Chapter 74#

The People in the Story (Part 11)#

The second brother snorted coldly, his expression grim as he looked at Xia Wenshi, clearly not taking his plea for mercy seriously.

The buzzing sound of the chainsaw was like a death knell. Xia Wenshi saw him approaching and stammered, unable to form a complete sentence: “Bro-bro-brother, let’s talk nicely.”

The second brother said strangely, “Who’s your brother? Chopping you up to fill the well would be perfect. Human flesh is the best material for storing water.”

“…………”

Chopped up to fill the well???

After hearing his words, Xia Wenshi’s eyes rolled back, and he fainted directly from fright.

On the other side, the eldest brother panted heavily, his eyes full of hatred. He raised the wooden stick in his hand and viciously brought it down on Xie Wenci, beating him indiscriminately.

“It’s you guys who bullied my third brother, right!”

The wooden stick was covered in barbs. Soon, Xie Wenci was bruised and swollen, only able to scream and flee.

“Not me, not me…” Xie Wenci ran towards Chen Can, so the wooden stick also swept towards Chen Can, hitting him on the bridge of his nose. Instantly, blood flowed continuously.

“Stay away from me, away!” Chen Can also let out a shrill and pathetic scream.

Listening to their screams, the feigning-unconscious Xia Wenshi was terrified, his body trembling.

Drip.

Cold blood from the wooden saw fell onto his eyelids. Xia Wenshi felt an itch but dared not touch it. His heart was filled with tears, regretting why he had courted such a disaster tonight.

At this moment, he suddenly heard a familiar female voice, anxiously saying, “Xia Wenshi, don’t lie there. Get up if you don’t want to die.”

Xia Wenshi’s eyelids twitched. He cautiously squinted his eyes. Su Wanluo was bending over, looking at him with a panicked expression.

“!” Xia Wenshi sprang up like a carp.

The second brother was knocked unconscious by a heavy object, and the people standing in the darkness were Ye Sheng and Ning Weichen. Ye Sheng expressionlessly threw away the large stone in his hand; Ning Weichen even had the presence of mind to give him an extremely beautiful smile.

Xia Wenshi: “You guys are really here.”

Su Wanluo nodded weakly and quickly said, “Mm, stop talking, let’s go.”

“Oh, oh, oh, okay.” Xia Wenshi’s eyes were teary. He was so scared by that madman that he ran out as if his butt was on fire.

In the dark room, the third brother heard the commotion, turned around, and saw Ye Sheng. He instantly shrieked like a chicken whose throat was squeezed, “Big brother, it’s him! It’s him!” The eldest brother turned back: “It’s you, kid, who bullied my third brother, right—you even knocked out my second brother again?!”

He saw the unconscious second brother on the ground and was so angry his head spun.

He kicked Xie Wenci and Chen Can aside and angrily raised the wooden stick to settle scores with Ye Sheng.

These three were the protagonists of the story, and in the world of rules, they simply couldn’t be provoked.

Ye Sheng didn’t want to waste time with this group of people and turned to leave.

“You brat, stop!”

The eldest brother, furious, rushed over with the wooden stick, his eyes splitting with rage.

“Don’t run!” The third brother hated him deeply and picked up a large stone as a weapon. Even the second brother, who had been knocked unconscious, was slowly regaining consciousness.

All the hatred of the three brothers was instantly transferred to Ye Sheng.

Ye Sheng twitched the corner of his mouth, quickly left the dark room, and left a message for Ning Weichen and the others: “Don’t follow me.”

Four stories, and now the puppet, the little bird, and the three brothers were all offended by him.

Ning Weichen listened to this, looked at him with a smile, his body motionless, and not a trace of a smile in his eyes.

Ye Sheng walked quickly. His goal was originally the owner of the garden, so he directly plunged into the coldest tunnel.

The biting cold wind along the way seemed to freeze his blood.

At the end of this icy, bloody world, Ye Sheng looked up, his pupils constricting—he saw an office. Abrupt, clean, ordinary, standing alone in the snow.

Like the heart of the world.

A nameplate above it neatly read “Su Jiande.”

—This was the supervisor’s office Su Wanluo was looking for.

Ye Sheng wanted to approach it, but suddenly a strong gust of wind appeared out of nowhere, carrying snow particles and a strong smell of blood, completely blocking him from the door. Where the strong wind raged, ice prisms shot up from the ground like bamboo shoots. A slight carelessness might result in being impaled by the ice prisms.

The office was not allowed to be approached.

Ye Sheng looked at the overwhelming ice and snow and strong wind on the ground, not daring to act rashly, choosing to retreat first. The three brothers chased relentlessly. The underground world of this well was intricate and complex. Ye Sheng turned his head and entered another passage. The light gradually faded, and his vision went pitch black. He walked blindly inside, and as he walked, his foot suddenly stepped into empty space.

“Ye Sheng, be careful!”

Ye Sheng didn’t expect there to be a pit here.

The pit was about one meter deep.

But fortunately, there was something like liquid in the pit, which helped cushion the impact, so he didn’t sprain his ankle when he fell. The surroundings were like a giant swamp, a strange smell came from the tip of his nose, and sand rubbed against his skin. Ye Sheng knew what it was.

This was… cement.

He fell into a cement pit.

And besides him, there were Xia Wenshi, Su Wanluo, and even Luo Xingyan.

“Xiao Ye, boohoohoo, why did you fall in too?” Xia Wenshi cried, “I was waiting for you to save us.”

Click. In the darkness, Luo Xingyan turned on his phone’s flashlight. Executive Luo’s face was gloomy, darker than cement. He never expected to be chased to this extent by a bird. What bad luck! He chewed the lollipop in his mouth, stick and all, and said, “Stop howling! If we stay here any longer, we’ll surely die!”

Xia Wenshi sniffled: “How do we get out? I can’t move in this swamp—damn, damn, damn? Xiao Luo? Why are you here too?”

Luo Xingyan didn’t want to answer the boss’s idiotic question. He moved through the cement, his nose twitching, his cat-like eyes growing colder and colder.

However, misfortunes never come singly. Just as they were trapped in the cement, a strange giggling sound came from above.

“Hehehe, I found you.”

Luo Xingyan shone the flashlight upwards, immediately illuminating a strange smiling puppet face. The puppet had chased them, dragging a huge axe in its hand, squatting by the cement pool, grinning widely.

“W-what is that thing?” Xia Wenshi’s scalp tingled the moment he saw the puppet.

Su Wanluo’s face was as pale and fragile as paper, her pupils staring blankly at this uninvited guest.

The puppet put down its axe and suddenly reached out. Its strength was surprisingly great, pulling Xia Wenshi directly out of the cement pool.

The puppet squatted down, and a strange smiling face stared at Xia Wenshi.

Xia Wenshi, with fear etched into his soul, was about to faint again.

In a flash, a stone flew over from a distance and hit the puppet. The puppet let out a scream, hurting so much that it let go. It clutched its head and said with a giggle, “It hurts, my head hurts.”

Xia Wenshi took the opportunity to fall back into the pool, his heart pounding, and tried to run, but his thin arms and legs couldn’t move in the cement. The puppet giggled, saying its head hurt, but the hatred in its eyes was turning into murderous madness. It moved quickly, like catching a fish, and pulled Xia Wenshi out of the cement again!

This time, the puppet pressed Xia Wenshi’s head firmly to the ground—and with its other hand, it picked up the axe from the ground and raised it high.

Luo Xingyan’s face was unusually grim. The missions he carried out were either A-grade or S-grade, usually without any miscellaneous people. This trip to the basement was truly unlucky.

Luo Xingyan swung a chain in his hand. Just as the puppet raised its axe to chop off Xia Wenshi’s head, the chain wrapped around its arm.

With a sharp tug, the puppet’s body mechanism loosened, and it instantly fell into pieces.

“…”

Xia Wenshi was truly scared unconscious this time, completely out cold.

Su Wanluo, who was closest to him, suppressed her fear and reached out to drag him over.

The people in the story are immortal.

A layer of white light appeared on the scattered wooden pieces on the ground. A strange force carried the wooden pieces into the air, reassembling the puppet. The puppet, alive again, seemed to have more flexible joints.

It still had a giggling expression, but after landing on the ground, its eyes were cold, and it immediately raised its axe to grab Ye Sheng.

Ye Sheng: “…” Why are you grabbing me and not Luo Xingyan?

Ye Sheng wanted to curse.

When the puppet reached out its arm, Ye Sheng took the initiative to grab its hand. The puppet froze, staring at him menacingly, trying to see fear in his face. However, Ye Sheng’s face was as cold as ice, as if he had never smiled.

The little puppet suddenly said strangely, “Smiling is a very important thing.”

Here we go again.

That same line again.

Smiling is a very important thing.

The puppet was not a Heresy; it was a product of the rules of this space. Ye Sheng’s Spirit Calling was useless against it.

He could escape from the puppet this time, but what about next time? Killing the puppet and trapping it again and again was useless. It would constantly revive and break free, becoming stronger and stronger.

“Yes, smiling is a very important thing…” Ye Sheng softly repeated the sentence after it.

The dark space intensified one’s senses. Ye Sheng looked into its pitch-black eyes, his almond eyes deep and cold, and replayed its fairy tale in his mind.

At the beginning of the story, the first friend the little puppet met was the fox trickster. The fox tricked it out of its backpack and then slandered it. People nearby came to watch the fun. Seeing the little puppet’s grinning face, no one believed it. The bear in a police uniform picked up the little puppet and threw it far away. The little puppet hit its head.

A rabbit came and asked, “What’s wrong with you?” The little puppet said, “My head hurts.” The little rabbit bared its teeth and made a pained expression: “Hehe, you’re not pretending at all. See, you should be like me.”

An old woman came over and asked, “Little wooden man, are you sick?” “My head hurts.” The little puppet still had a grinning expression. “How outrageous, even a little wooden man learns to lie!” The old woman left in disgust.

The little puppet’s headache grew worse and worse.

At the end of the story, a witch came over. The witch asked, “Little wooden puppet, your head hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, and it’s getting worse.”

The witch said, “That’s because you’re very sad, but you can’t cry.”

—[Childhood is a journey with no return.]

Ye Sheng looked at the puppet’s smiling face, covered in rust and mold. The upward curve was etched on its face from the moment it was born, becoming its expression for life.

In elementary school textbooks, there was always a question after the story: “What did we learn from this fairy tale?”

This was the Story King’s continuation, his interpretation of childhood.

Ye Sheng could not fight against the rules.

—But here, “story” far surpassed rules.

By the dark cement pool, the puppet stared at him menacingly and venomously, saying, “Anyone who can’t smile can’t live a happy life.”

Ye Sheng softly said, “Then are you happy now?”

The puppet made a strange grinding sound.

Ye Sheng said, “Did your head hurt when I hit it just now?”

The puppet’s laughter suddenly stopped. It stared at him intently, no longer speaking. The puppet raised an axe in one hand, intending to cleave Ye Sheng from top to bottom.

Ye Sheng said, “You are very sad, but you can’t cry.”

Ye Sheng raised his hand. He had tried to use Spirit Calling before, and his eyes were moist. He slowly wiped away the moisture, his cold, indifferent almond eyes looking at the puppet, his voice as light as falling snow.

“Smiling is a very important thing, but if you can only smile, that’s far from enough.”

Written for children, no fairy tale has an imperfect ending.

In the story, the witch gave the puppet all human emotions, making it able to cry, laugh, be angry, and be anxious.

In reality, Ye Sheng raised his arm and wiped his own tears from his fingertips onto the puppet’s black, mad, hateful eye sockets.

“Ye Sheng…” Su Wanluo stared blankly at the cold-faced boy with strange pupils.

But to everyone’s surprise.

The next second, with a clang, the puppet suddenly took a step back, and the axe in its hand fell.

“Ah, ugh…”

It clutched its head and suddenly squatted on the ground. Large drops of blood-red tears suddenly flowed from its eyes.

Those tears were like highly corrosive sulfuric acid, sizzling and burning deep tear marks on its face, and at the same time, corroding away the upward line at the corner of its mouth.

“My head hurts, my head hurts,” the puppet muttered to itself.

Tears dripped onto its body, creating one black hole after another.

The puppet’s body was being corroded by its own tears. A white glow tried to revive it, but its tears kept falling, life and death constantly alternating.

This scene was particularly terrifying. But Su Wanluo looked at the scene before her and suddenly became lost in thought for a long time. Smiling is a very important thing, but if you can only smile, that’s far from enough.

This sentence was too familiar. She must have heard it when she was very, very young. She might not have read this story or known this puppet. But during her growing up years, someone must have gently told her, “It’s okay to cry when you want to.”

Ye Sheng gently exhaled, retracting his slightly stiff fingers.

He had gambled correctly.

Luo Xingyan squinted at all this and suddenly spoke, “Do you recognize these things?”

“Mm.” Ye Sheng looked up and asked, “Do you have a lighter?”

Luo Xingyan: “Huh?”

Su Wanluo spoke at this moment: “Xia Wenshi has one.” She helped the unconscious Xia Wenshi and took a lighter from his pocket. Su Wanluo’s hair was covered in fine sweat, and her face was pale as she said, “When I helped him, I felt something here.”

“Good.” Ye Sheng moved forward in the cement, taking the lighter from Su Wanluo’s hand.

Luo Xingyan said, “What are you going to do?”

The puppet had been torn apart by Luo Xingyan’s chain earlier, and many wood chips and splinters were scattered on the ground. Ye Sheng casually picked one up and looked at it with downcast eyes—the wood chip was as thin as a matchstick.

Just then, the bird finally found its way over. The bird shrieked, its voice deafening. Its tail feathers were very long, and after several deaths and resurrections, its feathers were like armor and blades. The bird’s sharp claws descended from the sky, its blood-red eyes full of covetousness and malice.

“Die, humans!”

Luo Xingyan gritted his teeth, intending to get up from the cement and continue fighting with this unkillable bird.

Snap.

Just then, Ye Sheng opened the lighter in the cement swamp.

Flames burst forth.

Everyone froze, looking towards the sound.

Ye Sheng lit the match.

The orange-yellow firelight shone on the young man’s face.

The cave was eerily dim and yellow. His eyelashes hung quietly like a fan-shaped shadow, his skin pale, his lips colorless. He had an indifferent, detached, even somewhat fragile appearance. But when the young man raised his eyes, the distinct hostility and coldness within them fractured his demeanor, like a sword that kills with a single touch.

The moment the match ignited, the warm light not only illuminated Ye Sheng’s face but also the bird’s confused pupils.

Fairy tales always have a lesson to teach us.

The puppet’s experience was about grievance, about crying, telling us that life doesn’t just need laughter.

And “Last Year’s Tree” was about friendship, searching, about an unbreakable promise.

Finally, the little bird flew to the city to find the tree that had been made into matches.

A little girl sat by an oil lamp.

The girl said, “The matches are all used up, but the fire lit by the matches is still burning in this lamp.”

Story and reality merged at this instant. The firelight blazed, like a gentle old memory.

The bird’s face twisted, its movements convulsed. After a very long time, it retracted its feathers and quieted down. It stared at the lamp for a while, then opened its mouth and sang last year’s song above the swamp. It sang and sang, until its voice was broken and distorted, but it still didn’t stop.

“Shall we go now?” Su Wanluo asked, enduring the pain.

Ye Sheng casually threw the match in his hand onto the puppet.

Sizzle! The moment the flames roared! The entire underground world shook. Just as he was about to speak—

“First, let’s find…”

Suddenly, an angry shout came: “Who allowed you in!” The excessive commotion seemed to have awakened something, and the ground shook.

“Get out!”

The deafening sound came from above. Everyone looked up and instantly froze in place.

They were in a cement pool.

And above the cement was a huge mixer.

The mixer was shaped like a fan, its blades extremely sharp. With the world owner’s roar, the mixer started to move. It spun rapidly, so fast that one couldn’t see its shadow. At the same time, the blades slowly sank downwards. The heavy machine hanging overhead descended, and there was no doubt that the moment this large meat grinder hit the cement pool, it would shred all of them.