddenly realized, "Do you remember the shrine?"

Gu Longming nodded, "What's wrong?"

Lin Qiushi said, "I felt something wasn't quite right about the ancestral hall when I went in before, but now I've finally figured it out!"

Gu Longming said, "What's wrong?"

Lin Qiushi said, "If you think about it carefully, would you think that the shrine is too brightly lit?"

Even though there was only one door and not a single window open, entering the shrine on a cloudy day felt as if it were daylight.

Gu Longming said, "I haven't felt it if you don't mention it... I'm used to modern lighting facilities, and I really haven't noticed anything wrong with the oil lamps."

Lin Qiushi: "So..."

Gu Longming: "So?"

Lin Qiushi smiled, "What do you think would happen if we extinguished all the oil lamps inside the shrine..."

Gu Longming was shocked to hear such a proposal from Lin Qiushi: "Are you serious? No!" If Lin Qiushi's guess was correct, then it meant that the human oil lamp had a suppressing effect, and when such a lamp went out, all the suppressing things would probably come out, and who knows what would happen then.

"Don't be so nervous." Lin Qiushi said in a warm voice, "I'm just kidding."

Gu Longming: "...you're actually the one joking now right?

"I'm really just kidding la." Lin Qiushi saw that Gu Longming's expression was still taut and laughed, "Really, don't worry, I'm not the kind of person who doesn't have a sense of proportion."

Gu Longming looked suspicious.

Lin Qiushi, on the other hand, jumped right into the conversation and spoke, "When are we going to steal the lamp?"

Gu Longming was relieved, "Whatever, why don't we go over there first?"

Lin Qiushi said, "Yes."

He saw Gu Longming's expression slacken and somehow felt that he had some bad taste, but come to think of it, Ruan Nanzhu usually seemed to be teasing him like this....