An infinite journey starting from paradise

“Ah… um…”

Shayue nodded: "Thank...thank you."

"Ah."

Lin Shangren looked at the girl and realized that his eyes of innocence seemed to have lost their function. He then looked towards the foot of the mountain and saw the Doll Village there.

"My name is Naoto Kuchiki, and I'm... a doctor. Little girl, you just said you wanted to go back to the Shigusa Shrine. Are you a guest of the shrine?" asked Naoto Hayashi, recalling the information that Bunji Inui had mentioned about the Ame-no-Ko Festival in Ningyo Village.

"Well... my name is Sunazuki. I did visit the shrine... I... I have never been to the village." Sunazuki stuttered. Lin Shangren noticed that her steps were very small and her toes were curled up in her tabi. It seemed that she was very cold.

"Let me carry you. If you keep walking like this, your feet will definitely freeze."

"Ah... no need... I..."

"I'm a doctor, and I should listen to the doctor on this matter."

"Ah? Ah... Indeed, when it comes to matters concerning your health, you have to listen to the doctor..." Shayue recalled the common sense that Aunt Sayo taught her. Although this was common sense, this was her first time meeting a so-called doctor, and she was a little unsure.

"Don't be shy, it's just a few steps. Just hold the umbrella for me."

Without saying anything, Lin Shangren carried the petite girl on his back.

“Ah… ah…”

The girl could not resist and could only lie on Lin Shangren's back.

"Shayue has been living in the shrine and has never seen outsiders?" Lin Shangren suddenly asked.

"Yes...ah, no! Sunazuki is just a visitor to the shrine!" the girl quickly denied.

"Where did Shayue live originally?"

"Sand Moon...Sand Moon..."

The girl seemed to have lost her brain and didn't know how to answer.

"really."

Based on the girl's reaction, Hayashi Shangren has already confirmed that this girl is the daughter of the Shirakusa family who was secretly raised in the Shirakusa Shrine specifically for the purpose of marrying into the Hinami family.

"Judging from her reaction, she must have been living in the shrine with little contact with the outside world, which is why she's so shy and lacks common sense. But, if it's for a secret marriage, would she really raise her child like this?"

Lin Shangren was a little confused.

He then asked, "Did you sneak out to play?"

"..."

Lin Shangren only received silence. The girl seemed to have been mute, and she stopped answering Lin Shangren's questions.

Lin Shangren didn't ask any more questions, but just carried Shayue on his back and walked towards the human-shaped village.

Suddenly, Lin Shangren noticed something wrong. There was indeed a village at the foot of the mountain not far away, but the village looked extremely dilapidated and did not look like it was inhabited at all.

Lin Shangren was startled, then recalled the different visions he'd witnessed through his previous interactions with Cicao Yexiao. He placed a finger into the shadows at the back of Shayue's neck, and the moment it touched her hair, the scene before him truly transformed. The once dilapidated building had completely transformed, now appearing to be inhabited. Smoke from cooking fires could be seen in the distance.

"Could it be that only the villagers of the Doll Village can see the Doll Village? What is this village like? Is it some kind of magical disguise, or something else?"

Lin Shangren hurried forward a few steps, reaching the village. After entering the village, he withdrew his hand from gently touching Shayue's hair. Sure enough, the scene before him had changed again. The police station had become dilapidated and looked like a ruin. Burn marks from the fire could still be seen from above.

He took a few steps closer to observe, but the scene before him changed again. This time, he didn't touch Sha Yue's body, but a man in police uniform suddenly opened the door of the police station from the inside. The moment Lin Shangren saw him, everything returned to normal.

"Excuse me, who are you?"

Village policeman Gao Shan Dongxian looked at Lin Shangren in confusion.

"My name is Naoto Kuchiki, and Yasumasa Kuchiki is my uncle. This time I am returning to the Doll Village on behalf of my uncle to bring a message to Uncle Kuroya." Lin Naoto replied.

"Xiuki Jingmao? Ah...ah! It was Jingmao's family who changed their surname to Xiuki after they moved out of the village. Are you his nephew?" asked Gaoshan Dongxian.

"Ah."

Lin Shangren smiled and nodded.

"So...who is the girl you're carrying...?"

"I met her on the way back to the village. She seemed to have lost her way. So I brought her here to warm herself up..."

As he spoke, Lin Shangren used his shadow touch to inspect the entire police station. Based on their appearance, he roughly confirmed that the policeman in front of him should be a relative of Gao Shanzhixin, who he had killed, and most likely his father.

"Then, Uncle Gaoshan, shall we go in first?"

"it is good."

Seeing that the other party called out his name, Gao Shan Dongxian stepped aside to let Lin Shangren in.

"Kuchiki, please go sit in the room inside. I have to go to the village first. I'll also go get that boy Shangzhi over. After all, he should call you cousin."

"Ah, Doctor Kuroya married into the Kuroya family. If you count it that way, it's true."

Lin Shangren answered as he put Shayue on the ground.

"Yeah, speaking of which, Kuroya Hospital should have been inherited by Jingming."

"Uncle is living well in Tokyo."

"Really? Hahaha, okay. Then you guys warm up first, I'll be back soon."

After leaving these words, Gao Shandongxian left the police station.

Lin Shangren's originally kind smile turned cold again.

"Feign deceit or take direct action? This village is not simple..."

Chapter 152: Things Like Haunted Dolls (Part 4)

The fire in the police station was burning brightly, and wrapped in warm air, Shayue's feet, which were soaked in snow and frozen, felt a burst of uncomfortable soreness, heat, swelling and pain, which brought her back to her senses a little.

"I messed up... I can't tell anyone that I've been living in the shrine... But I didn't tell them, he guessed it himself... Hmm..."

Shaking her head in frustration, Satsuki trudged into the police station's reception room. While the police station looked like a Western-style building from the outside, the interior was decorated in a traditional Japanese style: sliding paper doors, wooden floors, a low coffee table, tatami mats, and a kotatsu.

"It's better not to say anything and wait until Aunt Sayo takes me back. I clearly didn't want to go far, but I got lost inexplicably just a few steps out of the shrine. Ah, my sense of direction is really bad." Shayue thought.

She sat obediently on the edge of the floor, with her head lowered, praying in her heart that Aunt Xiaoye would not lose her temper with her.

Lin Shangren didn't rush into the reception room, but instead walked towards the police station. He wanted to verify something.

"The world seen by the Doll Village villagers is different from the world seen by outsiders. Outsiders can only see what the villagers see when they have physical contact with the Doll Village villagers. No, when I was talking to that police officer just now, I didn't have direct contact with Satsuki, but I was still able to communicate normally with him. At that time, we saw the same thing..."

Thinking about it, Lin Shangren walked out of the police station.

Sure enough, after walking out of the police station, the scene outside changed again, turning back into a ruin-like scene.

"Destroyed by fire?"

Lin Shangren looked at the charred building in front of him. He pulled out Feng Ling Yue Ying, cut off a piece of charred wall with a knife, and held it in his hand to check it carefully.

"It's true, it couldn't be truer. The scene outsiders see is not the environment."

Lin Shangren turned on the [Caterpillar War God's Telescope] and spread out the shadow touch at the same time. He looked around and confirmed the scene of the humanoid village seen by people outside the village.

From a visual perspective, there is only a desolate ruin here. This small village seems to have been bombed many years ago and completely abandoned.

However, the feedback from the shadow touch was slightly different. The distribution of shadows within a twenty-meter radius was essentially the same as what Lin Shangren saw. However, Lin Shangren sensed something his eyes couldn't see: a human shadow. Specifically, a person sitting on the ground about seven meters behind him: Sha Yue. Although he couldn't see her, he could feel her shadow.

In order to make it easier for everyone to distinguish, we will call the human-shaped village seen by outsiders a "deserted village" and the human-shaped village seen by villagers a "normal village".

At this time, Lin Shangren was in a deserted village.

"Tsk, that's interesting."

Lin Shangren locked onto Shayue's shadow, then moved his finger over to lightly touch her body. Instantly, the scene before his eyes changed from a deserted village back to a normal one, but the charred wall in his hand didn't disappear.

He looked at the place where he had just cut off the wall. It was intact, so Lin Shangren cut off another piece of wall from there and at the same time withdrew his fingers that were touching Shayue.

The space turned into a deserted village again, and the wall cut from Chang Village did not disappear either.

"Both sides are real, what is this? Spatial superposition?"

Lin Shangren looked at the dilapidated gate of the Huangcun Police Station.

Through the shadows, he sensed the shadow of a complete door. So he moved his hand to the shadow of the complete door and pushed it open with force, deliberately making a loud noise.

As he expected, although he did not have long-distance contact with Shayue's body this time, the scene in front of him still changed into Changcun's appearance.

"The point isn't just contact, it's also... observation. What is this, Schrödinger's cat?"

Based on the experiment just now, Lin Shangren made a bold hypothesis that this human-shaped village and even the space around it have spatial superposition. The space here will collapse into different shapes depending on the observer, just like Schrödinger's cat.

Schrödinger's cat is a classic thought experiment in quantum mechanics. Imagine a closed box containing a live cat and a bottle of poison gas controlled by a radioactive atom with a 50% chance of decay. When no observer is watching, everything inside the box is in a state of divergent wave functions: the cat may or may not be killed by the poison, with these two divergent possibilities superimposed. Only when the box is opened and the contents are observed does the wave function of possibilities collapse into a predetermined outcome.

Lin Shangren's space is similar, yet different. Only when those in the deserted village and those in the ordinary village can observe each other will their space transform from a deserted village into an ordinary village. "Observation" here refers not only to visual perception but to the full range of sensory perception. Lin Shangren observed the intact gate of the ordinary village police station through shadow control, while Shayue heard the loud noise Lin Shangren made. The two observed each other, and Lin Shangren returned from the deserted village to the ordinary village.

Due to the spatial barrier and the limitation of mutual observation, outsiders could never enter the Ordinary Village unless they walked into the Humanoid Village together. However, Lin Shangren could sense people from other dimensions through shadow control, allowing him to travel back and forth between the Ordinary Village and the Deserted Village.

"No, it's not that simple. There is not only a superposition of two spaces here, there are other spaces. The speed of time flow in different spaces is also different." Lin Shangren made a judgment after recalling his experience since entering the valley.

"It's quite interesting." Lin Shangren rubbed the back of his neck. "What's even more interesting is that she..."

His eyes looked at Shayue who was sitting on the edge of the floor. She was frightened by the loud noise of Lin Shangren suddenly opening the door.

"I'm sorry for scaring you." Lin Shangren smiled slightly and walked to Shayue's side.

Shayue lowered her head, as if she was afraid that she would say something wrong again and be tricked by Lin Shangren.

"Take it off."

"what!"

"My clogs and tabi are soaked in the snow. The sudden change in temperature will easily lead to frostbite."

As he spoke, Lin Shangren reached out to the girl's feet, gently removed her clogs, and then took off her wet cloth socks. Throughout the entire process, Sha Yue didn't move at all, like an exquisite, motionless doll.

"As expected, it's red from the cold. It would be better to soak it in warm water for a while."

"Um... No, don't bother you. I, I'm fine..."

Shayue retracted her feet shyly.

"It's snowing, and you're walking in the snow wearing such a thin kimono and wooden clogs. Aren't you really afraid of getting sick? How do the people in the Shicao family take care of you? It's really outrageous." Lin Shangren said deliberately.

"Ah... yes, it's my fault. Xiaoye and Aunt Weiye are both very good. It's my fault..." Shayue explained quickly.

"Eh? Really? That's not what Yexiao said. You should know Cicao Yexiao, she's also the daughter of the Cicao family, studying outside the village. She and I are friends, and I heard her say that Weiye and Xiaoye are both very sharp-tongued people."

"Not at all!"

Lin Shangren smiled slightly, but Ashrose suddenly complained.

[Is it not a good idea to lie to such a simple girl? (?_?)]

"Isn't this good? This is good, but this needle doesn't poke. I suggest increasing the force."

On the other side, at the entrance of Kuroshiya Hospital.

Kuroya Naoori was walking home, his face flushed and his head lowered, not knowing what he was thinking about.

"Hey, Xiao Shang?"

A pretty voice came from the front.

Kuroya Naori raised his head: "...Oh, it's Nanako."

The beautiful girl in front of him, wearing a burgundy coat, with short hair and a beauty mole at the corner of her mouth, is called Nanako Sawagenari. She is a nurse working at the Kuroya Hospital.

"Xiao Shang, I am your elder, so you should use honorifics and call me Miss Nanako." Sawasei Nanako said playfully. In fact, she was only three years older than Kuroya Naori, but she was indeed a generation older in terms of seniority.

Seeing that something was obviously wrong with Kuroya Naori, Sawasei Nanako quickly asked: "Xiao Shang? What's wrong? Your face is so red and your expression is so depressed. What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"

"I...I'm fine."

Facing his beloved, Kuroya Naoki forced a smile: "I'm fine, it's just... it's too cold and I got a cold. By the way, if I call you Miss Nanako, can you please stop calling me Xiaoshang, Miss Nanako?"

"Hee, Xiao Shang is Xiao Shang."

Nanako Sawasaki patted Naori Kuroya's shoulder and said, "Then I'll go home first. My father is still waiting for me to come back."

"Well...thank you for your hard work."

"Of course it's hard!"

Nanako Sawasei stretched out her body, and Kuroya Naori's eyes were instantly fixed on her chest, which was swaying violently despite being covered by a coat. He then looked away, but his mind was still reminiscing about the charming scene he had just witnessed.

"It's just a hallucination... Uncle clearly died a long time ago..."

Kuroya Naoori shook his head vigorously, trying to dispel the images that kept resurfacing in his mind. In that long-abandoned house, his uncle, the long-deceased head of the Hinagami family, Hinagami Akizuru, was brutally violating a wealthy woman he had never seen before.