Chapter 1738: Chapter 1738: Hope Is Fading
"Don’t worry about all that, let’s just take it back first?"
"Yeah, take it back and scan it, see what’s inside."
"We’ve been digging half the day and there’s nothing new. How about we go back and rest first?"
The old man nodded. "Let’s go back first."
The first thing Little Taotie did when she returned to the Ancient Castle was wash her hands, then video call her brothers.
Cheng Guodong: "Miss your big brother?"
"I do!" Little Taotie leaned close to the camera, eyes wide as she stared at her big brother on the screen.
Faced with his little sister’s magnified face, Cheng Guodong burst out laughing.
Qin Xin: "Can you sleep in the Ancient Castle?"
Little Taotie patted her chest to show she had a big heart and could sleep soundly anywhere.
Gu Yixing: "When are you coming back? If you don’t come back soon, I won’t be able to stop myself from storming into the Special Department and refusing to leave."
Little Taotie giggled. "Once we find Head Grandpa, we’ll come back."
The three brothers exchanged looks.
The longer someone stayed missing, the slimmer the hope of finding them...
The scan display showed the box. It was an empty box—yet another box that, in everyone’s eyes, was empty.
But for Little Taotie and Hua Jinyan, the box was still filled with densely packed little things: Ghosts shrunk down many times over, some of them nothing more than tiny points of light.
The "emptiness" in other people’s eyes was not truly empty; in the eyes of some, emptiness itself was a form of existence.
This visible emptiness was, in its own right, a noun.
"Is this what the Ancient Pagoda is supposed to be suppressing?"
"If it’s these things, doesn’t that mean there are still a lot, a whole lot more of them?"
"This box is a prison they created for themselves, isn’t it?"
Hearing his colleagues’ conversation, the old man subconsciously touched the snuff bottle.
Just like the scholar in the snuff bottle—his own self-made prison.
These existences who once gave up their lives have, after a thousand years, been born again. No one knows how many, in the end, will figure things out and want to fight for a chance to live again, and how many will keep on imprisoning themselves like this.
Today was yet another day without finding Shen Cang.
With each passing day, hope grew all the more faint.
Little Taotie lay sprawled on the bed, unable to fall asleep.
During the video call earlier, her second brother had just been saying he could sleep anywhere, and then immediately got slapped in the face by reality—now she just couldn’t sleep no matter what.
Hua Jinyan asked, "Want to hear a story?"
Little Taotie shook her head. "I feel irritated."
Sometimes listening to a story was enjoyment, but sometimes it only made the heart more restless.
"Tell me, what’s on your mind?"
"I can’t really say, I just feel annoyed inside."
"Then... how about eating something before you sleep? Maybe you’re just hungry, and that’s why your heart feels uneasy."
Little Taotie shook her head. "I’m not hungry."
Hua Jinyan frowned.
Little Taotie would usually eat something even when she wasn’t hungry, yet now she was actually refusing food. That made the situation seem more serious than he’d thought.
"Do you want to listen to some music?"
"No."
"You can’t sleep because we still haven’t found Head Grandpa, right?"
Little Taotie stayed silent for quite a while before finally speaking. "Do you think... we can still find Head Grandpa alive?"
The colleagues’ conversation hadn’t avoided the two kids, so she’d clearly heard them say the hope was very slim.
Hua Jinyan more or less guessed why she couldn’t sleep and sighed. "Don’t overthink it."
"Why won’t you answer me directly?" Little Taotie sat up and glared at him.
Hua Jinyan looked helpless. "I don’t know either. I’m afraid that if I say it out loud, it’ll sound ugly."
"Say it. I want to hear the truth."
"Once someone has been missing for more than forty-eight hours, with each additional day, the level of danger multiplies, and the survival rate plummets."
