Locking eyes with the face, Yang Xiao’s mind went blank, 1 second, 2 seconds... a full 4, 5 seconds passed, and the rotten-eyed ghost still hadn’t made a move. It was then that Yang Xiao finally noticed sothing, the ghost’s eyes... they didn’t seem to be focused.
Although it appeared to be staring directly at him, it seed not to have noticed him at all. This feeling was incredibly strange, as if he was nothing but invisible air.
Yang Xiao was on edge, not daring to breathe, until a few seconds later when the ghostly face at the bedside slowly turned and receded little by little.
"Thud."
"Thud."
"Thud."
"Creak—"
The sound of heavy boots moved past the door, opened it, and the figure with the stiff gait left. Only when the footsteps had completely disappeared did Yang Xiao let out a sigh of relief, turning his body and collapsing uncontrollably onto the floor; just that mont had left his limbs weak.
Normally, encountering a ghost wouldn’t warrant such a humiliating reaction, but as the rotten-eyed ghost approached, he suddenly discovered that his Human Bone Staff had lost its response. The connection he had with the Human Bone Staff was severed; now, it was nothing more than an ordinary short stick.
He didn’t want to believe it, and proceeded to take out other Magic Artifacts, like the Soul-Capturing Mirror and the Ghost Lantern. However, to his shock, all of those artifacts were disabled. He could summon them and put them back into the Drama Robe, but their powers were gone, and the fla within the Ghost Lantern had unusually extinguished.
Without these things, he was now just an average person with slightly above-average strength. Facing a ghost head-on would be unimaginable.
"Are you okay?" a line of text lit up on the toy phone.
After this incident, Yang Xiao also recognized the importance of the rag doll. It was the key to breaking this situation. He also couldn’t help feeling fortunate about his earlier choice. Had he not co here and gotten the phone, had he rashly left the room, that encounter with the rotten-eyed ghost would have been the end of him.
Now, he more or less understood the abilities of the rotten-eyed ghost, which they called Frog. Its habits were similar to that of a frog; those rotten eyes could only see moving objects. As long as one remained motionless, they would not be detected.
"I’m fine, thanks to you," Yang Xiao typed back after a while, "How about you? I heard it hit you."
"It’s okay, doesn’t hurt, I’m used to it." After a pause, the rag doll pleaded pitifully, "Can you take with you, please? Don’t leave behind, I’m really useful!"
"We’ll leave together." Yang Xiao was completely out of his depth here, and bringing the rag doll along could help avoid a lot of trouble.
Crawling out from under the bed and lifting the blanket, he saw that the rag doll had accrued many more scars, and a button that served as its eye had been gouged out, lying aside, looking very pitiable: "How should I take you, I an, where should I put you?"
A quick response appeared on the toy phone, "Thank you, just stuff into your clothes."
Even though the rag doll had saved him, in a place like this, no one was truly trustworthy. After so thought, Yang Xiao decided to use a strap to tie the rag doll to his chest, that way he could constantly monitor every movent of the rag doll.
After finishing all this, Yang Xiao turned his head to glance at the direction of the door and typed, "What exactly is this place?"
"It’s a hospital, a very terrifying hospital."
The situation matched Yang Xiao’s guess, so he continued typing, "What should we do now?"
"Leave this place as quick as possible. Frog checks the rooms periodically, it will co back. It’s best that we find my body before it returns."
"Where did you hide your body?"
"I don’t know."
Staring at the three characters on the narrow screen, Yang Xiao was taken aback. "You don’t rember where you hid your own body?"
"I’m sorry, I’ve been modified by them many tis. Each ti I escaped and was caught, they would modify us, causing problems with my mory."
From the rag doll’s reply, Yang Xiao caught the key point, "What do you an by ’us’? Besides you, are there other captive rag dolls?"
"Yes, there are others."
"How many more, and where are they all kept?" Yang Xiao pressed on.
"Sorry, I can’t rember clearly."
Yang Xiao didn’t dwell on it and changed the question, "All right, are you male or female? What do you look like? How old are you? What clothes are you wearing? You must rember that, at least."
But after waiting for over ten seconds, the rag doll still hadn’t responded. Yang Xiao’s heart sank, "Don’t tell you’ve forgotten this too."
"I’m sorry, I really have forgotten. They... they did very cruel things to us, each ti worse than the last..."
These lines of text were different from before—the font distorted as if trembling, filled with despair and fear. It seed that mory was a painful tornt for the rag doll, and it was hard to imagine what it had gone through during its ti stuffed inside a rag doll.
Exposing the rag doll’s scars further might lead to its complete breakdown, so Yang Xiao waited for it to calm down a bit before continuing the conversation, "Don’t worry, now that I’ve promised you, I will definitely help you find your body. But where should I start looking?"
Yang Xiao needed the rag doll to provide him with clues; otherwise, he would be like a headless fly, dood to failure sooner or later.
"Although I’ve forgotten where I hid the body, I can feel everything that body is going through. The body is hidden in a very cold place," several lines of text quickly appeared on the phone’s screen.
A very cold place?
The first thing Yang Xiao thought of was the Morgue when considering cold places in a hospital, but it wasn’t definite. As far as he knew, hospital rooms that match low-temperature characteristics also include blood banks, dicine storage rooms, and even so large hospitals have specialized low-temperature labs. None of these places could be ruled out.
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