The Witch's Time Cabin

In the spacious clearing, three people surrounded a claw machine, intently watching the metal claw's movements.

Before Wang Jue arrived, Zhao Yijiu had tried twice more without success, so Wang Jue became the hope of the entire village.

"Amazing!" Yu Xing watched as the second-to-last coin was inserted. Wang Jue skillfully manipulated the buttons, grabbing a human head doll and sending it towards the exit.

Wang Jue's arrival breathed life into the stalled amusement project. Two human heads had already emerged from the chute below, picked up by Yu Xing and placed on top of the claw machine.

He was now grabbing the third.

"This isn't difficult at all. It's fixed so tightly, it's hard to shake it loose. It's much easier to grab than the claw machines outside," Wang Jue muttered, unable to imagine how Yu Xing and Zhao Yijiu had managed to fail to grab a single head with five coins. Zhao Yijiu remained silent, while Yu Xing just hummed in agreement beside him.

Soon, the third human head, resembling an elderly person, was also pulled out.

"Thank goodness for you, otherwise we would have ruined this project," Yu Xing exclaimed.

"Heh heh, no problem." Wang Jue took the third head from the chute and looked at its wrinkled face. "Where's the clue?"

The sign said three human heads would yield a clue, but it didn't mention where the clue would be. Yu Xing shrugged and casually reached for the human heads placed on top of the machine, only to find nothing.

His eyebrows shot up, and he turned to look. The two heads he had placed there earlier had vanished – Where are my heads?

Where did those two heads, this big, that I just put here, go?

Before he could ponder further, Yu Xing felt a chill around his neck. Something furry and dense wrapped around him.

He reached out to touch it, and the thing on his neck immediately tightened, bringing a sense of suffocation.

It was hair!

Besides the hair, something seemed to be pressing against the back of his neck, giggling.

That must be the face.

The movements of these two human heads were truly silent. Yu Xing, so close to them, hadn't heard them disappear.

His eyes turned cold. Amidst the tightening hair, he stole a glance at the other two.

The three human heads were distributed quite evenly. One rolled on the ground, then bounced up like a ball. Each time it hit the ground, it left behind small chunks of minced meat, which was disgusting.

As it bounced, Zhao Yijiu's knife pierced its scalp. The mechanical half and the small knife's metal made a faint humming sound.

"Whoa!" Before Wang Jue could even react to the unfolding events, the human head in his hand suddenly opened its eyes and a gaping maw, lunging for his wrist.

He was so close, he could clearly see the bloody, rotten flesh inside the doll's mouth, and its teeth, inexplicably sharp.

With that bite, his hand would be ruined!

Instantly, Wang Jue ignored everything else. A yellow talisman appeared in his fingertips and was rapidly slapped onto the doll's mouth.

Upon contact with the doll, the talisman erupted with a chilling airflow. The doll's mouth opened wide in pain, sliced by invisible blades. The human half was somewhat affected, while the mechanical half only received shallow white scratches.

Fortunately, with Wang Jue on guard, the doll couldn't bite him for the time being.

Seeing that all three were under attack, the Alice-headed doll on the claw machine finally spoke: "The clue is inside one of the human heads."

Wang Jue reacted instantly, looking at the doll being tormented by the talisman with a complicated expression. It was screaming in pain, but in reality, nothing serious was happening to it. It's only in one of the heads, so it can't be this one, right?

He didn't want to look any closer into that mouth.

"It's not with me," Zhao Yijiu said in a deep voice, holding the human head like a skewer and prying open its mouth.

The clue must be in the mouth of the long-haired head that was strangling Yu Xing.

The two of them looked towards Yu Xing, whose neck was still entangled in hair, and who seemed unable to breathe.

Wang Jue looked at Yu Xing, a decent young man with a cheerful personality and good manners. At this moment, his face had turned pale, as if devoid of blood beneath his skin. He felt a desire to help. "Quick, see if you can pry it open! If not, I'll--"

"I can," Yu Xing said. He raised his hand and forcefully pulled the hair outward, immediately regaining his ability to breathe. "I was just checking its hair volume. After wrapping around me for so long, it's just a small clump. It can't even cover my nose and mouth. It's bald!"

Wang Jue: "..."

Zhao Yijiu: "..."

Yu Xing was also quite mischievous. The doll had split its hair into two strands to choke him from behind, and he was now pulling each strand outward with his hands, with such force that he almost ripped the doll's hair and scalp off.

The doll had long stopped giggling. With the searing pain on its scalp, it let out a pained howl.

It sounded quite pathetic.

"This doll has incredible strength. You managed to pull it off with your bare hands?" After a moment of speechless disbelief, Wang Jue suddenly realized something was amiss.

"Yeah, you're stronger than I thought," Zhao Yijiu added, a flicker of caution in his eyes. "Although this is our first time entering a deduction game together, I never saw this side of you during our usual work. You're very good at hiding."

Wang Jue looked at the two of them, pondering.

These two were supposedly colleagues in reality, but judging by their words, Zhao Yijiu didn't trust Yu Xing? This meant that in Zhao Yijiu's mind, Yu Xing could be the murderer?

He observed Yu Xing, noticing that after hearing Zhao Yijiu's words, his hands paused, and his expression seemed to falter for a moment before being quickly masked. "Ahahaha, no, which deducer isn't good at hiding?"

"Perhaps," Zhao Yijiu said, glancing coldly at Yu Xing before his gaze fell on the doll Yu Xing was holding. "Get the clue."

Yu Xing stopped wasting words and handed the head over.

The long-haired doll was barely alive, its eyes darting around. Zhao Yijiu took it, forcefully pried open its mouth, and behind the row of neat teeth, he saw a white piece of paper.

He disdainfully pulled out the paper and read a sentence on it: "The detective has not traveled with the murderer so far."

After reading it aloud, he showed the paper to the other two, then disgustedly stuffed it back into the doll's mouth.

With a release of his hand, the head fled like a refugee, flying back into the claw machine from the passage, neatly filling the empty spot.

This...

What kind of clue is this?

After Zhao Yijiu read out the clue, Wang Jue's expression was a bit strained.

However, this clue... seemed to be of some help in the deduction.

"Wang Jue, were you acting with Xie Ze before? Why did you suddenly come looking for us?" Yu Xing "realized belatedly," asking curiously.

"Xie Ze and I were just on the carousel, and then Xie Ze suddenly said he wasn't comfortable leaving us two to walk alone, meaning he wasn't comfortable leaving me—he happened to see that couple on the Ferris wheel and wanted to go find them there," Wang Jue said dejectedly. "I followed him at first, but then for the next ride, they planned to go on the spinning teacups, which had a maximum of three people, so they left me behind. Ling Heng told me that they saw you two go to the claw machine area on the Ferris wheel and asked me to find you."

So that's how it was.

Yu Xing nodded thoughtfully.

The murderer would inevitably approach others, searching for who resembled the deceased more, while the detective could either contact the deceased to protect them or distance themselves from the deceased, making it impossible for the murderer to guess who the deceased was.

Everyone was secretly observing others. Besides the obvious clues, everyone's intentions and actions were enough to reveal a lot.

The three of them each had their own thoughts and walked towards the next attraction. The sign for the claw machine area had changed to read "[This attraction is temporarily closed]."

They had originally wanted to go to the haunted house.

But Wang Jue wailed, saying he was afraid of ghosts and didn't want to be scared by ghosts even in a non-supernatural deduction game. He adamantly refused to enter even when they reached the entrance of the haunted house.

So, Yu Xing displayed the little humanity he had left, patted Wang Jue's shoulder with great tolerance and pity, and changed their target from the haunted house to other indoor attractions.

They walked for a long time before finally discovering a rather peculiar facility in a corner of the amusement park. It was a wooden house that didn't look large from the outside, with gears covering its walls and a steam pipe sticking out somewhere, hissing and releasing white steam.

Alice's avatar was made into a sign hanging on the door, with "The Witch's Time Cabin" written underneath in Gothic font.

As they pushed open the door, a clear bell sound rang out. Yu Xing's steps slowed for a moment as he looked around in amazement.

This place... was very special.

So special that the moment the three of them entered, they fell silent in unison.

Upon entering the house, one could feel the difference between this place and others. Although it also had steampunk-style decorations, it possessed a palpable sense of age that the other places lacked.

The overall color scheme here was a hazy moon-gold, which, under the light, inexplicably exuded a hint of gloom amidst its gentleness.

It was as if time, which should have been moving forward normally... had rusted.

Time was originally an abstract concept, yet Yu Xing had this thought in an instant.

In his eyes, time...

was such a helpless thing.

He withdrew his thoughts amidst the footsteps of Zhao Yijiu and Wang Jue and continued to look around.

The hall was covered with a dark gold carpet. Besides tea-colored hardwood sofas and a coffee table, there was also a display stand.

The display stand was piled high with exquisite artifacts from various eras, including miniatures of the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, as well as notebooks that could be used as gifts, pen holders decorated with small gears, and models of Gothic castles...

Hundreds of items were magnificently piled up. He could only name about half of them, and there were some things on the table he had never even seen before.

He casually picked up a quill pen. The pen was unexpectedly heavy, and he couldn't tell what material it was made of.

Thick white lines were wound around the hall, with several photos clipped to them by iron clips. There were portraits, landscapes, and blurry images of unknown meaning, as well as unsettling, terrifying scenes.

Looking at these photos, Yu Xing suddenly felt a sense of familiarity.

He put down the quill and stopped in front of a landscape photo with a yellowish-brown hue. In the photo, the earthy color was a dilapidated wooden boat, washed ashore on muddy ground, with an oar leaning crookedly against its hull.

Through the small wooden boat, a village could be vaguely seen in the distance.

"So familiar..." Yu Xing murmured, as if sensing something, and carefully examined these photos.

Everything in the photos seemed to be something he had experienced before... or so he thought.

"What are you staring at a tree for?" Wang Jue came over, pointing at the photo of the small wooden boat. "Speaking of which, this big willow tree looks so familiar, why can't I remember where I've seen it?"

A tree?

Yu Xing looked at the small wooden boat, then at Wang Jue.

Wang Jue's mind should be fine.

Therefore, it meant that the same photo was seen differently by him and Wang Jue.

He instantly realized that these photos were likely generated based on each person's different memories.

Suddenly, Yu Xing's peripheral vision caught a glimpse of red.

His expression immediately turned grim. He abandoned Wang Jue, who was still marveling, and walked towards the photo where the red was located.

This photo was old and had already begun to yellow.

In the photo, a handsome man with a clear complexion, dressed in a light-colored long gown and a traditional jacket, sat on an intricately patterned wooden chair. His naturally smiling eyes looked at Yu Xing outside the photo with an indescribable penetrating gaze.

The man wore a distinctive earring on his left ear: a slender piece of glass hanging with long tassels, and the red color was precisely the color of the glass and tassels themselves.

It was an eerie blood-red.

The man possessed a beauty that transcended gender. Yu Xing stared at him calmly, his fingers unconsciously clenching until they dug into his flesh.

"Lingren..." he murmured silently, the faint smile on the man's face seeming to carry a hint of mockery.

Yu Xing hadn't expected that this so-called Time Cabin could replicate his memories in these photographs.

These photos dredged up many experiences he had deliberately buried, especially the blood feud.

"Welcome."

Suddenly, the door at the back of the hall opened. A voice, clear and smooth as a flowing spring, greeted them first. Then, a woman with long hair emerged from the inner room.

The three people in the hall snapped back to attention.

Yu Xing withdrew his gaze from the photos, a faint smile playing on his lips as he looked at the owner of this place.

He hadn't expected to see an NPC that looked completely human here.

The woman wore a black robe and walked barefoot on the dark gold carpet. Her fair skin was beautiful and delicate.

Her face was even more stunning. Completely bare-faced, without a speck of makeup, she was more beautiful than any woman Yu Xing had ever seen. Especially her eyes, which shone with a dark gold light. When they gazed at him, they seemed to smile yet remain cold, as if they could draw one into the past and plunge them into a vortex of time.

For some reason, the woman's gaze lingered on Yu Xing for a while. They stared at each other, seeing a shared indifference in each other's eyes.

"Hello!" Wang Jue exclaimed, his eyes wide. "May I ask who you are!?"

This woman's style was all wrong!

If one were to use a Cthulhu role-playing game as an analogy, this woman's appearance (app) was definitely above the human maximum, belonging to the realm of mythical creatures!

I, I could tell at a glance you weren't human!

The woman finally shifted her gaze from Yu Xing and nodded gently at Wang Jue. "I am the Witch. I'm working part-time here for one day."

"Meow." A black furball on her shoulder stirred. It turned out to be a small cat that had blended into the black robe.