With his previous experience in the castle, Xu Huo still let Shutong in this time to understand the situation inside the house first.
In addition to the Gem City resident and the old lady who was the homeowner who had secretly spied on him on the street, there were also two unkempt men in the room. They were hiding in the basement and devouring the food the men brought.
"Eat slowly." The old lady came with water and gave the man who brought the food a glass, "Wan'en, thank you for bringing the food."
The man named Wan En shook his head, "It's not convenient for you to buy too much food. Ai Li and Ai Shan have been suffering a lot these days."
Ai Li and Ai Shan are two people who came out of the basement. They have similar names, but one has red hair and the other has brown hair, and their looks are also very different.
After quickly finishing the food in his hand, Ai Li took two sips of water and said, "What's the situation now? Are you still not allowed to go out at the city gate?"
Wan En nodded, "I'm afraid you will have to hide here for a while, and more foreigners have come to the city recently. Those foreigners are very strange, and they all seem to be very powerful..."
Ai Li and Ai Shan's expressions changed after hearing this. The former asked quickly: "Does it look like a doll?"
"That's not true, but it is very similar to the kind of dolls you described. They can disappear, reappear far away, and even fly." The negative answer given by Wan En did not make the two of them relax.
With an expression on his face, Ai Shan even showed a look of fear, "It must be the kind of person who looks like a doll that my father said. That person is also like magic. He can appear anywhere and kill people at will. The king also used him."
no way……"
"It's not that the king can't do anything to him, the king and him are on the same side!" Eli clenched his fists and said with hatred in his eyes: "Father saw with his own eyes that the servants in the castle took out a lot of dolls, every once in a while
Many people have disappeared in Time City. It must have been the king who asked the puppet man to do it. Maybe the missing people have been turned into puppets!"
"Aili," Wan En said to calm him down, "it's impossible for a person to turn into a doll."
"Okay!" Ai Li retorted and took out a black stone as big as his thumb and put it on the table. "Have you looked for it these days? Have you seen anyone with such a black stone? I saw it with my own eyes when I sneaked into the castle.
Yes, after seeing the queen’s maid picking off the black gem on the doll’s chest, the living doll immediately became unable to move!”
"My father must have been turned into a doll by them, but I alerted the guards before I could figure out where the doll was hidden."
Aili grabbed his hair in pain, "If I move faster, maybe I can find my father..."
"Don't blame yourself too much," Ai Shan advised sadly and soberly: "Even if you find the father who turned into a doll, you may not be able to bring him out. If the king is really involved in all this, he will definitely not
Let us out of the city."
"Uncle Wan'en, you still don't believe all this?" Aili looked up and looked across, "My father is not the only one who saw the puppet man!"
Wan En looked at him in embarrassment, "When I heard about this, the uncles and uncles who lived near you disappeared one after another after going to the castle. Not long after, their families also disappeared. Everything I knew was
I heard it from your mouth."
"But there are a lot of foreigners coming here recently, and I've seen things like your pipe on some of them."
Hearing this, Aili quickly took out a metal pipe from his waist and said, "This kind of metal is very special. It has never been seen in Gem City."
"It is indeed very special," Wan En said with a complex expression: "I saw someone splitting three houses open with the same metal."
He was referring to the player chase on the first night.
"That makes sense!" Eli became excited. "Father said that the puppet man brought a lot of strange things like this to the king. The king must have made father and the others in order to get such powerful metals.
Became a doll!"
As if he had proof, he stood up and walked back and forth, and then said: "You must tell everyone about this, otherwise everyone may be turned into puppets!"
"Calm down first. How many people can believe what a few of us say?" Wan En stopped him. "Think about it carefully. We must first ensure your safety."
A few people sat down again and began to discuss how to spread the news. There was no way before, but now that there are so many strange outsiders in the city, there will always be someone using their brains to think.
After listening to their conversation, Xu Huo also figured out the causes and consequences of the craftsman's disappearance.
The approximate process is that Eli's father and other craftsmen accidentally encountered the king making a deal with a man who looked exactly like a doll after entering the castle to work, and then died or disappeared. The bargaining chips for the transaction were various props - Eli's hand.
The stolen pipe was a prop, and the one given by the king was a doll that seemed to have been transformed from a resident of Gem City.
For the residents of Gem City, this kind of thing is beyond the scope of their understanding. At the same time, it has promoted a certain degree of awakening. At least Aili and others no longer look like
Other residents are so ignorant, but they know how to doubt and resist.
But this matter is better understood from Xu Huo’s perspective.
First of all, there are those dolls in the Queen's studio. It can be seen that those dolls were indeed made by the Queen. All the people in Gem City may have evolved from those doll props in a specific instance environment, so they do not exist.
"People become puppets."
Therefore, the craftsmen who encountered the transaction were most likely killed, remade, or abandoned.
Secondly, to put it bluntly, this matter is a props trading prop. The king used the puppet props made by the queen to exchange the props used by ordinary players with the puppets.
Let’s not mention the identity of the puppets for now, but the king’s exchange of props is a bit strange. The king and the queen hardly leave the castle. They don’t use the props themselves. It’s more like they don’t know what the props are. The “pen of the code” has also been stuffed.
In the corner, the king didn't hesitate at all when he asked for it. Why did he exchange so many props?
Buying raw materials for dolls?
Judging from the information placed in the castle, the black gemstone, the core material used by the queen to make doll props, is most likely mass-produced, which means they have no shortage of this stone... unless they are making higher-level dolls.
"interesting."
For a time, many possibilities flashed through Xu Huo's mind, and they all finally fell on the puppet man.
This dungeon has not been open for a long time, and the gems were stolen a month ago, which shows that the king and queen were trading with the puppets for a long time before this, regardless of whether this dungeon world actually existed in the illusory world.
Whether in a fairy tale world or in reality, one thing is certain, at least one of the kings and queens has been in contact with the game world for a long time.