180 Another Self (XI)

◎Don't look it in the eye!◎

Zhu Ning saw Li Xin's past.

A door appeared in her mind, with a faint white light on the edge of the door. It was the first time Zhu Ning used this ability. Instead of directly looking up data like Bao Ruiming did that time, she could not directly search for keywords and could only travel through the memory palace.

This is the door of memory.

After opening the door, Li Xin's past unfolded before him, and the first memory he read was the most recent.

Zhu Ning saw herself walking into the red house from Li Xin's perspective, with a thin wall separating them.

Li Xin looked at Zhu Ning silently from behind the wall. The other party was a little confused when he saw the traces of his life.

Zhu Ning seemed to have no idea where this place was.

Zhu Ning searched for clues without knowing anything, treating this place as a very common contaminated area.

Memory reading cannot reveal people’s mental activities, so Zhu Ning has no way of judging what Li Xin is thinking.

She stood behind the wall for a long time, the freckles on her face moving slightly, like ripples on a calm lake.

After a long time, Li Xin saw Zhu Ning walk into the bedroom. Only then did she raise her hand and gently knock on the wall.

"Zhu Ning" This was the first sentence Li Xin said to Zhu Ning: "Is Zhu Ning there? Li Xin calls Zhu Ning."

"Zhu Ning is here, over." She heard her own answer. At that time, she regarded Li Xin as an ordinary pollutant, following the logic of a pollutant and playing a role that she did not understand at all.

Li Xin also regarded Zhu Ning as an ordinary human being, just like other people who accidentally entered the red house.

Zhu Ning paused slightly when he saw this, and then continued.

The second door.

Li Xin's memory was rewinding, like a movie being played in reverse at high speed.

Eleven years ago, ever since Zhu Ning walked into the red house, Li Xin had been observing her.

She enjoys observing humans, observing enough details to be able to imitate them.

But Zhu Ning was obviously different here. Zhu Ning could sense Li Xin's emotions: confusion, incomprehension, contempt, and joy.

Non-natural humans are completely different from humans, and have a bit of the condescending feeling of a "God" from above.

Some of Zhu Ning's actions seemed ignorant and childish to her.

Zhu Ning was almost discovered by the mechanical mother several times, and it was Li Xin who helped her avoid it. She was taking care of Zhu Ning as if she were taking care of a young grass seedling, not so carefully, but she would water Zhu Ning when she thought of it.

The third door.

Time goes forward and memory rewinds. Before Zhu Ning entered the red house, Li Xin's life was simpler.

From her perspective, the mechanical mother was breaking down day by day, the skin on her face was failing, and the mechanical gears were rusting and necrotic.

The mechanical mother sighed quietly in the corner of the red house, unable to understand the mission of her own existence.

The defective products in the red house will think about the countdown of their lives late at night. They don’t know what the future holds.

The accumulated "resentment" attracted a predator. A little girl with freckles was sleeping on the bed. That was the real Li Xin.

Li Xin closed her eyes tightly, unaware that a black ant spider was crawling up the bedpost.

The ant spider climbed onto Li Xin's face and gradually explored her face. A human face is a very large map for a spider.

It climbed for a while before it determined the direction, bypassing Li Xin's mouth and crawling over her nose.

Li Xin frowned in her sleep. The ant spider had sneaked into her ear canal, entered Li Xin's brain, and found a comfortable position to occupy.

At this time, Li Xin, who was sleeping, realized something and struggled desperately. She felt like someone was strangling her throat. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't do it at all.

Bang! While struggling, Li Xin turned over and fell off the bed.

She lay straight on the floor like a corpse, her pupils dilated and unable to focus at all.

After a very long time, her pupils slowly gathered, and finally "Li Xin" stood up and lay back on the bed.

From then on, the Li Xin that Zhu Ning met was synthesized.

The fourth door.

Turn the clock, go back in time, and follow the past of an ant spider.

Zhu Ning seemed to be watching an animal degeneration, just like humans degenerating into apes. She was watching an unnatural human degenerating into an unintelligent spider.

The ant spider lives in the red house, which existed before humans built high walls. It used to be an orphanage.

After the high wall was built, the Federation "placed" mechanical mothers in it to breed defective products.

In comparison, ant spiders are the earliest indigenous inhabitants. They live in narrow and damp crevices in walls and usually avoid humans.

The wooden wall interlayer is their nest, and their biological habits make them feed on ants.

They can survive in ant colonies.

It was the first time that Zhu Ning put himself in the spider's perspective. The world in front of him suddenly became very huge, and a human leg seemed like a mountain that was difficult to cross.

If a curious child pours water into it, it will be a disaster and the corpse will be crushed to pieces.

Random, disordered, chaotic, not knowing when disaster will strike, this is the life of an ant.

The ant spider crawled along the edge of the sewer. Its tiny body could pass through most obstacles and squeeze into an extremely narrow gap.

The crack seemed bottomless, and the ant spider was lost in the underground crack. Since there was no way out, it could only continue to go down, deeper and deeper.

I don’t know how long it walked, but it stopped as if it was about to reach the center of the earth.

A strange red light seeped out from the crack in the ground in front of me, illuminating an unintelligent ant spider, so strange and yet so tempting.

The red light emitted heat, and the ant spider stretched out its two forelimbs, trying to figure out what was underneath.

etc--

Zhu Ning felt a sense of panic for no reason. She was not at the scene, but was just recalling someone's memory. However, she didn't even dare to look directly at the memory. The hairs on her back quickly stood up, and human instinct took over.

Every cell in my body was clamoring to escape.

Don't look at it! Don't look at it! Don't look at it!

Zhu Ning quickly withdrew her hand. Even though her mind told her to continue, her instinct told her not to.

She immediately pulled herself out of Li Xin's memories, pushing open the doors of memory one after another, trying desperately to escape from Li Xin's memory palace.

Zhu Ning suddenly opened her eyes and felt her brain contracting deep inside. Her whole body was cold. She opened her mouth wide and breathed deeply.

What did she see?

Zhu Ning couldn't believe what she had just seen. Her brain was throbbing with pain, as if it was being strangled, and the pain made her want to vomit blood.

The smell of death and decay spread, and Zhu Ning was instantly enveloped by a huge force, and countless steel needles pierced him.

She had just made eye contact with something.

The perspective widened, expanding from that of an ant to that of an underground being. Magma was swirling underground, and a behemoth lurked beneath the ground. From the perspective of an ant, its size was impossible to judge, stretching across the entire underground.

The surface of its skin was wriggling, and the slight wriggling made a disgusting and sticky sound. Every movement made her teeth chatter, and the mumbling echoed in her ears. Twitching gray lines began to appear in her mind, like a tangled mess.

Crazy mumblings came, all cognition was shattered in an instant, and memory and reason were distorted by a strange force.

The brain is tense, like a can filled with air pressure. It is easy for the whole brain to explode, and the brain matter and blood will burst under the weight.

Pollutant, Zhu Ning gritted his teeth and couldn't stop trembling. That was the biggest pollutant Zhu Ning had ever seen.

There is a huge pollutant buried under Area 103, which stretches endlessly and is definitely larger than the entire Area 103.

Zhu Ning was standing above it. Compared to it, she was no bigger than an ant.

It gave "Li Xin" and "Jiang Ping" power and became creators. It reshuffled nature, mixed human genes with animal genes, and created a new species.

Pollutants will eventually overturn all the orders established by humans.

All along, the residents of Area 103 have been living above the pollutants, unaware of this.

The high wall plan built by mankind eighty years ago is completely useless. Apart from the kingdom of God, there is no pure land in the world in the true sense.

The people in other areas were all waiting to die, the only difference being whether they died sooner or later. If that thing down there were to awaken, the entire 103rd District would be completely destroyed.

By then, a huge pollution area may be formed, and everyone will be assimilated into pollutants.

The end of the world is coming, and you and I are all ants.

She had always been vaguely aware that she was racing against something, fighting for every minute and every second.

After learning about the countdown to doomsday from Bao Ruiming's memory, Zhu Ning felt that he should have gained the upper hand.

But only now did I begin to understand the true meaning of doomsday. It was so close, right under my feet.

She found her true enemy, but she didn't even have the courage to look him in the eye.

…

Cleaning center.

Huo Wenxi was sitting in a conference room. The lights were off and the room was dim.

Huo Wenxi smoked quietly, the smoke rising and covering her face, making it impossible to see her expression.

She has remained in this state since her conversation with Huo Jinsheng.

The Huo family asked her to make her own choice, whether to give up District 103, evacuate directly, and return to the Huo family's main home in District 1.

There were footsteps everywhere, employees were running around anxiously, the whole center was in chaos, many people tried to find the person in charge but couldn't find him.

Some employees wanted an explanation, while others realized something was wrong and fled the cleaning center overnight.

There is no peace tonight, only the surface remains stable.

The situation inside the cleaning center is turbulent, and something is brewing at any time, possibly a melee.

Zhu Ning had been gone for a long time. It was already late at night and it would be dawn in two hours.

It was snowing outside, and the snow was getting heavier and heavier, covering the entire Area 103, like a soft feather blanket.

Huo Wenxi smoked one cigarette after another in the office, and the ashtray was full of cigarette butts.

There was a document on her desk. The investigation team sent outside the wall had returned, and this was their investigation report.

The investigation team did not go outside the actual protective wall, but just walked along Jiang Ping's old route, all inside the protective wall.

Huo Wenxi sent elite troops and provided them with the best equipment and weapons resources.

But the losses suffered were far beyond Huo Wenxi's imagination. Yesterday they received a return report and the investigation team will arrive within two days.

There were fifteen people in the investigation team outside the wall, but only one came back. The remaining fourteen were killed and the only one who survived went crazy.

The survivor was discovered by the garrison outside the wall. He was acting crazy and attacked everyone indiscriminately. He was almost shot dead by the garrison.

The garrison waited until he had exhausted all his energy, then used a gun to calm him down. After confirming his identity, they realized that he was an investigator sent by the cleaning center.

The garrison quickly contacted the 103rd District Cleaning Center and quickly sent back the investigator and all his information.

The investigator has completely lost his mind, his body is covered with scars, and he would commit suicide if he got the chance. He is currently receiving psychiatric treatment.

No matter how much they questioned him, it was ineffective because the investigators would only repeat two words: "Dead."

"Dead!" The frantic investigator held his head and repeated, "Dead, dead, dead, dead..."

The treating doctor said he would do his best to treat the patient, but told Huo Wenxi not to have any expectations.

According to the treating doctor, don't expect any useful information, this person's life will be ruined.

He suffered from severe mental pollution, muttering to himself and praying to something.

Some trauma is reversible, but some is not.

Huo Wenxi's job is to investigate the truth, and she has read countless investigative reports in her life.

This was the first time she hesitated, probably because her supernatural powers had temporarily disappeared and she didn't dare to trust any of her own judgments in this state.

Huo Wenxi pressed the cigarette butt into the ashtray, then opened the envelope and found a chip inside.

The chip contained a video feed from inside the investigation team's helmets, a complete record of their encounters outside the wall. The video hadn't even been inspected by Prometheus, nor had it been manually filtered; it was complete, firsthand information.

Huo Wenxi was the first person to read this chip.

She was getting close to the truth.

The author has something to say:

Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or provided me with nutrient solution between 2023-01-31 00:06:43 and 2023-01-31 20:39:03~

Thanks to the little angel who threw the rocket launcher: Taotao 1;

Thanks to the little angels who cast mines: Cecilia 1;

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