At the moment when he saw the familiar clown sculpture in front of him, Qiu Xuan drew his knife almost reflexively and pointed it towards the face, but in the next second, his wrist stopped in mid-air.

Ed: "Hit him!" Ahhhh ”

"Don't make any noise," Qiu Xuan frowned and gently poked the clown's sculpted cheek with the tip of her knife. "Something is wrong...... He didn't seem to be a living person. ”

"What do you mean...... Not a living person? ”

"Come and see for yourself." Qiu Xuan took a step back to give up his position, but Ed shook his head and hesitated to step forward, the latter looked at him with some hatred, and then raised his hand and pushed the entire standing clown to the ground.

With a bang, the sound of landing is not like the muffled sound of the human body smashing down, but more like a real rubber sculpture, which falls straight down.

Qiu Xuan squatted down, and the tip of the knife slashed at the only flaw, the clown's face.

No blood was oozing, and the knife seemed to have cut into plasticine, leaving only a gap in it the same color as his cheek.

Ed was amazed, and finally had the courage to come over and take a closer look.

"The skin on its body also looks a little like it has been replaced," Qiu Xuan said as the tip of her knife continued to move downward. "But the overall feel is the same as the dead clown from before, so the thing in front of us is either made to replace the last clown we killed, but it hasn't worked yet. Either that or the same is the same one, but for some reason, not only did he regrow his head under that degree of smashing, but he was also affected by some side effect, and now became a real sculpture. ”

"Well, in either case, we'll have to solve it in advance." Ed said tentatively, "This thing looks very evil. ”

Qiu Xuan didn't speak, she got up from the ground again, her eyes staring around in the darkness.

"Now it's not the main question who this clown is, the question is, where the hell did the owner of the balloon stand go?"

In the darkness, Ed suddenly fell silent, he recalled for a long time, and spoke behind Qiu Xuan in a slightly hesitant tone.

"You say, will it ...... The clown and the boss, actually, the same person? ”

Qiu Xuan was stunned.

Her mind raced through all the details of the day she had seen the balloon stall owner, and then she thought of something, and crouched down again to brush the sleeve of the clown sculpture that had fallen to the ground. I saw that under the cuffs of the fat clown suit, the position of the ring finger of the left hand wearing gloves was obviously bulging out differently from other fingers.

Qiu Xuan took off her gloves and saw that the position of her original ring finger had been replaced by a crudely made prosthesis.

"It's that boss, and that boss is missing a finger!" Ed cried out, "I know, I know!" Otherwise, why could he get the clown's skin to make balloons every day, it turns out that they are the same person at all! ”

"But if it's really the same person, then this afternoon, I saw the boss and the clown in the same scene, what happened?"

"It must be a stand-in, or something the boss used to deceive you." Ed squatted aside and explained to Qiu Xuan, "At that time, was the boss the one who spoke up first, and then you found out that the clown was in the room?" You know, they're circus people, and it's not hard to use people's subjective judgment to confuse the public in that chaotic situation. Just like the world of real and false nuns we experienced before, didn't we also make preconceived mistakes to let the real prisoner Selena hide until the end? ”

Qiu Xuan was still thinking about these words, and glanced at Ed, looking a little surprised.

"Yes, you're making pretty fast progress. I thought you'd just be there until the end of this trial, 'Ahhh ”

She deliberately learned what Ed had shouted in a hurry before, and the latter raised his eyebrows to glare at her, but then he didn't dare to think about it, so he had to lower his eyebrows aggrievedly.

"You do have some truth in that, but I don't think the clown and the boss are the same person."

Qiu Xuan stopped joking and looked down at the clown on the ground again.

"Selena's incident taught me a pretty profound lesson, so I make a hypothesis before judging now. As you said before, obfuscating the public should also be a means of the balloon stall owner, and from the previous clues, it can be roughly seen that there must be some kind of connection between him and the clown. ”

"But they shouldn't be the same person...... 'they' shouldn't be the same person." Qiu Xuan said this, raised his hand to take a piece of cloth, and wiped the color and makeup off the face of the clown who fell to the ground with some force.

The face looked like an unremarkable face in the crowd, but it was very different from that of the balloon stall owner.

"How could it be ......," Ed exclaimed, "but he also had a broken finger!" The clown is not the boss, so where is the boss?! ”

Qiu Xuan stood up and looked far away at the center circle provided for the main personnel to rest beyond a few tents.

"Tonight, when I was returning from the circus, I met the gnome who was selling tickets at the door, and asked him about something." Qiu Xuan wiped the paint that was inevitably stained on her fingers, "Guess what?" In the circus, the owner of the balloon stall took a leave of absence today, citing physical discomfort. ”

Ed opened his mouth wide.

Qiu Xuan toe kicked the clown who fell to the ground, "So now let's assume that the real balloon stall owner has some kind of relationship with the clown, and it is likely that they are the same person, as you guessed before...... So who is the 'boss' we have been seeing? ”

……

"Lord Lidgar."

He bowed down and saluted the man with extraordinary temperament in front of him, and said with a solemn face: "It's all arranged, Sister Carson will stay in the tent we arranged tonight, you can go over at any time." ”

Lidgar didn't look at the person who spoke, just fiddling with the barrel of the gun with his fingertips.

"What time is it?"

He seemed to mention it casually, and the man standing in front of him looked down at his watch, and said, "Twelve o'clock, there are still seven hours before the morning show of the circus the next day." ”

"Thank you for your hard work." Lidgar finally stopped what he was doing for a moment, and looked back at the man who was talking, as if he were giving alms. "Go back and report your injuries directly to the Ministry of Armed Forces, and say that they are injured at work. Let them give you a better prosthesis, and the Hunter Bureau will pay for it, so you don't have to worry. ”

"It's my pleasure."

The man bowed again, bending at an angle almost ninety degrees to the ground.

Liedgar was noncommittal, chuckled and patted him on the shoulder, and walked in a direction in the darkness. The man he had passed by was still bent and frozen, his left ring finger empty in the dappled moonlight.

In the morning, seven o'clock sharp.

"Ticket evasion, ticket evasion, brothers."

The stout man crouched a little on the edge of the circus fence, and muttered as he peered out to observe something.

Kiara glanced at the side with some disapproval, but said nothing.

They lingered in this spiritual memory of the past for another night, and when Qiu Xuan went out of the tent to meet the group, they learned that the crowd had come to see them according to the existing information, but they did not see Lilia or any one of Lilith in the tent.

Although, in a way, they are "alone".

Then people came from tent to tent, and even knew what color pajamas the dwarf was wearing when he slept, but they didn't see the conjoined sisters anywhere.

They had no choice but to stay in the circus for another day.

The cash that Chiara carried with her was finally not enough to pay for the gang to continue watching the whole circus for another day, and they originally wanted to stay in the circus venue and not go out to come the next day, but due to the security system set up at the entrance of some tents in the circus, they could only enter the circus with a ticket stub.

So they came up with a compromise solution, which was that some people would stay in the venue, while others would go out and buy tickets to come in.

At that time, according to the method of guessing the boxing, they will take turns to enter the venue with those tickets, and those who are not in turn will continue to look for clues outside.

Chiara had enough money to buy three tickets, and for the time being, she didn't want to care about what was going on behind the scenes of her ostensibly harmonious fellow executioners. After the vast majority of the audience entered the venue the next morning, Qiu Xuan came out of the flowers, patted her clothes and walked towards the balloon booth in the bright light.

No one was there.

She casually stopped a passing staff member and said casually: "I want to play this, is this stall closed today?" ”

"Did you say Luke?" The staff then glanced at the empty stall, "No, strange, Luke only took one day off yesterday, and he didn't say anything about leave today." ”

"Please wait a moment." He said, "The owner of this stall should have something to do, I'm going to call him." ”

Qiu Xuan and Ed silently followed the staff member to the familiar tent, and heard the man let out an exclamation within seconds of opening the curtain and walking in.

"Dead ...... Dead, Luke, Lou ......"

He ran out in a panic, and the excessive undulating movement attracted the attention of the crowd around him.

"Please go to another stall first, guest." The staff said to Qiu Xuan with a white face, "Something happened to the person in charge of our side, please forgive me." ”

"It's fine."

Qiu Xuan promised well, and when the staff hurriedly ran to call for the emptiness, she pulled Ed directly into the tent.

"It turns out that he is the real balloon stall owner." Qiu Xuan squatted on the ground and sighed at the person who had lost his breath on the ground. Ed relapsed in the back, glancing at the corpse from a distance of a few meters, and didn't want to look at it any more.

"It's not that clown from yesterday!"

He shouted at Qiu Xuan from afar, "It turns out that the clown is the real balloon stall owner, and the one we have been seeing is someone else!" But how could he die, we obviously didn't do it yesterday! ”

"It's very simple, it's just killing people and killing people."

Qiu Xuan didn't seem surprised by this result, and after confirming the news she wanted to confirm, she stood up, pulled Ed away from the hurried staff, and slipped out of the tent again.

"The impostor boss had already been seen by the real boss when he entered the tent, the boss who had been pretending to be a clown sculpture. Although we killed the clown once after that, the imposter was still not at ease, so he came over again in the evening to make sure. He also saw the clown who had regrown his head for some unknown reason, so he cut off his head again. And this time...... I don't know if the clown is really dead or can be resurrected, but judging by the reaction of the staff over there, he must be completely dead. ”

Ed was silent for a moment, "So...... Why did that guy pretend to be the owner of a balloon stand to sneak in? ”

"I didn't know, there were so many people who came to see that circus last night." Qiu Xuan said honestly, "He may do things for everyone who has a little power behind him, or he may just be looking for revenge." ”

As she walked down the road, she repeated her old trick again and stopped a passing staff member.

"Will the Carson sisters perform today, and in which tent are they performing? I don't see it on the map. ”

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed." "There's no Carson sisters today, but the magicians will perform in the South Corner tent at one o'clock in the afternoon, and it's going to be a wonderful show." If you don't like it, you can also check out the performance of the Skinny Boy, or ......"

"What happened to Sister Carson?" Qiu Xuan interrupted him, "Can I go see them?" Just look at it from afar, it won't bother anyone, I swear. I really like them, I came by train from City B, I just got off the train yesterday, and I did more than ten hours of hard seats to rush over, just to see them, I didn't feel like I slept once, I ......"

"Ma'am." The staff shook their heads and chuckled, "I'm sorry, but I think I probably saw you in the central tent yesterday, and you came to see the show, didn't you?" ”

Next to him, Ed was already picking at the three-bedroom apartment with his toes on the ground. Qiu Xuan didn't squint and said, "You are wrong." ”

"You're very conspicuous in the crowd." The staff member still smiled at her with a standard measuring tape, "You and the lady on your left, you can easily spot it in the crowd - obviously, we can easily find two pieces of the puzzle in different colors in a solid background, don't we?" ”

n.