Chapter 157: Bites

Song Xizheng realized what was happening and scrambled to his feet at once.

The others followed suit, rising quickly beside him.

All they could see now was Xiao He — a wooden puppet with a body charred black from head to toe, her head tilted at an unnatural angle, one eye missing entirely, staring fixedly at Song Xizheng.

"Why... why didn’t you save me? Why did you lie to me?"

"You could have saved me. Why didn’t you... save me?"

The moment they heard Xiao He’s broken, halting voice, the whole group snapped to full alert.

Every puppet they’d seen so far, whether on stage or off, had been utterly silent. But this puppet Xiao He, however faint her voice, spoke with unmistakable clarity.

Song Xizheng swallowed hard. Wait, what exactly was going on here? What did she mean, he wouldn’t save her? Wasn’t this all just part of the performance?

Why didn’t you save me?

"...Why did you go along with them in lying to me?"

As soon as Xiao He finished speaking, every tourist in the theater rose from their seats in unison, turning to face Lin Yun’s group, eyes locked on them with unnerving intensity.

It felt as though the group had just been accused of some unforgivable crime.

"Wait — aren’t you performing right now? Why would I be the one who needs to save you during a play?" Song Xizheng couldn’t hold the question back.

He genuinely found this puppet Xiao He completely baffling.

The puppet twisted her neck sharply. "No, no..."

It was Lin Yun, standing off to the side, who suddenly understood what was really happening.

Back at Hongxiu Tower, why had Xiao He said that Song Xizheng resembled someone from her memory so closely?

Because what they were witnessing now was, in fact, Xiao He’s memory — the memory of a ghost, replaying itself.

Even though it was currently being staged as a puppet performance, the memory still lived on in the ghost Xiao He’s mind, though the details of the scene itself had clearly been twisted and altered somewhere along the way.

"You won’t save me! It’s all your fault — you’re the reason I wasn’t saved!"

"If I kill you, my suffering finally ends!"

The tourists around them shifted all at once, surging forward with clear intent to kill Lin Yun and everyone standing beside her.

Lin Yun pulled a stick out of her backpack without hesitation and jabbed it hard into the tourist closest behind her.

The others joined in almost immediately.

The puppet Xiao He simply stood there, watching, unable to comprehend how she’d been betrayed so completely.

Xiang Lian had betrayed her. And the man she’d loved had betrayed her too.

Lin Yun swung the stick and sent one of the attacking tourists flying backward. It slammed into the wall and instantly shattered into a scattered heap of parts on the floor.

Lin Yun blinked in surprise. Wait... this was a puppet?

"Oh my god, these tourists are all puppets!" Song Zhenzhen exclaimed, clearly caught off guard by the discovery.

The others glanced over quickly, then hit even harder than before.

A puppet, huh? Fine — I’ll tear you apart.

Realizing they’d been found out, the disguised tourists abruptly stopped hiding what they were, letting their puppet nature show openly as they charged forward one after another.

They wanted to keep this group trapped here, to turn every one of them into puppets in turn —

More raw material for a handful of flawless new productions for the theater.

Lin Yun thought fast, pulled out a lighter, snatched up a fallen puppet part, and set it alight.

"Keep coming, and I’ll burn every single one of you to ash."

The remaining puppet-tourists froze at that, then scrambled backward in a hurry.

Seeing the tactic actually work, the others quickly pulled out their own lighters as well.

The puppet Xiao He took two steps back too, though her stare never left Song Xizheng. "You don’t want me?"

"What do you mean, ’want or not’? We’re not even close! I never lied to you — it was Madam Yao who paid someone to deceive you!"

Song Xizheng grabbed a fistful of his own hair in frustration. That Madam Yao really was something else entirely. How on earth had she managed to find someone who looked so much like him just to fool this puppet?

This was completely insane.

Over and over, he kept circling back to the same thought — the man she’d been searching for looked exactly like him...?

Damn it. Song Xizheng finally pieced the whole thing together and cursed under his breath. So that was it. Back at Hongxiu Tower, Xiao He had acted as if he were some heartless man who’d abandoned her.

So this was the reason behind it all!

But even if the sky came crashing down, the plain truth was — he’d just been watching a show!

Yet the puppet Xiao He seemed to lose her mind entirely at his words.

"Fine, fine. You don’t want me? That’s all right. As long as you die, we can be together forever."

"You promised me. You said you’d come and marry me."

"We were supposed to stay together — have children, live as husband and wife for the rest of our lives."

The tourist puppets around them grew agitated all over again, and this time not even the flames seemed to hold them back — they surged forward once more.

The group had no choice but to keep fighting, smashing every intact puppet within reach into a scattered pile of broken parts.

Right in the middle of the chaos, the puppet Xiao He suddenly lunged at Song Xizheng, catching him completely off guard from behind.

She clung tightly to him and sank her teeth straight into his neck.

"Ah—!"

Song Xizheng hadn’t seen it coming at all, and the sudden pain tore a scream right out of him.

Lin Yun, standing closest, rushed over at once to try and pry the puppet off him.

But Xiao He’s bite held firm, her eyes burning with pure hatred, refusing to let go once her teeth had sunk in.

Song Xizheng was in agony. "Sister Lin — just smash her head in!"

Lin Yun glanced at the puppet once more, then struck her with the stick in hand.

The blow knocked Xiao He’s jaw open just enough for Song Xizheng to wrench himself free.

Honestly, Song Xizheng was more than a little furious by this point. None of this had anything to do with him — he’d only come here to watch a show, and somehow he’d been dragged into someone else’s scheme entirely, for no reason at all.

Some stranger had used a face that looked seventy or eighty percent like his own to deceive an innocent girl, and in the end, none of it had anything to do with him whatsoever!

Shouldn’t we go track down this Madam Yao?

She’s the real problem here — what does any of this actually have to do with me?

Song Xizheng felt like crying, except no tears would come.

By then, every tourist-puppet around them had been reduced to a pile of broken parts, and the puppet Xiao He herself had finally been knocked unconscious.

"Let’s move, before she wakes back up."

Lin Yun let out a breath of relief. The puppet theater today had turned out to be one genuine surprise after another.

The others caught their breath and stepped carefully over the scattered piles of puppet parts on their way toward the door.

Song Xizheng walked last of all. Just before leaving, he glanced back one more time at the charred, motionless puppet Xiao He, let out a quiet sigh, and walked away without looking back again.

The door to Red Sleeve Pavilion swung shut behind them once more.

Up front, the little girl who’d been sitting there stood up on her seat, turned her back to the stage, lowered her eyes, and looked down at the puppet Xiao He lying on the ground.

"What a useless thing."

"Can’t even manage the smallest task properly."

She let out a small snort, hopped down from the chair, and vanished into the depths of the theater in just a few short steps.

But the teddy bear she’d been holding the entire time was nowhere to be seen anymore.

Once outside the theater, Lin Yun’s gaze drifted back to Song Xizheng’s neck, where the puppet’s bite had broken skin and drawn blood.

None of them had expected a puppet to actually be capable of biting someone hard enough to draw real blood.

"Song Xizheng, do you have any medicine on you? Maybe head back and treat that first."

Song Xizheng touched the wound gingerly and hissed at the sting. "Yeah, I’ve got some, but it’s back at the shelter."

"Then you should probably go back now. That Xiao He was seriously vicious — she nearly tore a chunk out of you."

Song Zhenzhen glanced at the wound again and winced slightly; it looked genuinely nasty up close.

"All right, you all go ahead and keep at your tasks. I’ll patch myself up and then finish my own assignment after."