"Are you okay?" Tang Xin asked.
Xu Xiaoyou looked up. The girl on the hillside was casting a concerned gaze toward her. She shook her head.
"You arrived just in time."
Tang Xin also leaped down the hillside, her body as light as a little blue bird. In a moment, she arrived by Xu Xiaoyou's side, watching her stoop down to skillfully separate the brown bear's skin and flesh with a short blade, moving like an old hunter.
After peeling a large piece of bear skin away from the flesh and fat along the dark red muscle fibers, Xu Xiaoyou stored them in a tool card. These bear skins were worth quite a bit of money.
Finishing this, Xu Xiaoyou looked deeper into the woods, shouldered her hunting gun, and walked forward.
"Let's go."
Tang Xin quickly followed. As they continued deeper, the surrounding needle-leaf forest gradually thinned, and their field of vision grew wider.
In the deepest part of the quiet forest lay a lake. A thick layer of ice covered the lake, as clear as crystal.
The entire lake surrounded a central small island—more like a small patch of land protruding from the water.
A small wooden cabin stood lonely on the island in the middle of the lake, as if forgotten by the world. In the gradually darkening night, only its blurry silhouette could be seen.
The wooden door was pushed open, making a creaking sound. Dust swirled up, flying through the air.
Years of musty air rushed out. The space inside wasn't large, resembling a hunter's cabin. A patched-up animal-hide sofa faced the fireplace. Many animal heads were displayed on the walls—trophies of the cabin's owner.
A crude log wardrobe was dotted with green mold spots. Despite the freezing environment outside, the air inside was still somewhat damp, indicating that someone had been living in this cabin not long ago.
"Someone was here just a few days ago," Xu Xiaoyou said.
"Hmm?" Tang Xin said thoughtfully. "But this place is far from the city."
Xu Xiaoyou didn't answer. She stooped down, reaching out to pinch the furnace ash—residue from burning firewood and coal. She stood up again and threw open the wardrobe. After seeing a men's fleece-lined snow-proof windbreaker inside, she became even more certain of her guess.
A sense of eeriness welled up in her heart. Why would a new-model city windbreaker appear in a snow-field cabin dozens of kilometers away from the city?
If it were refugees fleeing the city to the snow-fields, they would be lucky just to have enough to eat.
Their clothing was mostly made directly from animal skins through hunting. Occasionally, if they were lucky, they might scavenge supplies left behind by snow-field exploration teams or noble youths during winter hunts.
Most of them were disconnected from the era, living the most primitive and wild lives.
Xu Xiaoyou went to the attic. There were two rooms in the attic. One was relatively large, fitting a double bed and various log furniture. The other was very narrow, formed by the slope of the roof and the ceiling, filled with clutter. If not for a hunter's bed in the corner, Xu Xiaoyou would have thought it was a storage room.
She lit a kerosene lamp. Dust swirled in the air, and it was so quiet that a pin drop could be heard.
The bedding on the small bed was also worn out, like a large mass of cotton batting tied with thick thread, covered in mottled yellow stains.
She noticed a picture frame on the bedside table. The photo inside was framed and looked very new. The little girl in the photo had a bright smile. To her left was her mother, a woman with a kind and gentle face. The man had a mild expression, though his smile looked a bit tired. Behind the two of them, he held the mother and daughter in his arms with wide, sturdy shoulders. It looked like a perfectly normal, warm family.
Whether it was her imagination or not, the expressions of the mother and daughter seemed a bit stiff. Their poses felt as if they had been meticulously designed, which instead made her feel uneasy.
Had a family been living in this small cabin recently?
The background of the photo was at the Star of Art?
The Rose Eye Ferris Wheel was a famous attraction in the Star of Art, a must-visit for couples. Nearly two hundred meters high, one could overlook the entire city from the top. Enveloped in a romantic atmosphere, many couples would commit to their lifelong futures there, with lovers finally becoming family.
Xu Xiaoyou picked up the photo. The flickering, dim firelight reflected on the faces of the three people. The image in the photo suddenly changed. The man's expression remained mild, but the mother's and daughter's faces became deathly pale. Dark blood flowed from their hollow eye sockets, and the smiles on their lips were terrifying.
Xu Xiaoyou shook her head violently. The three people in the photo returned to normal, as if everything just now had been an illusion.
Just then, a pair of hands patted her shoulder.
She turned around and saw Tang Xin looking at her with slight confusion.
"What's wrong? You don't look too good."
The blue-haired girl shook a small stuffed bear in front of her. It was fuzzy, but one of its glass bead eyes had fallen out, and messy cotton threads were sticking out of the hole.
"It's nothing," Xu Xiaoyou shook her head. "Is there anything in the other room?"
She put down the photo and followed Tang Xin into the other room—the room of the man and his wife.
Looking at the deerskin bed in the center, Tang Xin voiced her confusion.
"They aren't locals from the Star of Art, are they?"
"Since the orphanage system was implemented, the concept of family has faded for ordinary people. They don't really seem like snow-field refugees either."
Tang Xin picked up a camera hanging from a deer antler coat rack and said to Xu Xiaoyou, "A camera of this brand is very expensive. Everyone uses the curtain; only a very small number of noble youths use this kind of camera. In fact, this camera brand is custom-made for them."
"Could they be tourists from outside who came to the snow-fields to experience life?"
"Perhaps they aren't even a family," Xu Xiaoyou said coldly.
The photo gave her too much of an eerie feeling—the stiff expressions of the mother and daughter, and the fact that the daughter shared no resemblance with either parent. Genetically, this was impossible. Leaving aside general features, even subtle traits like the distance between the eyebrows showed no similarity.
She shared no resemblance not just with the man, but with the woman as well.
Three completely unrelated people with no blood ties had formed a family.
Tang Xin was puzzled. Xu Xiaoyou, looking at the wedding photo of the two hanging on the wall above the bed, seemed to notice something. She stepped forward quickly, took it down, and examined it closely.
In the wedding photo, the woman wore a flowing wedding dress with a happy smile. The man was in a neat formal suit. At first glance, it was a perfect and beautiful moment, but there was a hidden secret.
She noticed the woman's hand gesture: her middle and index fingers were crossed. In the Church, this was a gesture made when one had lied and desired the gods to lessen their sin.
Furthermore, the woman's eyes seemed to be wavering, as if she were asking the person taking the photo for help.
Suddenly, Xu Xiaoyou sensed something. She quickly moved to the bed and flipped over the mattress of the deerskin bed. Seeing the scene revealed inside, the two girls in the room felt a chill run down their spines.
There lay two lifeless puppets, one large and one small.
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