"Are these Shadow Play props made from human skin?" Shen Boxia's gaze sharpened slightly.
He instinctively took several steps forward.
He wanted to see more clearly.
But at that moment, the gongs and drums abruptly stopped.
The shadow puppets on the screen ceased moving, and the villagers watching beneath the stage also froze almost simultaneously, as if someone had cast a paralysis spell on them.
They had already seemed hypnotized.
Their bodily movements had been minimal.
Now, they stood there like Puppet People, even the rise and fall of their chests from breathing gone.
If not for the traces of blood and vitality still coursing through them,
they could easily have been mistaken for corpses.
Only after two or three minutes did the villagers begin moving again.
The crowd slowly dispersed.
They began leaving one after another.
No one spoke, no one conversed. They did not even exchange glances. Everyone had hollow, numb eyes as they silently turned and vanished into the night along the road they had come from.
What a fucking bunch of sleepwalkers.
The oil lamps on the stage still burned, swaying gently in the night wind.
The shadow puppet on the screen remained in its turned posture, like a painting frozen upon a wall.
The performance was over.
Before long, the area in front of the stage was completely empty.
Apart from Jiang Qiao and Shen Boxia,
there was no one else.
"I'll check backstage," Shen Boxia said.
He strode to the side of the stage, where a cloth curtain hung, concealing the backstage area.
He reached out and lifted the curtain.
Only to find no one inside.
There were neither gong and drum players nor artists controlling the puppet strings.
There were only several oil lamps,
and a pile of scattered shadow puppets.
Shen Boxia's