Chapter 133 Night Candle Rules 11 Who Gets the Child?
The streets were deserted, the shops were dilapidated and abandoned. A boy stood in the bright sunlight, wailing at the top of his lungs. Even though the sun was warm, a chill seeped up from the soles of his feet.
Ying Yao's demeanor immediately turned serious.
Before Nanmen Jue "saw" the boy, he didn't react at all. The boy seemed to be waiting for them on purpose, yet he also seemed to have appeared out of thin air.
Hearing the crying, the two people behind him ran a few steps to catch up. When they saw this strange scene, they both became wary.
"What does this mean?" Wei Chongru asked in a low voice. "Is he a human, or some kind of strange being?"
“I don’t know,” Ying Yao said. “I’m not the best at dealing with these things.”
His usually indifferent tone carried a hint of annoyance and frustration.
Nanmen Jue said calmly, "Then what are you doing here?"
Wei Chongru and Mo Gui were surprised to see that Ying Yao, who had just been showing some momentum, had weakly lost it again and said softly, "You didn't let me come in. I didn't come in with you."
Nanmen Jue raised an arm, and Ying Yao obediently shut his mouth.
Now is not the time to talk about these things. Nanmen Jue stared intently at the boy in front of him, quickly exchanged a few words with Zhang Zhi in his mind, and said, "He shouldn't be a living person."
"I'd guess it's not a living person." Wei Chongru gave a bitter smile, a sense of resigned fate creeping in. "What should we do?"
It's like escaping one tiger's den only to fall into another; it's truly baffling what to say.
Nanmen Jue moved slightly, and Ying Yao immediately grabbed her arm. "Don't approach rashly. Once you come into contact with these things, you'll be drawn into their rules."
Wei Chongru asked, "What rules?"
“No one knows before entering the rules,” Ying Yao said. “Relatively speaking, the Snow Maiden’s kind of strange realm is already considered an easy type to survive in. If it were a realm with complex and tricky rules, people wouldn’t even know how they died.”
Wei Chongru and Mo Gui exchanged a horrified glance.
Nanmen Jue slowly pushed Ying Yao's hand away, his eyes still fixed on the crying boy. "We were already connected with him the moment we found him."
As she spoke, she turned around and winked, then turned and strode away.
The three understood what she meant and quickly followed.
The boy's cries were still behind them, but after only a few steps, the figure suddenly reappeared in front of them, at the exact same distance as when they first saw him.
As they walked forward, the distance would shorten, but when they turned around, the boy would still appear before them like a ghost.
Now everyone knows that what Nanmen Jue said was true; they have become connected with this strange entity and cannot escape.
Mo Gui was a little exasperated. "How can this be considered a staged accident? Who wants to have any contact with him?"
Wei Chongru tugged at his arm hard, "Keep your voice down! What if he's in a bad mood? We're already in his domain, how we die is entirely up to him!"
Have we already entered the realm of the uncanny?
These words reminded Nanmen Jue. She carefully looked around. The sun was still shining brightly. Apart from the fact that there was no one there, this place was no different from reality. It was not like the Snow Maiden's ghostly realm, where one could easily tell the difference at a glance.
“I’ll go,” Ying Yao said in a deep voice.
As he spoke, he lifted his leg to approach the boy, but was then grabbed by Nanmen Jue.
"What are you showing off for?" Nanmen Jue didn't look at him, pulled the guy who kept losing health even if he did nothing back, and strode towards the boy.
Ying Yao stretched out one hand, then slowly lowered it.
This time he didn't stop him. Nanmen Jue walked smoothly up to the boy and asked, "What do you want to do?"
The boy kept yelling at the top of his lungs, "Mommy—"
At that moment, Zhang Zhi thought to herself, "Brother Nanmen, why don't you let me..."
"No way." Nanmen Jue rejected her without even thinking. "There is competition among the supernatural beings. I can't guarantee that all of them will be good to you. I suspect that the Snow Woman Ghost is an exception. This guy, no matter how you look at him, is more like a brat."
Zhang Zhi fell silent, feeling uneasy. Nanmen Jue thought for a moment, then half-squatted down, as if facing a real human boy, and asked, "Do you want us to help you find your mother?"
As if she had uttered the right keyword, the boy stopped wailing and looked at her with a sob, "I want to find my mother."
Nanmen Jue patiently continued to ask, "How do I find it?"
"Go, go to the police station, hiccup." He hiccuped as he cried.
Go to the police station? Nanmen Jue looked at him scrutinizingly, not expecting such a down-to-earth answer. He wondered if the police station referred to a human police station or something strange.
She didn't speak for a moment. The boy's lips twitched, and he looked like he was about to cry again. "Don't you want to help me find my mother?"
Just as Nanmen Jue was about to answer, his pupils suddenly contracted.
In front of her, the boy wiped away tears, his face seeming to melt as they slowly streamed down, revealing red muscles, bulging eyes, and teeth...
"Aren't you willing to help me find my mother?"
He repeated it again, but this time the voice didn't come from his throat. Instead, it was mixed with a heavy, muddy tone, turning into a chaotic murmur that came from all directions, pressing down on Nanmen Jue!
"Those who are unwilling to help a child find their mother are bad people, and bad people have no reason to exist..."
"South Gate!"
Ying Yao rushed over, but was frozen in place by Nanmen Jue in the next second.
"Don't come any closer!"
Despite the ever-increasing mental pressure, Nanmen Jue shouted, "I'll take you to find your mother!"
As soon as she finished speaking, her rambling disappeared. Nanmen Jue casually wiped away the blood that had been spurted from her nose, and looking at the glaring red on her fingers, she smiled.
The mental anomaly was so powerful that if it weren't for Zhang Zhi's help and her extremely strong mental strength, she might have been torn to shreds just now.
At the same time, she felt a chill in her heart; this type of eeriness was even more difficult to deal with than the Snow Woman.
Ying Yao rushed over anyway. He glanced at the boy whose face had been completely healed, then looked anxiously at Nanmen Jue, "How is he?"
He took out a talisman and was about to slap it on her when Nanmen Jue stopped him, saying, "It's just a little nosebleed. We need to find a police station now."
"This godforsaken place still has a police station?" Wei Chongru looked around, his face pale. "It's all ruins now."
"Over there," the boy suddenly pointed in a direction.
The others looked at him warily, but Nanmen Jue was the most carefree. "Let's go. We're already in the thieves' den, we can't run away."
They followed the boy in the direction he pointed. Ying Yao whispered in Nanmen Jue's ear, "He said that bad people have no reason to exist. This may be the rule of this strange realm."
Nanmen Jue had also thought of this, and she tilted her head to signal to the two people behind her.
The rule for boys is that they cannot be "bad people." The question is, to what extent is this distinction made between good and bad?
Currently, it seems that if someone is considered a bad person for not helping a lost child, then the threshold for being a bad person is quite low.
As they were pondering, they suddenly heard Mo Gui's suppressed whisper: "Look!"
Nanmen Jue looked up and saw that what had just been a desolate and dilapidated scene had become bustling with people in the blink of an eye. Time had also changed from daytime to evening. The orange-red sunset shone on the street, every shop was open, people were coming and going, and there was the smell of dinner in the air.
Everyone looked shocked.
It's like leaving the apocalypse, leaving the cycle of reincarnation, and returning to the warm reality; everything feels so real.
Nanmen Jue said in a low voice, "Did you notice?"
Ying Yao's voice was somewhat solemn, "These are all living people. Or rather, they are indigenous people."
Although there were many people, and they were all doing their own things, there was something special in their eyes.
As Nanmen Jue and his group approached, almost everyone turned to look at them. But upon seeing the boy, they seemed to instinctively turn their gazes away and return to their own tasks.
It seems that once we enter this place, we've truly entered a realm of ghosts and monsters.
Nanmen Jue carefully observed the passersby. Apart from their pale faces and fearful eyes, they were indeed still alive, not ghosts.
Where are the strange servants in this strange realm?
After walking a while longer, the boy stopped. "We've arrived at the police station."
The group looked up and saw that it was indeed a police station, just like in real life.
"Let's go," Nanmen Jue said, taking the lead. "Let's go in and see if your mother is there."
Her nonchalant attitude made the other three break out in a cold sweat, but the boy didn't react to her attitude at all, as if as long as the behavior was right, what he said didn't matter.
They brought the boy into the hall, and as soon as they entered, everyone fell silent.
Besides them, there were a few other people, most of whom looked desperate and trembling. In front of each of them was a boy who looked exactly the same!
Clearly, these girls were forced to bring their boys to find their mothers.
This strange creature is searching for its mother everywhere outside. If she agrees, she will appear here; if she doesn't, grass will grow on her grave.
However, none of this mattered to Nanmen Jue. As soon as she entered, her gaze was fixed on a young girl. The girl had delicate features and was wearing a white, fluffy princess dress, which made her seem out of place here.
She also noticed Nanmen Jue. Her beautiful eyes blinked, but she lacked the arrogance of the previous world and appeared somewhat wooden, more like a delicate doll than her puppets.
Nanmen Jue grinned exaggeratedly.
Heaven is on her side! There are just as many shocks and surprises in this world. Who would have thought that she would run into Yu Wanyan here?
The others also noticed Yu Wanyan. Wei Chongru and Mo Gui glared at her, while Ying Yao looked at Nanmen Jue.
No one knew better than him how much Nanmen Jue hated this mechanical puppet princess.
But Nanmen Jue had no intention of causing trouble in this strange territory; it was obvious that the "murder" was the work of bad people.
The boy then nudged her, saying, "We need to register."
Nanmen Jue walked towards the registration desk, and the boy pushed the other three, saying, "We all need to register."
Upon arriving at the registration desk, Nanmen Jue felt something scrape against her skin, and she squinted.
The person at the registration desk was alive, but his face was terribly pale. He probably really didn't want to work with a room full of boys. He looked at the three of them with trepidation.
“Three adults and one minor.” He paused, then asked a perplexing question, “Who forms the family with whom? Who raises the child?”
The four of them, including Nanmen Jue, were stunned on the spot.
What's going on?
"All newcomers must form a family, and there must be two adults and one child." The registration staff member, with a pained expression, quickly explained to them, "You have three adults and one child. Quickly decide who will form the family with whom, and who will take custody of the child?"
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