I'll also work hard to conquer the dungeon today.

Chapter 35, December 16: The Secret Mansion and Miss Lily's Toy House

Despite being terrified and crying her eyes out that night, Miss Lily arrived at the toy house the next day still full of energy.

Are you full of energy...?

Zhou Hao noticed that Miss Lily's eyes were dark and bluish, as if she hadn't slept all night, and her originally energetic greeting had become weak and listless.

"Huh? Why is he wearing a scarf?" Miss Lily suddenly noticed that the black-haired doll sitting on the sofa in the living room of the toy house was wearing a black scarf. Although it made him look more handsome, it covered up his pretty face.

After much deliberation, Miss Lily finally decided to give up her inner turmoil.

"Let's play a word-reading game today. If you misread a word, you have to play hide-and-seek with Mr. Bear!" Miss Lily said slowly, taking out a sticker she had found in her room drawer from behind her back.

“I’ll turn the pages and you can read them one by one,” Miss Lily said, turning to the first page.

It was a white rabbit crouching down, holding a carrot in its left hand and placing the other hand obediently on its knee.

Zhou Hao was utterly stunned. These were characters? Characters from a fairytale kingdom? So they wrote by drawing! How awesome is that?!

"Fei, come first," Miss Lily called out.

Fei remained silent, not glancing at the calligraphy copybook even once. Rather than deliberately ignoring Miss Lily, it was more accurate to say he was ignoring everyone else, completely absorbed in their own world. Besides, even if he wasn't daydreaming, as a newly minted mute, he was completely unable to speak, especially since he didn't recognize the characters at all.

"Huh? Fei didn't say anything, I'm so sad." Miss Lily frowned, grabbed Fei, and put him in the model forest next to her.

"Mr. Bear, have fun with Fei!" she instructed, then added, "Let me see what this character is." With that, she turned the calligraphy book back to her.

Miss Lily stared intently at the character with her deep blue eyes for a long time, and then she realized that she didn't recognize it either. In fact, she didn't recognize the rabbit-shaped script, a script that only rabbits could understand.

The rabbit tribe has now split into two camps. Although it belongs to the south along with the Doll Town, the rabbit village is located in a more remote area. Not to mention, the powerful rabbits have long since followed the Rabbit Duke to settle in the capital of the Fairy Tale Kingdom. The rabbit village is now only good for being divided and eaten up by other forces.

In the model forest, Fei stood on a tree, looking down at Mr. Bear. When he noticed Mr. Bear's arm dangling down, he quickly jumped to another tree. Mr. Bear then smashed the original tree in half with one of his arms.

With his narrow, purple eyes slightly lowered, he jumped down from the tree and fled, pursued relentlessly by Mr. Xiong. Everywhere he went, there were fallen trees and their corpses.

In this room, all the toy models have their own unique fantasy world.

It's like he's being chased by Mr. Bear in the model forest, and all the trees are falling down, but from the outside, the trees appear perfectly intact, and he and Mr. Bear remain motionless in the same spot. If he's injured in the illusion, the same wound will appear out of nowhere on the doll. But if he's killed in the illusion, the doll's body will immediately react in the same way and collapse.

These are unique rules for the Toy House game, but they don't appear in the dungeon rules; they are known as hidden rules.

A gentle knock sounded on the door.

Miss Lily frowned, put down the calligraphy book in her hand, and ran to open the door.

Through the crack in the door, a glimpse of an unfamiliar khaki color appeared. Suddenly, a hand reached out and forcefully pried the door open. A white shirt was worn over a khaki plaid suspender skirt, and long, soft, misty gray hair cascaded down her back, topped with a matching khaki beret. The three braids framing her face swayed slightly with her movements, and the rubies at the ends of her hair shimmered faintly.

Completely different from her usual simple black spaghetti strap dress, this outfit makes Mu Yegui look especially cute and adorable. If Miss Lily is a genuine little loli, then Mu Yegui looks like a loli, with a delicate and soft figure that's easy to push over, and even beautiful and sweet-voiced.

"What are you going to do..." Miss Lily asked weakly, completely lacking the arrogant attitude she usually displayed in front of the doll.

"I'm curious what you usually do." Is it really as silly as Zhou Hao said? Of course, Mu Yegui wouldn't say the last sentence to hurt Miss Lily's young heart.

"Today we're playing a word-reading game..." Miss Lily glanced at the calligraphy practice book she had left in the toy room and said guiltily.

Zhou Hao inexplicably felt the same kind of unease a student feels when facing a teacher, but for some reason, he just felt incredibly good. Finally, someone could keep Miss Lily in check. His peers were awesome!
Mu Yegui stepped forward, bent down, picked up the calligraphy book, and then, pointing the characters at her, asked, "What's the pronunciation of this character?"

Miss Lily: "..."

Seeing that Miss Lily remained silent, Mu Yegui asked again, "Do you really recognize this word, Miss Lily?"

Miss Lily pursed her lips. She really didn't recognize the rabbit-shaped characters. Who knew what this rabbit dance-like thing meant?

Mu Yegui turned to the next page, and there was still a white rabbit with long ears, kneeling with its knees bent and holding a carrot in each hand.

On the third page, the white rabbit has its legs slightly bent, one hand outstretched in front of its chest in a circular embrace holding a carrot, and the other hand behind its back.

He quickly flipped through the pages to the end, and finally Mu Yegui closed the book.

"Behind the largest painting in my second-floor study is a safe, inside which lies my diary. —Mr. XX" This is the meaning conveyed by this calligraphy book. The way to read the rabbit-shaped characters is actually to understand the meaning by looking at the body movements; there is no font simpler to read than this.

"I found this in my bedside table; it seems to be a gift my father left me," Miss Lily pouted stubbornly.

It was a very old calligraphy copybook, but Mu Yegui thought of a possibility.

The letter of authorization vaguely reveals that Miss Lily was already quite old before her death; otherwise, she wouldn't have said that Lily was special from birth, and then added that she was cruel and bloodthirsty. Considering the maid told her mistress that Miss Lily died when she was five months old, honestly, how could a newborn child really be considered cruel and bloodthirsty? She was more likely unable to care for herself.

Therefore, either the letter of authorization or what the maid said must be false.

Furthermore, if this calligraphy book was indeed left to Miss Lily by her father, then the statement in the letter of entrustment that "her father was killed by the Duke a long time ago" is highly contradictory.

By considering the above information, we can make two guesses.

First, the male head of the household and Miss Lily's father are not the same person. The female head of the household had Miss Lily with another man after the male head of the household's death, and died five months after Miss Lily's birth. The last two paragraphs of the letter of authorization were written by someone else. But who exactly wrote these two paragraphs? What is the significance of writing them this way?
Second, the letter of authorization is genuine, and Miss Lily was already quite old when the mistress died; the maid is lying. However, this conjecture has a major flaw: would a maid, who lacks her own consciousness, really lie?
The rabbit-shaped characters are my original creations. The prototype is similar to pictographs, but not quite the same. To understand the rabbit-shaped characters, you only need to look at the movement.

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(End of this chapter)