Doomsday Jigsaw Puzzle

Chapter 349: Chapter 153: Dandelion and the Mirror Evil Fallen

Without relying on visual cues, Bai Wu. (Important note, click on this Chapter for details!)

Based on Liu Yiyan’s categorization habits, he quickly filtered several videos with black screens, trying to confirm the possibilities of a few supernatural tales.

The voice inside was like this:

"The first day I moved into the apartment, I heard an old lady tell me not to go to the rooftop because at two in the morning, an old man would appear. This old man would be carrying a thermos, asking if anyone wanted some tea, going from door to door. Don’t answer, hold your breath, and wait for him to leave."

"I was curious, how could there be such a person? So, I installed a surveillance system. Alright, it’s actually unrelated, I just like to monitor; to live is to constantly spy on others, only then do I feel alive!"

This was the first video. By rights, at this time Liu Yiyan should have been recording his own room, but the video screen had gone dark.

This made Bai Wu suspect... Liu Yiyan had later become one of the supernatural tales. He continued to watch. ƒrēewebnovel.com

"Some rooms have started committing crimes; I saw it. Inside the hollow shell of a television, a secret is hidden. Strange, isn’t he bothered by the smell? Wait, that doesn’t seem to be the point... What am I overlooking?"

"The little girl on the second floor suddenly woke up again. Is she sleepwalking? Constantly knocking on the door, her brother sleeping like a log. Hey, that’s really interesting. Does he know his sister can behave so terrifyingly? Hell, hell! Is she a superhero? How is she doing this?"

"The elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor. No one pressed the button, and I should be able to see something in the elevator, but there’s no image. I know there’s something in this area that wants me to see, and I’ll be able to see it; if it doesn’t want me to see, then I can’t... this is so annoying!"

"Hey... this little girl is really bad... tsk tsk tsk, I can’t mess with her... The people in this building have a clever variety of ways to hide bodies."

The device contained many video records around midnight, Bai Wu paid attention to the time intervals, finding that they were almost every few minutes.

An existence that could not see through cause and effect, this meant that whether the shelter could be successfully established was still not certain.

Jing Liu came here; perhaps everything was already arranged, or perhaps it was a wild gamble.

Thinking this, Zero said:

"What kind of beings are you? Don’t you have any weaknesses? Who among you is the strongest? What is his stance?"

Zero asked several questions in succession, and Jing Liu did not answer all:

"We ourselves are not clear about what kind of existence we are, but perhaps like your name, we are Zero infectees. Before the anomaly arrives, while other creatures are still gradually accumulating the possibility of mutations, we have completely mutated, possessing a power that is tremendously strong even when looked upon seven hundred years later."

"The strongest among us is my brother. He possesses strength far beyond any of us. Even I don’t know how far he has gone."

Zero noticed that Jing Liu’s words were quite precise. Others were elder brothers, but this strongest was a brother.

Obviously, this brother’s status was far higher than the other elder brothers.

"He has no stance, and we have no weaknesses, at most we can say there are things we’re not good at, just as I’m not skilled at fighting. But that’s relative to you and my other brothers."

Lastly, it was what the old lady mentioned, at midnight an old man carrying a thermos would appear.

And this old lady, very likely fabricating stories, was judged by Bai Wu to be one of the supernatural tales.

Because it was in this room that Bai Wu saw a thermos; the notes also confirmed one of his ideas.

[People always challenge those scary things to prove their skepticism, but isn’t this behavior itself very perplexing? There are some things we indeed know don’t exist, but still, as the saying goes, we must respect the rules, my old pal.]

The clues were slowly surfacing; obviously, this Liu Yiyan had chosen some kind of death-wishing behavior, responding to the old man with a thermos, asking if anyone wanted tea.

But why would the thermos be left in Liu Yiyan’s room?

The night grew thicker, the laughter in the distance more exaggerated, as if more people were being infected. Bai Wu furrowed his brow and opened the window.

And at that time, in the neighboring room, the room that hid the puppets... a laugh emanated.

The laughter sounded no different from the one outside, Bai Wu also laughed, not because he was influenced, but because he suddenly realized that this laughter seemed to have infected a supernatural tale... assisting himself.

Here, many doll limbs were laid out, Bai Wu had been somewhat puzzled before, as to why his eyes had not provided any hints.

Why he hadn’t seen that doll, now he understood.

"A blind man being able to accurately perform the actions described by the audience is not hard, but why could he mimic the audience’s expressions? Either he isn’t blind... or, or... he is the puppet, and the puppet in his hands is the real puppeteer."

In the darkness, those limbs seemed to be connected by threads as they began to continuously join together, until they formed a complete puppet.

[Congratulations, you have found the third supernatual tale. Trust me, its ability will be very useful to you, even if your limbs shatter, they can still be "stitched" together in a "Broken Lotus Roots Continue to Connect" state, but you know, there is a prerequisite for all this, let it attach to you, deal with the other five supernatual tales.]

Jing Liu’s always calm face showed a faint, barely noticeable fluctuation:

"However, brother did have three weaknesses on his body afterward. Back in the day in Denglin City, in order to save this world, he offered himself for the scientists in Denglin City to research, and indeed, the scientists implanted three weaknesses into his most powerful body."

This was news that even Zero found stirring; he had never encountered Jing Liu’s brother. But presumably, he’s not on the same level as Jing Wu.

...

...

Baichuan City, Supernatural Tale Apartment, the seventh floor.

The time had long since slipped into night.

The laughter that echoed between heaven and earth had by now entered Bai Wu’s ears.

Not long ago, he had been rummaging through a room on the seventh floor like a scavenger at the end of the world seven hundred years ago.

Listening to the faint laughter in the distance, he didn’t feel much of anything.

The purpose of laughter is to express negative emotions in a joyful manner; if a person does not feel joy, he naturally won’t be affected.

And Bai Wu was devoid of negative emotions. He revealed a smile, not because the laughter had influenced him, but simply because he found the laughter... quite amusing.

As night fell, Bai Wu pressed the light switch, but found it unresponsive; the rules didn’t allow for electricity in this apartment building, which was a bit of a problem. However, the gang of Evil Fallen from the prison would be used to it if they lived here; after all, they could endure the conditions of a prison.

Without light, the current visibility wasn’t great, which made everything within Bai Wu’s sight take on a shade of dark blue.

Thanks to his astonishing vision, Bai Wu was still able to look through some documents. Especially since the "documents" in his hands weren’t paper ones.

After leaving the fifth floor and deceiving two supernatural tales, for the next hour or so, Bai Wu had been examining various documents.

Because on the seventh floor, he had found a certain special room.

Up to this point, he roughly knew about the events that had occurred on the seventh floor, many bizarre occurrences, but these were also internally competing; which one would successfully become a supernatural tale, Bai Wu was still unclear.

The first strange occurrence, a middle-aged blind man lived on the seventh floor, he always led a puppet and would take it begging every day.

Of course, compared to those who just put out a bowl and asked for alms directly, this middle-aged blind man had some talent – to a certain extent, it wasn’t begging anymore, but performing.

The puppet in his hand, under his control, came to life, garnering applause from the audience.

The audience discovered that the puppet could indeed perform many actions.

Some audience members would intentionally give him a hard time, but the blind man, listening to their descriptions, would flicker his fingers along the strings, and in no time, he’d have the set of movements down pat, even the expressions would be the same.

With this one craft, he could earn quite a bit of food every day. People were gradually realizing that money had lost its value.

In Baichuan City, people began to use edible foods as goods for trade.

These things, of course, would not be recorded in the blind man’s home. His home was sparsely furnished. There were only some detachable limbs of dolls scattered about, all bearing strange notes—

[They are indeed parts of dolls.]

Yan Jiu was even more astonished:

"One smiles when happy... but I, I can’t feel that emotion..."

Jiang Yimi and Lin Rui exchanged glances, looking at Yan Jiu with disbelief.

Yan Jiu lowered her head, thinking she had exposed her vulnerability and consequently, the others might look down on her.

However, she had no idea what was going through Lin Rui’s mind.

At that moment... Lin Rui’s train of thought, for some reason, suddenly zigzagged.

The character "了" seemed to indicate that something had happened. However, after scanning the surroundings, Bai Wu still found nothing suspicious and thus, went to the room opposite.

That room belonged to the second potential source of supernatural tales—Peeping Tom. freēwēbnovel.com

The middle-aged blind man’s manipulation of marionettes was all recorded on this Peeping Tom’s vlog device,

The vlog had more than five hundred categories, different times, different events, different families... even different vantage points.

Such as men, women, single, married, kitchen, living room, bedroom, and even—the bathroom.

Copious surveillance videos were all contained within it; calling it a vlog was, in reality, just the Peeping Tom adding his own commentary over edited hidden camera footage.

He had spied on almost half the residents of the apartment building.

The reason Bai Wu felt that the middle-aged blind man could possibly be one of the supernatural tales was that this was how Peeping Tom described him.

In the video, the middle-aged blind man was climbing the stairs. Eerily, the blind man walked steadily and slowly, taking extremely standard steps, but he did not pick up the marionette. Instead, he continued to flicker his fingers... manipulating the puppet, step by step, up the stairs.

Making the puppet climb the stairs with him seemed like a form of craft exercise. However, Peeping Tom clearly didn’t think so.

"I have observed the blind man opposite me for a long time. He always manages to barter quite a bit of food, which is strange. Outside is in complete chaos, yet there are people who watch his performance, people who willingly trade food for a puppet show. Isn’t that ridiculous? I always feel there’s a sinister secret behind it all."

Wen Tai felt that Bai Wu’s questions were a bit too detailed, but still nodded and said:

"Yes, Toad. Don’t mess with those... well, as long as you’re happy, Toad."

The Toad had wanted to give Bai Wu some advice, not to wander around during the free activity period in the prison area, as it might attract the attention of some ferocious criminals and possibly entangle him in the midst of two opposing forces.

But then it thought, "Jing Wu" was the absolute worst, the most evil person, so it felt that such advice was unnecessary.

Although Wen Tai didn’t say much about himself, through the back and forth, Bai Wu could still sense that Wen Tai was very timid, a genuinely honest person, and said:

"What did you write in your crime statement on the day you were imprisoned?"

"Toad... I haven’t committed a crime... I haven’t committed a crime... I just peeped at people..."

Wen Tai did not continue, and Toad hung his head in shame.

"Is this witchcraft, or did he arrange a shill? But what’s even stranger is that every time he returns, he keeps manipulating the puppets instead of just picking them up... His life is very regular, going to sleep on the dot, but every time I surveil his room... I always feel a chilling sensation."

There were many videos. The reason Bai Wu stayed here for so long was that Peeping Tom’s voyeuristic desires ran wild, leaving behind a large number of files.

Some were about the family of three from the Supernatural Tale Apartment downstairs.

There were even some of Zhao Cuican from the second floor.

He now knew that out of the six supernatural tales, he had found two: one in the mobile phone constantly making people look up, and another in the television, watching everything.

The Peeping Tom was indeed very similar to the supernatural tale in the television; his name was Liu Yiyan.

Of course, Bai Wu would not judge a book by its cover, nor a person by their name, but he had to admit—often, a name speaks for itself.

Liu Yiyan was somewhat of a hacker, with a severe desire to monitor, not so much because he enjoyed prying into other people’s privacy, but rather because he was afraid of not having everything under his control.

But this had also brought him trouble.

Because the apartment itself had already begun to twist, under many strange rules, some videos disappeared.

In them, one could only hear the voice of Liu Yiyan, but the screen was pitch black. From these voices, one could sense Liu Yiyan’s fear.

He clearly captured something that science could not explain. These things did not want to be filmed by him, hence the screen went black.

He suddenly found it a bit odd, just imagining it.

A man flipping through screens around midnight, speaking rapidly, continuously sharing his thoughts related to the screen content.

"This must be a disease."

Many videos could not be accessed, but with a large base of voyeuristic videos, Bai Wu noticed that Liu Yiyan had even purchased a server to store his own surveillance.

It’s hard to imagine one person monitoring an entire apartment building.

In these videos, there were many crimes worth mentioning; in short, this apartment was teeming with talents.

To survive in this doomsday scenario, all kinds of theft, robbery, murder, and body disposal were rampant.

In her understanding, a laugh meant joy and happiness, so why would anyone laugh at someone they disliked?

Of course, she understood mockery, but she had never seen someone who seemed to want to devour her alive while continuously laughing at her.

Lin Rui was ready to explain and simply tell Yan Jiu what happened, asking her to hide...

But in Bai Wu’s eyes, the ones that truly counted as supernatural tales, as of now, were only a few; it was only these videos that were dark with no images, only the voice of Liu Yiyan.

Someone had hidden a corpse inside a television. Only those old-fashioned big color TVs would have space to hide a person.

And this incident may have triggered the supernatural tale of "I am watching you."

Next was the little girl from the second floor, who might have been sleepwalking, and during her sleepwalking, performed actions that Liu Yiyan could not understand. However, Bai Wu found it odd, the second floor... wasn’t Zhao Cuican the one with a sister?

Then there was a middle-aged blind man, and both he and his puppet were highly suspicious.