Chapter 226: The Town Where Memories Are Forbidden

Chapter 226: The Town Where Memories Are Forbidden

Lena's heart raced wildly as she unconsciously crumpled a corner of her ticket, caught in a dilemma.

Should she follow the rules and report her condition to the staff?

If she didn’t report it, she might have to face the unknown “■■” alone—especially since her past self had specifically mentioned in the note that it was “more dangerous than ordinary enemies.”

But if she reported it...

Lena looked up, quickly glancing at the stiff corpse in the ticket booth and the monkey doll with an exaggeratedly sinister smile on the red train’s engine. She began to doubt whether the staff were truly always friendly.

When she was an ordinary child visitor, the staff might have been trustworthy;

However, after revealing that she had been contaminated, would this town, which harbored extreme fear of “■■” and had even abolished all memories and music for its sake, still maintain a friendly attitude toward her?

After all, the ticket only promised friendliness to normal visitors and children, never specifying how they would handle those exposed to contamination!

What if Lena had told the truth just now and was subsequently treated as an “unstable factor carrying contamination” by the staff, who then dealt with her accordingly?

After much hesitation, Lena, under the watchful gaze of the large, hollow eyes of the monkey doll, silently boarded the small train and took a seat in the middle.

Amidst the sound of wheels grinding against the tracks, the train started moving.

Lena gazed out the window, bored, watching clusters of balloons surge overhead like a flowing sea of color, while colorful fairy-tale houses rushed backward on both sides, with their clean windowsills, exquisite gardens, and wide streets...

But there was not a single person in sight.

It seemed like a bizarre dream, a paradise crafted solely for children.

The town was not large, and the small train soon began to slow down, eventually stopping at the entrance of the first attraction.

The monkey doll on the front of the train clapped its hands and called out cheerfully, "First attraction —— Hide-and-Seek Paradise —— we have arrived. Welcome all interested children to disembark and experience it."

Its voice, likely produced by a speaker in its belly, was high-pitched and carried a slight, unstable electrical hiss, making it sound grating and peculiar.

Lena jumped off the train, intending to check out how the attraction worked before deciding whether to try it.

At the entrance, she easily found the instructions for playing—

It was a set of four children's drawings, with a warm and adorable color palette, simply illustrating the steps of the attraction.

In the first drawing, a boy with a bowl-cut hairstyle wearing blue overalls and a girl in a red dress with a high ponytail were holding hands happily as they walked through the iron gate of the attraction.

The second drawing showed the girl sitting in front of a vanity mirror, swinging her legs eagerly, while the boy stood behind her, one hand holding a hammer and the other pressing an iron nail against the girl's eye, driving it deeply into her eyeball.

Both children had wide smiles on their faces, which, combined with the warm tones of the children's drawing, created a bizarre and manic atmosphere.

Above the girl's head, there was a line of red text:

"In the first round, I'll nail my eyes shut, and I'll come to catch you!"

The third drawing showed the boy crouching with his knees hugged, hiding in front of a tall wardrobe, while in the distance on the other side of the frame, the girl, both eyes nailed shut, reached out her hands, feeling her way forward, searching for the boy's hiding place.

The fourth drawing depicted the girl grabbing the boy who was trying to escape, her mouth curved up in a wide smile that stretched to her ears, holding a hammer and a blood-stained iron nail, with a few crooked red letters written below:

"I caught you!"

A large, bright red exclamation mark added a sense of horror.

Lena rubbed her eyes, took a step back, and from head to toe, she exuded a reluctance to visit this attraction.

Since there were still twelve more attractions to see, she wasn't in a hurry to explore this one just yet. She preferred to observe carefully and choose the most promising site.

Although she had decided to skip this particular attraction, Lena didn't rush back to the car. Instead, she planned to use her free time to wander around the nearby streets and alleys, gathering as much information and clues as possible.

Wandering into an alley beside the attraction, Lena's gaze swept over the various small ads and news clippings plastered on the wall, and she focused on a missing person notice.

The person being anxiously sought by relatives was a ten-year-old girl.

According to the notice, the girl went missing on June 5th, year 678 of the local calendar. That night, she drank her usual warm milk, received a goodnight kiss from her mother, and went to bed in her bedroom. But the next morning, her family found an empty room. The door and windows were locked from the inside, and there were no signs of intruders anywhere in the room. The child had vanished like dew evaporating quickly under the sun, leaving no trace.

Lena gently traced the edge of the missing person notice and noticed a noticeable thickness, indicating it wasn't a single sheet of paper.

She used her fingernail to pry at the corner of the notice and successfully peeled back the top layer, revealing another missing person notice underneath.

"How is there another one below..."

Lena murmured, continuing to peel along the edge.

One by one, the missing person notices were lifted off, and as the papers, new and old, fluttered down like snowflakes at the base of the wall, faded and blurry photos of children appeared, their innocent smiles directed at Lena.

Her eyes widened in shock as she arranged the missing person notices in chronological order and read through the names of the missing children:

Jack, missing since April 678;

Anna, missing since June 678;

Lilian, missing since August 678...

Lena roughly counted about twenty children who had vanished one after another in the same year.

As time progressed, it became evident that local law enforcement had become highly vigilant, implementing a series of protective and surveillance measures, but none of these could prevent the children from disappearing.

Such concentrated cases of missing children—what had happened in 678?

Lena hastily jotted down a few names of the children and the key times of their disappearances before returning to the small train.

The moment she stepped onto the train, Lena felt a sense of unease and lifted her head, squinting her eyes. Her gaze passed through a cluster of low-floating balloons and settled on the attic of a distant, pale yellow house.

Just now, there seemed to be a flicker of light there, like... the reflection from some kind of lens.

It was as if someone was watching her from the shadows.

Lena sat down and glanced at the note she had left for herself before losing her memory, her fingertips pausing on a particular line—

"An enemy may be hiding in the shadows."

Indeed, she wasn't the only one who had entered the town.

...

A corner of the attic curtain was pulled back, revealing a short man crouching below the window, his eyes peering through the gap to observe the outside.

He watched the red train depart into the distance, then tightened his grip on the binoculars and turned to his companion, saying:

"The newcomer is a young girl; she doesn't seem threatening. She didn't enter Site One, but she lingered in the alley beside it for a while. I'm not sure if she found anything."

The short man's companion, a tall, scar-faced man, was currently smoking irritably.

Another one wore a hat, his eyes beneath the brim gleaming shrewdly, darting around like those of a rat searching for food.

The exposed skin of the three men bore tattoos representing the Burning Pure Land, exuding an aura that sent shivers down the spine, a testament to their blood-soaked hands.

After the destruction of Longinus, the Burning Pure Land lost a powerful and stable ally and resource supplier, and was subsequently hunted and besieged by multiple factions.

Even in the chaotic Gods' Playground, the Burning Pure Land, known for deliberately harming other players and committing every atrocity from murder to arson, faced widespread rejection from most legitimate forces.

The retribution for their past lawlessness and countless killings finally caught up with these outlaws.

Led by the scarred man, the remnants of the Burning Pure Land stumbled upon Shadow Domain Ability users during the chaos, accidentally falling into the Shadow Realm and eventually making their way to the legendary Lost Kingdom.

They have been trapped here for over half a month.

During this time, their numbers dwindled from seventeen to just three—by pooling the tickets of their fallen comrades, they still needed one more stamp each.

Thus, they yearned for the arrival of new players more than anyone else... or rather, they longed to seize the hard-earned stamps from the newcomers.

"Can you tell which domain she belongs to?" the rat-eyed man asked cautiously. "The little girl in the playground might not be as young as we think."

The short man replied, "Her eyes seem quite unique, but I can't tell anything else."

Hesitating for a moment, he lowered his voice uneasily, "I... I think she noticed me just now."

"What's there to fear?"

The scarred man sneered, "No matter what, she's only one person—once she visits a few attractions and collects some stamps, we'll take her ticket."

With that, the scarred man flicked away his cigarette butt and ground it under his heel, cursing, "This damned place, I don't want to stay another day..."

"Damn the sightseeing spots, damn the music!"

At the mention of music, the three fell into an uneasy silence, their faces darkening.

The short man shrank his neck, his voice trembling: "Didn't you hear it too... that sound, it always appears at night, and it's getting closer, closer..."

Before he could finish, the scar-faced man struck him hard on the head, causing him to cry out in pain and clutch his skull.

"No more talk of it, it brings bad luck!"

While the scar-faced man was scolding the short man, Rat-Eyes fiddled with a blood-stained in-ear headphone nearby.

The headphone had positioning, communication, and recording functions, and this particular one belonged to their eleventh fallen comrade.

When they arrived at the location indicated by the device, all they found was a splattered pool of blood and this half-crushed headphone.

From the scene, it appeared that the deceased companion had slammed his head violently against the ground, bursting like a watermelon and spraying blood everywhere, while the headphone fell and was crushed by his flailing limbs...

Since arriving in the Shadow Realm, death was not uncommon.

But Rat-Eyes couldn't shake off the lingering thoughts about this particular comrade's death.

Because the manner of his death was different from the others.

He didn't die from the eerie "music," nor from the town's attractions, and he hadn't broken any rules...

He was simply walking down the street when he was attacked by some violent, bloodthirsty creature, unable to utter a single cry for help.

Rat-Eyes was curious about what exactly he had encountered before he died.

So, during these days, he found tools and gradually repaired the headphones, wanting to listen to the recordings from back then to verify the situation.

"Static... static..."

After relentless efforts, sound finally came through the headphones.

First, there was a chaotic burst of static, then Rat Eye heard heavy panting, hurried footsteps, followed by a desperate, almost broken scream that seemed to be forced out of a constricted throat:

"Snake! Snake!..."

"Hiss..." followed by a series of ragged, intermittent gasps.

Rat Eye speculated that the victim's throat had been gripped by something, allowing only the sounds of near-suffocation.

Next, there was a loud thud, and the breathing sounds abruptly ceased—there was no doubt that the disparity in strength between the two was so great that the victim had no chance to resist.

Listening to the subsequent rustling sounds of dragging a body, Rat Eye's expression froze.

This victim was not weak; he was even skilled in the "Death" domain, which specialized in attacks.

What kind of creature could have driven him to such a desperate state?

Rat Eye repeated softly:

"...Snake?"