Chapter 195: Transforming Community Experience (Part 4)
The woman at this moment was even thinner than the one Tang Xinjue had seen five minutes ago. Her belly, which was originally as bulging as a mountain, was now only a circle of sagging fat. The rest of the fat was scattered on her face, neck and limbs, like a large, unevenly cut meat rack.
The child was reluctant to speak at first, but under the threat of the other party's ferocious look, he had no choice but to point to the place where the shadow had just passed and said, "It's right there!"
The woman looked over quickly, then turned away angrily: "You're lying, there's nothing there!"
The child was stunned and rubbed his eyes: "But it was right there...why is it gone?"
He had clearly seen the glass ball rest there! How come when he looked closely, it suddenly disappeared?
"Okay." The woman narrowed her eyes dangerously, a sinister sneer appearing on her fleshy face. "Since I can't find a [living toy], my son is almost out of meat again..."
As the words left her mouth, she suddenly reached into the folds of her belly and pulled out a sharp machete from her flesh:
"Then I'll take you in exchange!"
"No!" the child screamed in fear. His two companions had already slipped away when they saw the situation was getting bad, leaving him alone, a skinny guy. It was undoubtedly impossible for him to fight against the woman.
At the critical moment of his life and death, he suddenly remembered: "I have a toy that moves. I can give it to you!"
The woman scoffed. "Are you trying to trick me with your kids' robotic dolls?"
"It's not a robot doll, it's a doll that can run away on its own, smells like food, and can be sold for money!"
After the child stammered and finished explaining, the woman's eyes lit up. "Another living toy! How could such a good thing happen today? Hurry and show it to me!"
The child moved his chicken-bone-like feet, and both of them looked behind him at the same time - there was nothing on the ground except a few pieces of cotton that had not yet completely melted.
Woman: "...Where's the stuff?"
The child was stunned for a while, then muttered , "He ran away by himself?"
“…”
While they were confronting each other, Tang Xinjue had already pushed the hippo doll back to where 606 was hiding.
"What is this?"
Guo Guo was very curious about the hippopotamus and scanned it up and down with his pupils.
"The probability is the same as ours." Tang Xinjue answered briefly.
Guo Guo: “???”
She was instantly horrified: "Is there a person in here too?"
Zhang You also observed carefully for a few seconds, and shook his head in the mental connection: "If you hadn't told us, we really wouldn't have discovered this on our own."
Guo Guo nodded vigorously. She thought that she was the most pitiful because she couldn't move or speak, but now, in comparison, she could at least move her eyes. The friend in front of her really didn't look alive at all.
Tang Xin Jue: "Don't worry, he is still alive."
Judging from the fact that it escaped from the claw machine on its own and was able to use its mental power to influence her thinking after being caught, this "doll" has very strong vitality - as to whether there is a human or a ghost inside, it is not certain.
"The doll's outer shell completely sealed him off, and I couldn't establish a complete mental connection."
She quickly recounted what had happened outside.
After discovering the distress signal from the hippo doll and deciding to take action, she used her mental power to create several illusions to confuse the residents and successfully pushed the thing away in front of them.
The hippopotamus itself seemed to be even more shocked than the residents, and even excitedly blurted out a few words, but because the words were too unclear, Tang Xinjue could only hear that it was a boy who was speaking. The latter became weak and shut down due to insufficient "battery power" and never made another sound.
Tang Xinjue sat in the glass ball and rubbed his brows: "My mental strength is still slowly recovering, so I can't fight them head-on at the moment."
This copy was indeed strange, but what was more serious was that she was worried that the longer the group stayed outside the community, the more dangerous the environment would become.
For the indigenous residents, the toys here should be divided into two types. One is an ordinary doll, and the other is what women call "living toys" - which is the current form of the four people in 606.
"[Living toys] are very valuable to them and can be exchanged for wealth here. This is also our biggest source of danger."
From the woman and her son to the three children, the number of "people" who know about their existence will only gradually increase, and the difficulty of hiding for the four people will also increase.
"If you're caught, your head will be cut open?"
As soon as Guo Guo imagined that scene, he could feel that it was some kind of evil method that bound the soul, and a chill ran down his spine.
Zhang You continued to summarize the information provided by Tang Xin Jue: "[Living toys] include not only the four of us, but also the one that escaped from the claw machine, the one that was captured by those children, and this hippopotamus doll... If we can communicate with them, we will know more."
However, at this moment, the hippopotamus was still lying quietly on the ground, as if it was dead and could not be woken up even by Tang Xinjue's mental power.
Guo Guo suddenly became curious and asked Zhang You to take her to the hippopotamus and gently touched its skin.
At the same moment, the pupils of the eyeball doll shrank rapidly, and Guo Guo's voice also stopped abruptly in the mental connection -
Countless fragments poured into her eyes!
…
"I see, they are human beings too, candidates just like us."
This time Guo Guo did not faint.
After losing her voice briefly, she quickly regained consciousness in her mind and began to broadcast live what she saw.
To be precise, she saw not just one candidate, but many - this was a multi-dormitory copy.
They were both men and women, and the only thing they had in common was that they were all skinny and running wildly on the street, followed by a group of indigenous people with knives chasing them. The scene was somewhat similar to a zombie blockade.
"No one escaped... Not one escaped."
Of course, the examinees, so thin they were just a bag of bones, couldn't outrun the ghosts. Guo Guo didn't see what they went through in detail. All he could see were faces twisted in extreme fear, and then darkness.
[Hold on, we're not completely dead yet. We just have to wait for the opportunity... to return to Block 1 and earn our lives back...]
[Stay awake, don't sleep, no matter how tired you are, don't sleep, let's hold on a little longer, okay?]
[Is anyone still awake? Can you please talk to me? Even if you can just open your eyes... Lao Zhang? Xiao Wan? Are you still there...]
The sounds in the darkness gradually faded, and Guo Guo felt his emotions becoming hopeless and he fell into silence.
——Until a heavy object fell from the sky and woke up the long-sleeping consciousness.
"Damn! What the hell is this place..."
When this consciousness opened its eyes again, it saw one black shadow after another falling from the sky in front of it. There was a heavy Barbie doll with metal arms, big round eyeballs, and a transparent crystal ball that seemed to contain a little man.
…Each one was strange in shape and very different from the dolls he knew.
Amidst Barbie's intermittent cursing, the enclosed and oppressive space seemed to have a hole broken, and air, color, and sound poured in. After the noise from the outside world disappeared, he found that he could actually move!
[Lao Zhang, Xiao Wan, A Qiu, we've finally arrived! Quickly go to Street 2 to get your ID cards, then go to Street 1 to recover...]
The image began to move again , and Guo Guo realized that her consciousness was also beginning to withdraw. Just as she was about to manually control the depth observation, the voice in the hallucination suddenly appeared in her ears:
"Who are you?"
Guo Guo: “!!!”
She was startled and came back to her senses in an instant, facing the hippopotamus's dark eyes. She was so scared that she almost used her purification skill.
Oh, I forgot, she has no hands now.
Zhang You shoveled her back into the car in time and kept some distance from the awakened hippo doll.
The white hippopotamus was still unable to move, but the voice that suddenly broke into the mental link between the four people proved that he had awakened.
His voice was full of vigilance, and he seemed to be still a little confused and hadn't reacted.
"We should be the ones asking you this." Tang Xinjue sat motionless in the glass ball, his voice drifting down.
The hippopotamus suddenly felt a sense of oppression that was even more terrifying than when he faced the indigenous people. He was silent for a few seconds, and when he wanted to speak he found that due to the momentary fear just now, his mental power had directly fallen out of their area.
Barbie raised her metal arm a little and poked the hippo: "Why aren't you talking ? Are you asleep again?"
Hippo: ...How do you express the disconnection with your eyes?
Zhang You suggested to Zheng Wanqing, "I think every time he wakes up it's related to external shocks. How about I throw you down and hit him again?"
Zheng Wanqing cheered up: "Okay!"
hippo:"……"
