148 Killing VIP (Part 3)

Is he a pollutant?

"The church door is closed." Xu Meng said.

Zhu Ning came to his senses. It was normal for the church to be closed at night. Most churches opened in the morning for prayers.

But there is a sign at the door that says the opening hours: 10 pm to 3 am.

This is a church, not a bar. What are you doing so late at night? Singing hymns?

There was a faint light in the church, proving that someone was inside. Zhu Ning walked forward and tried to open the door, but found it was locked. He still wanted to use the master key, but the key was completely gray and had no effect at all.

The door in the cloud of consciousness is not considered a door?

Liu Niannian: "There's a clock on top."

A black crow stood on the old clock, showing that it was six o'clock in the afternoon, four hours before opening time.

Liu Niannian used it to check the speed with her mechanical watch so that she would know the time in this world.

Xu Meng: "Let's go somewhere else and come back when the time comes."

They had no choice but to leave the church and walk back to the road. Zhu Ning looked back. In the darkness, the church with lights on was like an eye looking at her.

There are many cars parked on the Ring Island Highway. Now that it is dark, people are starting to start their cars and prepare to go home.

Most of them were traveling together or with their families, and their expressions were very relaxed and contented. Some even sang as they walked.

There's a saying that you can tell from a person's appearance whether he's experienced hardship or not. Zhu Ning sometimes walks on the streets of District 103 and always sees dejected office workers and hurried pedestrians. The pressure of survival on them is too great, and they can be transformed into pollutants at any time and anywhere.

But the people here are different. They exude a sense of ease and comfort in their bones, as if they have never experienced the hardships of life and are a million miles away from pollutants.

Zhu Ning took another look at the vehicle as he passed by, and saw that there were also densely packed barnacles growing under the chassis.

Just like in church.

How do these barnacles grow?

There was an uncle in a flowered shirt on the roadside who whistled when he saw single beauties. When Zhu Ning and her friends passed by, the uncle leaned against the car door and said, "Beautiful ladies, where are you going? I'll take you home."

Liu Niannian said that the NPCs here all thought they were living people, and that some mechanism must have been triggered, and someone came to chat them up.

Liu Niannian: "No need, let's take a walk and enjoy the scenery."

Uncle: “You think I’m a bad person.”

Zhu Ning and Xu Meng didn't want to talk to him. Only Liu Niannian approached him. Liu Niannian pretended to be hesitant and said, "This is our first time out together. We don't dare to get into a stranger's car."

"I understand. A little girl should take care of herself when she goes out." The uncle actually started chatting with Liu Niannian. "What did you do on Fusha Island?"

Zhu Ning and Xu Meng looked at each other and realized that this place was called Fusha Island.

Zhu Ning winked at Liu Niannian, who immediately understood and began to tease, "We didn't know where to go, and we didn't make any plans. We just wandered around and played at the beach."

The man finally found an area where he could show off, and naturally he would not let it go. He began to talk non-stop: "You guys are going to the Bajiao Bridge to see the night view at night. Have you eaten? Our coconut water here is amazing..."

Liu Niannian seemed to remember something and said, "We just passed by a church."

"Church?" Man: "What church?"

Liu Niannian: "That one."

She pointed and saw a spire in the distance.

"Oh, you mean the Sacre-Coeur?" The man realized after seeing the spire. These girls just love going to places like these. He thought Liu Niannian was there to check in and take photos for her social media feed. "We locals don't go there very often. We think it's unlucky."

Liu Niannian: "Why?"

The man didn't answer immediately. He lowered his brows. At this time, everyone who should have left had left, and there were fewer people coming and going around him.

The man said, "That place is quite old. It used to be a morgue during the war. I also heard from my elders that there were corpses lying in a row inside. It was so densely packed, one next to the other. In the middle of the night, a corpse would suddenly sit up and shout anxiously, "Where's my brain? Where's my brain?"

"Later, the gate to that place was closed. Unless you knocked, you didn't know what was going on inside. The lights were often on, and sometimes I would hear people screaming when I passed by."

"Scream?" Liu Niannian asked.

“Yes, screaming,” the man lowered his voice, “Save me or something. There are people singing.”

The man tells the story so vividly that people are inexplicably immersed in it.

He kept looking at Liu Niannian's expression. Among the three girls, Zhu Ning and Xu Meng had no expression on their faces, but Liu Niannian was listening very attentively.

"What happened next?" Liu Niannian asked.

"No, we don't let children go near it. We say people get lost there all the time."

He said half laughing, "Are you scared?"

Liu Niannian said obediently, "A little."

The man saw her expression and thought there was something interesting going on. "Don't be afraid. Just don't get close and you'll be fine. I'll protect you."

Liu Niannian was able to suppress her nausea and said, "Thank you, brother."

The man thought Liu Niannian was particularly nice, and inexplicably explained a few more words to her: "What's the big deal? My name is Wang Shengli, just call me Brother Wang, it's okay."

He originally wanted to take the opportunity to touch Liu Niannian's shoulder, but Zhu Ning raised an eyebrow at him from behind, and he silently withdrew his outstretched hand. His instinct told him that this girl was not easy to mess with.

Wang Shengli knew Zhu Ning was there, and he had no chance today, so he handed Liu Niannian a business card and said, "Call me if you have any trouble."

Liu Niannian took the business card, which was a little yellow. In this world, there was no such thing as a secondary brain, and there were not even smart phones. Wang Shengli used a flip phone.

Wang Shengli also warned Liu Niannian: "But I didn't scare you. No one wants to go into that church except crazy people. The farther away you stay, the better."

Liu Niannian nodded and said he understood.

Wang Shengli told her to call him, and he made a greasy expression. Just as he was about to get in the car, Zhu Ning suddenly said, "Brother Wang, there seems to be something under your car."

"Something?" Drivers are most afraid of accidentally getting something into their car without noticing, which could lead to an accident when they're on the road. "What is it?"

Zhu Ning: "Looks like a barnacle?"

Wang Shengli showed an impatient expression, "It's this thing again, after we finished it, there's another one."

Zhu Ning understood what he meant and understood that it was common for barnacles to grow on cars.

Wang Shengli lowered his head to check under the car. This posture required him to lower his head. Wang Shengli was wearing a jacket, and the collar was supposed to cover his neck, but because he lowered his head, his neck was exposed.

Liu Niannian was closest to him and watched helplessly as two bloody wounds opened on both sides of his neck.

Liu Niannian was stunned and thought he had seen it wrong. Was that... fish gills?

The bloody wound on the neck was even "breathing", opening and closing, and the strip-like structure could be clearly seen.

Liu Niannian had never been in the kitchen, let alone killed fish. He rarely stared at the inside of a fish's gills for so long. Staring for too long would make one feel a little dizzy.

Wang Shengli acted so normally, just like every other greasy guy who tried to pick up girls, but he actually had gills?

Wang Shengli couldn't see Liu Niannian's expression, so he kicked the barnacles on the back of the car with his foot. The barnacles didn't move at all, so he probably had to use scissors to pry them off.

Wang Shengli turned around and saw that Liu Niannian's expression was a little dull. "What's wrong with you?"

After Wang Shengli turned around, the gills merged and hid under his collar again.

Liu Niannian recovered and said, "It's okay. I was just thinking about the church."

Wang Shengli thought she was still scared, so he said a few more greasy words. As he got in the car, he suddenly remembered something and asked, "By the way, did you buy diving suits and oxygen tanks?"

This question was incoherent, and Liu Niannian thought he was going to introduce diving. "I haven't planned to go diving yet."

Wang Shengli looked up at the sky and saw dark clouds gathering on the horizon. "Buy it early. You outsiders are not as good as us. It's going to rain."

After saying this, Wang Shengli got into the car and left. There were too many barnacles hanging on the back of his car, causing the back of the car to sink a little, making it difficult to drive smoothly.

There weren't many people on the street, and the aunties selling coconut water not far away were packing up their stalls and preparing to go home.

After Wang Shengli left, Zhu Ning said, "You are really amazing."

Liu Niannian is good at asking questions. She has a skill that makes you instinctively want to get close to her and talk to her more.

"I always fool my brother," Liu Niannian felt as if his brain was broken, "Did I just see the gills of the fish?"

Is she hallucinating?

Zhu Ning: "We saw it too. Is this normal?"

Zhu Ning and Xu Meng have been to polluted areas many times, so they think any strange things they see are normal and cannot grasp the right degree.

Liu Niannian's worldview seemed to be shattered. "This is totally abnormal."

She sorted out her thoughts, "The conscious cloud guests are creating a dream world. Even if there are some outrageous and unrealistic imaginations, they should be pleasant to watch, at least not disgusting."

Most guests upload their consciousness to escape the world, because the land in the real world is becoming less and less, and the pollutants are increasing. The rich give up resistance and choose to go directly into the cloud.

The slogan of the consciousness body cloud is that it is the final ideal home for mankind.

This cloud must make him feel comfortable and at ease, not so strange.

Liu Niannian: "I've seen the cloud of the consciousness of that perverted murderer. I thought he would kill people in the cloud too, and it would be full of corpses and stuff, but his cloud is full of cute dolls. He prepared a dream princess house for himself."

People have to face their own hearts in the cloud of consciousness. In reality, murderers spend a lot of money to create a space for themselves. Continuing to kill is not exciting at all for them, and it is even a bit boring.

He chose to have the doll accompany him, which could heal him.

Bao Ruiming's mind would be normal if it contained a perverted murderer or a corpse, but there is a weird church here, the townspeople have gills on both sides of their necks, and barnacles grow under the cars.

The painting style is too bizarre.

This is not human aesthetics at all, but more like the aesthetics of pollutants.

Liu Niannian: "In Bao Ruiming's mind, these are the normal people?"

This is the only reasonable guess. Bao Ruiming returned to the cloud of consciousness as if he had returned home.

Zhu Ning thought about it and realized that this was actually in line with Bao Ruiming's perverted personality. He loved marine life and had researched mechanical jellyfish and transparent people. He might think these things were beautiful from the bottom of his heart.

Or maybe he was one of them.

The question is why this island, and what is the significance of these scenes?

Zhu Ning looked up at the sky, where the dark clouds were growing heavier and heavier. "I was wondering, if we don't want to attract the attention of the inspection team, we have to do normal things. What exactly is normal in this world?"

The logic of the consciousness body in the cloud is very similar to that of the polluted area, and it also has a perverted disinfection mode. So how should it try to integrate into the floating sand island?

After all, the person opposite is not a normal person.

To use a game as an example, the consciousness cloud is more like a game without clues, and it depends entirely on you to discover and summarize the rules on your own.

How do you judge whether you are normal?

Xu Meng: "Maybe buying diving equipment is normal."

Wang Shengli reminded them that there must be a reason for this. She remembered that there was a hut selling diving equipment on the beach.

Zhu Ning felt that Xu Meng and he were probably thinking the same thing, so he expressed his guess: "Wang Shengli reminded us that the tide might be rising here soon."

Xu Meng added: "And it will flood the church."

Barnacles cannot withstand long-term exposure to the sun and need water to survive. The church building is covered with barnacles.

There are barnacles on the bottom of Wang Shengli's car, and Wang Shengli himself has gills on his neck, which is the result of natural evolution on the floating sand island.

Wang Shengli said that people from other places might not be able to adapt, so he recommended that they buy diving equipment to prevent them from drowning.

"Wait," Liu Niannian said, "Does that mean it's going to flood soon?"

Zhu Ning: "It's just a guess. I can't tell whether what he said is true or not."

It is entirely possible that Wang Shengli deceived them.

When Liu Niannian heard this, he felt a chill down his spine. If the townspeople had fish gills growing on their bodies, then this incident was a third-level weirdness.

Liu Niannian: "This doesn't conform to the common sense of the cloud structure of consciousness."

Zhu Ning and Xu Meng didn't have any special reaction. To them, this place was like a polluted area. They had seen stranger things.

But Liu Niannian has been exposed to family matters since she was a child, and she knows too well the structure of the cloud of consciousness. Some rules and regulations are like truth to her, and any details that do not conform to common sense will be magnified in her eyes.

Why would someone construct such a world in their own consciousness?

It doesn't make sense. If that's the case, then does Bao Ruiming himself also have gills?

Is he a pollutant?

No, if it is a pollutant, the pollution concentration will be detected by the system, and the alarm will sound wildly, and the company will shut down directly starting from the server.

No matter how special Bao Ruiming's status and position are, the Lu family will not open this back door for him. If other guests are infected, the family business will be ruined.

Or has the pollutant evolved to the point where it can...live in the cloud of human consciousness? And not even be discovered?

The author has something to say:

Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or provided nutrient solution between 2022-12-15 21:02:07 and 2022-12-16 21:00:19~

Thanks to the little angel who cast the deep-water torpedo: 1 piece of poetry, wine and tea;

Thanks to the little angel who threw the grenade: CherieX 2;

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Thank you very much for your support. I will continue to work hard!