Bo Yi had just carefully placed the object in a specimen bag when he looked up and noticed Zhao Yi watching him with a complicated expression.
He calmly raised his eyes to meet his gaze.
Caught sneaking a look, Zhao Yi timidly looked away. Pretending nothing had happened, he grabbed Zhao Wen Shan beside him. "We'll go look for clues, then."
Zhao Wen Shan was dragged away, utterly bewildered.
After the Zhao siblings left, the other players saw that there were no clues to be had and departed in twos and threes. Even Zhang Songhao clutched his wound and endured the pain as he left the dining room to search for a first-aid kit.
Bo Yi put away the research specimens he had just collected and rose unhurriedly from his seat.
Now, Bo Yi was the only person left in the dining room. A wind from some unknown source drifted through, carrying a bone-deep chill. The wavering candle flames danced and crackled. As the temperature in the dining room gradually fell, their bright yellow flames turned pale blue, stretching the shadows on the walls into long, twisted shapes.
Bo Yi continued forward without a change in expression.
The wind swirling through the dining room immediately grew fiercer, its mournful howling like sobs in his ears. Amid that howling, Bo Yi's ears twitched as he caught another sound.
"Rrrumble..."
Something was rolling across the floor...
"Rrrumble..."
And the sound was drawing closer and closer... It sounded as though it was right behind him...
He slowly came to a stop. The instant Bo Yi turned toward the sound, the wind abruptly ceased-the air throughout the dining room seemed to freeze, and not a single sound could be heard.
In that deathly silence, Bo Yi scanned the floor around him. It was completely empty.
Bo Yi withdrew his gaze and was about to continue forward, but his raised foot suddenly stopped in midair-
A head sat quietly on its own right in front of him.
It was a doll's head. Its hair had become terribly tangled from rolling across the floor and was coated with dust. Since the hair almost completely obscured its face, Bo Yi could not tell whether the head belonged to the doll that had appeared in his room.
Bo Yi drew back his foot, bent down, and reached toward the doll.
But before his fingertips could touch the doll's head, it began rolling again.
"Rrrumble..."
It rolled slowly toward the dining room's exit, neither too fast nor too slow-just fast enough for Bo Yi to follow without being able to touch it. Sometimes, when Bo Yi walked too slowly, it would even ease to a stop and wait for him.
Now Bo Yi was certain-the head was showing him the way.
He followed the doll's head out of the dining room, through the corridor, and finally stopped beside the staircase in the hall. Just as Bo Yi thought they had reached their destination, the head began rolling again.
"Rrrumble..."
It rolled toward the back of the staircase.
Hmm? There was actually space behind the staircase?
Puzzled, Bo Yi nevertheless followed it around.
"!" A hint of surprise crossed his face as he saw what lay behind the staircase.
There was actually a room hidden here!
The gap between the staircase and the wall was narrow, so even Bo Yi had not thought to explore it earlier. The door had been cleverly positioned behind the turn in the stairs, concealed in the shadow of the landing. On top of that, it was the same color as the staircase and blended in almost seamlessly. Without looking closely, there was no way to notice it.
If the doll's head had not rolled toward the door and vanished in front of it before Bo Yi's eyes, he would never have noticed there was a door here.
Following the head's guidance, he reached out and pulled the door open.
As soon as the door opened, a rush of cold, clammy air hit him, mingled with the stench of rotting wood and moldy paper. The room had no windows and was pitch-black, without a trace of light. Bo Yi could only hold up his candle carefully and look around.
Judging by its arrangement, this seemed to be a storeroom. It was filled with old belongings, with wooden crates of all sizes piled together and stacks of yellowed paper resting on top. All sorts of wooden tools hung on the walls. Bo Yi guessed they were tools for making dolls.
Unfortunately, even that brief glance revealed reddish rust on the iron parts of many tools, while much of the wood had begun to rot. They seemed to have gone unused for a long time.
Bo Yi set the candle on a nearby crate and picked up the papers on top. Their edges had curled slightly, and dust had piled up on them. All kinds of doll designs had been drawn on the pale yellow sheets.
Come to think of it, he remembered the voice that had sounded in his mind earlier saying that this instance was called "Doll Castle"... Yet so far, he had hardly seen any dolls anywhere in the castle. Even the clues about dolls were hidden in this little room, which was impossible to find without looking closely.
He wondered where the kindhearted doll's head that had brought him here had gone...
He returned the papers to their original place, picked up the candle again, and began walking around the room to search.
The wooden crates were piled haphazardly at varying heights. The lower ones lay scattered across the floor, while the taller stacks formed a small mountain that completely blocked the wall behind them.
Bo Yi looked around as he walked. In a moment of inattention, he tripped over a crate on the floor and lurched sideways. Just as he was about to fall, he reached out to brace himself against the mountain of crates beside him.
But the instant his hand touched a wooden crate, alarm flashed through his mind. This is bad-these crates are empty!
Sure enough, a second later-
Bang-
Bang-
Bang-
The stacked crates lost their support one after another and toppled like dominoes, crashing across the floor with dull thuds.
Having finally steadied himself, Bo Yi had no attention to spare for why the crates were empty.
He was staring at the wall revealed by the fallen crates-there was an enormous iron door.
The paint on the door had long since peeled away, and dark brown rust covered almost its entire surface. Even from some distance away, Bo Yi could feel the cold continuously radiating from it.
He kicked aside the wooden crates on the floor and walked toward the iron door.
The closer he got, the lower the temperature fell.
He placed his hand on the iron door's handle. It was ice-cold to the touch, as though he had pressed his hand against a block of ice.
Just as Bo Yi was about to push down, he suddenly felt an icy breath behind his ear. At the same time, an equally cold body pressed against him from behind.
"Dear guest..."
A familiar voice, warm with amusement, sounded right against his ear. "May I ask what you're doing here?"
Before you continue