Chapter 104: Inheritance
Simply bandaging her thigh, Lu Jinzhao turned her gaze to the human skin quietly resting on the workbench.
She tried moving her fingers and found that although her body felt somewhat rusted, the state of her fingers had recovered fairly well.
Most of the late night had already passed, so she had to hurry and prepare the skin peeled from her own body by drying it yin-style, and temporarily use this human skin to complete today’s mission.
Lu Jinzhao first prepared her own skin and placed it on a wooden frame, then began completing the task assigned by “Master” today.
With the memories of the past “three years,” the drawing was not difficult for Lu Jinzhao, and when applying it to this human skin, everything seemed to become smoother.
Although she had wasted quite a bit of time, it was not yet dawn when she finished the drawing.
But what came next was the trial.
The most troublesome and most skill-testing carving stage.
One day was still too short, but fortunately, the mission did not require them to make a particularly exquisite shadow puppet; as long as it met the “humanoid shadow puppet” requirement, it was fine.
Therefore, Lu Jinzhao used the simplest draft, an ordinary-looking little girl.
The clothes were the simplest and most convenient style to make, while the hair would be a bit more troublesome.
As for the girl’s expression, she only planned to make the most calm one.
When Lu Jinzhao picked up the carving knife to make the first cut, the techniques Master had once taught her naturally surfaced in her mind.
Normal shadow puppet carving is divided into yang carving and yin carving, and since she had not designed any patterns on the shadow puppet’s clothes, the parts needing yin carving were much fewer.
As the carving progressed, Lu Jinzhao gradually discovered something.
The fingers touching the human skin were changing.
The fingerprints were slowly disappearing.
A sentence Lu Jinzhao had once heard suddenly appeared in her mind: the hand is a person’s second face.
And fingerprints are the most unique thing on a person’s body.
Now, as she slowly touched this human skin, her fingerprints were disappearing.
It was as if… her face was being slowly erased, and she herself was being devoured by the human skin.
As the carving gradually took shape, the originally dried human skin unexpectedly regained some toughness and luster, as if… it had absorbed essence and come alive.
Lu Jinzhao looked at the gradually forming shadow puppet, and an indescribable sense of disgust welled up in her.
She even wanted to tear this shadow puppet apart immediately.
But… no.
To survive, she had to tolerate this thing.
At least, tolerate it for now.
When she finished carving, time had already reached the afternoon.
Lu Jinzhao had not left the room all day today, yet she did not feel hungry in her stomach.
She thought, perhaps her stomach had completely broken down.
When she finished the carving part and started coloring, the wrongness became even more obvious.
Clearly, she had only designed the simplest clothing for this shadow puppet, with no patterns at all, and even the clothes were black, yet when the colors were applied to the shadow puppet, and the light in the room changed slightly, this shadow puppet seemed to tremble faintly with the light and shadow.
It seemed like… it was about to come alive.
It was just short of one breath.
Just a little bit more.
Lu Jinzhao looked at the shadow puppet gradually taking shape under her hands, couldn’t help but step back two steps and stare for a while, then slightly exhaled.
Not good, extremely not good.
This thing… the more she looked at it, the more eerie it seemed.
Just the fact that she had almost completed a shadow puppet in such a short time was wrong enough, and now, under such crude production conditions, this shadow puppet actually showed a weird sense of exquisiteness!
Heaven knows she had really done it quite perfunctorily.
But even so, this shadow puppet seemed to have absorbed something itself to repair the rough parts of her making.
“This ghostly thing, it couldn’t have really absorbed my essence, could it?”
She was now half-dead, neither alive nor dead, and truly couldn’t feel much.
Perhaps, she needed to check the current states of her other companions to know.
After finishing coloring, time had reached night.
Lu Jinzhao rubbed her fatigued and swollen temples, propped up her somewhat shaky body, and took the mostly completed human skin out in the toolbox.
She remembered Fu Xuesheng’s reminder, so she did not go to the usual gathering place first, but directly came to a spot not far from Master’s room door.
The room door was open.
Each of them had deliberately not closed the door when leaving.
Now, there was less than an hour until 12 o’clock.
Lu Jinzhao carried the toolbox, carefully observing.
Time passed bit by bit.
While observing, she also felt her current state.
Her heartbeat was still very slow, and stepping on the ground gave a sensation that was both heavy and soft, unreal.
Her thigh clearly had its skin peeled off, yet she hardly felt any pain, but rather a strange sensation.
The pain seemed to have disappeared, but this was absolutely not good news.
In such a dangerous place like the platform, pain also represented a warning that the body was in danger; once the pain was lost, she might lose control over her body and sense of proportion.
Her breathing had also slowed, almost half of a normal person’s breathing rate.
There were long intervals between each inhale and exhale.
Without looking in a mirror, Lu Jinzhao knew that she probably looked more like a female ghost than the shadow puppet in the box right now.
While thinking, Master’s room seemed to make a slight unusual sound.
Lu Jinzhao’s attention immediately focused on the room door.
She didn’t dare get too close, afraid of being affected.
Then, she saw that the already open room door seemed to be touched by some invisible existence, slightly moving.
But that was the only anomaly.
Afterward, there was nothing unusual.
Until the other companions arrived one after another outside the room door, Lu Jinzhao did not discover anything else wrong.
Her brows were tightly furrowed, somewhat puzzled about what had happened, and somewhat worried about Fu Xuesheng’s current situation.
Not worried about her life, but worried that if she died, she wouldn’t be able to get more information from her.
If Fu Xuesheng was still alive, perhaps she could figure out from her experience what that subtle sound earlier was about.
“…Junior Sister?”
Someone beside her called Lu Jinzhao in a subtle tone, and Lu Jinzhao turned her head to see his somewhat suspicious gaze.
“What’s wrong?” Lu Jinzhao replied to him.
Hearing the response, the man looked relieved: “Nothing… I just didn’t recognize you for a moment, I thought…”
Thought a ghost was standing here, right?
Lu Jinzhao mentally filled in for him.
She shook her head to indicate she was fine, her gaze falling on the companions who had arrived one after another, carefully observing their states.
She could see some differences in Zhong Sui and Ji Xiangchen, and even smelled a clear bloody scent on Zhong Sui; these two must have had something happen.
But Huo Ye looked very calm, with nothing noticeable.
And Huo Ye was also the only one present who possessed a fate.
