From the doorway came the muffled sobbing of the Blythe couple.
After a while, the sobbing slowly faded into the distance; they must have left.
Lawrence Winters sat in the room thinking for a while longer.
The suggestive audio in the headphones, the many-petaled lotus hidden under the quilt—was it just that?
Could something like that really make a perfectly healthy girl fall into a sleep she never wakes from?
She stared at Alice Blythe, who lay there with her eyes closed, pondering in silence.
Not long after, she suddenly heard a shout from the next room: "Ha! Look what I found!"
It was the voice of the Daoist Wang.
Lawrence rushed over, yanked open the door, stuck her head out, and asked, "Daoist Wang? Did you find the key object?"
Daoist Wang ran out of the room next to Alice's, holding up a porcelain figure about half a foot tall, and said, "Take a look at this thing!"
Lawrence lifted her gaze to it.
