Doll Castle (27)

"But..."

Zhao Yi and Zhao Wen Shan looked at each other. "Where are we supposed to find eyes..." Wasn't this just as impossible as giving her a doll? Did anyone think they didn't want to give her one? They simply didn't have any!

Surely they weren't supposed to gouge out their own eyes and give them to her? The servants had eyes, of course. But even setting aside whether they could beat those servants in a fight, if those really were the eyes she wanted, it wouldn't be their place to offer them, would it? After all, the servants obeyed her every command. If she wanted their eyes, she could take them herself. They probably wouldn't even resist.

"Surely... she doesn't want us to find her own eyes... haha..." Seeing the atmosphere grow tense again, Zhao Wen Shan cracked a joke. But when she saw Bo Yi's expression, horror slowly crept across her face. "I was joking! You didn't take that seriously, did you?!"

"No." Bo Yi shook his head.

"Oh, that's good..." Zhao Wen Shan had barely breathed a sigh of relief when Bo Yi continued, "That's what I thought from the start."

Zhao Wen Shan: "!!!"

She turned to stare at Bo Yi, her eyes wide. "You're not joking, are you? We don't even know her, let alone how she lost her eyes. Where are we supposed to find them?!"

Besides, they'd only just met. Did she really have to demand such an expensive "gift" right off the bat?! The NPCs in this instance were far too shameless!

Bo Yi said nothing. He dodged the dolls' attacks while thinking it over. To be honest, he hadn't been particularly surprised when he finally reached that conclusion. After all, both the paintings hanging in the gallery they passed through every day and the dolls' empty eye sockets kept emphasizing one word: "eyes."

Still, things were exactly as Zhao Wen Shan had said. Although the instance kept hinting that "eyes" were the key clue, there were no eyes to be found anywhere in the castle...

Wait!

Bo Yi's movements faltered.

There were eyes in the castle!

And they were in the most obvious place of all!

"What? What is it?!" Seeing Bo Yi's expression change, Zhao Wen Shan immediately grew nervous. Had something else happened?

"I know where the 'eyes' are," Bo Yi said with certainty.

"What?!" Zhao Wen Shan was both shocked and delighted. She couldn't even spare the time to ask how he knew, urging him instead, "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

The other three immediately crowded around Bo Yi. "Where are they? Which way do we go?"

Bo Yi pointed in a direction.

The other three worked together to fight their way through, doing their best to clear a path for Bo Yi.

But after struggling to reach their destination, all three were visibly dumbfounded.

"The place you were pointing to..." Zhao Yi stared, disbelief written across his face. "You meant the gallery?!"

"Yes." Bo Yi nodded without much expression. He took out his Dissection Knife and approached the nearest painting.

Zhao Yi watched for a while, hesitating over what to say. Finally, as Bo Yi brought his knife down toward the eyes in the portrait, he couldn't help speaking up to stop him. "Shouldn't you think this over?"

"These paintings... didn't we establish on the first day that touching them triggered a death condition?"

"Aren't you afraid..."

"I know what you mean." Bo Yi's movements weren't affected in the slightest. With a rip, he neatly sliced open the canvas. "But..."

He turned and motioned for Zhao Yi to look at the "guests" nearby, whom Bo Yu and Zhao Wen Shan were holding back. "Is our situation now... really any different from triggering a death condition?"

Zhao Yi fell silent for a moment, then took out his own weapon and stepped forward to help.

As more and more cuts appeared in the canvas, the things beneath it were gradually exposed to the air.

"This is..."

Looking at what lay behind the canvas, Zhao Yi couldn't help stumbling back two steps. His stomach churned-

Beneath the torn scraps of canvas, countless pairs of eyes with dilated pupils were packed into the hollow frame, staring blankly at him. They floated in formalin that had already turned cloudy and yellow, yet a faint smell of rot still lingered.

"Ugh-"

Zhao Yi covered his mouth and ran out of the gallery. He'd never had trypophobia, but at that moment, he felt the diagnosis was confirmed. There were so many! Every fucking eye in the castle had to be inside these paintings! Thinking of how many times their group had unknowingly walked back and forth under those eyes' stares over the past three days, Zhao Yi felt as though he was about to fall apart.

No! He'd rather go outside and hold back those "guests" than stay here and "dig out" eyes!

The one who came in to replace the fragile Zhao Yi was the resilient Bo Yu. She was clearly much better at handling this than Zhao Yi. After seeing the densely packed eyes, she paused for only a second before briskly getting to work.

Still, there was one thing she didn't understand. "There are so many eyes here..."

"How do we figure out which pair belongs to that girl?" Surely they couldn't take them over one pair at a time to test them? Even putting aside whether they had enough time, if they gave her the wrong pair, no one could guarantee what the girl, who had been sitting quietly in her chair all this time, might do... After all, this was an instance. If they lost that gamble, there would be no chance to start over.

Bo Yi had already sat down on the gallery floor and begun digging out the containers holding the pairs of eyes. At her question, he said, "I have a way."

He took the Detector out of his pocket and aimed it at one pair, muttering to himself, "I just need to find the pair with the most energy..."

Although Bo Yu didn't understand why, and couldn't quite make sense of what Bo Yi was doing, since he said he had a way, she focused on slicing open the canvases.

Rip-

Bzz, bzz-

The sounds of tearing canvas and the device's vibrations rang out one after another in the gallery. Just as the two settled into their smooth teamwork and were about to get into a rhythm, Zhao Wen Shan suddenly screamed.

"The fog!"

Zhao Wen Shan, who had just turned around, pointed behind Bo Yi and screamed, "That black fog is spreading this way!"