Little Puppet, I'm sorry, I was wrong to blame you...

"What are you doing!"

The reed mat at the entrance of the shack was roughly ripped aside. Several pairs of military boots blocked both ends of the shack, their gleaming bayonets reflecting an ominous light under the torches.

"In the middle of the night, what are you doing in a place like this!"

"Your Excellency! Your Excellency, we are good citizens!" Among the children, the old man stood up, bowing and scraping. He raised the puppet in his hand to show the interpreter standing amidst the soldiers.

"The old man was telling them the story of Sun Wukong... just coaxing the children, just coaxing the children!"

Shen Le's head buzzed.

He had learned this song when he was a child, too. Back then, in a bright, safe, and warm classroom, his teacher had led them in singing, telling them about the Japanese devils' invasion and the stories of little heroes.

But now, this old man, in a dark and cold shack, while the Japanese devils might come to search at any moment, was secretly performing for the children, telling them that there were such children, such little heroes, who stood with us, with you, to resist the Japanese devils, not hesitating to sacrifice themselves for it!

His chest heaved, and he gripped the shack's pole tightly, tears almost falling on the spot. The interpreter stared at the puppet with disbelief, looking at its tattered cloth jacket and skirt, and let out a scoff.

"This thing counts as Sun Wukong?"

"We're poor, Officer, we're poor." The old man hunched his back, raised the puppet in his hand a little higher, and tugged at the strings repeatedly. Following his movements, the puppet jumped nimbly, performing handsprings, backflips, side flips, front aerials, back aerials, tucked somersaults, spins, and swallow-style flips...

"Hmph! Barely looks like something."

The interpreter snorted, turned his head, and barked a few sentences in Japanese before leading the Japanese soldiers away. The old man listened with bated breath, and only when the commotion outside could no longer be heard did he put the little jacket back on the puppet and continue to sing.

Shen Le stood in the darkness, watching the Little Puppet take steps, turn, be flung high, and land flat, its body twitching constantly, its fists clenched tight. When the final verse arrived, he couldn't help but sing along in a low voice:

"The autumn wind blows through every village, spreading this moving story far and wide. Every fellow villager has tears in their eyes, singing of Little Erxiao the Cowherd..."

Inside the shack, every child's eyes were bright and brimming with tears, looking up at the quiet puppet in the old man's hands. The flickering firelight from the firewood in the center of the shack shone onto the Little Puppet's face, and from the Little Puppet's face, it shone into the heart of every child.

The field of vision slowly dimmed, then slowly brightened again. The Little Puppet lay quietly before him, its body bare, lacking both the gorgeous red skirt and the dusty little jacket. Yet this time, Shen Le stroked the Little Puppet's cheek with a gentleness he had never felt before:

"I'm sorry, I was wrong to blame you..."

He calmed his emotions, then began to look up information, draw diagrams, and prepare to make the control board for the marionette so that all the strings could be tied to it. After drawing for a while, he opened Taobao and began to search:

He couldn't even think about making the clothes himself; his specialty was ancient architecture restoration, not textile restoration. Even if he could repair the damaged fabrics on the Little Puppet, he couldn't turn the damaged into the intact, nor could he make ancient-style clothing of a similar design.

The only way out was to buy them...

Fortunately, the almighty Taobao had everything. For a puppet of this 60-centimeter height, he could use clothes for 1/3 scale BJD dolls; they came in diverse styles, and the price... was also acceptable. Ready-made ancient-style doll clothes cost one or two hundred for the cheap ones, and five, six, or seven or eight hundred for the expensive ones. Of course, if he wanted them custom-made, the price would be different.

Shen Le took a photo of the doll clothes sketch he had drawn by hand, then took another of the cleaned and dried fragments of the puppet's clothes, and began to flip through Taobao shops one by one, communicating with them:

"Hello, do you have this pattern and style in stock?"

"No stock. We can do custom orders, dear~~~"

"How much for a custom order?"

"It depends on what material you use. We have cotton, ramie, chiffon, polyester, silk, brocade..."

Shen Le shopped on Taobao with satisfaction. After comparing four shops, he spent 528 big ones to buy a set of ancient-style red dresses called "Peony Fairy" for the Little Puppet, along with a wig, a headpiece, and a beaded tassel. Once the purchase was complete, he checked the time and realized it was already night:

"Well, time to go out and forage for food again..."

He stretched and stood up, finally finding time to check his phone for recent messages. As soon as he opened WeChat, aside from the endless stream of messages in his classmates' group, there was a message from the young policeman Shi Guangbing:

"Hello? Is that puppet of yours still there? I'd like to bring some people to take a look at it, is that convenient?"

Shen Le had a rather good impression of him. Whether it was pulling him out of the river, staying up all night in a frantic search for the children, or rushing in to direct the evacuation and help treat the children, it was clear that he was a reliable person. Since such a person had asked, he was naturally willing to accommodate him.

"It's convenient. When are you coming?"

"Can you do it within 5 minutes?"

Shen Le strolled leisurely from the first room of the east wing in the third courtyard to the sedan hall in the first courtyard. He opened the main gate of the mansion and saw three people standing shoulder to shoulder at the entrance:

One familiar face was the policeman Shi Guangbing, and the other two were strangers—one was a baby-faced youth, and the other was a young man in a Tang suit. Seeing him open the door and come out, the two strangers—one raised his hand and narrowed his eyes, while the other held up his phone to look through the lens. Then, they exchanged a quick glance. A look of astonishment appeared on both their faces simultaneously.

Strange... the person in front of them, the owner of this grand mansion, was clearly just an ordinary person. Neither the Spirit Eye nor the app on the phone showed anything unusual.

His aura was normal; he was neither tainted by gloom nor was he the type who was extremely masculine and immune to all evil. He didn't even have that sense of abundant merit that naturally repelled external evil.

His spiritual pressure was also normal; he was not a Taoist practitioner or a Buddhist disciple. Judging by his physique and gait, he was clearly not a martial arts master either.

How could such a person live so comfortably and thrive in a mansion with such thick demonic energy?

"Are you the two who want to see my puppet?"

"Yes." Shi Guangbing stepped forward. He turned slightly, opened his right hand, and gestured toward Shen Le:

"These are people from the Municipal Bureau of Culture. This is Gu Yulin, and this is Zhang Bingxin. They are currently working on a project related to intangible cultural heritage, and when they heard you had a marionette passed down for decades, they asked me to inquire if they could come and take a look."

"Mr. Gu, Mr. Zhang, please come in." Shen Le smiled and nodded at them with ulterior motives. Whether his mansion—this ancient house—would be designated as a protected building likely depended on the people from the Municipal Bureau of Culture. Getting to know two of them now was not a loss!

The three followed Shen Le into the mansion. As soon as they stepped into the courtyard, the baby-faced youth let out a soft "Wow":

"What beautiful wood carvings!—Can I take pictures?"

"...Don't spread them around," Shen Le said in a low voice. The baby-faced youth was eager for this, and had already raised his phone, snapping away. Beside him, the Tang-suited youth Gu Yulin even raised his camera, capturing the ridge beasts, the inverted lotus wood carvings on the column capitals, the Circle Chair in the main hall...

He photographed everything he saw, wishing he didn't have to miss a single thing.

At an angle Shen Le couldn't see, rows of pale yellow numbers kept jumping on the phone screen and the camera screen, occasionally popping up a deep yellow or light red:

47, 65, 103, 56, 92...

These pieces of furniture and decorations had all been soaked in demonic energy... Although they were still a long way from becoming demons, the energy values had already deviated quite far from the normal range...