Academy City's Puppet Master

"Hey, the old man is really underestimated." Kihara Chime shook his head and sighed, "The old man just thinks it's too boring to do it yourself..."

As he spoke, he pulled out his cane out of thin air.

Hitomi Shiranui immediately stood ready and manipulated the puppet into a posture.

Kihara Chime didn't make any other movements, but stood in place like an ordinary old man with a cane in both hands.

"You just said that this is a temporary puppet..." He looked at the robot, "Then, as a puppet master, where is your exclusive puppet? Since you are going to come here to snatch someone from this old man, how dare you not do your best? You Don't you take the old man too seriously?"

Hitomi Shiranui's face froze for a moment: "This is enough! Besides, how could it be possible to enter Academy City with his own puppet..."

It's not Ling Xingye. Before he came to Academy City, he was a well-known puppeteer, and he often performed street performances. Even the name of the superpower was misrepresented as "puppet operation".So much so that it has almost become his trademark to carry a travel bag full of puppet dolls.

And Shiranuo Tong's background is a girl from an ordinary middle-class background, a powerful person, a genius, the youngest honorary professor at the university...

With such a character design, carrying a puppet with him...it's a bit weird.

Kihara Chime stared at her closely, and said in agreement: "It makes sense, after all, you are not Ling Xingye, so there is no reason to take the puppet out. But..."

After a pause, Kihara Chime continued: "That's not a reason! Usually you don't need to bring puppets, but knowing that you are going to fight, you still don't bring out the strongest equipment... Isn't it justified?"

"..." Shiranuotong said impatiently, "Why do you have to worry about which puppet I use? After all, it will be more beneficial to you if I use a temporary puppet?"

"It's not that you didn't bring it," Kihara Chime was still obsessed with this question, "but you can't carry it?"

"...what are you trying to say?"

"Ling Xingye." Seeing the girl's suddenly constricted pupils, Kihara Qianmu smiled triumphantly, "It seems that the old man is right——Ling Xingye is your real puppet!"

After a long silence, Hitomi Shiranui asked coldly, "How did you find out? I didn't disclose any relevant information."

"You really didn't, it was exposed by Ling Xingye himself." After cracking a huge secret, Kihara Chime was very satisfied, "Although the old man captured him, he couldn't conduct some destructive research on him—it was because the puppet hindrance."

"After observation and research, the old man discovered that the manipulator turned out to be another personality of Ling Xingye, or the subconscious mind—a consciousness that is like a machine and is obsessed with fixed mission goals."

"Next, it's not difficult to find out that you are the only one who can modify and create Ling Xingye's memory and personality by building a memory palace for Ling Xingye."

"Xingye is not a puppet." Hitomi Shiranui dryly argued.

Kihara Chime chuckled lightly, noncommittal.

Then he said: "The old man has a proposal, let's make a deal - the old man can let you meet Ling Xingye, and you have to suppress Ling Xingye's troublesome second personality."

"Aren't you afraid that Xingye will knock you down after waking up?"

"Will he listen to you when he gets the truth, or say something else?" Kihara Chime said, "Do you want me to keep it a secret for you?"

"Are you threatening me?"

"Understand whatever you want." Kihara Chime took the lead to walk towards the elevator, "This old man just wants to explain one thing - this old man didn't mean to hurt Ling Xingye."

"That's right." Hitomi Shiranui sneered.

"Really, the old man is an observer—this is the truth—just want to see what is so special about this historical node." Kihara Chime said, "The old man has a hunch that as long as he is locked on, he can witness the beginning of history." Important node!"

Keeping in mind the key points of yesterday's meeting, Hitomi Shiranui still didn't believe a single word that came out of his mouth.

But seeing that Kihara Chime didn't intend to go to war, and was indeed taking him to find Ling Xingye, I didn't know that Huotong still followed.

===Chapter 24 Fan===

"Here is..." Ling Xingye got up from the ground while holding his head, and when he looked back, he found that he had fallen off the bed.

"What kind of intense nightmare did I have last night..." With a wry smile, Ling Xingye lazily crawled back to the bed while feeling the dull pain in his head, and buried his head in the soft pillow .

The air conditioner was running relentlessly, and even in midsummer, the room was still cool.

After finally suppressing the headache, Ling Xingye was shocked again by the cold, and pulled the quilt over his body with his backhand.

"Oops... I'm sure I'll catch a cold today after sleeping on the floor for half the night..." I thought in a daze, "Ah, forget it, it's summer vacation anyway..."

Perhaps it was because of the bad sleeping position, although Ling Xingye was already lying on the bed early last night, Ling Xingye felt even more tired at this time, and wished to cover herself with a quilt and sleep forever.

And that's exactly what he did.

It's a pity that the dull pain in his head gradually subsided, but also the drowsiness disappeared along with it.

Time passed by, listening to the ticking sound of the second hand of the wall clock on the wall, but the brain became more and more awake.

Ling Xingye is the type who finds it difficult to fall asleep once he wakes up; therefore, he also feels very helpless about the current situation.

It's just that if you are sober, you can forget about getting up, and there is no reason to get up early during the summer vacation.

Besides, it's still early in the day.

"Speaking of which, what dream did I have before?" With nothing to do, he emptied his mind, and then his thoughts drifted in one direction inadvertently.

After all, it was the first time Ling Xingye encountered such a thing as falling off the bed.

Ling Xingye is the type who can't remember the content of dreams, but only last night's dream left a relatively clear and complete memory - it even clearly made him feel creepy, and it didn't really look like a dream.

"Academy City, Fantasy Killer, Railgun, Puppeteer..." Ling Xingye patted his head, "Have you read too many light novels these days? It feels like you have really traveled back in time."

Unfortunately, in reality, I am just an ordinary person.

Putting aside that unrealistic dream, Ling Xingye continued to close his eyes, trying to get back to sleep.

But the plot of the dream kept echoing in my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more real it felt.

"Damn it!" Ling Xingye bounced up, "Don't let anyone take a good rest!"

Without any sleepiness, he turned on the light, left the bedroom, went to make a cup of coffee and came back.

Sitting at the desk, the eyes naturally cast to the left - there is a large bookshelf with ten floors, which is already full of books.

This is Ling Xingye's main way of pastime.

Although he had that strange dream last night because he read too many light novels during the summer vacation, Ling Xingye, who was sitting here, still took out a book habitually and opened it.

"It's over, I'm hopeless..." Closing the book with a snap, Ling Xingye covered his face, "Is there no other way to entertain yourself? For example, the 'Internet' I saw in my dream..."

Because the memory of some details in the dream is too deep, Ling Xingye is a little dissatisfied with the real world.

But ten minutes later, he reopened the novel.

"No way, reality is reality, how can it be as exciting and interesting as the world of fiction?"

After flipping through the entire novel in one breath, I looked up again, only to find that it was already dawn outside.

Ling Xingye didn't intend to go out for breakfast, but continued to inspect his bookshelf, thinking about which book to read next.

"Hmm...Let's just think that the dream last night was a 'traveling dream'. There should be a prototype work. Maybe there is a chance to dream it again, so let's look for the original work..."

Ling Xingye has collected a lot of light novels, some of them have been read, and many of them were just bought on a whim, and then used to build walls.

So he can only search for keywords and look for possible works.

"Academy City... Puppeteer..." As he muttered, his fingers ran across the spine of the book one by one.

But I have never been able to find these two keywords that appear most frequently in dreams.

"The ingenious girl... Uh, is this a puppeteer?"

After a while, I pulled out this set of books and continued to search.

His finger swiped across the long list of "Catalogue of Forbidden Books of Magic"—because the text was too long, Ling Xingye didn't intend to chew on this tome for the time being—and then stopped on a series next to it.

"Learning War City?" Considering that the memory in his dream may not be completely accurate, Ling Xingye nodded, "Well, this is very possible!"

……

After spending half the morning, Ling Xingye reluctantly read the first volume of "School Battle City Asterisk".

I was so hungry that I ran out to look for food.

"It doesn't feel right, it's just that the bull's head is wrong with the horse's mouth." Walking on the street under the scorching sun, Ling Xingye complained about himself while clutching his stomach.

There was no one on the street, except for the occasional vehicle passing by, making it appear extremely empty.

Ling Xingye has long been accustomed to this.

Because the time of coming out was wrong, the breakfast shop was basically closed.So Ling Xingye had to walk two more streets before finally finding a breakfast shop that was still open.

The operator is a beige centaur robot, belonging to the old t800 model.

Of course, because it is an old model, the concept of time is not as strict as that of the recent new model-this breakfast shop can be open until the afternoon, for people like Ling Xingye who have an irregular schedule, it can be said that is the gospel.

"A package number four, thank you!"

Ling Xingye took the canned drink and the compressed breakfast, and handed over a gear with only one tooth.

"Thank you for your patronage! Welcome to come next time!" Centaur t800 responded enthusiastically, stuffing coins into the coin slot on its back.

After swallowing his breakfast in a few mouthfuls, Ling Xingye didn't go home, but went to the bookstore in the town.

It seemed that he couldn't find what he wanted in his book collection, so he planned to go to the bookstore to look for it.

The waiter in the bookstore is the latest cat-ear-shaped c100 humanoid robot, and the surface of the body is covered with full artificial fur, which is quite cute.

Therefore, the bookstore is also very popular.

Ling Xingye stayed in front of the manga area for a while, and finally stepped forward and walked away.

Those who are active in the manga area are mostly halfling h100-type elementary school and middle school students. As a high school student, he really can't bear to hang out with these little brats.

Finding the book you want in the novel area is also a physical effort. You need to move a heavy ladder, and you have to climb to a height of more than ten meters to check the top bookshelf.

Even with the help of the cat-eared clerk, moving the ladder took a lot of physical strength from Ling Xingye, so he had to stop and lean against the bookshelf to rest for a while.

"Excuse me, is it Ling Xingye?"

Such a voice suddenly sounded in my ear.

Looking up, it was an unknown person.

Ling Xingye looked at the girl next to her in surprise—the girl was obviously not from this town, because Ling Xingye had never seen a body of her model before... It would be better to say that the girl, like Ling Xingye, is a real "human being" ".

"You are?" Ling Xingye asked, and at the same time, she also had a guess in her heart—it must be a new transfer student, because she was still wearing a sailor uniform, and she didn't know which school's uniform it was.

The young girl has a weak temperament, has long black hair with a slight brown color, and wears a pair of glasses on her face. Behind the lenses are a pair of trembling eyes, showing an unconcealable surprise.

——Looks like we met somewhere...