"Detective, can't you open the door? I'll open it. George! George! What are you doing? For Father's sake, open the door quickly."
Mrs. Freeman tried to find the room key, but with a click, Xia De had already opened the door.
The bewildered little girl followed Mrs. Freeman, Priest Augustus, and Xia De into the Boy's bedroom.
The room was not large. The thirteen-year-old blonde Boy was lying on the bed, facing away from the direction of the door. Even the sound of strangers entering the room did not make him move.
Xia De rushed over, but the spell False Immortality had no effect on him; the Boy was not seriously injured. Priest Augustus also stepped forward, and after turning the Boy over on the bed, he found that he was only sleeping.
"Child, wake up, wake up now!"
The Priest called out in a somewhat hurried voice, even gently patting the Boy's face a few times, and only then did the Boy awaken.
However, his opened eyes were filled with extreme terror, and he didn't even show surprise at strangers entering his room:
"There's something in the house! Mom, I want Mom!"
He shouted incoherently, and no matter how Priest Augustus tried to soothe him, it was useless. From his words, it was not difficult to tell that the Boy had just had a strange dream, so much so that he was still unable to distinguish between dream and reality after waking up.
"I'm here! Oh, my poor little George! What's wrong with you?"
The middle-aged woman also walked into the room, holding her little daughter's hand. Priest Augustus continued to comfort the Boy, trying to get him to talk about what happened in his dream, while Xia De walked back to the bedroom door, looking at the empty living room outside.
The cozy home seemed a bit terrifying.
"Do you really feel nothing?"
"Very slight whisper element, very slight. Even an ordinary person would not be affected unless they insisted on living here for a year. The element appeared after you opened the door with a spell."
She answered softly in his ear, her murmuring sound always making Xia De want to turn his head to see if someone was leaning on his back.
"The appearance of the whisper element means this is indeed a relic, but the problem is where the relic is..."
Under the comfort of his mother and the Old Priest, the Boy gradually calmed down, but he could not give detailed information about what happened in his dream. He had almost completely forgotten the contents of the dream after waking up, only vaguely remembering that a strange bandaged person appeared in the house, and that strange person tried to kill him.
"Have you seen the missing oil painting here? This is a relic of your husband and wife."
Seeing that he couldn't get much information, Priest Augustus took the art folder from Mrs. Freeman's hand, opened the blank page, and let the Boy identify it. But the Boy shook his head in confusion, indicating that he had not touched his father's relic.
"Brother, on the day we just moved in, we went to look for toys together, didn't you flip through this?"
The girl, holding Mrs. Freeman's hand, suddenly spoke. The girl was probably only five or six years old, with bright eyes, and she would bite the end of her words when she spoke. She looked at her brother curiously, but the blonde Boy shook his head blankly:
"Did that happen?"
When talking to his sister, his tone was no longer so fragile.
"Yes, I remember you pulled out a painting, and then... and then what happened?"
The little girl tilted her head and thought for a long time but couldn't give an answer.
"Child, where would you hide your favorite treasure?"
Priest Augustus asked again, and his kind expression made the Boy, who was somewhat unwilling to answer, instinctively avert his gaze, but then seeing his mother and sister looking at him with concern, he gritted his teeth and said:
"There's a large cardboard box under the bed."
"Priest, I'll do it."
Xia De walked over and pulled out the cardboard box from under the Boy's bed. After opening it, the five people immediately saw the rolled-up oil painting.
Upon touching it, Xia De immediately confirmed that it was a relic. He unrolled the oil painting; there were no creases on it, and as Mrs. Freeman said, the background was curtains fluttering in the sunlight, and the painting showed a tabletop with various items on it.
"Look at this!"
Priest Augustus narrowed his eyes, his tone very alarming. He pointed directly to the center of the oil painting, to the wooden three-story model house placed on the table.
This was a high-end toy, scaled down proportionally from a real building.
The side facing away from the painting was a cross-section of the house, showing the exquisite movable furniture, decorations, and puppets inside the model. And at this moment, on the second floor inside the model house in the oil painting, there were actually two puppets, one large and one small, and the layout of that model building looked exactly like this three-story rented apartment, and the location and arrangement of the room where the two puppets, one large and one small, were located, also looked very much like the room they were currently in.
Looking at the two exquisitely crafted puppets in the oil painting, Xia De showed a puzzled expression, then suddenly widened his eyes:
"Priest, look at the two puppets in the oil painting, don't they look like me and this Boy?"
"They do! They really look like Brother!"
The little girl was the first to say so, raising her hand.
Priest Augustus also leaned forward:
"If you hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have noticed, they really look alike... Wait, what is this?"
Due to the perspective of the oil painting, they could only see a partial area inside the model. And in the model within the oil painting, outside the door of the room where the two puppets were located, something seemed to be lurking behind the door. But the painter did not focus on that area, so only a pair of eyes could be vaguely seen.
Xia De and Priest Augustus simultaneously turned their heads to look outside the real door, but the real door was fully open, and there was nothing outside.
"Oh, look! This painting has changed!"
Mrs. Freeman suddenly shrieked, and Xia De looked at the painting in his hand again. Indeed, a tall bandaged puppet had somehow moved from outside the model room door to inside the room.
None of the five people saw this process.
And the combined height of Xia De and the Boy's puppets was still not as tall as the bandaged, knife-wielding puppet.
Under the gaze of five pairs of eyes, the bandaged puppet with a black hat actually moved within the painting's model. This terrifying scene made the girl scream, and the Boy George also trembled in fear, clutching his mother's arm beside him and not letting go.
The bandaged puppet in the oil painting's model approached the other two puppets, then raised its knife and stabbed. The two puppets, one large and one small, also moved to dodge. The small puppet was too slow and was almost stabbed, while the larger puppet quickly went to help him, and then unfortunately was stabbed in the shoulder.
"Oh!"
Xia De cried out, then quickly covered his arm. With difficulty, he used his other hand to take off his outer coat; the white shirt on his left shoulder was already stained red. Although the injury was not as exaggerated as the puppet's in the painting, he was truly injured:
"I'm fine."
There was no time for treatment; his eyes were fixed on the oil painting in his hand. Despite being stabbed, the two puppets, one large and one small, still could not escape the attack. Because they were only moving and maneuvering within one room of the model, they hadn't thought of transferring to other places through that door:
"Quick, let's go to other rooms."
Priest Augustus saw the clue and quickly helped Xia De walk out. Mrs. Freeman also worriedly led the two children behind them, and the group went from the Boy's room to the living room, then left the second floor, running down the stairs to the first floor.
During this time, Xia De, with his back to the Freeman family, used "Satiated Food" to heal the inexplicably appearing wound on his body. And in the oil painting in his hand, the two small puppets finally escaped the room when the people in reality left, and like them, moved to the stairs of the model house in the oil painting.
The bandaged puppet with a black hat and a sharp knife moved very quickly when in the same room as the small puppets, but when not in the same room, its movement speed was very slow. As long as the two small puppets didn't go upstairs, they were temporarily out of danger.
"Let's leave this house!"
Xia De said, and together with the Priest, he quickly arrived at the first-floor entrance hall. He had initially thought they wouldn't be able to get out at all, but unexpectedly, the door opened normally, revealing the Tobesk street scene on a Thursday afternoon.
The Priest and Xia De walked out simultaneously, but the painting Xia De held in his hand suddenly disappeared the moment he left the house, spreading out and falling onto the floor in front of the door.
Then Mrs. Freeman and the children also successfully came out of the house, and when Xia De looked at the oil painting inside the door again, he actually saw the puppets representing him and the Boy walking back into the model house from the model house's doorway.
"Mrs. Freeman, have you touched this oil painting?"
Xia De suddenly asked the middle-aged woman beside him, who was holding her children's hands, standing at the door at a loss:
"I should have touched it when we moved... But I was wearing gloves at the time! Yes, when I tidied up these oil paintings, I always wore gloves!"
This somewhat indecisive woman suddenly understood Xia De's meaning at this moment.
"Only those who directly touch the oil painting with their hands will have corresponding puppets appear in the painting. This thing shouldn't be strong, otherwise, it wouldn't only allow one person to come into contact with it at a time, through vague memories."
Priest Augustus concluded, and seeing that the two small puppets in the oil painting had the idea of going upstairs, Xia De immediately walked back into the door. His puppet then turned and went downstairs, standing in the entrance hall with the real Xia De.
"Child, you go in too."
Priest Augustus said to the Boy, but the Boy pulled his mother with a terrified expression.
The middle-aged woman, who was clearly also afraid, looked down at her children, gritted her teeth, and actually let go of her daughter's hand, pulling the Boy back into the house. As she stepped through the door, she was trembling, but still remembered to say to the Old Priest outside the door:
"Priest, please look after little Leah for me first."
"No problem, but Mrs. Freeman, the danger is not over yet."