Chapter 245 Jinjiang (1)
When entering the third courtyard, Yan Shixun glanced around the courtyard.
Just as the old ticket seller said, everything displayed in the third courtyard is related to the Baizhihu shadow puppet image materials.
In the surrounding rooms, there were no shadow puppet figures or props except for some CDs and paper materials.
The room had not been lived in or taken care of for a long time. A thick layer of dust had accumulated and spider webs were hung everywhere, making it look dilapidated and desolate.
But at this moment, the paper pasted on every door and window became the curtain of the shadow show, and the sunset became the light source of the shadow show.
But the light source was clearly outside, and the shadow should have fallen inward, but at this moment it was reflected on the withered and fragile window paper.
In the blink of an eye, Yan Shixun and Zhang Wubing both felt as if they were not standing in the dead and deserted yard.
Instead, he sat in the audience of the shadow play.
In the originally empty yard, old-fashioned wooden tables and chairs appeared. In the gradually dimming light, the glossy mahogany paint reflected light, and pairs of feet landed on the intact bluestone bricks.
Yan Shixun's gaze slowly moved upwards.
On each long bench sat a villager with an unclear face.
They were wearing clothes of the past style, and their facial features seemed like melted paint, becoming muddy and indistinguishable.
But the laughter was still clearly audible.
The villagers crossed their legs, holding melon seeds in their hands, and waited excitedly for the shadow play to begin to the sound of gongs and drums.
Looking at each face, they were all hidden in the semi-darkness, as if evil ghosts had their mouths wide open, clapping and cheering for the wailing of the world, and could not wait to see the desperate cries of the living.
Zhang Wubing and Yan Shixun were sitting on the same bench, their eyes were dull and lifeless, as if their souls were not there. Sitting next to Yan Shixun was just an empty shell.
Yan Shixun soon discovered that something was wrong with Zhang Wubing.
However, he did not make any move and continued to sit there calmly, watching everything coldly.
Heaven and earth do not exist in the courtyard, and this space seems to be isolated.
Without the control of the Great Dao, all people, gods and ghosts will become confused. Even Yan Shixun cannot tell whether the villagers here are human or ghost, and whether this place is false or real.
If he was in a nightmare caused by evil spirits at this moment, then how could a normal person know whether his action of finding Zhang Wubing would be seen as pulling Zhang Wubing into the nightmare?
If this is true, then he was the one who harmed Zhang Wubing with his own hands.
——The trick of the evil spirit.
What I like most is watching people running towards what they think is hope, and then at the moment when they think they have finally escaped the crisis, all the truth is revealed. I like watching people be stunned and collapse, and cry for having harmed their relatives and friends with their own hands.
Yan Shixun raised his eyelashes and turned his gaze coldly to the stage in front of him.
He won't act rashly before he finds out the truth.
Who knows if this stage...will perform a play related to him?
Yan Shixun sat comfortably on the bench, his black trousers outlining his straight and slender legs smoothly. A black long coat was draped over his shoulders, and a corner of it slid down from the bench, leaving a sharp arc.
On the sturdy body hidden by the coat, every inch of muscle is taut and bulging, and the powerful strength contained is lurking in silence, ready to deal with any upcoming crisis.
As long as the "villagers" around take action...
Yan Shixun would attack without hesitation.
He lowered his eyelashes slightly, his handsome face was like a sheathed sword, a sleeping tiger with eyes lowered in silence.
Even though he was sitting in a completely unfamiliar and strange place, Yan Shixun remained calm and at ease, without showing any emotion on his face, as if he was in his own yard.
Yan Shixun's back was straight, like a pine tree or a long sword, never bending.
His straight and strong shoulders easily bore all the cold gazes from all directions, not shaking at all because of the malicious gazes of the villagers around him.
The safety of Zhang Wubing's soul is unknown, and the situation of everyone in the program crew is unknown whether they are alive or dead. Even no one knows where he is at the moment.
However, Yan Shixun's sharp eyebrows remained calm, and he was not shaken by the current crisis.
The courtyard was transformed into an old-fashioned theater. The red lanterns around it lit up one by one in the darkness, illuminating everyone's faces.
The gongs and drums sounded.
The show is about to begin.
The villagers turned their heads stiffly and slowly, and their eyes, which had been fixed on Yan Shixun, now looked towards the stage in unison.
Behind the dim curtain, lights were lit.
A woman's shadow fell on the curtain and flashed by.
Then, the shadow play officially began. The exquisitely painted shadow puppet characters appeared one by one behind the curtain, and the prop landscape gradually unfolded on the curtain.
Yan Shixun raised his eyes slightly, but when he saw clearly the plot being played out on the screen, his eyes widened instantly.
Even though these are hand-painted shadow puppets and not as realistic as photos, the craftsmen's superb skills still make the facial features and body shapes of the characters vivid, allowing people to tell the identities of these shadow puppet characters at a glance.
Xie Lin.
The first shadow puppet figure to appear on the screen was the once young and naive Xie Lin.
Yan Shixun saw the ragged young man walk into the farmland under the moonlight, bend down and pick up the baby wrapped in a shroud.
The blood on the shroud soaked through the fabric, like blooming flowers.
The baby had no face, only a pair of black and white eyes, watching everything calmly.
On both sides of the shadow puppet stage sat musicians in long robes. Their faces were also blurred, but the instruments in their hands were as fast as falling jade and as slow as still water.
The sad and desolate sound of the erhu is like a woman's low sobbing in the night, and finally the highest tone of the suona pierces the silent night, like the last roar and unwillingness of a living soul before death.
The young boy Xie Lin left with the baby in his arms. The outline of the village in the distance behind him was gradually shrouded in black shadows, with only a faint light shining through the windows of the village houses.
The light was entangled with the cold white moonlight, like the eyes of the dead who refused to close their eyes.
Behind the window of a village house, the figure of a young boy flashed by.
The entire village was then completely engulfed by darkness, leaving no trace of light.
The only figure left on the shadow play screen was a woman.
Behind her, the sun rose and set.
In the old theater that was illuminated by red lanterns and turned a blood-red, Yan Shixun sat in the audience, looking coldly at the woman hiding behind the curtain.
He saw the sunrise and sunset thirty times.
Yin and Yang cycle, Qian and Kun alternate, life and death rise and fall.
The blood-red liquid slowly flowed down from the top of the curtain, and under the reflection of the light, gradually soaked every inch of the dim curtain.
It also made the woman's figure blood red.
Her eyes were fixed on everyone in the audience, and her eyeballs rolled in her sockets from left to right.
Every villager she saw seemed to have his head chopped off by an invisible knife. The head fell down suddenly and rolled on the bluestone slabs, leaving only the blood gushing out from the neck.
Throughout the theater, heads were rolling under every table and chair.
The headless corpse sat on a long bench, blood staining his clothes red. The blood then flowed down the bench, gathering into pools of blood on the stone floor.
The blood gradually spread to Yan Shixun's feet, staining the soles of his Martin boots with blood, and then continued to flow upwards.
Like rising tide, the blood surged up into waves, hitting the surface of Yan Shixun's shoes, wave after wave, trying to swallow him up.
And he sat there, different as a mountain.
Yan Shixun raised his eyes in the pervasive smell of blood, staring at the woman behind the curtain. After a long time, he opened his mouth and asked the woman in a low voice.
"Who are you?"
Even Song Ci, who was closest to Xie Lin, did not know such detailed stories about his youth.
Xie Lin was born in the southwest region. According to him, the village where he was born was near Baizhi Lake.
Since this woman was able to perform what happened in the past on the screen of a shadow play, was she someone Xie Lin once knew?
Who is the boy in the village?
Is it because of the drastic changes that have taken place in the village in recent years that Master Bai, who was completely different from the one he had seen in posters and newspapers before, has undergone such a transformation?
The audience became interested in the story, but the manipulator behind the shadow show refused to answer any further questions.
The woman's figure gradually faded.
On the stage, the musicians continued to play their instruments.
However, what appeared on the screen was no longer the village of that year.
But it is the highway in the southwest region today.
The convoy was driving on the road, with cheerful music playing, and the figures emerging from every car window had smiles on their faces.
Yan Shixun narrowed his eyes and instantly realized that the people appearing on the screen at this time were actually the program crew!
He felt a chill in his heart.
If this is the case, it means that the thing hiding behind the scenes has been targeting them since they entered the southwest territory.
Why?
Is it because Xie Lin was in the car?
No one answered Yan Shixun's questions, and even the figure of the woman on the screen had disappeared.
A cold, white, full moon rose from behind the eaves of the theater. It was so huge that it seemed to be hanging high above the courtyard, and the huge wheel hanging down below brought with it a heavy, oppressive force.
The red lanterns all around did not have any festive meaning at all. They swayed gently in the bloody wind, as if even the paper of the lanterns was dyed with blood.
The bodies of the dead villagers around him had gradually grown cold, and even the bloody smell floating in the air had become condensed and smelled even more fishy, making it unbearable.
However, Yan Shixun sat in such an environment, watching the changing scenes on the screen without blinking, trying to find out what the ghost hiding behind the scenes wanted to say through the shadow play.
The program crew's convoy stopped outside the archway, and everyone filed out and walked over the archway.
At that moment——
With a "puff" sound, blood spread out from behind the curtain and splashed onto the curtain.
Like blooming flowers, enchanting and gorgeous.
Then, the blood slowly flowed down the petals, like the tears and blood of an innocent soul who died with his eyes open.
Yan Shixun couldn't help but concentrate on the curtain, trying hard to see from behind the bloodstains what the obscured scene was and where the blood came from.
But at this moment, he suddenly felt that Zhang Wubing's body, which had been completely cold from the beginning, suddenly moved.
Yan Shixun's eyebrows furrowed, and he suddenly turned his head to look at Zhang Wubing. His slender palm turned into a hand knife and chopped straight towards Zhang Wubing's throat.
A gust of wind blew up at a rapid speed, blowing up the loose hair on Yan Shixun's temples.
The light from the red lantern shone in his eyes and through his fine hair. His sharp eyebrows were like a long sword unsheathed, unstoppable.
The palm wind blew up his coat and instantly reached Zhang Wubing's chin...
Zhang Wubing remembered very clearly that when the strange thing happened in the courtyard, he was clearly holding Yan Shixun's arm.
However, in just a blink of an eye, Yan Shixun suddenly disappeared from his side.
His arm missed and he almost fell to the ground.
Zhang Wubing shook his head and looked around, but there was only empty air.
There are also shadows cast by the setting sun over the eaves.
The worst thing was that the doors of every room around were shaking violently.
It sounded like someone was trying to push open the locked door and was walking towards the people in the yard from all directions.
Zhang Wubing panicked. He quickly turned his head to look to both sides, but everything in his vision seemed to be spinning around and he could not find a stable point.
In his anxious panic, Zhang Wubing's heart was beating so violently that it seemed like it would jump out of his chest in the next second. He could no longer hear anything except his own heartbeat.
And his survival instinct was screaming at him to run, run quickly!
Zhang Wubing could feel that every inch of his muscles was gradually becoming stiff, and his hands were shaking so much that he couldn't make a fist.
When people are afraid, they instinctively want to escape from the things that scare them, want to escape from unsolvable difficulties, and tell themselves that everything in front of them is an illusion.
However, Zhang Wubing couldn't even do this.
He had nowhere to escape and could not escape.
The front and back yards are all this yard. No matter he goes forward or backward, he is always in the same yard. It is as if the whole world is just this one landscape, and the world outside the yard does not exist.
The most important thing is that Yan Shixun disappeared.
Zhang Wubing didn't know what happened in the blink of an eye, but he was very clear about one thing -
His brother Yan is missing and may even be in danger.
He couldn't just leave like this, he had to go find his brother Yan. What if, what if his brother Yan needed him at this moment?
Even if Brother Yan doesn't need him, he can't hold Brother Yan back. He must work hard to save himself!
Zhang Wubing's calves were shaking uncontrollably, but he forced himself to watch the doors around him open one by one.
There was a loud "bang!"
Zhang Wubing was startled and turned around suddenly to look in the direction of the sound.
The door facing him was violently pushed open from the inside and shattered against the wall.
Revealing the person behind the door.
However, what shocked Zhang Wubing was that the thing that appeared behind the door could not even be called a human.
It was a headless corpse.
The head above the neck was missing, and one could even see the blood vessels and muscles surging under the skin, as well as the blood gurgling up. Blood foam accumulated on the cross-section of the neck, like illusory bubbles that would burst if poked.
Before Zhang Wubing could figure out what was going on, loud noises one after another rang out around him.
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
Doors were pushed open, revealing the people hiding behind them.
However, it is different from the shadows projected onto the window paper and door panels.
All the "people" have no heads.
Blood gurgled down the broken blood vessels. The headless corpses were like a new wall, trapping Zhang Wubing inside.
Zhang Wubing subconsciously took a half step back, but his calves went weak and he was almost tripped by the uneven broken bricks and fell to the ground.
But he quickly realized that, in fact, he had nowhere to retreat.
Yan Shixun, who used to protect him, was no longer behind him to keep him safe.
……No.
He even had to go beyond these headless corpses to find out where Yan Shixun was at the moment.
Zhang Wubing only felt a surge of despair and powerlessness in his heart.
During casual conversations on weekdays, he had heard An Nanyuan talk about his own feelings when watching movies, and he also talked with Zhao Zhen about what he saw as an actor.
Those explosions, corpses, plasma, death... they are all props.
After an actor dies in a movie, he will stand up again after hearing "cut!" and ask the director with a smile how it went.
However, those who have not witnessed real death with their own eyes cannot feel the real death and emptiness through the movie screen.
The smell of blood lingered at the tip of my nose, gastric juice rolled up in my stomach, my throat tightened, my heartbeat accelerated to a dangerous level, there was only the sound of distant white noise in my ears, and everything in my brain was emptied.
No matter how smart your mind is, it will stop functioning when facing death. The death of your peers, as well as your real sense of smell and vision, all tell your brain -
You, too, will die.
He died at the hands of these evil ghosts.
And this time, there will no longer be a ghost exorcist powerful enough to hold up the heaven and earth, with cold eyes and stepping on blood to save you from ghosts.
There was a buzzing sound in Zhang Wubing's ears.
He opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but his vocal cords completely lost their function and he couldn't utter a single word.
The headless corpses in the surrounding rooms would not stop because of Zhang Wubing's fear.
They raised their legs slowly and stiffly and stepped out of the door.
At that moment, Zhang Wubing saw with his own eyes that the headless corpse, which was originally covered in blood and flesh, suddenly turned into a normal villager.
The heads returned to their necks, and the purple and cold skin exposed outside the clothes became soft and bloody again.
They actually... came back to life.
Every face had a hideous and malicious smile, but there were no eyeballs in the eye sockets. There was only an empty darkness, staring at Zhang Wubing blankly and silently.
Behind the villagers, the room that was once faintly illuminated by the setting sun was gone.
Instead, it was replaced by a wall.
It was as if they were originally behind a curtain, and after leaving the stage, they disappeared behind the curtain.
Never see the light of day.
Zhang Wubing's eyes were filled with tears. He turned his head hastily and his gaze quickly swept across the courtyard.
Then he suddenly discovered that there was only one room where no villagers appeared.
——The door of the room was never closed from the beginning.
Through the half-open door, you can see the old-fashioned TV in the room with crackling sounds and flashing lights.
But I don’t know when the woman on the TV disappeared, and any shadow play being shown also disappeared.
It's like poor signal reception.
Maybe, Brother Yan is there?
Such a thought flashed through Zhang Wubing's mind.
Another idea came to Zhang Wubing's mind. He thought that this might be another trap, like a hyena trapping its prey, driving the trembling and weak prey into a corner, and then killing it in one fell swoop.
Zhang Wubing knew that this might be a dead end for him if he was desperate.
However, it is also possible that Brother Yan is there, and it is also possible that it is indeed a safe place.
Zhang Wubing gritted his teeth, and finally ran away when the villagers who were coming towards him from all directions were getting closer and closer. When it seemed that he had nowhere to escape, he started running.
He rushed to the half-open door at the fastest speed in his life, pulled the door open, and at the same time, his long legs flew over the threshold and landed on the floor of the room.
Without waiting for Zhang Wubing to stand firmly, he immediately raised his head and looked at the TV.
At this glance, Zhang Wubing's pupils constricted.
——The TV that was empty when I looked at it outside the room just now, now Yan Shixun’s figure appeared on it.
Yan Shixun, who had disappeared from his side, was now sitting on the TV screen with his back to him, as if he was sitting in a theater.
The ground under Yan Shixun's feet was littered with fallen corpses, heads rolling all over the ground, headless corpses piled up like a mountain, and blood gathered like an ocean.
Zhang Wubing's heart was trembling.
He tried to reach for the TV with shaking hands, but felt a cold gaze coming from the side.
The eerie chill spread up along his arms and back, inch by inch, making his scalp numb.
Zhang Wubing turned his head little by little and looked to the side.
But I saw a vague figure on the huge poster hanging on the wall.
The shadow puppet stage that was originally printed on the poster seemed like a real shadow puppet show was being performed behind the curtain, with the person behind the scenes manipulating the shadow puppet characters, directing them to cry or laugh.
Lifelike and vivid like real people.
On the shadow puppet screen in the poster, the woman is shaking with laughter as if she is taking revenge. The villagers who originally surrounded her fall down one by one.
Blood flowed at the woman's feet.
At the same time, on the TV, in the shadow play that Yan Shixun was watching, blood dyed the curtain red, covering everything.
The blood was spreading from every edge of the TV screen towards Yan Shixun.
It was like there was an invisible danger, watching him with malicious intent.
Zhang Wubing watched all this with his own eyes. He rushed towards the TV, holding onto the screen with both hands. In his desperation, he seemed to be trying to find an entrance to the TV, wanting to rush behind the screen and loudly alert Yan Shixun that danger was approaching.
"No, you can't do that! Brother Yan, Brother Yan!"
Zhang Wubing's cries were heart-wrenching, and tears suddenly spread out from his eyes and flowed down his cheeks.
The urgency seemed to break through the soul.
Straight to heaven and earth.
Zhang Wubing's eyelashes trembled, tears were still flowing on his face, but the panic and helplessness in his eyes had disappeared, and the corners of his lips gradually returned to a cold arc.
He slowly stood up from the miserable state of crying while hugging the TV.
When his face lost all warmth and emotion, it was as if the false appearance that originally covered his soul was wiped away, revealing the real soul underneath.
Until then, people will suddenly discover——
It turns out that the little fool who always cried and called Brother Yan, Brother Yan, also had such a handsome face that was awe-inspiring without even getting angry.
Zhang Wubing raised his eyelashes coldly, turned his eyes slightly to look at the poster next to him, with a look of superiority and majesty between his cold brows.
It was as if ghosts and gods were standing on the altar, judging souls and sins.
And hell is under his feet.
Thousands of ghosts were wailing below, and the raging fire never went out all year round, burning their souls.
But it couldn't make him waver in the slightest.
An invisible aura swept across, cleansing the entire courtyard.
The villagers who had gathered at the door of the room, stretching out their arms with bared fangs and claws to grab Zhang Wubing, were all shocked and stood still, staring at Zhang Wubing's background in disbelief, their empty eye sockets revealing real fear.
Zhang Wubing chuckled.
His voice was cold.
The cowardice and cry of the past have faded away, like the cooling magma dormant tens of thousands of meters underground.
Even though Zhang Wubing's voice was not loud, it had no presence and no one dared to ignore him.
"You guys, are you trying to... stop me now?"
Zhang Wubing asked the woman in the poster in a deep voice: "Your son has been deprived of life and death, and you also want to harm the miracle that the Heaven and Earth Avenue expects?"
"Yan Shixun."
Zhang Wubing withdrew his gaze from the poster, as if that glance was a condescending charity.
He looked at the TV screen again, whispering Yan Shixun's name. A low laugh rang out, causing a tremor in his chest.
When mentioning Yan Shixun, even his originally cold and stern brows seemed to be tinged with a barely perceptible smile.
"The evil spirit has entered my bones. This is my only and last chance of survival..."
Zhang Wubing slowly stretched out his hand, and his delicate and clean knuckles moved closer to the TV and landed on the screen.
The moment he touched the TV screen, the entire hard screen seemed like molten iron, allowing Zhang Wubing's fingers to penetrate.
His straight and upright figure gradually disappeared in the room.
However, the room, which was no longer occupied by any human figures, was still dead silent, and no one, ghost or object dared to make a sound.
The villager stood stiffly at the door of the room. His whole body lost temperature little by little, becoming stiff and cold again. Then, the moment the setting sun shone over the eaves, his body made a sound of breaking and shattering.
“Crack, snap!”
The bodies of the villagers were like failed pottery figurines, cracking and falling off bit by bit, collapsing in the courtyard outside the houses and turning into a pile of red bricks and stones on the bluestone slabs.
Even the posters in the room were back to their original places. There was no swaying woman, and no shadow puppets being performed. It was as if the room was just a poster of characters that could be seen everywhere, and the people on it were simply printed colors.
It won't move and won't turn into a ghost.
…
Zhang Wubing felt like he had just had a long dream. He had just gotten up from the bed, and the soft warmth that his hands and feet had brought out from the quilt had not yet subsided, but he was forced to open his eyes.
However, this sight almost frightened Zhang Wubing to death.
Yan Shixun was actually sitting next to him - but he treated him with the same cold and murderous intent that he usually treated ghosts, and was about to chop his neck with a knife.
Zhang Wubing immediately screamed for mercy, "Brother Yan, Brother Yan, it's me! I'm just sick!!"
He almost shed tears and felt like he was about to die of fright. Even the skin on his cheeks could feel the palm wind that was so close to him.
The fear of being killed by the knife made Zhang Wubing stop breathing subconsciously. He stared at Yan Shixun with eyes wide open in horror.
And Yan Shixun keenly sensed Zhang Wubing's breath the moment Zhang Wubing spoke.
The person sitting next to him was definitely Zhang Wubing.
Instead of the empty soulless body before.
Yan Shixun slammed the brakes and pulled his knife back in mid-air.
Finally, with Zhang Wubing looking like he was going to die, the sword stopped just in front of his neck.
It was less than one centimeter away from Zhang Wubing's Adam's apple.
Yan Shixun raised his eyebrows and looked at Zhang Wubing with warm eyes.
Zhang Wubing trembled his lips, and then he collapsed on the bench as if he had lost strength after a huge shock.
He leaned his head on Yan Shixun's waist, sobbing weakly.
"Yan, Brother Yan QAQ, you really want to kill me, woooo."
Yan Shixun sneered and slowly withdrew his hand: "Don't worry, there is no one else as stupid as you. The person sitting next to me before was not you."
As soon as he lowered his head, he saw the tear marks on Zhang Wubing's face, shining brightly in the light of the red lantern, and he felt even more disgusted.
"Are you still crying?"
Yan Shixun was surprised and said, "When did this happen? I was watching you the whole time and didn't notice it."
Upon hearing this, Zhang Wubing subconsciously raised his hand and touched his face, and sure enough, he felt something cold.
When did you cry...
Zhang Wubing's eyes were blank, and many images appeared in his mind.
The headless corpse in the yard, the shadow play on TV, the moving posters...but in the end, all these scenes were occupied by the image of Yan Shixun in front of them.
"Oh, yes."
Zhang Wubing suddenly realized what had happened before: "Brother Yan, you disappeared in the yard inexplicably. I couldn't find you, so I cried anxiously."
Yan Shixun originally wanted to laugh at Zhang Wubing, but suddenly grasped the information revealed in his words.
"You mean, I disappeared from you? Did you come in here from the yard we were in before?"
Zhang Wubing didn't understand what was going on, but he nodded and said, "Yes, I couldn't find Brother Yan no matter what I did, and I was almost killed by a headless corpse. But I didn't expect that I would appear next to Brother Yan after watching TV."
Although Zhang Wubing clearly remembered that he was so anxious that he wanted to cry because he couldn't save Yan Shixun, and had no recollection of how he appeared next to Yan Shixun, he still remembered that the picture on the TV was where he and Yan Shixun were at that moment.
After listening to Zhang Wubing's story, Yan Shixun's relaxed smile, which was originally displayed on his face because of Zhang Wubing's appearance, gradually disappeared from his lips.
"I understand... I'm on TV?" Yan Shixun repeated this sentence in a low voice and fell into deep thought.
He is a spectator in the audience.
But isn’t he also on the stage for the other spectators?
On the shadow puppet screen of the theater, Yan Shixun saw the young Xie Lin and the village from decades ago.
But Zhang Wubing saw him appear in the theater.
Earlier, Yan Shixun and Zhang Wubing had just watched a shadow play on TV and witnessed the woman's grief and anger.
But I didn't expect that in the blink of an eye, I would become a part of the shadow play.
If he really died in the theater, would the next person who walked into the shadow puppet museum also see the shadow puppet play with him as the protagonist, and then wonder what the play was?
Yan Shixun pondered for a moment, then pulled Zhang Wubing up, his sharp brows firm again.
He raised his eyes and looked towards the stage in front of him.
From the moment Zhang Wubing entered the theater, the curtain on the stage completely lost all the images and characters. The musicians on both sides also shrank in an instant, from living people to a thin shadow puppet.
Only a blood-stained curtain remained, swaying gently in the night breeze under the light.
The smell of blood and the red lanterns hanging high together enveloped the courtyard in blood.
Yan Shixun scanned the entire place and found that it had become an empty grave with only body parts scattered all over the ground.
The dead head with eyes open was looking up at them.
Yan Shixun didn't take the dead bodies seriously at all, but Zhang Wubing was so scared that he grabbed his sleeve, carefully hiding himself behind his brother Yan, and avoiding looking at the dead bodies.
It's like a child who has found a guardian.
When there is no one to protect him, he can walk thousands of miles with strength, and even if he is afraid, he will just wipe away his tears and keep moving forward.
But the moment she saw her guardian, all her strength turned into tears of grievance, and she cried and threw herself into her guardian's arms, seeking comfort and praise.
——Of course, Yan Shixun would not praise him.
I just feel disgusted by his face covered with snot and tears.
"Zhang Dabing, if you dare to wipe your nose with my coat, you will die."
Yan Shixun felt the heat behind him and said disdainfully: "I keep my word."
But even as he said this, he still pulled out a handkerchief from his coat pocket and slapped it across Zhang Wubing's face with an ungentle "smack!"
Although he did not turn around, it was as if he had eyes behind him. Just based on the sound and temperature, he accurately determined where Zhang Wubing was standing. He slapped Zhang Wubing's face with his handkerchief accurately and wiped it roughly.
Like a dad taking time to wipe his son’s face while rushing to play games.
Zhang Wubing was rubbed so hard that he cried out in pain.
"Brother Yan, Brother Yan, this is my face, not the ground QAQ."
Zhang Wubing: Oh, oh, oh.
Yan Shixun grabbed Zhang Wubing's collar and carried him across the blood on the ground. He stepped over the corpse lying on the ground without changing his expression and walked out with a calm look on his face.
Zhang Wubing's words made Yan Shixun realize that they were not in reality at this moment, but in a drama created by some evil ghost or something else.
Both he and Zhang Wubing became part of the shadow play after entering the theater.
Yan Shixun couldn't help but recall the picture he had seen on the wall behind the poster before.
The shadow puppet craftsman hides behind the scenes, deftly manipulating the wooden sticks in his hands to guide his shadow puppets to perform various actions.
Make him sad if he wants to be sad, and make him laugh if he wants to laugh.
Although the shadow puppets are beautifully painted, they are all under the control of others and cannot make any moves on their own.
This is something Yan Shixun absolutely cannot tolerate.
If you want to escape from control without being able to find the person behind the scenes, there is only one way -
Leave the prepared stage.
The smell of blood penetrated into his nostrils along with the cold night wind, but Yan Shixun was not disturbed at all. With every step he took, his mind was working at high speed, and the structure of the entire theater and courtyard was quickly reconstructed in his mind.
The scene of the convoy arriving at the Shadow Play Museum that he had just seen in the shadow play, as well as Yan Shixun's own habitual inspection of the entire environment before entering the museum, were quickly constructed in Yan Shixun's mind, allowing the scene outside the theater to extend outward as well.
A three-dimensional map appeared in his mind.
A smile appeared on Yan Shixun's lips.
Beyond the stage prepared by the shadow puppeteer behind the scenes... there is a much wider world.
If there is no world, then he will build his own world.
If you can't communicate with heaven and earth, then rely on yourself.
The Martin boots stepped onto the theater porch, making a firm sound.
Yan Shixun tilted his head slightly, lowered his eyes to look at Zhang Wubing beside him, and asked with a smile: "Xiaobing, are you ready?"
"Ah, ah?"
Zhang Wubing looked up blankly: "What?"
Yan Shixun turned his eyes back and nodded gently: "It seems that you are ready."
Without waiting for Zhang Wubing to make any more inquiries, Yan Shixun suddenly stretched out his hand and pushed open the door of the theater. He leaped over the half-meter-high threshold with his long legs and leaped into the pitch-black darkness outside the door.
Zhang Wubing's originally confused eyes gradually narrowed in fear.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Yan! Brother! Ah! I don't think I'm ready!!!"
Under Zhang Wubing's ghostly howls, the two men leaped into the dark abyss of unknown danger.
The whistling sound of the wind caused by the rapid descent passed by Yan Shixun's ears.
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