Chapter 362: Inside and Outside the Painting

Just like before, Xia De placed the toy pistol puppet on the oil painting, and it indeed melted into the oil painting and appeared at the entrance of the model house.

The puppet associated with Xia De walked to the toy pistol but didn't bend down to pick it up. Mr. Freeman's puppet also looked at the toy pistol but didn't pick it up either.

"Credentials."

The priest thought for a moment and suddenly said. Xia De suddenly realized, and sent the Military Intelligence Agency's credentials and the gun license into the oil painting as puppets as well. The puppet corresponding to Xia De first picked up the credentials, and then finally bent down to pick up the toy pistol, its fingers even making a very obvious action of checking the bullets.

The puppets in the oil painting and the real people in reality were not replicas or had any soul connection, they just could transfer damage. The puppets couldn't use Ringed Shushi abilities like Xia De, but the puppets at least knew how to fire.

It was just that by passing weapons in this way, the puppets Xia De made could only be used by himself, and couldn't be used by Freeman.

But this was enough. Leaving Mrs. Freeman and the boy in the foyer, Xia De and the priest took the oil painting upstairs.

The armed puppet in the oil painting also moved toward the second floor of the model, and met the bandaged puppet in the living room on the second floor.

The oil painting couldn't make a sound, and the two outside could only see the action of the puppet raising the gun in the picture.

But it was a great pity that even with a weapon like a revolver, the armed puppet still couldn't beat the bandaged puppet. The other party was not only tall and big, but also had excellent dodging ability, and when in the same room as the victim puppet, it could move in space within the model. Even after being hit by a shot, it didn't affect its own movement at all, and even gave Xia De's puppet another knife.

So after the bullets in the pistol were exhausted, Xia De, who was injured again, could only return to the foyer on the first floor to hide temporarily.

And because of the fight just now, the bandaged puppet had already arrived on the stairs, and would probably enter the foyer in half an hour.

The armed puppet threw the credentials and the revolver out of the model house, and they immediately appeared on the surface of the oil painting. Xia De replenished the bullets for the pistol, but didn't send it into the oil painting again.

"The intelligence level of ordinary puppets is too poor, they can't beat the bandaged puppet. I think your puppet needs other helpers."

The priest suddenly said.

"You mean Mr. Freeman and the little boy? Let them fight against the enemy together with my puppet?"

Xia De pointed to the two puppets huddled together in the oil painting, and shook his head to remind:

"The boy is too weak, and Freeman's puppet, although its intelligence is normal, its strength is too poor."

"I mean myself."

The priest said very calmly:

"I know you can't turn me into a puppet, but I can take the initiative to come into contact with that painting, letting a puppet corresponding to me appear in the picture."

Xia De immediately shook his head:

"Priest Ao Gu Si, having more people doesn't necessarily mean it's useful, but it will definitely put you in danger too. Let me think..."

He looked at the pistol in his hand, and then looked at the oil painting.

Covering the revolver with the handkerchief again, but the size of the wooden toy that appeared afterward was almost exactly the same as the original, and not thumb-sized.

Xia De threw the 1:1 scale wooden toy toward the oil painting, and this time the pistol didn't appear in the model house, but appeared on the table beside the model, and the pistol in the picture actually recovered into a real item form. It was too big and couldn't enter the model house at all.

The bold attempt made Xia De understand another rule: wooden puppets with a size sufficient to enter the model house would maintain the puppet form to enter the model house. And wooden puppets that were too large to enter the model house would appear on the table and turn into the form of real items.

"Can this gun still be taken out?"

Seeing such a thing happen, Priest Ao Gu Si on the side asked curiously.

Xia De shook his head to indicate he didn't know, his eyes scanning the picture more carefully, and then he saw very shallow text on the curtains that served as the background in the oil painting.

The curtains themselves were in the sunlight, and the color of this line of text was extremely similar to the curtains, so it wasn't discovered at the first moment:

【Inside and outside the oil painting, inside and outside the painter.】

Xia De thought thoughtfully when reading this line of text, hesitated for a moment, and whispered the text. Subsequently, Xia De's hand touched the oil painting, and that hand actually reached into the inside of the picture.

"Oh?"

Priest Ao Gu Si looked at this scene curiously, and Xia De also frowned.

He first reached out to touch his pistol, and successfully retrieved it from the picture.

"Does this mean..."

The priest whispered, and Xia De nodded and reached into the picture again, but was stopped by the priest:

"I'll do it this time."

He didn't ask Xia De how he understood those strange texts; after all, Xia De had shown his ability to know text because of 【Time and Space】 at the study session before.

Xia De told Priest Ao Gu Si the specific pronunciation of those ancient letters, and after trying twice, the priest also successfully reached his hand into the picture.

He reached toward the model house, and as expected, couldn't touch it, as if there was a glass cover blocking the priest's hand outside the model.

Subsequently, the priest reached toward other items on the table in the picture, and holding these things still couldn't touch the model house, but these items could be taken out.

But whether it was a vase, a rotten apple, a statue resembling the ancient god 【Primal Crack】, or a small pendant, these were all ordinary items. So the two guessed that this was a test product thrown into the oil painting by all previous owners of the oil painting when trying to fight against the model house.

It was still unknown, besides Xia De's 【Toy Manufacturing】, what kind of production conditions other puppets that could be thrown into the oil painting had. In a certain sense, this painting actually had the function of turning puppets into real existence.

"My hand can't touch the model, should we think of other ways?"

The priest fell into deep thought again, but Xia De had already found a way, and a relaxed expression appeared on his face:

"Priest, trouble you to go out again, go to my house, and bring Xiao Miya here."

Thinking of the cat at home, Xia De added another sentence:

"Oh, it might not be willing to let you hold it, you can tell it I'm in trouble like last time, and then use clothes to lure it into the carriage."

Xia De handed out the key to his house and his blood-stained coat. Seeing that the priest was still puzzled, he reminded:

"Priest, although we can reach our hands into the painting, strictly speaking, we are still outside the picture, so we can't touch the model house inside the painting. And when holding things in the picture, it is very likely that that item and our body are judged as the same item."

"Inside the oil painting? Outside the oil painting? Can your cat..."

The old priest showed a smile, nodded knowingly, and after instructing Xia De to be careful, he took the key and Xia De's coat and went out.

Taking advantage of Priest Ao Gu Si's departure, Xia De also explained to Mrs. Freeman who was waiting on the side, telling her not to tell anyone about this matter after it ended.

Mrs. Freeman naturally understood; after all, her family encountering a supernatural event wasn't a good thing, and telling it out might affect the future marriage of the children. She immediately pulled her son and swore to God together that they wouldn't tell anyone about the whole thing.

But Xia De still thought that when there was time, he would let Doctor Schneider come over and use his ability to let the Freeman family fade away from all this.

The doctor couldn't completely erase memory; that would cause permanent damage to the brain. But he could make the Freeman family's memory of this matter become blurry, until they suspected it was just a dream years later.

For ordinary people, forgetting the contact with mystery and the supernatural was good for them.

Counting the time for taking the carriage and luring that cowardly and alert cat at St. Deran Square, the priest took a total of over an hour to go back and forth.

And during this period, the bandaged puppet in the model house had already arrived in the foyer from the stairs. To avoid it, Xia De used the strange art to open the door of the landlord's house on the first floor and entered it to hide temporarily.

Doing this was a bit bad, but the group of people wouldn't move other people's things randomly, so this was also a thing done as a last resort.

I don't know if it was the priest's action of trying to touch the model house just now that made the relic feel a greater crisis, the movement speed of the bandaged puppet accelerated again. Before the priest returned, it had already blocked the three puppets in the large bedroom on the first floor in the model.

Xia De sent the pistol into the oil painting again, and the three puppets were forced to circle with the bandaged puppet. The smaller puppet ran first, the two larger puppets joined forces to entangle the bandaged puppet, and then left the room one by one just like in reality.

But even if three puppets fought with one puppet, the bandaged puppet still had the upper hand. It was not only tall and big, but also had excellent dodging ability, and when in the same room as the victim puppet, it could move in space within the model. Even after being hit by a shot, it didn't affect its own movement at all, and even gave Xia De's puppet another knife.

So after the bullets in the pistol were exhausted, Xia De, who was injured again, could only return to the foyer on the first floor to hide temporarily.

"Is Father back?"

For safety, Xia De had been keeping the little boy from coming into contact with or watching the oil painting. But the child, who was being pulled by his mother, vaguely felt that Mr. Freeman was protecting him.

When the group of three transferred back to the second floor, the little boy was still looking around, seemingly expecting his father to suddenly walk out of the room with a smile. But that painter couldn't come back; if he really came back, Xia De would be even more troubled.

In short, the oil painting seemed to perceive that the people outside the picture had a way to deal with it, so it gave the bandaged puppet in the picture more power.

And as the bandaged puppet's actions became faster, Xia De and the boy affected by the relic became more and more dangerous. The whisper elements of the relic were already affecting the boy. Even with Xia De watching on the side, if this matter wasn't solved as soon as possible, the boy becoming a madman was probably the best result.

Fortunately, Priest Ao Gu Si successfully brought Xiao Miya back.

That alert orange cat really didn't let Priest Ao Gu Si hold it, but followed behind the priest and jumped onto the stairs. Seeing Xia De sitting in the living room, the cat immediately pounced on him excitedly.

Xia De, who had been nervous, finally smiled when he saw the familiar cat. Holding Xiao Miya, he kept stroking the cat's head. The orange cat meowed, and with Xia De's stroking, its fluffy little head was also shaking, allowing him to touch it better. ===== CHAPTER 363 =====