Cheng Shuang restrained her urge to back away and looked into the boy's eyes. There was no emotion, no joy, no mischievousness, no malice, no vitality. That numbness and dullness instantly reminded the girl of someone—the emcee.
Although her heart was in her throat, the little girl standing at the door steadily took out two lollipops from her pocket, unwrapped them, put one in her own mouth, and handed the other to the little boy, making an indistinct "ah" sound.
The little boy tilted his head back slightly, showing no interest in the lollipop, and asked in a hoarse voice, "What do you want to do?"
Cheng Shuang touched her head, and after noticing a hint of disgust in the little boy's blank gaze, she took the candy back and said very directly, "I wanted to see if your teeth were okay." As she spoke, she crunched the lollipop and swallowed it, stuffing the white candy stick into her pocket before entering the room. She took a step closer to the little boy and this time clearly opened her mouth and said "Ah."
The young lady's mouth was full of the sweet taste of candy, and her pearly white teeth looked too neat and not sharp at all.
Disdain flashed across the little boy's eyes again. He slowly opened his mouth, revealing a set of fine, white, pointed teeth, with bright red bits of flesh stuck between them.
Cheng Shuang's heart sank. She tiptoed and peered over his head into the room.
The room had only one closed window, and because it was a north-facing room, it was dimly lit. Only a figure could be vaguely seen on the ground, and the smell of blood was coming from there.
The man was wearing a bright yellow down jacket. He blended in with the villagers in the morning, and his striking color made him stand out.
In such a short time, he collapsed here. He must have broken some taboo.
Cheng Shuang nervously licked her teeth. She couldn't tell whether the child in front of her was the offspring of the emcee or just an emcee himself.
If there were some strange or unusual setting where the character shrinks during the day and grows larger at night, she would only have one option left: to run.
But she was really unwilling to run away like this.
The girl never expected her luck to be either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. She encountered a key character in the dungeon right away, and this character had just eaten a living person.
“He… barged in uninvited, an annoying outsider.” Suddenly, the boy raised his eyes. In the dim light, his eyes were almost luminous green, like two small fluorescent stones.
Cheng Shuang inexplicably calmed down. If the boy were the master of ceremonies at night, he wouldn't have explained so much, nor would he have shown the likes and dislikes of a child when faced with candy.
"The smell of blood in the room is too strong. Is there anywhere else we can play?" she asked tentatively, really just to see how tolerant the person in front of her was of her, an outsider.
The boy hesitated for a moment, then looked towards a corner of the yard.
Cheng Shuang didn't turn around; she mentally tried to picture what that corner was.
A woodshed? Yes, it's a woodshed.
"Do you want to finish it?" she asked again, then took out individually packaged beef strips from her canvas bag, tore them open, and said, "This is meat too, delicious meat."
The little boy took it and slowly opened his mouth, "My food also has flavor; it's salty."
The little girl held her breath, not really wanting to know what human flesh tasted like. Her smile almost froze. "You're probably talking about blood. Blood contains a lot of sodium and chloride. When they combine, they become sodium chloride, which is table salt."
She didn't even know what she was saying; the pressure of facing the cannibal was immense.
If it were a monster, that would be fine, but this was a completely human being, someone she initially mistook for a child.
The little boy didn't understand, so he just brushed past her, walked out of the room, and looked at her from the doorway. "You're sweating, you're nervous, you don't like this room..."
Cheng Shuang immediately adjusted her mindset. The reason why the little boy was so perceptive must be that he was more familiar with human scents and sweat. If she panicked first, she would put herself in a passive position.
The little girl nodded decisively: "Yes, I don't like this room. I don't like places with a strong smell of blood."
Cheng Shuang's gamble paid off; the little boy didn't have the fragile emotions of someone with a "glass heart." He calmly walked out, saying, "To the woodshed."
With no obstructions inside, Cheng Shuang looked closely and saw that the person lying on the ground had several pieces of flesh missing from their face, and their face was covered in blood.
She closed her eyes, turned around and took a step, and with a soft "plop," she looked down and saw that one of her eyeballs had been crushed in half.
The little girl stepped over the threshold expressionlessly, rubbed the soles of her shoes on the steps at the door, looked at the boy standing in front of the woodshed, and walked over with feigned composure.
The door to the woodshed was pushed open.
Cheng Shuang held her breath again.
Alright! She should have realized that this instance wouldn't only open once, so the boy wouldn't only eat one person. The woodshed was piled high with bones, but it wasn't as gruesome as the mutilated corpses in the house, because the bones had been cleaned clean, leaving not a single piece of meat, let alone any smell. But piled there, it looked like a tomb for the dead, eerie and devoid of any warmth.
The little girl pondered for a moment, wondering if she would invite the little boy to run around the village now and have him bite off her cheek.
In the end, the little girl gave in to reality. Having seen ugly and terrifying monsters, how could she be afraid of a dozen skeletons?
She stepped inside, found a clean spot to sit down, unfolded the reference diagram, and beckoned to the little boy, "Come on, let's build with blocks!"
This overbearing attitude made the little boy's empty eyes flicker. He obediently sat down on the blanket, and after sitting down, he shifted his bottom, giving up half of the blanket, and said slowly, "Sitting on the blanket is warm."
"Okay!" Cheng Shuang didn't refuse and moved closer. She was startled by the little boy's low body temperature and tilted her head to look at him. "Why are you so cold?"
"Because I'm hungry, very hungry," the boy said, emphasizing each word.
Upon hearing this, Cheng Shuang pulled out several hand warmers, tore open the packaging bags and white paper seals, and stuck them on the boy's legs and abdomen.
The boy remained motionless like a puppet, seemingly without any aggressive tendencies. But she knew it was because she hadn't shown any malice or violated any of his rules that he was letting her have her way.
The little girl stuck the remaining three pieces to her waist and legs.
After a few seconds, the boy quietly moved his head, turned to look at Cheng Shuang, and uttered a single word in a hoarse voice: "Warmth."
Cheng Shuang smiled, took out a small bottle of mineral water and a large bag of beef jerky from her bag, and said, "Eat up!"
The boy shook his head, his gaze fixed on the building blocks on the ground.
"Eat first, you can put the toys back together later."
Seeing Cheng Shuang's resolute expression, the boy took the beef jerky, and imitating her, tore open the packaging, buried his head in it, and began to gnaw on it.
The young girl breathed a slight sigh of relief. At least he wasn't making a living by eating human flesh, and at least she could communicate with him before he became a real master of ceremonies.
When he had almost finished eating, Cheng Shuang tore open the sausage and was about to hand it over when the boy's dirty face suddenly contorted. He quickly got up, ran to the door, bent over, and vomited violently.
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