Bang!

The human-like puppet in a red dress swung the craft knife in its hand, splitting the ceramic flower pot on top of its head along with the heavy object pressing it down, straight into two halves.

The energy blade emitted from the craft knife even extended outwards, slicing through the couch in front of it with a missing corner, revealing the wood and cotton inside.

However, Li Ang’s movements were a shade faster than the puppet, as the strobe light mode of his flashlight directly enveloped the human-like puppet,

causing the latter to reluctantly wave its blade, its movements slowing rapidly under the strong light, eventually freezing entirely, motionless in its place.

"...Tsk."

Li Ang continued to shine the flashlight on the puppet for a few seconds, confirming it was no longer moving,

before switching the flashlight back to constant light mode to avoid hurting his own eyes. "Last time, the light froze it instantly.

This time, there was a delay with the light, taking a moment before it was fully frozen.

According to the tattoo’s explanation, the effective sealing time for the first flashlight exposure is twenty minutes, the second time is ten minutes, so the third time would be five minutes.

If it continues further, I might need to keep shining the flashlight on it all the time..."

The room was evidently not threatened by just the wooden puppet,

the gutted, eviscerated rabbit corpse in the bathroom was the best proof — the black cat had slipped into the ventilation ducts, and the original family members responsible for feeding the cat had yet to appear.

Time was limited, with no time to lose,

Li Ang climbed the stairs towards the second floor, his right hand holding a meat cleaver, while the fingers of his left hand lightly rested on the flashlight button, ready to switch to strobe mode at any time.

The anticipated lethal danger didn’t appear, as Li Ang smoothly climbed the stairs, glancing left and right.

The structure of the second floor was overall similar to the first floor, divided into four rooms, each with anime stickers on the doors.

The contents of the stickers were:

A silhouette of a boy and a girl holding hands;

Books;

A cat playing on a scratching post;

A man holding a woman in a wedding dress silhouette;

Judging by the sticker patterns,

These four rooms should be a children’s bedroom, a study, a cat room, and the master bedroom.

The doors of the children’s bedroom and the cat room were open,

while the door of the study had a lock with a very small keyhole,

and the master bedroom had an electronic password lock requiring a specific code to open.

The four rooms were located on either side of the hallway, with a window at each end of the corridor,

as Li Ang stood by the window looking out, he could see the starry sky, and the second floor of the neighboring house, along with the tree in the courtyard with a homemade swing hanging from it.

"The window is unbreakable..."

Li Ang furrowed his brow, lightly tapping the window glass as hard as steel with his fingernail, as the unbreakable system prompt appeared again in his vision.

He picked up the flashlight and pressed it against the window,

the light could penetrate the glass normally, shining onto the hallway window of the neighboring house, creating a brightness.

Li Ang stood in place, using the flashlight light to shine back and forth on the windows of each room in the neighbor’s house,

waiting for a moment. The lights in the neighbor’s house did not turn on.

"If there were people at the neighbor’s house, this sort of disturbance should attract them, right?

Or is there no one at the neighbor’s house, or is this space not the real world at all..."

Li Ang went to the other side of the corridor, using the light to disturb the neighbors on the right side of the house, also receiving no reaction.

"Hmm... there was no reaction from the neighbors on the right either, seems like there’s no need to waste time finding tape to stick an SOS signal on the window."

He looked up at the starlight, "The positions of the stars have changed. Time seems to be passing normally, but I can’t be entirely sure."

There are countless horror-themed literary works in the world. If it’s an entity-based villain like Jason or the Chainsaw Maniac, it’s fine,

but if it’s something supernatural, ghoul-like, or even an irrational curse,

the variety of tactics would be difficult to predict.

At this stage of the script task, Li Ang only had a few vague suspicions in his heart.

Perhaps this script task is a World in a Box set up by aliens to study human abnormal behavior, at this moment, there could be hundreds or thousands of alien scientists watching a reality show starring him.

Before grasping more information, everything is possible.

Li Ang shook his head and first walked into the open pet room.

This room was not large, with solid wood flooring, walls coated with light green paint, a full-height window, and a balcony behind the window with two sun loungers placed on the left and right for sunlight and relaxing, perhaps to pet cats.

Inside the room, there was a cat climbing frame with a small bed, a pet bed, a litter box, and a cat water fountain — essentially a miniature fountain.

Since cats prefer to drink flowing water rather than stagnant water, some families buy such pet water fountains, which can also filter impurities, soften water quality, and facilitate cleaning.

Li Ang carefully searched the room, and within the cat climbing frame and the pet bed, there were indeed many black and white cat hairs.

"This must be the room of that black cat."

Li Ang muttered to himself, "By the looks of it, that black cat should be an American Shorthair.

There’s no cat food in the room,

The cat food bag and cans are in the first-floor kitchen, including the food bowl.

Well... from the pet owner’s perspective, it seems logical not to keep the cat food in the same room as the cat, to avoid tempting it to steal food.

Moreover, letting the cat run up and down the stairs is also beneficial for its weight loss and fitness."

Li Ang knows a bit about raising cats,

unlike Chaichai who prefers dogs, Li Ang is considered a feline enthusiast,

having not raised a cat mainly because conditions didn’t allow it, fearing a pet cat would damage his landlord’s property — another major reason being Li Ang often had to "travel."

To compensate for this regret, Li Ang had a modem at home,

after all, it’s still a cat, no difference.

From this perspective, Chaichai should be considered the third member of the household, even ranking behind the modem.

As Li Ang considered this, he used a small scoop from next to the litter box to sift through its contents.

"The litter box contains nothing but cat litter, but the litter hasn’t been changed for a long time and shows obvious signs of moisture.

Given how much the homeowner appreciated the cat, this shouldn’t happen.

Has the black cat learned to use the toilet, or has it escaped and been away from the house for some time?"

Li Ang contemplated for a moment and put down the cat litter tray.

The tray contained tofu cat litter, mainly composed of pea fiber, looking like elongated white cylinders.

This type of cat litter has good absorbency, clumps quickly, and can be flushed down the toilet, making it widely used.

"Judging from the situation in the first-floor bathroom, that black cat is not simple. It might be even deadlier than human-shaped puppets.

If I carry a scoop of unused cat litter with me and suddenly scatter it when it attacks, could it mistake itself for encountering a fecal attack and retreat..."

Li Ang thought about it and abandoned this plan, comparable to "mop dipped in feces," not because he doesn’t like messing with cat litter,

but because the black cat might smell the cat litter, exposing himself prematurely.

"Tsk, it’s a pity there’s no catnip in the house. Otherwise, I’d give the black cat a leaf at the time, letting it help me deal with other anomalies in the house."

Li Ang muttered, stood up, walked out of the pet room, and entered the children’s bedroom.

The children’s bedroom was larger than the pet room by a considerable margin,

The walls of the room were covered with green stickers, and two children’s beds were placed on the floor, one on each side of the room.

The pillows, sheets, and duvet covers on the two beds were pink and blue,

apparently prepared for this family’s two children in the photos.

"Two sets of desks are placed at the foot of each bed. From the items on the desks, the two children have different interests.

One likes Barbie dolls and Hello Kitty, the other likes Transformers and Lego toys."

Li Ang glanced at the arrangement on the desk, and unlike the wooden puppet on the first floor, the toys on the children’s desks showed no signs of coming to life.

"Hmm... under the lighting, these toys haven’t changed either.

It doesn’t seem like the Toy Story setting—where these toys come to life once out of human sight."

Li Ang casually picked up two Transformer toys, holding Optimus Prime and Megatron by the neck, letting them fly and lightly clash,

while continuously making "whoosh whoosh," "bang bang" voice effects to simulate a fierce battle.

"Alright, let’s focus on the task at hand."

Li Ang put down the Transformers and turned to look at other parts of the children’s bedroom.

In the corner of the bedroom stood a large wardrobe, resembling the style of the wardrobe in "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Beside the blue bed—presumably the son’s bed—a not particularly sophisticated astronomical telescope was placed, with an astronomy popular science book dropped on the floor, its cover featuring Copernicus.

"An astronomical telescope for children."

Li Ang leaned his eyes against the telescope, observing the sky through the children’s bedroom window.

Whether due to the telescope’s quality or the thickness of the glass, the stars were not visible clearly through the telescope.

Li Ang put down the telescope and picked up the book from the floor,

this astronomy popular science book, like those in the first-floor side hall, only had the first half, not the second half.

But on the book’s title page, a line was written in English.

[Robin, may you always look up to the stars with the courage to explore the future]

"Hmm? This handwriting..."

Li Ang carefully discerned the words on the title page, then glanced at his left arm.

No, the words on the title page, and the tattoo that appeared on his arm before and hadn’t faded until now, were not the same style of handwriting.

"The publication date of this book is January 2017, and the paper is relatively new, not inherited.

In other words, this book was given by the male owner of the house to his son Robin."

Li Ang paused, glanced at Copernicus’s portrait on the book cover, and quipped, "Good thing it’s Copernicus and not Bruno, otherwise this book would be really strange."

In the real world, some public intellectuals in the East and shamelessly artsy magazines often promote the Polish astronomer Copernicus during the Renaissance as being seen as an enemy heretic by The Church for proposing heliocentrism, resulting in being burned to death.

However, in reality, although Copernicus was considered by the Roman Cathedral to have theories violating The Bible, their conflict wasn’t irreconcilable—Copernicus himself was a theology priest, peacefully passing away at seventy.

The one burned to death was Copernicus’s successor Giordano Bruno, whose attitude was more radical and he wasn’t a priest, ultimately being indicted as a heretic and dying in Rome’s flower square.

"Alright, it seems this Robin likes astronomy."

Li Ang put down the book and looked at the ceiling.

The children’s bedroom ceiling was also decorated,

on the girl’s side was painted beautifully in Disney-style princess paintings,

on the boy’s side, instead of paintings, there was a chandelier-like device.

Eight spheres of varying sizes, dangling from the ceiling with fine strings,

at the bottom of each string was a series of interconnected slides, seemingly able to move along the slides.

"This family really dotes on the kids."

Li Ang raised one eyebrow, walked into the bedroom, pressed the light switch.

Pa—a light sound accompanied by the button click, illuminating the chandelier device on the ceiling—the largest sphere, symbolizing the sun, radiating mild, non-blinding pale yellow light,

truly resembling the sun.

Li Ang stepped onto the children’s bed directly, to fiddle with the "sun,"

finding it movable,

the electric wire attached to the illuminated sphere could move back and forth, left and right, along the slides.

"The largest one is the sun, then the others are the planets in the solar system.

Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Mars..."

Li Ang played with the seemingly delicate solar system model for a moment, then jumped off the bed, looked again at the Narnia-style large wardrobe in the corner.

He stepped forward, opened the wardrobe, which was divided into left and right sections internally, with boys’ clothes, pants, and socks on the left side, and girls’ on the right.

Due to the wardrobe’s large size, placing two sets of clothes didn’t make it seem crowded.

"There’s a smell of mothballs inside the wardrobe, and pressing the back of the wardrobe doesn’t reveal any secret doors. Alright, it’s not a wardrobe that can lead to another world like in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Hmm? Wait, this is..."

Li Ang’s hand slid across the inside of the wardrobe door, clearly feeling neatly arranged scratch marks. Judging by the position, depth, and the length of the marks, they seemed to be made by human fingernails.

Immediately, countless possibilities arose in his mind that could cause such a situation.

"Old neighbor Wang? A perverted serial killer? An alien hiding in the wardrobe with a cat?"

Li Ang pondered for a moment, separated the hangers within the wardrobe, sure enough, at the bottom, among the pile of clothes, he saw indentations left by pressed footprints.

Someone, or something, had indeed hidden in the wardrobe.