Chapter 3
*
Twelve o'clock midnight.
Everything is quiet in the dead of night, and the slightest sound will be amplified infinitely.
Holding the knife, Zhou Yuli gently opened the door a crack. In the big wardrobe in Zhou Yuli's room, Pei Zhao, with shiny hair and a dark face, was sitting cross-legged inside, typing.
Why was it Zhou Yuli who took action?
The reason is simple.
"First, my arm is made of wood, he can't bite it." Zhou Yuli said calmly, "Second, this is my family affair."
"You're about to become my puppet!" Pei Zhao was unconvinced.
"Third, the thing on your head is too eye-catching." Zhou Yuli raised his eyes and glanced.
So Pei Zhao could only sit in the closet and wait for the result. He didn't know how to return to the original world after the operation. After thinking for a while, Pei Zhao whispered to the air: "Xiao Rui——"
How can we help you? 】
Pei Zhao: "After being completely puppeted, how can I return to my original world?"
【Don't worry, it will automatically go back when the target is completely turned into an object. 】
Pei Zhao: "Then I..."
"ah!"
"What are you doing!"
Two sharp cries pierced the darkness, interrupting Pei Zhao's continued questioning.
Pei Zhao's heart tightened. He heard a burst of chaotic footsteps and a child crying outside. He thought it was over. Zhou Yuli must have failed.
Pei Zhao pulled the inward-facing knob of the wardrobe door tightly, and Zhou Yuli told him that he must not come out.
Pei Zhao didn't know what was the point of worrying here. He could just rush over regardless of the consequences, but that would make a lot of noise, and what if it ruined Zhou Yuli's plan...
The crying sound became weaker and weaker, and gradually, it was not even as loud as the sound of Pei Zhao's heartbeat.
Pei Zhao breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time he felt very regretful. He should have insisted on going together, 2v3. Even if the emergency operation failed, he could still suppress it by force.
Was the action successful? Is that knife any good? How is Zhou Yuli? Will his parents make things difficult for him? If he fails this time, is there still a chance to save his family?
I don’t know why, but I care so much about someone I’ve only met once.
Maybe it’s because... he saw his past self in Zhou Yuli.
There were three violent knocks on the cabinet door.
"It's me!"
Pei Zhao was delighted, Zhou Yuli!
Before the cabinet door was opened, Pei Zhao asked hurriedly, "What happened?"
Zhou Yuli put down the latch on the door, opened the door, and without saying a word, he grabbed Pei Zhao's hand and ran towards the door.
"The throat was bleeding a lot. It seemed to be very deep. My parents called an ambulance."
When Pei Zhao was being dragged away, he noticed that Zhou Yuli was covered in blood, and he looked even thinner, with wood grain all over his face...
They ran very fast, full of blood, against the night wind, and finally climbed onto the roof.
The sound of an ambulance could be heard downstairs. Pei Zhao and Zhou Yuli were leaning against the wall, gasping for breath.
"Do you think he will die?" Pei Zhao asked.
"Maybe. He's been screaming for so long and has lost too much blood." Zhou Yuli looked up at the sky. His body made the sound of a tree sprouting. The speed of his transformation was getting faster and faster, and the wood grain covered almost his entire face.
It became difficult to move the muscles, but Zhou Yuli still spoke with difficulty, "It's too late, I cut very deep..."
In the evening breeze, Zhou Yuli's voice and the sound of the ambulance sirens in the distance became weaker and weaker.
Pei Zhao turned his head and saw a small and exquisite puppet lying quietly on the ground.
He was tall, with slightly curled hair, fair skin, a stern and mature face, and his clothes were stained with fresh blood.
[Congratulations to the host for achieving the achievement: first complete puppetization, obtained puppet: Zhou Yuli. 】
Xiao Rui's voice sounded in the air, and Pei Zhao clearly felt the changes taking place in his body.
It seemed as if there were countless invisible strings connecting him and the puppet.
The white light that flashed before my eyes, the parapets, and the starry sky gradually disappeared.
Pei Zhao suddenly hugged Zhou Yuli's puppet in his arms.
"Don't be afraid." Pei Zhao hugged him tightly, "Don't worry, I will always love you."
*
"Pei Shen is awake!"
Pei Zhao suddenly opened his eyes.
The first thing I saw was a familiar office. In front of it was a row of red banners with five big characters on them: "New Student Registration Office"
Pei Zhao then remembered where this sense of familiarity came from.
He had just reported to the registration office and was about to cross the street to meet his roommate Zhou Ran when a white light flashed and he entered a different world.
Speaking of another world...
Pei Zhao grabbed the clothes of the chubby boy next to him and said, "Zhou Ran, where is my puppet?"
The boy was his roommate and childhood friend who had been waiting for him across the street. He was looking at him in confusion, "What puppet? Master Pei, you just fainted. Are you feeling well?"
Pei Zhao was anxious, "It's just a human-shaped puppet, kind of handsome, and quite white!"
He had just promised Zhou Yuli that it would always love him, and the system didn't tell him that when he returned to the original world, the puppet was gone!
Pei Zhao was extremely anxious, walking back and forth, searching. Zhou Ran didn't dare to speak and stood aside, saying carefully, "God Pei, are you really okay? You just fainted suddenly, and scared me to death."
"Hello, this is takeout from the reporting office!" Just then someone knocked on the door, "Zhou Yuli... Is there anyone here named Zhou Yuli?"
Zhou Yuli?
Pei Zhao paused and said, "Yes, it's me!"
Zhou Ran said: "When did you change your name...
The takeaway was in an exquisitely packaged box, with only four big words on the store information: Perfect World.
Pei Zhao held her in his arms, and the panic in his heart disappeared instantly, and he felt relieved.
"Zhou Ran, do me a favor." Pei Zhao took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Zhou Ran, who was standing aside without daring to breathe.
Zhou Ran read the contents on the paper clearly: Law School of Hua University, Zhou Yuli.
"Brother, did you tear up someone else's admission letter? You wouldn't..."
Pei Zhao interrupted him, "Help me check if there is this person among the freshmen."
*
"Brother, we found him. He is a freshman in the law department. But he didn't report today. I asked someone to check it out. I heard that during the summer vacation, his younger brother, who was 15 years younger than him, stabbed him and his parents while playing with a fruit knife. His parents lost too much blood and died on the spot. Zhou Yuli was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment, but later disappeared."
In the dormitory, Pei Zhao received a message from Zhou Ran.
Similar but different story developments, a younger brother who is fifteen years younger, and a similar family background.
There really is such a person in reality.
So that perfect world... is it a parallel world to the real world?
He brought back Zhou Yuli from the other world, but what about Zhou Yuli from the real world?
Zhou Ran said he was missing, where did he go?
"Xiaorui?"
Pei Zhao straightened up and shouted twice into the air, wanting to ask the system if it knew the whereabouts of Zhou Yuli in reality, but after staring for a long time he still received no response.
"It's useless when we return to the real world..." Pei Zhao lay back on the bed, turned over, and Zhou Yuli's puppet was placed next to his pillow.
The clothes had been washed and put on again, and Pei Zhao even wiped his body with warm water.
Such a fair body, the person must be very clean. Pei Zhao thought that even if he became a puppet, Zhou Yuli would definitely want to be clean.
Pei Zhao poked the delicate puppet and muttered, "It seems I can only ask next time."
Pei Zhao held the puppet in his arms. He was so exhausted from the night that he soon fell into a deep sleep.
Steady breathing hit Zhou Yuli's face, and no one noticed that the surface, which was originally covered with wood texture, actually faintly revealed the texture of skin.
*
A dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, Zhou Ran had already returned to the dormitory. He was rustling around and I didn't know what he was busy with.
As Huazhong University of Science and Technology has reduced its enrollment this year, the dormitories assigned to freshmen are four-person rooms with a bed underneath a desk. Students are arranged into dormitories according to their majors and provinces.
Only Pei Zhao and Zhou Ran were admitted to the Department of Psychology from the entire province, so the two of them each occupied half of the huge four-person room.
Pei Zhao supported himself on the bed with one hand, looked down with hazy eyes, and saw Zhou Ran bending over the computer and typing on the keyboard.
"What are you doing?"
The chair scraped against the ground with a sharp and piercing sound. Zhou Ran stood up in horror, his face full of fear as if he had survived a disaster.
Pei Zhao rubbed his eyes and picked up the puppet beside him.
"Huh? Why is it wet?"
There was a puddle of white water stain on the puppet's clothes. Pei Zhao leaned close to it and smelled it, and there was a faint scent of milk.
…is there any dairy in the bed?
Pei Zhao was confused as to how he got there.
"Master Pei, I think I saw the person you asked me to check at school." Pei Zhao was suspicious, but when he heard Zhou Ran say this, it immediately attracted his attention. He walked down the stairs with the puppet in his arms, picked up a paper towel from the paper bag on the table, and wiped the milk stains while listening to Zhou Ran continue talking.
"You asked me to look up Zhou Yuli, and after that, all I could think of was his picture. Then, on the way back, by coincidence, I saw a giant figure that looked like him in the milk tea shop next to the school, but it was a little darker," Zhou Ran pointed at the paper bag on Pei Zhao's desk, "Oh, this is it! Master Pei, do you like to drink from this place too?"
Pei Zhao was stunned for a moment. He turned his gaze stiffly and it fell on the milk tea on the desk. A cup of milk tea is only nine points, with a faint milky aroma coming through the plastic lid.
Zhou Ran continued, "He didn't look well, he was staggering when he walked, and he seemed to have spilled his milk tea. I thought I was seeing things, but when I came back and looked it up, someone else on the confession wall saw it, too. I have to say, although he's a little dark, he's really tall and handsome, comparable to you, Pei Shen..."
Zhou Ran continued to speak, but Pei Zhao could not hear anything.
It was Zhou Yuli. It was Zhou Yuli who bought him the milk tea.
Is it the real Zhou Yuli, or the puppet Zhou Yuli?
The milk stains on the puppet's clothes proved the answer.
Zhou Ran talked for a long time and suddenly realized that the person in front of him didn't seem to be listening. Instead, he was staring at the puppet in his arms with a complicated expression. Following his gaze, Zhou Ran fell silent.
After a while, he muttered: "My eyesight may be bad today. Everyone I see looks like Zhou Yuli..."
The more he looked, the more he felt something was wrong, and suddenly he covered his mouth and screamed, "God Pei!"
Pei Zhao, who was immersed in speculation, subconsciously said "hmm".
Zhou Ran: "God Pei, do you feel that this puppet has grown bigger..."
…
*
Convinced that the puppet would really become a real person, Pei Zhao no longer dared to take Zhou Yuli to bed.
After placing an order for new bed curtains and a four-piece set and tidying up his own set of bedside tables, Pei Zhao carefully placed Zhou Yuli on the bed.
He and Zhou Ran did not use bed curtains. They had shared a dormitory since high school and had seen all kinds of people. He gave Zhou Yuli a bed curtain mainly because he was afraid that Zhou Ran would be scared when he saw the puppet lying alone on the bed. But even so, when Zhou Ran returned to the dormitory and saw the empty bed that was fully decorated, he was still scared.
"God Pei... Is there someone living in this bed?"
Zhou Ran trembled with fear as he looked at the neatly arranged bed.
Seeing that Pei Zhao not only bought four sets of clothes, but also desk lamps, school supplies, and even textbooks...
"Wait a minute, civil law, criminal law? Pei Shen, these are textbooks for the law department." Zhou Ran keenly grasped the key point, "It's over... When I talk about the law department, the only thing that comes to my mind is Zhou Yuli. He occupies my mind!"
Pei Zhao glanced at him and thought silently: Well, you guessed right, this is prepared for Zhou Yuli.
But he didn't say anything on the surface.
He didn't know whether the puppet Zhou Yuli would turn into the human Zhou Yuli.
Pei Zhao had a hope in his heart that Zhou Yuli in that world would eventually become a puppet because he was not loved. However, neither the system nor Zhou Yuli himself had ever said that this kind of love must come from parents.
What if it is love between people of the same age?
Classmates love, or...
Pei Zhao's eyes dropped and he looked at the puppet Zhou Yuli quietly.
When he was in high school, he heard the female classmates who were keen on B-sports often say that being loved would make you grow flesh and blood like crazy.
Then, will these puppets he brought back, which had willingly become puppets and "died" in the other world because they were not loved, start to grow new flesh and blood crazily because they are loved again?
The answer seems to be contained in the sweet milky aroma in the air.
…is also contained in the dark shadow that suddenly climbed onto the bed in the middle of the night.
After taking a nap during the day, Pei Zhao tossed and turned for a long time at night and couldn't fall asleep. He took out his mobile phone to check the time. The light on the screen flickered, illuminating a pale face beside the bed.
"Zhou Yuli!" Pei Zhao exclaimed.
At just one glance, Pei Zhao recognized that the person who climbed onto the bed looked very similar to the puppet Zhou Yuli.
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