See the Law of Deception

Chapter 101 Inheritance (7)

The old house was quiet during the day, as if nothing had happened.

The human skin was strange, and Lu Jinzhao dared not leave it behind to run around, much less carry it with her. She spent almost the entire day in her room observing the human skin.

When her gaze fell upon the human skin, it was an inanimate object.

But when Lu Jinzhao's attention wanders, it becomes restless.

Several times, when Lu Jinzhao deliberately looked away and pretended to be asleep, he opened his eyes again and saw that although the thing was hanging properly on the wooden frame, its position had obviously shifted slightly.

On one occasion, a corner of the leather had already fallen off the wooden frame. Lu Jinzhao knew without a doubt that if she ignored this monstrous thing for a while longer, it might silently stick to her again.

It seems to have an exceptionally strong desire for people.

What would happen if it actually stuck to your skin and replaced your original skin?
Several ideas flashed through Lu Jinzhao's mind, but none of them ended well.

Night falls quickly.

The group arrived at their master's room with their own dried human skins. They had all completed their first task.

"Now that the mission is complete, let's go in?" Zhong Sui looked at the group and, seeing that no one had any objections, pushed open the door.

When I opened the door, the smell in the room was slightly different from yesterday.

The stench is even stronger now.

The master's skinless body was rotting.

Upon entering the room, unsurprisingly, a letter was found in the corpse's hand.

According to their deduction, today's task would probably be to draw a draft. However, when Zhong Sui took out the letter and read it, her tone revealed a hint of surprise.

"Today's task is to dismantle the bones and make a suitable control lever using the dismantled bones before midnight tomorrow."

Using human skin instead of animal skin and human bones instead of bamboo sticks, wouldn't the resulting shadow puppet really be a ghost?

At the very least, if you were to take this kind of shadow puppet out, it would definitely be considered a supernatural item.

But the prerequisite is that they have to survive to get them out.

"So, tonight's job is... to dismantle the bones."

The bones of a skinless, decaying corpse were dissected and divided into five parts.

"Why do I feel like what we're doing is a bit like some kind of ritual?"

Zhong Sui muttered to herself, and no one else uttered a word in rebuttal after she finished speaking.

After a long silence, Fu Xuesheng suddenly spoke up: "Who knows, it might be some strange ritual that could kill us?"

The layout of this house is quite strange.

The body is currently positioned in the very center, while the five women's residences are scattered across the five corners of the house. They were skinned on the first night, dismembered on the second night, and what about the third night?

Is this a trial, or some kind of sacrificial ritual?
"Be careful, everyone."

Danger is imminent, but no one knows when it will strike.

Naturally, Ji Xiangchen was the main person in charge of dissecting the human body and removing bones, but fortunately, this time it wasn't a delicate task like skinning, so the others could help out to some extent.

However, during the process of cutting through the flesh and digging out the bones, everyone discovered something strange.

The flesh and bones on the corpse did not appear to be firmly attached.

No, it's not that it's not sturdy; it's more like a layer of human skin, merely attached to the bone, not like something that grows naturally within the human body. It's as if something is fixing this flesh and blood to the skeleton, and if you're not satisfied, you can replace it at any time.

Lu Jinzhao felt a chill run down his spine at the thought.

If this corpse is indeed the master from my "memories," then was he really a normal human being?

What was his purpose in taking on apprentices, teaching them skills, and setting up tests?
Removing the bones took much less time than skinning the body, probably because they had both completed their tasks and there was nothing unusual in the room except for the corpse itself.

"We have enough bone material."

Compared to the skin, there are obviously extra parts of bone.

"Let's go back."

After dividing the bones, the group clearly didn't want to stay there any longer.

At this moment, the wooden table was completely unusable.

The table was covered with rotting, decomposed flesh and blood. The bits of meat mixed with blood made the entire table extremely disgusting. Human organs, including intestines and fascia, were exposed to the air.

However, even though he felt disgusted, Lu Jinzhao still glanced at the intestines that had been pulled out.

Very clean.

The same applies to the stomach.

It was as if the corpse had not eaten for a long time before it died, and its stomach was completely empty.

Or perhaps, this corpse never needed to eat and had no normal human physiological needs?
The overly clean internal organs and the strange separation between the flesh and bone gave Lu Jinzhao an extremely strong sense of "artificiality," making the corpse seem like a living, three-dimensional shadow puppet.

Her hands were covered in blood from participating in the dismemberment, but the white bones she was holding were exceptionally clean, without a trace of human tissue adhering to them.

Blood smeared on bone can be easily wiped away.

No matter how you look at it, it's not normal.

It's too dangerous to carry this around with you.

But she had to complete the task, not only carrying it with her but also polishing it into a stick.

The human skin was stored in the tools on her workbench. It didn't cause any trouble along the way, but Lu Jinzhao felt a headache whenever she thought about how this thing would try to attach itself to human flesh once a person's attention wandered.

Tonight, I've discussed with the other passengers that we'll try not to sleep at night. During the day, we'll gather in the lobby and take turns resting while someone is watching over us.

But everyone still has to complete their tasks, and there will always be a time when they have to separate. What if they lose sight of this thing sometime after they separate?
Lu Jinzhao looked at his wrist; the red mark hadn't faded at all, and even now, the slightest touch caused excruciating pain.

She had a premonition that her arm might not heal until the mission was over.

Back in the room, Lu Jinzhao placed the human skin in the most conspicuous position on the workbench, and then decided to start making bone skewers.

"How do we make this?"

She was somewhat troubled. Given the hardness of human bones and the tools on the workbench, it was almost impossible to grind them into skewers the size of bamboo sticks within a day.

After all, there are no modern cutting tools here!
How can you ensure you can chop her into individual skewers using only an axe?

Slowly polishing it takes even more time.

However, she thought of the unnatural drying speed of the human skin, and perhaps these bones were also unusual.

Thinking this, Lu Jinzhao picked up a rib and examined it carefully under the light.

(End of this chapter)