Chapter 212

The video continues, with a dual perspective. On one side, a woman is hiding in the basement with her child; on the other, Ye Yanran group are searching the upstairs living room. They haven't found their target on the first floor and are preparing to go upstairs to check when the villa's electricity suddenly goes out, causing the crystal chandelier on the ceiling to flicker. This startles the three tense individuals. After recovering, they head up the stairs, only to find that the flowerpots at the top of the stairs have fallen over. These strange accidents don't deter the three; instead, they speed up their search.

The three quickly ran up to the second floor, where a stroller and a "Living Dead dead" baby lying inside a bedroom suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A few seconds later, a broken baby bottle appeared on the floor, with milk spilled all over it. The scene was set up perfectly when the three pushed open the bedroom door.

The three discovered the "Living Dead child".

The three people nervously pushed the stroller and took the "Living Dead child" away.

The villa fell silent.

In the basement, the woman heard the footsteps fade away, covered her face, and cried and laughed at the same time, appearing almost delirious.

It was indeed abnormal, because prolonged exposure to Pollution, even at Pollution very low level, caused the woman's exposed skin to fester and rot, and her mental state deteriorated day by day. The garden gradually fell into disrepair due to her neglect, and she didn't even realize that she had the lights on on during sunny days.

After Ye Yanran and the others took away the Polluted had been exposed to the counterfeit products, life at the villa returned to normal. The woman still pushed the stroller, sang lullabies, and gazed tenderly at her child. Finally, one day, she could no longer withstand the Pollution and fell into a coma.

While she was unconscious, the image suddenly went black for a second. A second later, the screen restarted, and the Polluted baby stroller was now dismembered and lifeless.

"Ah, ahh, ahh!"

Suddenly, the silent film started playing sound. The woman who had woken up screamed. She threw herself onto the stroller, hugged the Polluted's corpse, and cried out incoherently. She wasn't mute, but she couldn't utter a single normal syllable.

The camera followed the woman, recording her holding the Polluted's corpse until it decomposed, and finally running out of the villa in a frenzy, searching frantically for her child.

The Pollution on her body vanished into thin air in an instant, and the Pollution marks on her arms disappeared without a trace, but madness still accompanied her.

She's completely gone mad.

The camera followed the woman the whole time, recording how this woman of noble birth wandered the streets like a beggar. The story was tragic, but the originally uniformly cold-toned scenes gradually became colored, as if the ruthless cameraman was slowly becoming compassionate.

The story was long, but it only played out in Ye Jiang's mind for a moment. When it ended, Ye Jiang came to her senses and found that her heart was pounding.

The dagger, still under her control, remained suspended in mid-air, its sharp tip aimed at the Polluted's neck, as if it would swiftly sever the Polluted's head at any moment.

"No, no..."

The woman's desperate pleas reached Ye Jiang's ears, and she watched silently, as if she had become the cameraman in the story.

But she wasn't the cameraman. She moved slightly, and the dagger in mid-air shattered and scattered. She gave in to the woman's pleas.

Why didn't she take action?

Isn't it only natural to kill a Polluted in a pseudo-living state? Why is she wavering?

Ye Jiang was almost drowning out the sound of her own heartbeat.

"That replica in the stroller..." With a pounding heart, Ye Jiang heard herself speak in a low voice, "... Did you create that?"

Besides the young man who was with her, there was only one other person who was conscious at the scene, so only one person could answer her questions.

"No," the woman in a black dress and black beard replied as she stepped out of the elevator. "I'm just passing by."

"I was passing by the villa and sensed there might be a beautiful story inside, so I went in to take a look," the woman said. The wide brim of her top hat slightly obscured her eyes and brows. "A mother, afraid her baby would be taken away, hid with her baby in the basement. It's a truly touching story."

The woman adjusted her hat, her face revealing compassion. "But it can't be like this. As a woman myself, as a mother, I witnessed the tragedy that befell this lady. It certainly moved me deeply, but it's wrong. A mother will one day be killed by her own sick child; that's the real tragedy. So—"

The woman's face was full of compassion. She said, "So, I took her child out of the stroller and let it go where it was supposed to go, to correct this mistake."

She glanced sympathetically at the disoriented woman, then looked at Ye Jiang and clarified, "Child, I was just a spectator watching the story. At most, I only lifted a finger; I didn't do what you're saying."

woman

As she said this, she realized that she had only made this one move: releasing the real goods when the human officials entered the villa to take away the fakes.

It was a genuine release. In fact, the real thing had strange marks of a restriction on it. The real thing's hypnotic ability had always been suppressed by that restriction. When she released it out of the stroller, she also broke the restriction for it.

Therefore, the official human team did not encounter the "ghost wall" when they first entered the villa, but only after the real item appeared.

That's all she did.

As for who created the replica, and who placed a restriction on the original, that remains to be seen.

The woman's lips curled into an intrigued smile.

There exists an unseen and powerful force in the basement of the villa. When the human officials entered the villa, that force created a few minor incidents in an attempt to scare them away, but they failed. So, it created a fake, hoping that the officials would take the fake away. It was that force that limited the hypnotic ability of the real item.

The woman naturally wanted to find that powerful force, but unfortunately, it was hidden too deeply, and she couldn't find it in a short time.

The woman said, "Child, please don't misunderstand me."

Ye Jiang remained silent.

She believed it. Actually, she didn't think the woman had made the fakes, because Ye Jiang's video told her that the puppets were made by people who already existed in this time and space, and this woman...

He's a time traveler.

Ye Jiang looked at the ornament on the woman's ear. It was from an expensive brand in a world three hundred years in the future. When Ye Jiang was alive, she had made money and thought about giving Yu Qingyi something. She had looked up this brand of ornament.

If this woman doesn't have such a base hobby as stealing other people's jewelry, then she is undoubtedly a time traveler.

Ye Jiang stared at the woman with an inscrutable expression. Suddenly, the woman raised her hand, and a white mask, seemingly made of porcelain, appeared out of thin air above her palm.

Women are not ordinary people.

It's not even human.

"What are you going to do?" Ye Jiang asked.

The white mask seemed to come alive, its mouth opening and closing.

The woman smiled, "Killing just one Polluted seems to indicate that the human authorities are unable to take the Polluted away. I must kill this Polluted, otherwise this poor mother will still be killed by her child."

Ye Jiang: "..."

"You can't kill it," Ye Jiang said.

The woman exclaimed in surprise, "Why? It's just a Polluted!"

Ye Jiang thought to herself that the woman was indeed a time traveler; when she mentioned the Living Dead, she referred to them as the Polluted.

Ye Jiang simply said, "You can't kill it."

She only said it, without explaining why.

The woman stared at her as if she were a spoiled child. After a long while, she removed her mask, revealing a magnanimous acceptance. "Alright, child, if you say you won't kill, then you won't."

After saying that, she looked around and said, "Since that's the case, then there's nothing more for me to do here. I should go."

Ye Jiang remained silent, and the woman, unconcerned by her attitude, gracefully departed.

She had truly left; Ye Jiang sensed her presence fading into the distance.

At this point, only Ye Jiang and Rong Yin remained conscious in the villa. Ye Jiang glanced at the Polluted she had rescued, and with a flick of her hand, an iron cage appeared, enveloping the Polluted. With Cao An's experience as a precedent, the cage she created this time was just right.

Ye Jiang locked up the Polluted, put the young woman to sleep, and then went to the basement.

She felt she needed to go to the basement, even though she didn't detect any other signs of life there.

Where is the person who made the puppets?

She wanted to go and see.

Ye Jiang arrived at the basement, which was also elaborately decorated and extremely luxurious. However, it was empty and deserted.

The puppeteer she was looking for wasn't there; he wasn't in the entire villa.

However, familiar energy particles floated in the stifling air, swirling affectionately around her—they were her energy particles.

There are quite a few of them; I wonder why they've gathered here.

Ye Jiang grasped an energy particle, deep in thought, when a strange noise suddenly came from upstairs. At the same time, space began to distort and become unstable. Ye Jiang teleported upstairs and saw the situation. Inside the cage, the Polluted she had imprisoned was dead, its stomach ripped open. On the other side, a white mask was slumped over Ye Yanran's throat, gnawing at her neck like a living creature, blood splattering everywhere. Because of Ye Jiang's spell, Ye Yanran only groaned and did not wake up.

Mask!

The woman did not let the Polluted go. She had buried a mask inside the Polluted's body long ago, and now it had killed the Polluted and broken free. Not satisfied, she now had the first innocent victim appear.

Space became increasingly unstable, and the flow of time seemed to have a sound.

At that moment, a figure rushed into the villa, paused for a moment upon seeing its state, then his expression changed drastically, and he shouted:

"Ye Jiang, save her!"

Having traveled to this time and space, Xiao Pei rushed into the villa.

Ye Jiang's actions were no slower than her shouts. She had already crushed the mask and reached out her hand to Ye Yanran, who had lost too much blood, as her healing power flowed towards her.