The Toy

Translator: CinderTL

"Tap."

"Tap."

The sound of footsteps splashing through water echoed in his ears.

Neither too far nor too close.

Fatty instinctively looked up. Through the curtain of rain, a figure slowly approached. It appeared to be a man, dressed in a black trench coat and holding a large black umbrella.

The brim of the umbrella was tilted low, making it impossible to see his face from Fatty's angle.

But the man's hand gripping the umbrella handle was long and pale.

What made Fatty's heart race even more was the strength in the man's wrist.

The night wind was strong, yet the man's hand holding the umbrella didn't tremble in the slightest.

The man walked casually, stepping through puddles without hesitation. Water splashed around his black leather shoes, and an aura of killing intent surrounded him.

Strangely, Fatty's first instinct wasn't to turn and run. Instead, he caught a whiff of a familiar scent from the approaching figure.

As the large black umbrella tilted slightly upward, Fatty's pupils suddenly constricted.

"It's you?!"

"Ow, ow, can you be gentler? I'm a patient now, you know. Don't you have even a shred of compassion for the delicate and beautiful?"

The room was rather old, with no electric lights. Only two white candles burned dimly.

The bronze candleholders gleamed with a metallic sheen.

A figure lying on the bed kept muttering incessantly. He looked terrible, really terrible, but surprisingly, his spirits were high.

He still had the energy to bicker with the person beside him.

The self-proclaimed patient, who claimed to need care, was covered with a pure white blanket, lying flat on the bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin.

On his head was a torn black stocking, with holes just large enough for his mouth, eyes, and nose.

"Hiss—"

The man beside him gently touched his abdomen, causing the stocking-clad man to gasp in pain. "I say, Xiao Ranran, are you trying to kill me with pain so you can inherit my stockings?"

"Even if I gave you the stockings, Sister Lu would never wear them for you. Just give up on that idea!"

Listening to the stocking-clad man's rambling, Chen Ran, standing in front of him, showed a flicker of displeasure on his face. But this time, he didn't retort.

Instead, he reached out and tucked the blanket tighter around the stocking-clad man.

His companion's injuries were worse than he had thought.

The Gate inside his body was almost destroyed.

It was a miracle that he had managed to escape from the Nightmare.

Even more terrifying was that he could already sense the entity within his companion's Gate stirring restlessly.

"Hey, don't look so grim, okay?" Wei Jinting grinned, revealing a set of white teeth. "Cheer up, I'm not dead yet."

"Don't worry, I won't die so easily. There are still so many things I want to do." As if remembering something, Wei Jinting suddenly perked up. "I haven't gotten my hands on the rich widow's fortune yet. I can't die with regrets!"

"By the way," Wei Jinting changed the subject, "where are the others? Sister Lu must be missing me. Why hasn't she come to see me?"

"I didn't tell them."

"Heh, I knew you cared about me." After a pause, Wei Jinting lowered his voice. "They still don't know about my situation, right?"

In the flickering candlelight, Chen Ran's expression was hard to read. "You can't hide it for long."

"I'll hide it for as long as I can." Wei Jinting stretched comfortably on the bed, squinting his eyes. "By the time they find out, it'll be too late for them to do anything about it."

A series of rapid footsteps approached from afar, and with a loud "bang," the room's door was smashed open.

It was truly smashed open.

With a massive black iron hammer.

The solid wood door frame cracked, and wood splinters scattered everywhere. "Number 4, you damn bastard, I heard you brought back a toy. Are you planning to keep it all to yourself?"

Contrary to the aggressiveness of the intruder, the voice was surprisingly childlike.

In the faint candlelight, the intruder's face was revealed.

It was a rather small girl, around 13 or 14 years old, wearing a knee-length dress adorned with cute bear patterns.

But her sharp eyes and the enormous iron hammer she carried, which was almost taller than herself, clearly indicated that she was no ordinary girl.

"Number 8, who let you in?" Chen Ran's expression turned grim.

"Cough, cough." Wei Jinting coughed violently, almost knocked out by the impact. "It's fine, it's fine."

Wei Jinting squinted his eyes, his gaze scrutinizing the irritable girl. "Come here, let me take a look. Number 8, have you started secretly growing recently?"

"Secretly growing, and then planning to amaze us all, right?" He chuckled, his tone as shameless as ever.

Everyone had suffered from Number 4's flirtatious remarks. Only when the master was present would he quiet down a bit.

"If you keep messing with me, I'll chop off your little worm and sew it to your mouth!" After the routine threat, the irritable girl, known as Number 8, began rummaging through the room.

She turned everything upside down, almost throwing Wei Jinting off the bed and flipping it over to check underneath. "Damn it, where did you hide it?"

From Chen Ran's angle, he could see a large black leather bag slung over Number 8's back, its shape peculiar, resembling an ancient quiver.

But it was much larger than a quiver. A menacing-looking saw protruded from it, its sharp teeth gleaming coldly.

Besides the saw, there were various other strange items inside.

These were all Number 8's treasures.

Once, Number 4, out of curiosity, had sneakily opened it when Number 8 wasn't looking. Upon discovering the truth, Number 8 chased him with her hammer for eight blocks.

If it hadn't been for Number 3 coming to the rescue, Number 4 might have met an early demise.

"Stop looking," Chen Ran glanced at Number 8. "It's in Number 7's room, under her watch. You can go see it, but don't touch it, or else—"

Before he could finish, Number 8 happily dragged her massive hammer and dashed off like a gust of wind, so fast that sparks flew from the friction on the ground.

"Sister Lu, are you there?" Standing at the door, Number 8 still held great respect for Li Lu, mainly because of her notoriously bad temper.

After a while, a lukewarm voice came from inside. "I'm not here."

Number 8 pressed her ear against the door, trying to listen for any movement inside. "Sister Lu," she swallowed, her expression growing more excited. "I miss you, I want to see you. Can I come in and sit for a while?"

"Creak—"

The door opened a crack, revealing a plain face filled with calmness and indifference.

A few seconds later—

"Seen enough?" Li Lu asked. "If you're done, I'm closing the door."

But No. 8's gaze had already slipped through the crack in the Gate. She was delighted to see that in Li Lu's room, near the sofa bed, a person was lying on the floor.

It was a woman!

And she had a great figure, though her face was obscured by long hair, making it hard to see her features.

As her gaze lingered on the woman, the girl's face grew increasingly flushed. "Sister Lu, can you hand her over to me?" she pleaded, shifting her gaze back. "I promise to train her—no, take care of her—and make her spill all the information she knows."

(End of the Chapter)

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