Chapter 107: Inheritance
After bidding farewell to Fu Xuesheng, Lu Jinzhao returned to the room.
She first checked the condition of the shadow puppet and her own human skin. The shadow puppet was quietly staying inside the toolbox, looking very harmless.
And her human skin still needed some time to air-dry. At least, Lu Jinzhao felt that she wouldn’t be able to finish making the first one in time.
But she still didn’t show any anxious appearance.
The parchment probably knew that speaking would expose unnecessary information to Lu Jinzhao. Throughout the process, except for once when stimulated by Lu Jinzhao, it was extremely silent at other times.
At this moment, Lu Jinzhao took out the parchment and looked at it, then placed it next to that shadow puppet, and suddenly said, “Do you need this thing?”
The parchment showed considerable greed for the thing in the iron box, but although she didn’t know what was inside, it was probably related to the train and the ghost.
Since that was the case, she didn’t know if the parchment needed other things.
Of course, if the parchment really wanted it, she definitely wouldn’t give it. This was just a probe.
As Lu Jinzhao expected, even though the parchment wanted to maintain indifference, when Lu Jinzhao deliberately provoked it, it couldn’t hold back at all.
【Do you think I eat any garbage?!】
“Then what do you want to do with the thing in the iron box?” Lu Jinzhao followed up.
The parchment fell silent again.
But she had gotten the answer she wanted.
The stupid parchment thought that staying silent could hide it, but that phrase “eat any garbage” had already exposed everything.
It wanted to devour the thing in the iron box.
Even the parchment coveted it, even losing reason and directly exposing itself in front of Lu Jinzhao. The thing inside must not be simple.
Lu Jinzhao still didn’t know if the parchment’s coveting of the thing in the iron box was merely because it was powerful enough, or because of some special reason, but she could be sure that the parchment couldn’t be used as an “amulet” to suppress this shadow puppet.
The parchment had always been happy to see her death. It suppressed the wooden box, most likely because of a “transaction”.
One-third of her soul already belonged to the parchment. Although she could still control her flesh, in the eyes of the wooden box, she didn’t seem to be completely herself. The part of her soul that had traded with the parchment and was tainted with its aura became the tool for her to fox-borrow-tiger-might.
After all, the parchment had no intention of helping her. It was the wooden box that sensed the parchment’s aura and backed down itself.
But the ghost inside the platform obviously wouldn’t care about that, and hadn’t made any transaction or contract with her. And the parchment was even less likely to help her.
Not pitting her was already a blessing from heaven.
So Lu Jinzhao didn’t dare to try using the parchment to suppress this human skin in the same way as the wooden box. In fact, she didn’t dare to let the parchment come into too much contact with these things. Who knew if it would pull some trick?
Putting the parchment back into her pocket, Lu Jinzhao turned her gaze back to the shadow puppet that was almost complete, with only assembly work left.
Even though its limbs were broken and scattered on the workbench, just looking at it made Lu Jinzhao feel that it was “alive”.
It just didn’t have bones yet. It needed something to support its movement.
Assembly was impossible to do right now. Lu Jinzhao just sat there at the workbench doing nothing, waiting until nightfall.
She didn’t dare to rest, because she didn’t know these teammates. She didn’t know if any of them would lose patience tonight and want to do something.
So she had to stay awake, just in case.
In the ancient house, even late at night, candle fires dotted various places. Through the night curtain and the blurry windows, the shadows of those trees, the furniture inside the room projected onto the windows, and the occasional flashing human figures all seemed like a drama being performed on the shadow puppet screen.
Time slowly passed 12 o’clock, and the big house was completely silent.
Lu Jinzhao watched the flames on the candlestick flicker slightly, relaxed a bit for a moment, then turned her gaze back to the workbench.
The shadow puppet at night seemed a bit more dangerous. She didn’t dare to shift her attention away for too long.
The flame on the candlestick suddenly flickered, making the light and shadows inside the room tremble along with it. Lu Jinzhao’s intuition made her frown, and she looked up toward the candlestick, then through it, she saw the window behind.
There, at some unknown time, a shadow had appeared.
A shadow as tall as a person, just like a person’s shadow.
It stood there silently. From the outline, it seemed to be staring inside the house.
Lu Jinzhao tensed up all over, her hand slightly clenched into a fist, and her spirit immediately became taut.
What was outside the window?
Who?
In the middle of the night without a sound, coming outside her room—was it a teammate?
Or something else?
Thanks to past experiences, now when Lu Jinzhao encountered such weirdness, she was no longer scared to the point of numb scalp and blank brain. She just had a momentary irregularity in her heartbeat, then quickly regained calmness under the control of reason.
She didn’t dare to move rashly. That shadow was right outside the door. She had nowhere to run even if she wanted to right away.
Her breathing became faint. It was Lu Jinzhao restraining herself to reduce the noise she made.
Perhaps because it didn’t “see” what it wanted to see, the shadow outside the door lost patience first and moved.
He walked forward a few steps.
From the window to the doorway.
At this moment, Lu Jinzhao finally realized something was off about this house.
The windows were in a continuous sheet, all papered like screens. She could clearly see the thing outside moving from the window to the doorway.
Although she could only see a black shadow, his unfamiliar clothing, wide sleeves, and stiff movements really didn’t look like a living person. It was more like…
A shadow puppet hiding behind the screen.
Lu Jinzhao watched “him” raise his hand, the movement still stiff and mechanical, and then
——knock
——knock
“He” knocked on the door.
Lu Jinzhao didn’t dare to respond, but she was prepared, waiting for the next move from the thing outside the door.
But… for some reason, perhaps because some condition wasn’t met, “he” only knocked on the door but didn’t break it down.
Seeming to realize that this door wouldn’t be opened by knocking, the knocking stopped.
But from the shadow’s movements, “he” was still looking inside the house.
Lu Jinzhao felt her palms slightly damp. She knew this was because she was very nervous now.
Her heartbeat was fast. She couldn’t fully control her heartbeat to calm down. Her body muscles were tense, poised to strike.
“He” looked for a long time, until truly confirming that “he” couldn’t enter today. Then, his head turned weirdly toward another direction, and his body followed slowly a beat later, gradually leaving Lu Jinzhao’s door.
From beginning to end, Lu Jinzhao didn’t hear any footsteps.
Not even any sound belonging to a person.
“It’s gone…”
Realizing this, she breathed a slight sigh of relief, then remembered that she hadn’t paid any attention to the shadow puppet just now, and sharply turned back to look at the workbench.
The shadow puppet, which had been scattered on the table, had somehow assembled itself into a human shape.
Clearly lying expressionlessly on the desk, Lu Jinzhao still felt that just now, it had been watching her too.
With a gaze almost like anticipation.
Weird schedule, it’s so late I’m feeling a bit brain-fogged from sleepiness.
