Chapter 151: Gaze

Inside the restaurant, the moonlight was ghastly white.

At the moment the puppet appeared, everyone stopped breathing.

The little boy curiously looked at the puppet behind Lin An, babbling.

"Mom... play..."

He wanted to break free from his mother's embrace to go find the puppet on the ground and play.

In the deathly silence, the counting voice sounded again:

"3"

Lin An calmly looked at Zhou Fengling, his tone indifferent:

"Do you think you can still escape for how long?"

The woman trembled all over, she glanced at the child in her arms, full of reluctance.

After the puppet appears, only if someone actively sacrifices can there be hope of struggling to escape.

The child saw the puppet; who would sacrifice themselves for their own child?

She wiped a tear from her face and straightened her body.

"Aunt Zhou!"

The people in the restaurant instinctively cried out, their eyes full of reluctance.

"Woman! Don't!"

"I'll go! I'll go! The child can't be without a mother!"

Liang Shaoguang panicked, suddenly charging before the puppet and roaring loudly.

"Look at me! Look at me!"

"3"

The countdown lock sounded again, and from the team's voice came Gao Tian's rapid question:

"Captain Lin, if we repeatedly make eye contact with the puppet, can we keep delaying time, and then let others run as far as they can!?"

Lin An slightly shook his head:

"It's meaningless; in the end someone still has to willingly die. Moreover, the farther you run, the more people the puppet will see along the way."

"By then, as long as one person fails to make eye contact in time, everyone will die."

After dismissing Gao Tian's idea, he fixed his gaze on Zhou Fengling:

"Go take a look."

"The puppet's strength will only keep growing; fleeing is useless."

"2"

Zhou Fengling gave a grim laugh, then shoved the child away and walked to Liang Shaoguang's side.

"Take good care of the child."

She trembled as she knelt before the puppet, her lips quivering, tears streaming down incessantly.

"3"

"No! Absolutely..."

Liang Shaoguang roared in grief and indignation.

Lin An silently grabbed the frantic Liang Shaoguang and, with strength far beyond that of an ordinary Awakened One, pressed him firmly to the ground.

"Moon Wolf!"

Liang Shaoguang unwillingly tried to trigger his transformation to break free.

"It's meaningless."

"Zhou Fengling is the catalyst; if she doesn't die, many people will die."

"How long can you escape while carrying the child?"

"Once she dies, the problem can be solved."

Moon Wolf stiffened in place, its huge silver eyes gazing mournfully at the woman kneeling on the ground.

The woman slowly raised her head, staring directly at the puppet on the ground.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

She sobbed, continuously apologizing, while the puppet before her remained motionless like a dead object.

"2"

"Xiao Nan... I beg you to spare your brother... Mom begs you! Mom has knelt for you... sorry... Mom was wrong..."

The woman's head thudded against the floor, drawing blood, her hair disheveled.

Team voice.

"Captain Lin! Really no way left!?"

"Should we rush to run after Zhou Fengling dies!?"

"Why are you deceiving Liang Shaoguang?"

"Didn't you say the Meme kills everyone who sees it? Even if the catalyst dies, it will still kill those who saw it before!"

"We've all been seen!"

Zhang Tie frantically questioned, feeling that everything today had left him feeling suffocated.

Lin An gave a bitter laugh.

"I'm just guessing too."

He couldn't explain his past-life memories to Zhang Tie and the others.

Indeed, the Meme's killing doesn't care about all that.

It's not like the legend where killing the enemy dispels the grudge of an evil ghost's revenge.

He can only gamble now, betting that the death doll is different from other memes.

After all, the doll from his past life continued killing people, and its later disappearance likely means someone found a way to break it.

Or perhaps the doll killed Zhou Fengling and then never encountered anyone else, causing the concept of the death doll to vanish and dissipate automatically.

The most important point.

The task hasn't been updated until now, indicating that the final step is still missing.

After thinking it over, Lin An still felt that the loophole allowing someone to die in place of another for the doll was very likely the key.

「1」

The countdown reaches zero.

Zhou Fengling lifted her head, her eyes bloodshot, blood streaming from her forehead, she turned her head and took one last look at the child.

"Take good care of him after I die."

The doll's pallid eyes stared at her back, its mechanical voice sounded.

"Wooden person."

Zhou Fengling seemed to calm down, she gathered her courage and turned her head, her gaze fixed on the nightmare-like doll.

In a daze, she seemed to see the desperate look of the boy in the wheelchair.

She saw the helpless boy's throat torn open, the flesh on his face ripped away by agony.

She saw the two words the boy finally spat out.

"Mom.. Mom"

"Nan er..."

The woman clutched the doll to her chest with all her might, embracing it tightly as if holding the boy.

The expected sound of the skull turning did not sound.

Everything seemed to have stopped.

The moonlight outside was bright, shining into the dim restaurant.

It fell on the woman holding the doll, her shadow stretched long on the ground.

"Mom.. You finally want to look at me."

The doll's voice sounded.

Following it was the woman's sorrowful cry.

The restaurant crowd wore complex expressions; the young couple instinctively lowered their heads to glance at their own child.

"Ding, task: resolve meme 【death doll】 completed."

"Ding, gained 10 reputation points."

"Ding, reputation shop opened, current reputation 110 points."

"Ding, obtained special-type prop 【meme-doll】."

At the gas station, Lin An repeatedly played with the doll in his hand, his expression complex.

After completing the task, he did not first check the reputation shop; instead, he kept checking the doll's information.

As a rare meme, he never expected to receive it as an extra reward after completing the task.

"Lin... Lao Da!"

"How much fuel are we loading, ah?!"

Zhang Tie shouted with a blackened face, then grinned widely.

His snow-white teeth in the night looked exactly like a black bear baring its teeth.

This guy insisted he would use a tube while siphoning oil earlier, but ended up getting sprayed all over.

Headache.

Lin An laughed and shook his head, really not knowing what to do with this bear.

Gao Tian stood behind him with a gloomy face, sighing.

"Brother Lin, I just tried it."

"The hunting lock-on can't lock onto memes."

"After I just activated the skill, it was like aiming at air."

Lin An's expression showed understanding; actually he also had the mindset of giving it a try.

Even the Judgment Eye couldn't obtain the meme's specific information; Gao Tian's skill failing is also expected.

After all, it's hard to say what exactly a meme belongs to.

On the other side, Liang Lao Da, helping with the fueling, skillfully poured gasoline, while Zhou Da Shen beside him looked somewhat lost.

The moonlight was pure.

Lin An raised his head to look toward Shang Cheng, gripping the doll in his hand tightly, not knowing what he was thinking.