Chapter 81 Small hammer: fifty; Big hammer: eighty-one
The door creaked open, and heavy leather shoes slammed onto the doormat.
The two scanned the room. One of them, wearing glasses, looked impatient, pacing around and looking at everything. Finally, she kicked a cloth nearby: "Lift the cloth, check it out, and then you can go back."
"Huh?" The other person paused, looking at the dusty fabric with a hint of disgust. "No way, this thing is so dirty..."
“So you go.” The man with glasses took a step back, picked up the sign hanging on his chest, and patted the other man’s face, reminding him of the difference in their social standing: “What are you still standing there for? If you keep dawdling like this, I’ll just throw you in the dump later.”
Hearing this, the one without glasses flinched, muttering complaints that her boss was saying the same thing again, always throwing things into the trash.
Their hands moved swiftly and efficiently. Amidst the billowing dust, the two women glanced at the five or six sculptures below and found nothing wrong with them.
"Let's go, let's go." The bespectacled man rubbed his face. "This place is easy to find. Only the boss is so particular about details. We only need six of these things to go on stage. You're a newbie, so don't blame me for not reminding you. Remember to wear sunglasses, or you'll be absorbed and there won't be any way to save you."
"To be honest, if Yue Yiyue could get here, I'd change my mind."
"Yes, yes, thank you for the reminder, sister. Boss is just too particular about details. Let's get out of here. Tsk, Old Yang hasn't left since he came in last time. It's weird. Let's go."
Yue Yiyue, who was crouching behind the sculpture, put down the small hammer in his hand, listened to the sound of the door closing, and secretly peeked out.
Looking at the closed door, Yue Yiyue squatted in place for a few more minutes to make sure the other party wouldn't come back before she stood up and looked at the six sculptures in front of her.
They are all exactly the same.
The same applies to the three marks on his ears.
Sure enough, the fact that it could be left unattended without any supervision suggests something else is amiss.
And that person just said that someone came in and didn't leave.
Yue Yiyue stared at the sculpture in front of him, wondering if he had been eaten by it.
After all, those people, like chess pieces, have become one with those sculptures.
As Yue Yiyue hesitated, unsure which one to knock down, the sculpture made a sound.
"Are you here to destroy me too?" The first sculpture spoke first, its voice carrying a hint of pitifulness.
"If so, please seize the opportunity. If you fail to break the real sculpture that time, you will have to merge with me," the third sculpture said kindly.
The fourth sculpture quickly chimed in: "This is the last rule here. Please identify the real sculpture and smash it to win the game. Otherwise, you will lose and become one with the sculpture."
So that's how it is. So that person found a way out and went to great lengths to get here, only to fail at this step.
Hearing the same voice as Gu Nanqiu and seeing the same face as Gu Nanqiu, Yue Yiyue stood still and began to think.
"You only have one chance. Also, the door is already closed. You cannot leave this room until you make your choice."
The second sculpture provided further explanation, and Yue Yiyue gave a soft "hmm" as he carefully observed the sculpture before him.
"Were you here when you were conscious?" After looking through the document, Yue Yiyue suddenly asked, "Do you have any other senses?"
Yue Yiyue glanced at the six sculptures, staring intently at the one on the far right. Then she took two steps and stood in front of this sculpture, which looked no different from the others, and asked it in a low voice.
"I just moved here a few days ago. Before, I was always taken to many places, and I could only hear their voices. They were all so noisy, extremely noisy." The sculpture's cold voice was simply recounting its own experience.
These words took on a different meaning when they reached Yue Yiyue's ears: "Tired of this kind of life?"
"I suppose so..." The sculpture didn't know why it answered the question of the young man who had suddenly barged in and looked like he wanted to bring an end to them.
But the sculpture inexplicably seems to want to respond.
Warm hands landed on the surface of the sculpture, tracing its textures, and gently stroking the messy eye sockets: "If you can't see, do you also feel uneasy?"
"If I shatter it, will you be able to go back?"
Yue Yiyue didn't know what that part of the sculpture was or where it would return to, but she had to find out, as it concerned her next steps.
The sculpture paused for a moment, as if this human seemed to recognize it, or rather, had strange feelings for it.
He hesitated for a long time, pondering whether he should tell the truth or a lie.
With the countdown on her watch ticking down to the last seven minutes, Yue Yiyue wasn't in a hurry. She sat down next to the first sculpture and said, "Take your time thinking. Let me lean on your pillar for a bit."
"No need, I'll go back. Don't sit on the ground or lean against me, I'm ice."
Hearing this, Yue Yiyue's lips curled up slightly: "Okay, whatever you say. Where will you go back to?"
These words plunged the sculpture into memories of the past. After a long while, it finally spoke: "I was a wisp of something stolen from them. I should have returned to my clone to gather the fragments first, and then followed my clone back to my main body."
Picking through his memories, He complained, “I always hear Him roaring at me in the dead of night, why don’t I respond to Him?”
"He's just an imitator. He only knows how to imitate Qiu. Whatever Qiu does, he does too. He's such a copycat. How annoying."
"Then he said he wanted to become the best person, and then he locked Qiu up." He grumbled, "Are you trying to get revenge for me?"
"If you're after my revenge, I can tell you which one is real. Once it's broken, it's just an ordinary, insignificant ant."
"I promise you, you can keep me locked up for a while. But if it's too long, I need to find someone else."
With a joyful tone, He expressed His willingness to give this intruder a chance to resist.
"I don't like it when you lie." Yue Yiyue didn't take the bait. She bent down, picked up the hammer beside her, and looked at the sculpture: "I don't have time to listen to your grievances right now, so I'll just smash it to pieces. How about I go back and coax you later?"
"That is, if you have any memories of this place."
I started thinking that if Gu Nanqiu didn't have this memory, I should just smash it.
But now it seems that even if Gu Nanqiu doesn't know, Director Qiu will.
It's unclear whether their memories are shared or not, and what exactly is the "true form" that this sculpture is referring to?
If you collect enough fragments of autumn, you can piece together a large autumn.
Okay, she's just an ordinary person who doesn't understand, but afterwards she tried her best to understand, respect, and accept it.
"Are you sure it's me?" Upon hearing this, the sculpture reverted to its usual expressionless demeanor, coldly inquiring, "Are you really sure it's me? Then I'm sorry—"
“Yes, you are different from them,” Yue Yiyue said, looking at the sculpture carefully after it finished speaking. “You are here, giving me a sense of alienation. You make me feel that you are different from other sculptures, giving me an unfathomable feeling, just like the feeling that Director Qiu gave me.”
“These things are not found in any other sculptures.” Yue Yiyue tried to read as sincerely as possible. In order to keep up with the times, she secretly memorized a lot of jokes at night, and now she was finally using them. She secretly glanced at the sculpture and continued to read with deep emotion: “Perhaps you don’t know who I am now, but when you return to the clone you mentioned, you will remember me. At that time, you will know why I was able to recognize you at a glance here, and you will also understand the feelings behind my words.”
"I look forward to the moment when I shatter you, you return to your original form, and we recognize each other."
The sculpture fell silent for a moment, and the room became extremely quiet.
"One... leap." The sculpture's uncertain voice rang out, but this time the voice wasn't as cold as before; it carried a slightly sticky tone, sweet enough to make one uneasy: "It's you—it really is. I don't have eyes, and my ears have been fitted with something else, so I couldn't recognize your voice, but I didn't expect you to recognize me here. It seems you really are..."
He didn't finish his sentence, but his pleasant tone revealed an eerie satisfaction: "Smash me! It's me, it's me!"
"Once you smash it, you've won completely!"
"Oh, right, did you hear these sculptures saying something strange? Being locked up in this place for so long, I always feel lonely, so I can only make up stories to keep me company. There are a lot of lies in those stories, which is how I protect myself. You can understand, right?"
“I am also a victim. That damned Mu Hongcai had a strange person by his side who could extract a trace of beauty and put it into the sculpture. He initially thought that this would allow him to obtain me, but unexpectedly, he could not carve out even a trace of my beauty! So this is what I look like.”
After complaining, she gave a strange smile: "If it were you, of course, you wouldn't need to sculpt me; I already belong to you—"
"I think I've talked too much again. Hurry up and smash me already. Can I have a hug when we meet later?"
"I crave your warmth so much, let me hold you—"
As soon as the sculpture finished speaking, it felt itself being embraced in a warm embrace. Then it heard Yue Yiyue's voice: "Now you can. Of course, when I see you later, I will give you another hug."
She lowered her head and gently kissed the broken eye: "You are perfect as you are. Would it hurt if I shattered it?"
"Yi Yue... it will hurt a little, but it's all for the sake of reuniting with you." After receiving Yue Yi Yue's hug and kiss, He tried his best to control himself and not directly devour Yue Yi Yue into his body, so that they could truly become one: "It's okay, Yi Yue, I'm not afraid of pain. Being shattered by you makes me happy."
With only one minute left on the countdown timer, Yue Yiyue didn't hesitate any longer. She raised the hammer in her hand and said, "See you later."
"Okay—see you later!"
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