Twin female zombies come to the door: My lord, please have mercy!

In early winter in Jiangzhou, the night wind always carries a damp and chilly chill.

Wang Pangzi and Bai Yu have been going to several remote mountain forests in the neighboring province these past few days to purchase century-old lightning-struck wood.

Without the noise of these two clowns, the nights in Taiping Old Street are exceptionally quiet.

But the silence tonight is eerily quiet.

2:30 a.m.

In the west of Jiangzhou City, there is a high-end single apartment building called "Jinxiu Huating".

Zhang, a 24-year-old night shift security guard, was sitting in the guard room in the lobby, idly scrolling through short videos.

Ever since the official announcement of the "resurrection of supernatural phenomena" from the Great Xia Kingdom, even the most daring night owls dare not wander the streets after dark.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

The incandescent light bulb overhead suddenly emitted a faint electrical hum, and the originally bright light began to flicker uncontrollably.

Xiao Zhang shuddered and subconsciously reached for the "blessed peach wood stick" he had just bought online at a high price.

"call!"

A biting cold wind slipped in through the crack in the door.

The streets outside were shrouded in a layer of grayish-white fog.

Just then, a strange piece of music broke the deathly silence of the night.

"Ding-dong... Ding-dong..."

It's the sound of an old-fashioned wind-up music box.

The melody is mechanical and monotonous, like the accompaniment for a clown's entrance in a circus.

Xiao Zhang swallowed hard, staring intently at the tightly closed glass door of the guardhouse.

The music box's sound grew closer and closer, finally stopping on the other side of the glass door!

"Knock, knock, knock."

Three knocks, neither too loud nor too soft, sounded on the door.

Xiao Zhang was startled. The official defense guide clearly stated that one should never open the door if there was a knock at night.

He held his breath, quietly peered through the peephole of the glass door.

The corridor was empty, with only grayish-white mist swirling around it.

There wasn't a soul in sight!

But the knocking continued.

"Knock, knock, knock."

As the music box played its eerie yet cheerful melody, a seductive voice resonated deep within Xiao Zhang's mind:

"Sir, your package has arrived. Please open the door and sign for your happiness..."

The voice possessed an irresistible magic, instantly stripping Xiao Zhang of his reason.

His eyes instantly became empty and lifeless, and his body stiffened like a puppet, reaching out to grasp the doorknob.

"Click".

The door opened.

A gray gust of wind swept in.

There was still nothing outside the door, except for a rusty music box lying on the ground.

The lid popped open, revealing a clown spring doll with an exaggeratedly smiling face inside, nodding frantically at him.

Xiao Zhang's pupils suddenly dilated.

He tried to scream, but found that no sound came out of his throat.

Xiao Zhang lowered his head in fear.

I watched as my rough skin was visibly turning pale, smooth, and stiff, eventually transforming into a lifeless, cold, hard porcelain!

"Click click click..."

His joints made a mechanical, gear-gripping sound.

In that instant, it felt as if my internal organs had been completely hollowed out.

A rapid, whirring sound came from inside my stomach!

"Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock."

In just five seconds.

A living, breathing young man suddenly transformed into a life-sized ceramic wind-up doll.

A strange smile was forcibly fixed onto his face.

The music box stopped abruptly.

The grayish-white mist re-entered the night, leaving only the ceramic doll inside, its belly constantly dripping.

……

The next morning.

Taiping Old Street, Lin's Funeral Service Shop.

Lin Ye, wearing a loose gray hoodie, leaned lazily against the sofa, holding a cup of pre-Qingming Longjing tea that Ayougu had just brewed.

"These foreigners are really restless."

He glanced at the few high-definition photos of the scene scattered on the coffee table, raised an eyebrow slightly, and a hint of interest flashed in his eyes.

The photos were hurriedly sent over by Chu Hongyan ten minutes ago.

The image shows Zhang, the security guard who turned into a ceramic doll in the "Jinxiu Huating" apartment last night, and three other ordinary citizens who died in the same manner.

Their bodies were completely ceramicized, and upon dissection, it was found that there were no fleshy organs inside, but rather they were filled with rusty metal gears and springs.

Chu Hongyan sat opposite Lin Ye, her once handsome face now filled with exhaustion and anxiety.

"In the latter half of last night, a total of seven similar murders occurred in Jiangzhou. There were no signs of struggle and no lingering yin energy."

She picked up her water glass and took a big gulp, her voice filled with a deep sense of helplessness.

"Our Ninth Bureau's special agents and forensic team arrived at the scene immediately. They discovered that our armor-piercing cinnabar rounds and Taoist talismans had absolutely no effect on this type of death!"

"When they were cutting open the body, one of the forensic doctors was almost infected by the curse attached to the gears. This wasn't some evil spirit at all!"

"Of course it's not a ghost."

Lin Ye put down his teacup.

He leaned back in his chair, his fingers idly playing with a strand of silver hair that had fallen from Leng Yue's head beside him.

"The ghosts of the Great Xia Kingdom believe in cause and effect, and that obsession breeds evil."

"The way of dying in this photo is clean and neat, without any cause or effect, as if it was forcibly formatted by some kind of fixed 'program'."

Lin Ye turned his head and looked at Helena, who was standing behind him massaging his shoulders.

"Helena, you've been in the Western Vatican for a long time. Does this perverse pleasure of turning living people into wind-up toys seem familiar?"

Helena leaned closer and took a look at the photo.

A flicker of fear flashed in her icy blue eyes, and she instinctively took a half-step back.

"Boss... this is stuff from S.H.I.E.L.D. in the US!"

Helena took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the pounding in her heart, and explained in a low voice:

"The West doesn't have as many native demons as the East. The supernatural system in the United States is largely based on [containment objects]."

"They search the world for bizarre objects that defy the laws of physics, and then use genetic technology or some other means to forcibly control them."

She pointed to the rusty music box wreckage in the corner of the photo.

"This should be [Containment Item-042: The Smiling Joker's Music Box] from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top-secret archives."

"This thing has no physical form, nor does it belong to magic or yin energy; it is a kind of [rule-based cognitive hazard]."

"Its rules for killing are very simple: as long as you hear its music in the midnight fog and open the door after it knocks three times, the life form of the marked person will be forcibly rewritten and completely transformed into a soulless wind-up doll."

"The Western Vatican once tried to purify it with the highest level of holy light, but even the priest who presided over the ceremony turned into a pile of broken porcelain shards."

After Helena's explanation, the air in the hall instantly became somewhat heavy.

"Rules-based murder?"

Ayougu squatted on the chair, holding a half-eaten fried dough stick in her hand, and gasped.

"These foreigners don't know any martial ethics when they fight! They don't fight face-to-face, they just throw out some kind of rule-based cheat? How are we supposed to defend against that?"

"If this were to spread throughout Jiangzhou, wouldn't the entire city's population become toy store inventory?"

Chu Hongyan's face turned pale, clearly she also realized the seriousness of the situation, because the rule-based strangeness was the most difficult to deal with, and in the past, when the Ninth Bureau faced the rule-based ghost domain, they had all won by a narrow margin.

"Those bastards from the US, they've started resorting to underhanded tactics because they can't win in a direct confrontation!"

Chu Hongyan slammed her hand on the table in anger.

"What's the rush?"

Lin Ye chuckled softly.

"What Western containment objects, what rule-based erasure. It sounds impressive, but in the end, it's nothing more than loopholes in their laws of the Great Dao, which have given rise to some broken gadgets that exploit these bugs."

Lin Ye stood up.

"Trying to play by the rules on the territory of the Great Xia Kingdom?"

"What Lao Tzu cultivates is the Dao, the source of all laws in this world! Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the fundamental principles of Heaven and Earth—which of these isn't greater than the rules of that broken music box?"

Lin Ye walked up to Chu Hongyan and flicked her tense forehead.

"Alright, Captain Chu, put your mind at ease. Since the United States has deployed this thing to Jiangzhou, their target is definitely not ordinary people, but my funeral parlor."

"Get your Ninth Bureau people back somewhere else. I want to see if these foreign toys that have traveled across the ocean can take a beating."