Chapter 163: The Smiling Puppet

Words : 1420 Updated : Sep 28th, 2025

Chapter 163: Chapter 163: The Smiling PuppetThe restaurant had a "Temporarily Closed" sign hanging outside. He pried open a side door to get in, planning to head directly to the third floor, but on the ground floor, he encountered the puppet again. It was the same one as yesterday, though the parts of its body that had been burned or replaced with scraps had all been swapped out for fresh round logs, with only the joints showing traces of the past damage. It was mopping the floor. Xu Huo walked to the entrance and set down the items he was carrying. The puppet immediately turned its "head" to "look" at him, its mouth corners drooping further down, followed by its body rotating 180 degrees without moving its head, and it charged at him wielding the mop! Xu Huo casually threw an extendable rod that, with its electrically charged tip, pushed the puppet away. He then dumped a bag of sticky floor adhesive, which, thanks to the added technological elements, automatically peeled open on the side not touching the ground. One of the sheets caught the puppet’s foot as it landed. The puppet, more agile than a living person, slipped and crashed to the ground. As its body parts scattered, they became stuck to several sheets of the adhesive. Without the ability to think, the puppet couldn’t avoid the mess on the ground. As it tried to pick itself up, attempting to retract its wooden blocks, the adhesive under its foot slid away with no friction whenever it applied force, causing it to fall into pieces once it stood up. Taking advantage of the moment while its body was still disassembled, Xu Huo tossed a sticky web over it. The moment the net covered the puppet, it contracted automatically, securing the majority of the puppet’s body. "Click-click-click!" A wooden leg and arm were still desperately trying to crawl back. The puppet, now slanted on the ground, realized it couldn’t shake off the sticky sheets. Suddenly, its torso sprouted two rows of metal blades and rolled on the spot, cutting open two long slits in the net! Without changing his expression, Xu Huo pressed a button on the remote control, and the net’s sticky fluid exploded out, splattering onto the puppet like glue. Ignorant of the sticky liquid, the puppet rolled around a bit. Though it cut open the net, its body was in disarray, sticking together haphazardly, with the legs and arms that crawled over stuck to its back. In the end, it curled up face down, resembling a heap of wooden cylinders. In spite of this, it still glared at Xu Huo with an angry expression. Xu Huo stepped closer, about to use his extendable rod, when the puppet’s mouth corners suddenly slid to the side, revealing a small hole in the middle that shot out a tiny black shadow! He reflexively swung the rod to hit it away, and only when the object fell from the wall did he realize it was a black insect. Its shape was somewhat like a wingless dragonfly, but as soon as it hit the ground, its body liquefied, instantly melting a chicken-egg-sized hole into the floor! His eyebrows furrowing, Xu Huo took out a bottle of sticky fluid and inserted it into the puppet’s mouth. The entire bottle was poured in, and after the puppet gurgled and drank a bit, the "mouth" became glued to the bottle. Nonetheless, it didn’t cease its assault. Though its body was stuck together and it was biting the bottle, thumping against the ground, it looked quite comical. Xu Huo reached out and adjusted its downturned mouth back to the correct position. The puppet, which had been "twitching," immediately calmed down, and at the same time, he received a game notification: [Smiling Puppet: A puppet with a destiny fraught with hardship.] [Originally crafted as a cleaning puppet, it also came equipped with basic hospitality and defense functions. When it smiles, it signifies the master welcoming guests into the castle, but when it’s angry, it means the master wishes to send the guests away. As one of the countless puppets in the castle, it devoted its life to its duties.] [However, being the lowest level of puppet, it didn’t attract much attention, which is why it was stolen.] [The thief confined it in various places, forcing it to do things it did not wish to do. Although its new master is dead, it still cannot leave this place. The only thing it can do is reminisce about its old master while cleaning.] [Should a kind-hearted person bring it back home, the castle’s master will reward them handsomely; you only need to turn up the corners of its mouth.] Having read the puppet’s introduction, Xu Huo’s expression grew slightly grim. As a prop, this puppet had more history written about it than usual, but it also served to confirm one of his ideas—the Bear’s Paw Restaurant had no owner. Ignoring the puppet on the ground, he turned and walked upstairs. The traces of carnage and bloodstains in the restaurant on the second floor had been cleaned up, and the guests above the third floor had been cleared out. He went straight to the room where the girl in the white dress stayed last night. The scene here was completely different from what he had seen last night. When he opened the door yesterday, it was a very normal hotel room, not much different from the one he stayed in, but now, the spot where the bed was had been replaced with a large wooden cabinet, and where the liquor cabinet sofa was, there was now a large desk, with the decorations on all four walls of the room changed to bookshelves. This was not a bedroom, but a study. Moving the wooden cabinet aside, there were steps below as usual, and a sensor light illuminated the path to the secret chamber, with a stench of decay hitting him in the face. In the center of the secret chamber was a highly decomposed corpse. The corpse’s features were unidentifiable, but it was decapitated and its limbs had been chopped off, placed apart as if part of some ritualistic offering. The dried bloodstains on the ground covered more than half of the room, indicating a gruesome death. Next to it was an overturned table with a death list sandwiched between the scattered books. Xu Huo picked it up and saw that only the last two names from the top down had not been crossed out with red pen. It was the same list Sun Jirou had mentioned, with only two names remaining. Also, on the back of the list, there were contact methods for several stores. They were indeed killing people according to the same list. His peripheral vision caught a glimpse of some white fluff behind the bookshelf. He moved the bookshelf to find—a dead cat with a degree of decay similar to the corpse. Bear’s Paw Restaurant did not keep cats. Pulling off the cat’s collar, there was a bell attached, on the back of which there was a very small engraving of the Jade Token pattern. "The same pattern." It wasn’t the strap the girl in the white dress had given him, but that of the mysterious organization from the internet. Holding the bell, Xu Huo searched the secret chamber and quickly found a metal token in a hidden drawer under the desk. The pattern on it matched that on the design. After running his fingers over the metal token, Xu Huo glanced at the hidden drawer and then at the decaying corpse on the ground. He then pocketed the token, took the cat’s body, and left the secret chamber. The puppet lay silently on the ground downstairs, showing no reaction to his return. Xu Huo poured the solvent on the floor, dissolved some of the mucus, picked up the puppet and placed it in a cage, then placed the cat inside, covered it with a light-blocking cloth, and lifted the cage as he left Bear’s Paw Restaurant. S~eaʀᴄh the nôvel_Fire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. Returning to the carving shop he had visited earlier, less than an hour had passed. The master, without looking up, simply tossed him a metal token, "Here’s what you asked for." With the token in hand, Xu Huo suddenly smiled, "How did you know it wasn’t made out of jade?"

Chapter 163: The Smiling Puppet

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