The lobby of the inn looked like it was back to normal, at least the same as when they first came, Jun Yao's impressive peeling off of the wallpaper, the broken sofa in Xu Qing's memory, and the slightly old decoration, which made the four people who had just undergone renovation in this hall breathe a sigh of relief.

Lin Mo was placed on the sofa lying flat, Jun Yao looked at her, and really wanted to ask why she looked very weak after entering the mission, but she couldn't ask easily, just like props are everyone's secrets, and generally no one will easily mention it and ask easily. Lin Mo seemed to be able to see some non-human things clearly, and could sense their existence, so the last words she said before she fainted at the gate just now were "They are gone", and after entering this hall, she did see a normal scene.

As if discovering Jun Yao's inquiring gaze, Xu Qingran chuckled softly, "Are you curious about why Lin Mo is in such a situation?" ”

Jun Yao retracted her gaze in astonishment and waved her hand, her original intention was not to let the three of them tell their hole cards, she was just a little curious, "If it is any important information, you don't need to say it...... Everybody will have ......"

"She has the constitution of a medium, can sense and see all non-human creatures, and her blood can temporarily repel creatures, and getting too close to these creatures or using her medium's abilities too often can take a toll on the body. We've met the Ethereal Spirit twice today, and we're so close that we're unusually weak now. Xu Qingran didn't think this matter was a big secret, Lin Mo might be weaker and weaker in the later stages of the mission due to physical problems, so they must need the help and protection of their teammates, so they didn't plan to hide this matter in the first place, since Shen Junyao showed curiosity and doubts, it would be good to explain this ability clearly.

"So that's ......" Jun Yao nodded, she didn't expect it to be a spirit medium, this special physique that only appeared in novels, movies and TV series before, would also be a mission prop? However, she didn't pay too much attention to Lin Mo and her physique, she was more concerned about the words that Ai Yu said when she urged them into the house, "You just mentioned being cursed by time, what does this mean?" ”

"It starts with our visit to Lily's house...... Ai Yu began to tell the information they had learned.

"It turns out that you are the people invited by the mayor to help with the investigation, please come in, please come in." The young woman warmly invited Ai Yu and Yin Weiyu, who had come to inquire, into the house, her gaze stayed on Lin Mo and Zhao Xiao outside the courtyard, and waved her hand at them, "Those two are also with you, right?" Please be polite, let them come in and sit down. ”

"Lily and Alex next door have always had a good relationship, they grew up playing together, going to school together, going to the park together, sometimes visiting each other, all in all, they are inseparable. On the day of the disappearance, they seemed to have made an appointment to go to a place to play, which was very mysterious, and I asked her two or three times, but she refused to tell me, only that she would bring me something nice when she returned. The woman's face was sad, "Lily is playful, but she has always been very disciplined, and she will come back on time before sunset." But that day, I waited at the door until seven o'clock and she didn't come back. I looked at Alex's house next door, and Mrs. Smith was waiting for her children to come back, and we realized that something was wrong. ”

"Did you do anything after you found out they hadn't come back?"

"We ...... Calls were made to every house in the town, and they all said they didn't see Lily and Alex, and we asked the kids who were playing well with them if they knew where they had gone, but no one knew. ”

"You're just calling every house? Why don't you go out and go straight to find it? If the child is kidnapped and hidden by the residents of a certain household, you will not know the real situation even if you make a phone call! ”

"This ...... I was also anxious and I wanted to go to Lily. She's my only daughter, she's my time! But...... But I can't. ”

"Why?! If you cherish her so much, why don't you go out in person? ”

"You're not from this town, so you won't understand." The woman smiled wryly, and she glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, "Eternal Sleep is a place cursed by time. ”

"What does this mean? Cursed by time, can you elaborate on what this is all about? ”

It seemed that the topic was too heavy and related to the secrets of Eternal Sleeptown, and the woman seemed very embarrassed.

"Your daughter Lily...... We've been tasked with solving the problem of the missing children in town, and we need enough information to help us investigate. You must love your daughter...... The less time we spend on these chores, the better our chances of finding her. ”

The woman seemed to be persuaded by this set of words, her lips opened and closed, and after hesitation, she finally let out a long sigh, "Eternal Sleep was a miracle a long time ago, it belonged to a certain god, and then because of something, the god lost his power, and the miracle he left behind was punished for its existence, and the curse came. In Eternal Sleep, time is a very important thing, and if you violate the rules of time, you will be punished, and the most important of these rules is that at the last moment when the sun sets, you must return to the house, otherwise you will be cursed by time. ”

"Hmm...... So what happens when you're cursed by time? ”

"I don't know...... In fact, the townspeople have followed these rules all these years, and no one has ever broken them. However, I have heard that just thirty years ago, when the mayor had just taken office, the mayor had a very lovely daughter, who seemed to be playful, and went to play in the forest next to the town, and got lost in it. It was because the mayor of the town was in a hurry, and he didn't care about any rules, so he went directly to the forest to look for someone. Luckily, the kid was fine, but the townspeople were scared, after all, both the mayor and his daughter had broken the rules, and more than a month had passed, and nothing had happened to the mayor's house, and people felt that the rules were scareless, so people began to break the rules made by the gods, intentionally or unintentionally, who knew that the punishment would come so quickly. ”

"The mayor's daughter fell ill, but before the mayor could call a doctor, she died. The doctor looked at some of the child's conditions before his death and concluded that it was just an ordinary fever, but it was not normal for it to deteriorate so quickly in such a short period of time. The mayor was grieved, and he knew that this was the punishment of time. The rest of the town's inhabitants then showed similar symptoms, and those were all people who had broken the rules. ”

The woman stopped at this, she looked at them, and her gaze suddenly became fierce, "This is the butterfly effect, if one person violates the rules of time, all of us will suffer!" You foreign travelers, you must listen to the advice, never, never go out after sunset! ”

"I ...... We know, you calm down. You see, we didn't know about these things before, and the mayor didn't specifically explain them, if you didn't talk about it, if we violated it, wouldn't it be bad for everyone? So, did anything strange happen to your daughter before she disappeared, or did she behave unusually, about people or things you've never heard of? ”

"I reminisce about memories...... Before Lily's disappearance, there really wasn't anything strange about her, except for a few friends she used to hang out with, and she hadn't heard anything else talk about her. The woman was lost in thought, but after thinking about it could not find any useful clues, she shook her head helplessly, saying that she was really powerless.

"The mayor said that the bell tower has been singing strangely at midnight lately, and the children will inexplicably sleepwalk, so will your daughter sleepwalk too?"

"Yes...... Lily had been sleeping well, so I was scared when I first noticed her sleepwalking, I grabbed her hard and held her for a long time, at that time I felt a force against me, but then the force seemed to give up, so I carried Lily back to my room and watched her sleep all night. But that was just the beginning, and then I found out that she sleepwalked every night, and I stopped her, tried to wake her, and even locked the door of her room, but to no avail. She had no memory of these things when she woke up during the day, and she still ......"

"Ahh By the way, I remembered something, which is not strange, but now that I think about it, it is indeed a little suspicious. ”

"What's the matter?"

"Lily says her previous puppet is broken and she wants to buy a new one."

"Puppets?"

The woman got up, took out a dirty puppet from the cabinet and handed it over, "This is her favorite puppet before, she has loved it since she bought it, and when she said that the puppet was broken, I took a special look at it, but I didn't find anything damaged." So I thought, maybe the freshness has passed and I don't like it, so I asked her to buy a new puppet to play with. She loved the new puppet and slept with it every day, and strangely enough, after buying the puppet, Lily sleepwalked less often. ”

"She's sleepwalking less? Can we take a look at the puppet? ”

"Yes...... I'll go upstairs to get it, please wait here for a moment. The woman smiled, got up, left the living room, and walked towards the second floor.

The waiting time was very long, and Ai Yu and the four of them felt that the tea had become cold, but the woman still didn't come down, so Ai Yu got up and walked in the direction of the stairs.

"Ma'am? Madame, are you up there? What happened? Ai Yu asked loudly, there was no other sound upstairs except for the loud noise just now, Ai Yu hesitated for a moment whether to go upstairs to check, and suddenly something fell from above. A palm-sized wooden thing rolled down the stairs, Ai Yu was attracted by this sudden thing, and was about to squat down to pick it up, when Lin Mo behind him suddenly shouted, "Xiaoyu, go!" ”

Ai Yu was so frightened by this roar that she immediately retracted her outstretched hand, and her half-squatting body didn't have time to get up, but she took a step back like this, and immediately turned around and ran down the stairs. Because of Lin Mo's words, Yin Weiyu also pulled Zhao Xiao out, Lin Mo was holding a yellow rune paper in his hand, ready to answer Ai Yu at any time.

There was a loud "thump" in the direction of the stairs, as if something had fallen to the ground, and as if something was walking. The four of them couldn't care so much, so they pushed open the door and rushed out without looking back.

"The woman went up to get the puppet, and never came down? And Ai Yu, did you see something wooden thrown down from the upper floor? Add to that the woman's self-reported that Lily sleepwalks less often because of a puppet...... Could this incident have anything to do with puppets or woodwork? Jiang Xian first raised questions.

"I think it's possible, but I'm more concerned about the curse they say." Jun Yao said her opinion, of course she believed in the origin of the eternal sleep town that the woman said, and also believed in the existence of the curse of time, but she always felt that what this woman said was a little strange, she said that there are rules in the town that must not be broken, and those who violate them will be cursed and punished, but the mayor of the town also violated that rule in the incident she mentioned thirty years ago, but the mayor of the town does not seem to be punished, and he is still alive and well. And in the end, she warned Ai Yu and the four of them not to violate these rules, otherwise everyone would suffer.

"There is a contradiction in the woman's words about the curse of time, what is the punishment? And who is the target of punishment? These two points are inconsistent, but they are not without merit, at least the curse is real, and the rules should be real. Xu Qingran summed up, "But there is a very important problem now, the original plan was that we would go out tonight to see these strange things happening in the town, such as children sleepwalking in the street garden to gather, or go to the bell tower again to try their luck, and by the way see what the mysterious bell is about." But now that we've found clues about the curse, are we going to do it tonight? The most important part is that we need to know all the rules. Don't go out after sunset, that's one of the rules, but according to the woman, there should be more than that, so we have to figure out all the rules as soon as possible. Until we know if a curse is a condition of death, it's better not to violate it. ”

"Why don't we go and ask the mayor?" Yin Weiyu pointed to the landline phone at the front desk, she vaguely remembered that when she first came to Eternal Sleep Town today, the assistant named Linda next to the mayor seemed to have said that if you have any questions, you can call her to consult her.

"I think we might have to get it ourselves, after all, they didn't even say anything about the existence of a curse in this town when we first arrived. If this was directly available information, they would have warned us a long time ago, right? And when you say that the woman mentioned the curse, she hesitated to tell you or not. Jiang Xian shook her head, she didn't think this was a feasible method, Yin Weiyu smiled, "All in all, try it first, right?" There's no harm in trying, right? If she doesn't say it, we'll find it ourselves, but if she does, then we'll save a lot of trouble! ”

Xu Qingran didn't stop Yin Weiyu's behavior, he was silent for a while, as if he was sorting out and analyzing all the clues and information he got today, and then he said, "Regarding the clues about the disappearance of the five children, we have a closed door at Alice's house today, and his father's attitude is extremely bad, so we will temporarily put the clue of Alice's family at the end to investigate, there are still a few points of information obtained by Lily's family, and we will ask a few other children tomorrow to summarize the commonalities." The subgroup will remain the same as it is today, and pay attention to three questions when asking questions tomorrow: First, Alice's father's relationship with the rest of the town. Second, whether the puppet also appears in the action lines of other children. Thirdly, what are the other rules in town, and if you can listen to the events of thirty years ago, you can also carefully compare what Lily's mother said is different. ”

"As for the scheduled midnight probe tonight, let's cancel it first, after all, there is a clear rule in front of us one day, and we should abide by it until there is no clear evidence to overturn him. Then there's the bell tower, let's put it there first, at least until we've figured out all the rules before we go and investigate. Xu Qingran looked at everyone after summing up, "Is there anything else you need to add?" Everyone can mention it. His gaze fell on Shen Junyao, but Junyao just shook his head, and it seemed that his mind was not on what he had just said.

Yin Weiyu had already come back from the call, looking a little depressed, but everyone didn't care, after all, the probability of being able to ask for hidden clues directly was too low.

"Sure enough, Linda looked like she was rejecting people thousands of miles away, and when I first mentioned the curse of this town to her, she wanted to deny it. However, she still provided a little clue, the bell tower is the most sacred existence in Eternal Sleep Town, and legend has it that the incarnation of the gods inhabits it, so let's not come near and disturb it. ”

"She provided a rule, which is good, in that case, we won't go to the bell tower for the next two days, and before we think of a way to deal with this so-called curse, the bell tower will be included in the forbidden land first." Xu Qingran glanced at the time, it was almost time to eat, "It's almost time, let's go eat, let's have a good rest tonight." ”

So Ai Yu and Xu Qingran woke Lin Mo up and helped her and the others to go to the restaurant together.