Mystery: Survival from the Secret Doll

Chapter 270, 269: Silencing?

Upon seeing those ordinary, unremarkable, and unremarkable faces, Klein's pupils first dilated sharply, then quickly shrank to a tiny dot.

Those ordinary, unremarkable faces had their necks twisted a bizarre 180 degrees, their backs to their heads, staring at Klein with an incredibly eerie expression.

On their bodies, thin, illusory black lines, as if Klein had seen them before, seemed to extend to the edge of a dream, firmly grasped by an unseen large hand.

They are all puppets, they are all puppets being manipulated!
After those heads, which had rotated 180 degrees, revealed eerie smiles, the dream shattered in that instant.

The images presented in the dream divination instantly transformed into countless indistinct, twisted, and writhing vortexes, like a giant vortex of huddled worms. They instantly tore apart Klein's dream and further attacked Klein, who was in the mysterious space above the gray fog, through the dream!
It was as if he had divined something that shouldn't be divined. Klein had divined something extremely terrifying. Even through a layer of gray fog, even in the mysterious space above the gray fog, just that gaze caused the entire mysterious space above the gray fog to tremble and shake wildly.

This was the first time Klein had encountered such a situation!
The magnificent palace above the gray fog instantly transformed into a thick, boundless gray-white fog, and those countless gray-white fogs seemed to have turned into swirling worms composed of transparent, semi-transparent insects.

Klein screamed and fell to the ground, his body cracking open. From the cracks in his flesh, countless transparent, translucent insects seemed to crawl in and out, tearing at Klein's spirit, polluting it, and destroying his mind.

Thin, ethereal black lines appeared on his body, as if some being was trying to manipulate his spiritual threads, attempting to suspend him and turn him into a puppet.

Klein gritted his teeth and persevered, sobbing as he went.

His mind was a complete blank, as if countless insects had burrowed into it, tearing at his cerebral cortex and gnawing at his flesh!
"If you don't court death, you won't die—"

After an unknown amount of time, the frantic tremors above the gray fog finally ceased. Klein, whose collapse seemed to have transformed into an amalgamation of countless insects, was gradually reassembling his spirit, but he still appeared extremely weak.

"No, I'm not dead, and I haven't turned into a secret puppet either..."

"The dream divination seems to have revealed something extraordinary..."

He lay on the ground without rushing to get up, gazing at the now-stable dome of the magnificent palace, finding a strange kind of amusement in his predicament.

After catching his breath, Klein sat back in his high-backed chair. He calmed himself down, and the cracked, insect-like spirit body on his body returned to normal, though it looked even more ethereal and dim than before.

Klein glanced at himself and, not seeing the illusory, transparent black lines he had just seen, secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He then sorted out what he had seen and his next plan.

"However, these four dream fragments all involve very ordinary, common people. Why did they suddenly become like that..."

This was something Klein couldn't understand at all... But just to get such a strong backlash from a divination, if it were done in the real world and the divination was successful, Klein felt that St. Peter's Hospital could have already recovered his blasted, maggot-infested corpse the next day.

Recalling the excruciating pain of his spirit being torn apart, Klein shuddered with a chill.

How could someone like that be an ordinary person?

After calming himself down a bit, Klein sat at the head of the bronze table, conjured a fountain pen, and somewhat wearily wrote down the names of the problematic people in the four scenes he had seen.

Passersby I met on the street.

A thief stealing from the gates of the University of Tingen.

The residents of 47 Golden Rose Street.

And patients at St. Peter's Hospital.

"Their identities, ages, and social circles should all be unique, so why do they appear in my dreams, and why do I suffer a backlash when I try to divine about them?"

Klein held the fountain pen and tapped it little by little on the bronze table.

Then he picked up a fountain pen and wrote a few lines of words on the parchment that had materialized.

"The Antigonus family's notebooks, the maddened secret society members, the soothsayers, the paintings..."

These are all things related to the methods of fortune tellers.

Klein started having nightmares after seeing the monster Riel Bieber had transformed into, and the symptoms worsened after reading the notes of the cult members who had gone mad.

After recalling the Seer's Path Sequence 5, whose potion name is Master of the Puppet, and Sequence 4, whose potion name is Trickster, Klein felt that the temperature above this gray fog seemed to have become somewhat chilly.

"Could it be that these people are all secret puppets?"

"The notes of the Mad Secret Order members mentioned that there seem to be many Mystic Artifacts in the Hornachis Mountains. Is this a clue?"

"Because of this, I deepened my knowledge and connection with the mystical aspects of necromancy. With the enhancement of my spiritual intuition, it was like passing the judgment in a Cthulhu role-playing game. Under some kind of contamination from Riel Bieber and the notes of the insane cult members, my spiritual intuition passed the judgment. So, I saw these images in a hospital ghost story in my dream?"

The concentration of fortune tellers in Tingen is simply unimaginably high, to a suffocating degree!

Klein felt a little suffocated; the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed!
Oh no, can't he go home?! He doesn't want to stay here anymore!

-

Simulating the feeling of falling, after exiting from above the gray fog, I was about to go out to find Pedigris to ask about the situation when I realized it was the middle of the night...

Klein had no choice but to lie in bed, but he couldn't fall asleep.

The next day, when Pedigree came over with a few ritual books, Klein seemed to suddenly remember something and asked Pedigree about it in a casual, conversational manner.

"By the way, Pedigru, what happened to that guy who stole things outside the University of Tingen last time?"

Klein was taken to the University of Tingen by Don first. The subsequent capture of the thief was left to Pedigru. The wallet was eventually recovered, but Pedigru didn't seem to mention how the thief was ultimately dealt with.

"Why are you curious about this?" Pedigru asked, somewhat surprised, but still replied, "The city of Tingen prohibits any kind of illicit theft... I handed the thief who committed this offense over to the Tingen University security detail; they should be taken to the police station." "Illicit theft? Is there such a thing as legitimate theft?" Klein thought to himself, then asked curiously, "How many years would that sentence be?"

He remembered that in the dream interpretation, the face of the pregnant man corresponded to the thief who stole Tang's wallet.

Of course, Klein only considered pregnancy as a symbol, before he encountered the "Great Mother" and the "Mother Tree of Desire," well, before...

"Depending on the value of the stolen goods, those with lesser value are sentenced to one to three months of quarrying work, while those with more serious crimes are imprisonment and other criminal penalties. After all, prohibiting improper means of obtaining benefits is the unspoken rule of this city, and no one can violate it."

"Ore quarrying work?"

Klein had never heard of that before. Did it refer to a labor camp?

“Yes, the quarrying of Sunwell Ore.” Pedigris put down his book and prepared to leave. “Sunwell Ore is a very important mineral resource in Tingen. The Sunwell Ore we use daily for lighting and many ritual magic materials in the solar realm is one of the city’s specialties.”

"I remember, it should be sent to, um, the town of Ramd in the northwest? People from Tingen don't usually go there, and there are many people working there... There are both extraordinary individuals and ordinary people, and those responsible for mining ore, apart from criminals in Tingen who need to serve time, are some extraordinary individuals with lower ranks, but who are very suitable for physical labor. It's quite a good job."

The job of mining ore, which attracts exceptional individuals, offers quite good compensation.

Sunwell ore...

Klein involuntarily looked at the mineral lamp in the room, which no longer emitted light or heat.

Indeed, compared to using oil lamps, coal, and gas, this highly efficient and inexpensive energy source is a good clean and efficient energy source.

"I'm leaving now. If you feel unwell, please tell the nurse. And if you feel much better, you can go out for a walk. Staying in the ward all the time isn't good..."

Pedigra gave a few more instructions, then seemed to have other things to do, and soon got up and left the ward.

Klein looked out the window at the slightly overcast sky. It was a cloudy day with no sunlight, and the wind blowing into the room from outside carried a slight chill.

"It's going to rain."

Klein muttered something to himself, then pondered the information he had just extracted from Pedigris.

“Judging from Pedigris’s words, that thief should be mining right now. In my dream, the thief symbolized pregnancy. What does that represent? New life? The birth of offspring?”

But for these individuals, Klein really couldn't ask the Night Watchers or people from Tingen University or the University of Michigan for help.

"While these things can be attributed to dreams, this involves higher-level matters that even the gray fog cannot block. As a Sequence 9 diviner, it would be one thing if it were just a dream, but I know very clearly who these people are. To be able to divine this level of issues seems quite unlikely..."

But if those people are truly occult beings, are they other high-ranking diviners from the Secret Order? Or are they high-ranking diviners from the Great Secret Order?
Both are possible; neither can be ruled out.

"Of course, I could just take out the portrait and not say anything... But if I tell the Night Watchman or the people from Tingen University about this, it's fine if it's other high-ranking diviners from the Secret Order, but if it's a high-ranking person from Tingen University, then my secret will probably be exposed."

Given the circumstances at the time, his divination was definitely detected.

"Although I'm not sure if it's just a vague feeling that someone is interpreting my fortune, or if I already know some information about the diviner but don't know who it is, I'd better not gamble if there's a fifty percent chance..."

Of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, the best is to lie low; well, let's just lie low for now.

"However, if we investigate behind the scenes, there shouldn't be any major problems. But don't do that anytime soon, lest you arouse suspicion."

That patient at St. Peter's Hospital could be a good opportunity to gather information, but be cautious and avoid arousing suspicion.

After deciding on the next course of action, Klein planned to catch up on some sleep.

He didn't sleep well at all last night, so he probably won't dream about those strange things this morning. After all, even though it's a cloudy day, at least it's daytime.

May all evil spirits be gone!

Whatever you think of, it will come to pass.

At noon, Klein, who had already taken a nap and hadn't dreamed, was having lunch in the cafeteria of St. Peter's Hospital when he overheard the family members of patients at the next table discussing something.

They were holding newspapers with colorful pictures, seemingly commenting on something.

Klein wasn't particularly interested at first. He casually glanced at the newspapers the people were holding, but his hand holding chopsticks paused, his pupils contracted, and his irises dilated slightly.

"A stampede occurred this morning on Golden Rose Street caused by an out-of-control carriage, resulting in the deaths of two pedestrians..."

The color photograph shows two corpses being carried on stretchers at St. Peter's Hospital. The faces of the corpses are strikingly familiar to Klein—the faces of the tenant and the passerby he had just seen the previous night!
"They were silenced?!"

This was Klein's first reaction.

His second reaction was, "The mastermind behind this has realized that someone has discovered these are puppets, and he wants to destroy them and let them die a natural death!"

They are not high-ranking diviners from the University of Secret Man, but members of a secret society or other organizations!
Klein didn't even have time to finish the little food left in his bowl. He had always been a very frugal person who didn't like to waste food, but this time he hurriedly picked up the metal plate, poured the food into the cafeteria's trash can, put the plate away, and immediately returned to the inpatient department!
Following his memory, he calmed himself down a bit when he reached the corresponding floor in the elevator, then stepped out of the elevator and walked forward.

As he passed by a hospital room, he glanced inside as if by chance.

The bed in the room was neatly made with bedding, but the room was empty.

The patient in this ward has disappeared.

(End of this chapter)