In the darkness, Chen Cailing's mouth opened and closed silently.
What is he doing here?
I don't know.
Xiao Bai shook his head, then made a shushing gesture.
The flickering light cast a long, thin shadow on the wall. After standing still at the door for a moment, the sound of footsteps slowly moved away, growing fainter.
Xiao Bai and Chen Cailing, hiding behind the door, both let out a sigh of relief.
Chen Cailing opened her mouth to speak, but Xiao Bai reached out and covered it. She opened her palm, signaling Chen Cailing to write what she wanted to say on it.
Don't speak. It's not certain the danger has passed yet.
Chen Cailing nodded, then used her finger to write on Xiao Bai's hand.
Is he watching us?
Possibly, Xiao Bai replied with "sign language."
Why?
Xiao Bai shook her head, but in her mind, she thought, this is to confirm whether they stay in their rooms every night.
He won't come every night, will he? This guy is such a creep.
Seeing Chen Cailing's complaint, Xiao Bai couldn't help but smile slightly.
So what does he really want? Why hasn't he attacked us?
In a story, evil spirits must follow certain rules. Perhaps the restrictions on this ghost in the tale haven't been lifted yet.
Then what do we do?
Just thinking about someone standing outside the door every night, peeping and eavesdropping, gave Chen Cailing goosebumps. This seemingly peaceful manor was anything but safe.
Xiao Bai didn't answer. She opened her right hand and placed something in Chen Cailing's palm.
A key?
Where did it come from?
Xiao Bai pointed at the lantern, and Chen Cailing immediately understood.
The person who placed the lantern at the door and the butler who came up to monitor them were likely not the same person. After a day of investigation, it was now basically confirmed that aside from the participants, only the butler and the gardener were in the manor. Since the key wasn't left by the butler, the only suspect was the gardener.
This gardener seemed to know some secrets of the manor and had revealed quite a bit of important information to Ye Xiaomei during the day. In other words, he might be seen as a plot character helping the participants.
Then there was the key itself.
A small bronze key that didn't match the door locks at all. What lock did it open? Could there be a hidden room in the manor that the participants hadn't discovered?
For now, the participants had no way of knowing.
The night was full of twists and turns, but after that, it remained calm, with nothing else happening. Then, time moved to the morning of the third day.
That morning, a small incident occurred. When Xiao Bai opened the window, she happened to see the gardener Ye Xiaomei had mentioned working in the nearby garden. As if sensing something, just as Xiao Bai reached the window, the man looked up and thoughtfully glanced at the participants on the upper floor.
Had the gardener really left the key at the door last night? What was his purpose?
Later, Xiao Bai and Chen Cailing recounted everything that had happened the previous night and discussed it.
However, when Xiao Bai mentioned the human-shaped thing under the blanket, Chen Cailing's expression turned strange, because she clearly remembered that she had placed that blanket over the doll.
So, the human-shaped thing standing at the toy room door last night was Tongtong, who had come out of her room?
Could it be that the gardener or butler's arrival had interfered with the vengeful spirit's attack, causing the supernatural assault on Xiao Bai to suddenly stop last night?
The strangest thing was the key the participants had obtained.
The key was very small, and earlier, Chen Cailing had tried it on several locked cabinets, but of course, with no results.
Just then, the bell rang again. The bell meant the participants' daily work had begun. This time, it was Ye Xiaomei and Ke Shufan's turn to wake up "that thing" and bring it to the first-floor living room.
This was one of the strategies the participants had devised. With so many people around, even if "that thing" was possessing the doll, it couldn't openly attack in front of everyone.
For some reason, Butler Wei didn't show up all morning. Then, Xiao Bai and Chen Cailing decided to thoroughly search the house.
This bronze key wasn't a random prop. Its existence suggested there was an area in the manor the participants hadn't explored yet, likely tied to the story's core elements, or even revealing the greatest danger in the tale.
The sooner they uncovered the secrets, the higher their chances of survival. If they waited until the story's end, even if they revealed the hidden plot, it might be too late to change the outcome.
Total annihilation was a common occurrence in the horror stories of the Strange Talk Radio!
To thoroughly search the house, the participants decided to temporarily take Tongtong away from the main building. Of course, this task fell to Ye Xiaomei and Ke Shufan.
"Tongtong, the weather's nice today. Big sister will take you for a walk."
Smiling, Ye Xiaomei and Ke Shufan knowingly placed the wooden doll into a prepared cart. This was their idea from the night before—avoiding direct contact with "that thing" while not violating the list's requirements.
Especially after hearing Xiao Bai's account of last night's events, the two were even more convinced that this eerie doll was the story's main evil spirit, and it had already triggered its supernatural attack once last night!
Their task was to take the doll away from the main building to the courtyard for a "walk," giving Xiao Bai and Chen Cailing enough time to search.
Of course, this plan carried risks for both sides, but in a horror story, there was no way to resolve things without taking risks!
Once Ye Xiaomei and the others were far from the main building, Xiao Bai grabbed the pendant on her chest and headed toward the second floor.
From the first day they arrived at the manor until yesterday, after two days of observation, she had vaguely noticed something.
That was a height discrepancy between the building's exterior and its interior structure.
In other words, the actual interior space was shorter than it appeared.
To put it another way, Xiao Bai speculated that within the building, especially on the second-floor ceiling, there might be a hidden attic-like space.
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PS, please add to your collection! Please add to your collection! If the collection count breaks 2000 today, I'll add another chapter. Thank you all~