Chapter 21: The First Item: Deserted City Notes

Anything that connects the world in the book and the real world must not be an ordinary thing.

People who repeatedly hang themselves in the haunted house leave resentment on the rope loops.

In the world of the book, Ren Gui also hanged himself in the same place with despair towards this world.

When the rope loops carrying resentment in the real world and the world in the book overlap, the passage is opened.

Although Hongmao was ranked last on the list, he still managed to gain some experience in every delivery mission.

There must be something wrong with the hanging rope. In order to verify their guess, they have to enter the haunted house again.

Compared to before, Red Hair has become accustomed to the "ghost" lying on the ground in the middle of the haunted house.

"See you again!" Red-haired man stood outside the door without going in. He just poked his head out and greeted the group of evil spirits.

He was worried that if he went in he would be dragged down and hanged again, so he simply stood outside the door and waited for Chen Li.

Chen Li entered the room, ignoring the vengeful spirit lying on the ground, and picked up the chair that had fallen to the ground.

Without even looking at the ground, he just put it on the ghost's back and then stood on it!

The vengeful spirit underneath was pinned down by the chair, wailing in pain and digging with its limbs like a turtle.

Shen Li finally realized what had happened and got down from his chair, looking guilty, as if he had done something terribly wrong:

"Sorry, sorry, it's too dark in the room."

He took away the chair that was pressing on the ghost and asked it politely: "Can you move to the left?"

The vengeful spirit groaned and crawled to the side reluctantly, and actually made room for Shen Li.

The red-haired man outside the door was stunned.

Who is so honest as to apologize to a ghost?

The hanged ghost's head rolled to the side and he could not do anything about Chen Li. He could only stare at the red-haired man who was looking outside the door with great anticipation.

As long as he takes one step into the door, it will have the power to hang him again.

The red-haired man coughed guiltily, "Don't look at me. Forget it. I won't go in, let alone be your substitute!"

Shen Li stood steadily on the chair, with the hanging rope right in front of him.

This height is just right for his neck.

The top of the rope loop was hung on the beam and tied into a knot, making it very secure.

Chen Li held the hanging rope with both hands and pulled it to both sides, staring closely at the scene in the rope loop.

The rope loop was facing the gate. The red-haired man outside the gate looked at Chen Li curiously with a worried look on his face.

"No way, don't let that bother you."

"I'm not desperate." Shen Li slowly put his head into the rope loop and said to Hong Mao, "I just want to hang myself up and try it out."

Red Hair: "Is there a difference? Aren't they all hanging?"

Chen Li felt that what Hongmao said seemed to be correct.

He thought for a moment, then said to the red-haired man in all seriousness, "Remember to save me."

After saying that, he kicked over the chair under his feet.

The red-haired man said, "Brother, before you kick the chair, can you please ask me if you dare to go in first?"

There is one lying on the ground!

The boss just handed his life to him like this?

When did trust between people develop to such a new level?

The vengeful spirit had been squatting here for so long, and this was the first time it saw someone voluntarily hang himself to serve as its substitute. It was so excited that its eyes lit up, and it crawled to the door with its teeth bared, threatening the red-haired man.

As long as it stops the red-haired man and waits until the one hanging himself dies, it will be free.

The red-haired man stretched out one foot and jumped back and forth in and out of the door, unable to go in or out, and turned around in a panic.

At this moment, Shen Li, who was hanging on the beam, felt extreme pain in his neck and couldn't breathe at all.

At the brink of life and death, I suddenly heard a baby crying.

cold.

It's too cold.

He felt as if his soul had left his body, passed through the rope loop, and came to a white town.

The body floated down with the snowflakes around.

The dark iron door of the detention center opened, and a prison guard stood outside the door holding a one-month-old baby wrapped in a thin swaddling cloth.

This is the first heavy snowstorm in Spring City since the beginning of winter.

Although it was not the season for oleander to bloom, all the oleanders on both sides of the road bloomed overnight.

The child's guardian hasn't come to pick him up yet, and it's freezing outside.

The man with glasses in the guard room asked the prison guard to bring the child in to warm him up.

The baby looked at the security guard who was holding him in his arms, and curiously stretched out his little hands to grab his glasses.

"This child has a miserable life. He lost his parents when he was born." The prison guard patted the snow on his shoulders.

"I heard his mother killed his father, but the child is quite cute, I just don't know his name."

"Ren Gui."

"How do you know his name as a janitor? Aren't you cold if you give him your down jacket?"

…

The scene changed, and it was still a snowy winter.

Seven-year-old Ren Gui was lying on the windowsill of the strange neighbor and heard someone in the house humming a weird nursery rhyme.

"There are five lambs and three apples. The flowers are withered, the ground is covered with blood, and the skull is used as a lantern..."

The strange neighbor raised his axe and chopped, and blood splattered on the glass.

Ren Gui outside the window was startled and fell to the ground. The people in the room suddenly became alert and shouted towards the window: "What are you looking at!"

Little Ren Gui realized the danger, ran back home quickly, and hid in the closet, trembling.

Inside the room, a little boy wearing glasses held a bowl in his hand, "Ren Gui, I left a chicken drumstick for you, do you want to eat it? Are you playing hide-and-seek with me?"

"Then I'll count to ten."

"One, two, three, four..."

A bloody shadow covered the small body.

The boy's counting stopped abruptly.

…

Chen Li's soul floated in the air, and he felt that some of the scenes he had just seen were very familiar.

For example, now, the woman in the house is boiling water and scraping the scales and cutting open the belly with an expressionless face.

A mouse was stealthily poking its head out of a mouse hole in the corner.

"The soup is ready. You must be hungry after waiting for so long. Let's eat."

The woman filled a bowl of fish soup and threw it heavily in front of Ren Gui.

The rat poison in the fish soup had not yet dissolved and was floating on the edge of the bowl.

Ren Gui sat in front of the bowl of fish soup with his head lowered, silent.

"Why aren't you eating yet? Are you dissatisfied with my cooking?"

The woman's mood gradually became more and more irritable, and her bipolar disorder suddenly flared up. She picked up the hot soup and poured it on Ren Gui, her voice filled with endless hatred.

"You killed my son, but why didn't you die? Why don't you just die!"

…

Under the woman's vicious curse, Ren Gui grew up in silence.

Every time I sat in the last row of the classroom, covered in injuries.

The hair hanging in front of his forehead was already very long, and the male classmate wearing glasses used scissors to cut it to the right length.

The classmates around were talking about it.

"Why is the transfer student so familiar with the weirdo?"

"Yeah! He even brings food to the weirdo every day!"

"By the way, have you ever heard the weirdo talk? I heard that when he was a kid, he accidentally led a bad guy home and killed his cousin."

"This kind of person is so scary. The murderer hasn't been found yet."

…

It was another snowy night, and the transfer student who had a good relationship with Ren Gui died at the school gate.

His body was on the left side of the road, but his glasses were on the other side.

At daybreak, a garbage truck ran over his glasses.

The Snow Night Killer has been dormant for more than ten years and is killing again.

The whole city was in panic.

The transfer student died on Rengui’s eighteenth birthday.

He went out during the snowstorm to buy a birthday cake for Rengui.

From that day on, there was a missing piece in Rengui's heart.

The warmth that kept coming to him was taken away again and again.

He moved out from his aunt's house and worked outside on his own.

I rented a small six-square-meter hut next to a stinky ditch in the shantytown.

The clippings on the wall of the cabin were filled with information about the Snowy Night Killer that he had collected over the years.

He lurked in the darkness, polished a rusty iron, ate expired rice balls, and listened to the weather forecast every day, wanting to catch the murderer who had deprived him of all the warmth in his life, and then fight a battle with fate.

On a snowy night when he was 22 years old, he did it.

He caught the murderer who had been on the run for many years and cut the throat of the Snowy Night Killer with a knife he had sharpened himself.

Warm blood gushed out and passers-by screamed and ran away from him.

“Murder!”

Although Ren Gui had achieved his great revenge, the empty space in his heart was still empty, and what he had lost was not returned.

Ren Gui returned to the rental house in a daze, tied up the rope and kicked away the stool.

I have no attachment to this world.

At this moment, his figure overlapped with Shen Li's figure.

The heavy hat was floating on the rope loop, and in a trance, I saw snowing outside.

The Rengui in the book walked from a distance, step by step, on the thick snow, and stood outside the door.

He still looks the same as the 22-year-old in the book, tall and thin, like the rugged Shoushan stone in the ink painting.

Cold and stubborn.

In the heavy snow, Ren Gui wrapped himself tightly in his black down jacket and confided to Shen Li:

"Do you know how I discovered that the world I live in is a fake world?"

"Because of Blue City?"

When this name was mentioned, Rengui suddenly laughed.

"He's really stupid. He traveled through the book countless times. At first, he wanted to make amends to me, and later, he wanted to save me."

"No matter what image he appears in, he always wears a pair of glasses. You know, in the books he wrote, no one in the town wears glasses except him, so he is easy to recognize."

The guard at the detention center, the cousin who gave him chicken legs, the transfer student who cut his bangs...

Each of them is a marginal character that Blue City has traveled through.

When talking about Lancheng, Rengui's cold and world-weary expression loosened a little.

"Every time, he tried his best to save me, but every time he died."

Speaking of which, in this cold world of books, the only person who would be nice to him was Lan Cheng.

"Then why did you want to hurt him? Imprison him? Destroy the entire world?" Shen Li asked him.

"I didn't hurt him, I was just protecting him."

Ren Gui looked calmly at the heavy hat hanging on the beam and reminded him:

"It was never me who destroyed this world, but..."

Ren Gui stopped talking here.

Because at this moment, a huge black shadow suddenly appeared behind him.

With a heavy blow, bright red blood spilled on the white snow.

Ren and Gui's body and head are separated.