"Will the child still go crazy?" Xia Qiao asked fearfully.

"It'll be fine after tonight." Wen Shi said.

"Oh." Xia Qiao breathed a sigh of relief.

Xie Wen added: "Waiting until tomorrow to stimulate him will be another crazy method."

Xia Qiao: "..."

He gave the frame a slap when he heard it.

The cotton hand was tired of beating people, so Xie Wen smiled instead of getting annoyed and said, "Are some people a little too fierce?"

Some people pretended to be dead and remained silent.

The utility room has no windows, so staying in it for a while will confuse time.

Xia Qiao was so frightened that he didn't dare to close his eyes. When he heard it, he leaned against the cupboard and said, "I'll take a nap."

In order to prevent the annoying Xie Wen from falling into pieces, he reluctantly found a safe position, closed his eyes, patted the frame and said, "Be honest."

Xie Wen happily agreed, and after a while he suddenly said: "Your stomach is growling, are you hungry?"

The doll said coldly: "Shut up."

Xie Wen smiled and said, "Okay."

Then it gets really quiet.

I don't know how long it took, but it finally dawned.

The utility room was still dark, but the footsteps outside told them that the grandfather and grandson had already gotten up.

When Wen Shi was thinking about the locked drawer downstairs, he wanted to go out and take a look. But he was afraid of running into new dangers, so he didn't take Xia Qiao with him and asked him to wait in the utility room.

Originally he didn't even want to take Xie Wen with him, but Xie Wen said, "I don't take up any space and can still serve as a sentry. Do you really not want to think about it?"

So Wenshi thought about it... and tucked the mirror into the deepest part of the cabinet.

Xie asked: "..."

"Who told you to break easily? If you were a doll, I would have taken you with me." Wen Shi said calmly, opened the door and slipped out.

He is more accustomed to doing these things alone and has less worries.

Although the cages are all imaginary, there have been quite a few cases where judges were unable to remove the evil spirits and instead took their lives in them.

He didn't want to risk the lives of Xia Qiao and Xie Wen.

***

This house still has old-fashioned windows, and the lighting is average. It is always cloudy outside, and the house is dark.

When I heard this, I hid in a corner and saw the old man slowly going upstairs.

The chandelier that was knocked down last night is missing, and there is a dark hole in the ceiling.

The corridor on the second floor was littered with doll limbs, the torn-off head rolled to the floor, and cotton wool spilled from the neck.

The glass-bead-like eyes were pulled out and rolled all over the floor. Some of them were wide open and stared at the roof without blinking.

The old man took out a black garbage bag from his pocket, shook it open, and picked up the heads, limbs without saying a word.

The little boy stood in the shadow of the backlight, looking at him motionless.

After a while, he said quietly: "I'm sorry."

The old man said nothing.

He repeated: "I'm sorry."

"Grandpa, I'm sorry."

The old man sighed softly, straightened up with difficulty, and asked him: "Aren't these your favorite dolls? Why are they broken again?"

The little boy's voice remained calm: "Because I'm afraid."

When hearing: "..."

What do you say again?

If Xia Qiao heard these words, he would collapse on the spot.

I thought when I heard it.

The little boy was still explaining: "They always look at me and I'm scared."

"So you took off their eyes again?" the old man asked.

"Um."

When I heard it, I remembered the missing eyes of the Chinese dolls in the cupboard, and understood the old man's word "again". I'm afraid the little boy had done this kind of thing several times.

The old man sighed, his voice light and airy, which made the house even more gloomy.

The little boy suddenly said: "They are alive."

The old man looked at him.

Little boy: "They will all live."

Old man: "No. Do you remember what I taught you before? As long as you wear that thread on your chest, you won't live."

The little boy picked up the doll's stumps on the ground and said scary words seriously: "I remember, so I tore them all off. These have buttons and corsages on their chests, but some of them don't."

The old man didn't know how to make him understand, so he had to say: "This kind of doll is different."

The little boy asked: "What's different?"

The old man shook his head, cut off the remaining limbs, put them in a garbage bag and tied their mouths. Then he asked: "Why do you always think the doll will live?"

The little boy stopped talking.

The old man softened his tone again, as if he was joking to coax him: "Even if you are really alive, it would be nice to have a child to play with."

"Not good." The little boy immediately shook his head.

"Why?" the old man asked.

"Then you won't want me."

"No, how could it be possible?" The old man was stunned for a long time, and then he said slowly: "Grandpa will not let you go."

I frowned slightly when I heard it.

But he didn't delay here much. While the old man was sweeping the cotton wool on the floor, he used the garbage bag to sneak downstairs.

"You're finally down." Xie Wen's voice suddenly rang in his ears, and he was startled when he heard it.

Only then did he remember that there was a full-length mirror at the door of the old man's bedroom. Xie Wen could go back and forth between the mirrors freely.

"Is it fun up there?" The blurry figure in the mirror glanced upstairs, "I thought you were going to come down hand in hand with the old man and the young man."

"Get lost." Wen Shi said.

If this were the case in the past, he wouldn't even bother to explain. But maybe Xie Wen's joking tone was too obvious. He raised his feet and added: "Let me hear what happened. If you want to get into the cage by yourself, you have to do the same."

.”

Unexpectedly, Xie Wen said "Huh" and said, "I really don't listen well."

He paused for a moment and then said softly: "But I haven't been in the cage many times at my level. It's just a casual comment. If you listen too much, you will inevitably become soft-hearted, so it's better not to ask."

Listen to the tone of this elder teaching the younger generation.

Wen Shi looked at him expressionlessly and said, "Oh."

Xie Wen was amused by his tone: "What's wrong?"

When I heard it: "Those who don't know think you are beyond the realm of mortals."

The doll put on a cold face, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door behind her back.

The tall figure in the mirror leaned against the frame for a while, chuckled and whispered, "It's a big treason."

***

The old man's bedroom was almost the same as last night, except that there was a mirror missing on the bedside table. Logically speaking, this change would arouse the cage owner's vigilance, but judging from the old man's appearance just now, he didn't seem to be aggressive at all.

Perhaps he was distracted by the mess on the second floor and temporarily ignored the mirror.

There is still a lock on the desk drawer, and the traces of being pried last night have disappeared, indicating that the cage owner has a strong desire to protect this place.

When you smell it, try to find a thread and put it into the keyhole.

The cotton thread seemed to be alive, and it made a soft clicking sound when it was pounded in the keyhole.

He waited with bated breath for a while, and suddenly felt something lying on the window frame in his peripheral vision, staring at this side.

He looked up and saw that the window frame was empty and there was nothing there.

He lowered his eyes again when he heard it.

The doll's eyelashes were of unusual length and somewhat obscured his vision, so that when he blinked, he felt as if a shadow had flashed past.
To be continued...