Once Upon a Time: The Bitter Candy House
Xiaodou's panda paws made a crunching sound on the cobblestones—not from honey, but from a thin layer of bitter frost that coated each stone, emitting a sour white mist when crushed. The houses lining the street seemed drained of their color, the frosted gingerbread walls fading to the texture of gray cement. The windmills creaked mournfully as they turned, their rainbow stripes shattering into fragments.
"Welcome to Storybrooke." The mechanical cat's gear eyes reflected the gray sky. "The sun here is cold, the stars are bitter, and even the wind whispers in your ears..."
"Meow?" Xiaodou raised her paw to greet the fox NPC selling candy, her round ears shaking out the sweet frost from her fur. But the fox just glanced at her numbly and stuffed a piece of chocolate that looked like a coal blob into the paper bag. "Five bitter coins, thank you."
Bai Yan's personality blinked, fox fire igniting at his fingertips. "How about a freshly baked honey cake?" He flipped his wrist, and a sweet golden aroma instantly filled the street. The fox NPC's ears twitched suddenly, and a long-lost light flashed in his pupils. But the moment the cake came out of the oven, his expression solidified into a bitter mask.
"Warning! Illegal sweetness detected!" Raven guards descended from the sky, their iron claws crushing the cake. Xiaodou saw their lips curl unnaturally—that was the muscle memory of tasting sweetness. The leading guard pointed his mechanical claw at Bai Yan: "According to Article 47 of the Bitter Code, anyone found possessing sweets will be punished by being sent to the witch's kitchen to clean absinthe barrels!"
"Wait!" Xiaodou rushed over and hugged the guard's paw, "Let me taste this chocolate..." She closed her eyes and took a big bite. The dark chocolate broke into powder on the tip of her tongue, but a very light sweetness seeped out at the root of her tongue - like honey diluted by rain water, and like nuts hidden in nut shells.
"Ding—treasure radar triggered!" Xiaodou's claws traced golden lines on the chocolate as the system chimed. "Detected a sweet, imprisoned memory: On March 15, 1960, Xiaofang's calico kitten stole some milk."
"The essence of witch magic is 'sweet blockade.'" Lin Shen pushed his anti-bitter mask, and data streams flowed through the chocolate crumbs. "This bitter chocolate is actually a carrier of distorted memories, and the guards..." He suddenly pointed at the metal beak of a crow. "Their cores are mechanical pets eliminated by the GM, with a built-in 'broken heart program.'"
Bai Yan squatted down and used fox fire to melt the guards' gear joints: "Is that why you react to sweetness? Actually, you want to taste something sweet, right~"
The guards' iron claws began to tremble, and one of them suddenly took out the candy wrapper hidden under its wings - it was the oil paper that Xiaofang had used to wrap osmanthus cake sixty years ago, and there were still teeth marks on the edge.
The candy shop's window suddenly exploded, sending countless dark chocolate tentacles, wrapped in barrels of absinthe, hurtling down. Xiaodou, grabbed by the scruff of the neck by Ling Yuan's personality, dodged, only to see the stuffed animals in the window collectively turn their heads and stare at her with button eyes—they were the White Abyss Three Souls dolls produced by the real-life GM factory, their "biteable" labels oozing black syrup from their joints.
"Concept Mouse," the witch's mechanical voice came from the top of the castle tower, mixed with the whistling of gears, "This time no one can stuff your sweetness into my absinthe—"
Before she finished her words, the entire castle suddenly shook, and black smoke emanating from the tower's roof condensed into the outline of a mechanical tapir. Xiaodou's treasure-hunting radar began to whirr, and she saw a familiar silver bell flash through the smoke—it was the fragment of Bai Yan's earring, being melted into a chain by the witch's mechanical claws.
In the ruins of the collapsed candy house, Lin Shen's data stream suddenly became entangled with half a piece of chocolate, on which were crooked words carved with fingernails:
Save, save Xiaofang...
——The sweetness sewn into the candy house
Bai Yan's fingertips traced the writing, and the foxfire suddenly turned red—the color of his costume in his previous life, soaked in blood. Ling Yuan tightened his grip on the hilt, noticing that the sweet coating on the blade was resonating with the black smoke. Xiaodou had already rushed into the ruins, clutching the chocolate bar, his panda claws carving a golden path of hope across the bitter frost.
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