Authenticity

Authenticity

"Dead?"

This is a completely unexpected, yet seemingly reasonable answer.

While I was narrating the dream, small doubts indeed popped up in my mind more than once, wondering how such an unstable firecracker like Taizai could have been hidden until now.

From past experience, I have also come to understand that the Zhang family has always had plans prepared for potential hidden dangers.

Sometimes, due to information asymmetry, there may be omissions in the plan or the actions may be too cruel, but as long as dangerous and unstable factors are discovered, they will never turn a blind eye and let it go.

There are actually three contradictory issues here:

First, having witnessed such a bizarre alien twelve years ago, why would the Zhang family not have any preparations against him until today?

Second, when he came to me many years later with ill intentions and specifically asked me to prepare the black notebook, why didn't Xu You kill him directly and keep him, but let him leave and continue to hide in the convoy?

Third, when he was following Xu You in the convoy, why were only Captain Yan and I aware of his presence?

Now, after combining different information, I realized that these three questions are actually one and the same, and they are all simply answered by Xu You's words:

Because Taizi had died a long time ago, quietly and almost in a trivial manner.

Apart from having two more layers of skin than others, he didn't seem to have time to show any extraordinary abilities. Instead, he seemed a little childish and stupid because of his unfamiliar and clumsy handling of things. Even his vicious nature was disenchanted because of his easy death.

For the Zhang family twelve years ago, there were many dangerous situations to deal with and guard against. Naturally, they paid less attention to a so-called prophet who was already dead. At most, he was recorded as a reference material.

Something that had long ceased to exist would not be observed by anyone for twelve years, and certainly would not be observed by anyone else in the convoy.

To some extent, the real witnesses of Taizai twelve years later were only me, Xu You and Yan Mo, who were all deeply parasitized by the strange story at that time.

To be more strict, up to now, I am the only one who has witnessed the "latest" Taiwanese.

Damn, what does this mean? Why are there fewer and fewer people who can see him? Could it be that Taizi really died a long time ago and no longer exists?

At this time, Fang Ao reacted the fastest.

After he had come up with the metaphor of the "pullover" on a whim, he had been half-understanding it and was probably only drowsy enough to hear one word out of ten. But now he was startled and shouted again: "I know!"

I was delighted, thinking that apart from team leader Zhang Jia who proposed the theory of sunk cost, the two of them, the Dragon and the Phoenix, that I had been waiting for for a long time, were still missing one. I didn't expect that they would finally be together today.

He immediately used his old trick again, took out his special move that he hadn't used for a long time, and held Fang Ao's hands affectionately: "Sir, is there anything you can teach me?"

Zhang Jia looked at me quietly, and smacked his lips with a sour look.

Fang Ao's eyes lit up, and he was immediately beaming with joy: "Advisor, you just said so much, but I didn't understand or remember a single word. My brain can't handle it. But there is one thing I did understand and I still remember it."

Before he could finish, he was stared at by all of us with anxious eyes. He finally restrained his habitual nonsense and said quickly, "Isn't this the shadow?"

No one was paying attention to him anymore. We all reacted at the same time and exclaimed at the same time.

Yes, it is really dark under the lamp. Before Taizi was hit and died suddenly, didn't he see some non-existent huge irregular shadow cast on the ground and felt deeply frightened and tried to avoid it?

The shadow that appeared for no reason was also witnessed by only Taizi.

That is to say, I pondered, feeling a little uncomfortable: "In the two incidents, the characteristics of the witnesses can be summarized as one, that is, compared with other people, they were particularly seriously contaminated by the parasites of ghost stories at the time. So can we think that other people who were only slightly infected by ghost stories could not see or perceive some existences."

Doesn’t this mean that after the shadow was discovered twelve years ago, the dead Taizi also became something like a ghost story?

Fang Ao was stunned for a while, then said in confusion: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, everyone, lend me your brain first."

I asked him why, he really couldn't figure it out, wondering why Xu You and I still insisted that Taizi was Taizi. After twelve years, what if the one who jumped out now was a clone? It doesn't make sense to say that it must be a dead person jumping out to cause trouble. If it really doesn't work, maybe no one saw him, just because of quantum mechanics.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Yes, yes, Taizi was hit by ball lightning and turned into a quantum cloud. It can only collapse into an image occasionally when being observed, right?" (Note 1)

Complaints aside, the story is not so sci-fi, but it does provide an idea. To some extent, ghost stories are like the deep sea. The more parasitic and polluted it is, the deeper you dive, the more you can see things you have never seen before.

In some classic horror games, there is often a plot where only the protagonist can see the "other world" and become an extraordinary observer.

And often the more insane and inhuman the protagonist is, the more bizarre the inner world he sees.

If we follow this line of thought, there is a reasonable explanation for why twelve years ago Taizai saw a shadow that only he could see and hid in panic, and twelve years later only Xu You and I could see the dead Taizai.

However, a new problem arises.

I lifted up the little fat cat sleeping soundly in my arms, pinched its white gloves, and heard a carefree snoring sound. I thought it was unfair. If this was the case, how could Dongzai also see Taizai and be as wicked as me, scaring him half to death?

By the way, how did Dongzai get here?

Then I remembered that Dongzai's appearance was a bit out of place.

If I was rescued and hospitalized, and then taken to the Zhang family for transfer, and was dragged into the underground palace of "Dongxue" by Taizi without knowing it, then what about this little tabby cat?

I remember that before I went out, I didn't want to take the risk with the cat, so I temporarily left it in the store. Brother Li often came to my store. After all, he and Dongzi had cried unilaterally, so he was familiar with me. He would occasionally feed the cat for me. There were also people around the neighborhood who looked after the cat, so I was very relieved.

So, could it be that when a friend came to visit me, he brought the cat with him as a gift of comfort?

But that's not right. When I saw Taizai's crazy breakdown, I felt that Dongzai, as a harmless cat, might have appeared around Taizai earlier than I did. Otherwise, he wouldn't have tortured me like that.

After being woken up by me for a long time, the little fat cat was half-awake and barely woke up. It insisted on licking me in its sleepiness and meowed in confusion.

I couldn't help myself and subconsciously said, "...Change for me?"

The fat little cat looked at me blankly, and the people around me also looked at me strangely. I coughed awkwardly and put the cat down.

Well, cats are cats.

I asked around and the answer I got was surprising. In my mind, I was in the hospital and the cat came to visit me.

As a result, the first few guys who came to visit the patient looked at each other in confusion, scratched their heads and corrected him: "No, no, consultant, it's the other way around."

What's wrong?

"We suddenly saw your cat first and were startled by it, and then we found you."

I was stunned, didn't understand, and exclaimed.

At this moment, Gao Liu, who had been extremely silent in the corner, raised his head.

She did not participate in the discussion during the entire narration just now. She just lowered her head and wrote and drew something with the unused paper and pen. She looked very serious and solemn, and we all didn't feel like disturbing her.

It seemed that the drawing was finished now. Gao Liu handed over a stack of papers and said, "Advisor, take a look."

I glanced at it and found it was an unfamiliar map of an underground waterway network, with some small triangles representing the distribution of buildings above.

This is indeed an old skill that Gao Liu is good at, but it is more complicated than the underground waterway in the dense forest that she drew for me, and it makes people a little dizzy looking at it.

However, looking at those looping pipelines, I suddenly realized that the answer to the problem that has been bothering me lies in this waterway map.

Gao Liu stood up and picked up another picture. It seemed that he had carefully drawn two identical copies for easy circulation.

"This is the town's underground water network. After we were rescued, I borrowed the town's original topographical data, applied for equipment to conduct acoustic wave detection, and also asked the instructor and team leader for additional memories.

It’s just that the banyan tree roots and the pipes and underground passages are interfering, and many details still need to be adjusted, so it’s only temporarily completed.”

She said concisely with a hint of fatigue:

"If you were here, you would be swept away by the turbulence. Look." She drew a conspicuous red circle next to the icon of the collapsed building, and then began to move her pen, drawing a winding curve.

The final destination was actually not beyond the small town.

At the edge of the town, the waterway seemed to be blocked by an invisible wall. It made a huge turn and returned to the town.

My scalp exploded, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I was stunned and said, "So, after I was swept away by the turbulent current, there was no way I could leave the town?"

Oh my god, oh my god, the strong sense of unreality made me dizzy and I was thinking, what is going on, this is impossible?

"Advisor, in your memory, the strange waterway where you woke up and were rescued... are you sure it exists?"

I was a little confused by this question, "Then how was I rescued? Was the hospital I woke up in at the beginning just some kind of delirium? Did you rescue me directly in the town and send me to Zhang's Hospital?"

No, my heart skipped a beat.

First of all, the guys just said that they discovered Dongzai first and then discovered me.

The environment of the small town and the snow-capped mountains is too harsh for a tabby cat to survive in; besides, we came here by bus and then by plane, and it is not an exaggeration to say that we are thousands of miles apart. It is impossible for Dongzai to run to a small town whose address he doesn't even know.

Secondly, the hospital where I was rescued and woke up could not be fake.

I was very sure, "I really don't know how I was transferred to this hospital. After waking up in Zhang's Hospital, I used normal logic to guess that you found and took me over. But no matter what, the previous hospital must have found me." All the details were huge and vivid, and I couldn't just imagine them because of a brain attack.

Yan Mo, who had been frowning beside him, also pondered for a moment:

"You are right, one cannot imagine knowledge that one does not possess or understand.

During your hospital stay, you interacted with the two nurses and the doctor who made rounds, and you must have heard many descriptions of your condition and treatment plans. You can’t make up many professional terms out of thin air.”

The matter had reached a dead end here, and we all looked at each other in bewilderment.

Yan Mo stood up and said, "I'll go check the hospital and the two nurses." He left without any hesitation and just said to me, "Advisor, we found you because of your cat."

When I asked, I found out that several staff members accidentally found Dongzai wandering in the corridors and wards during the daily surveillance of Zhang's hospital. He seemed to be a little scared and looked around all the time. I didn't know what he was looking at.

Dongzai is a small fat tabby cat with distinct features. The guy who discovered it became more and more puzzled the more he looked at it. Out of curiosity, he shared it with his companions, saying that this cat really looks like the one the consultant showed off in the group, so why not catch it and send it to the consultant's shop to make it a second baby.

His companion was speechless and asked him why he was so bored. Why not just catch one more, and three of them could make a game of elimination. He was also confused when he took a look at it casually, and thought, "It's not right. It seems to be the consultant's. How did it teleport here?"

So they all went out to catch the cat, but they didn't catch the cat. Instead, they saw me lying in an empty ward, looking like I was about to die, as if I was going to die.

This time no one cared about the cat. I was searched for but couldn't find me. However, I automatically put on the hospital gown and showed up in Zhang's Hospital by myself. I didn't even have to register. No one could understand what was going on.

And, what's even more outrageous is that the guys wanted to ask me what had happened to me, but found that I seemed crazy because I was in a mess.

But at this time, Yan Mo, Xu You, the broker, Gao Liu and all the others were still in the emergency room not far away. There seemed to be no good way except to suppress my doubts and let me recover.

Only when things got to this point did I resolve the misunderstanding and match the information.

What they said was right, my inference was the opposite. From what I can see now, the cat really came first, and then I was hospitalized.

Adding together all the information currently piled up, I slapped my forehead and felt a bit of a headache, but also found it quite interesting.

I am from a small town that I cannot leave, together with a boy named Zhang Tianyi who cannot appear in Shilin, and a Taiwanese who died many years ago but keeps reappearing. Things are becoming more and more beyond my expectations.

Fortunately, at least one thing was confirmed soon.

I wrote down the descriptions of the two caregivers who impressed me the most and sent them to Yan Mo who was out checking on the people.

In addition, due to the clay pot soup incident of the nurse, I transferred extra money to the nurse as an apology. At that time, there were no other employees around, so I used an electronic account that I barely remembered, and the money was from the public account of my shop.

If the trace of this transfer exists, it means that my memory is real. At the same time, we can also find the name of the nurse based on the transfer record of the store, and then find her address.

With this clue, the guys quickly mobilized.

The Zhang family's efficiency was unexpectedly high. Within two hours, Yan Mo sent a message.

I was packing my luggage and discussed with Xu You that many things might need to be confirmed in person, so I asked him to call someone to take me to the stone forest that I saw twelve years ago.

Whether Taizi's remains are still there, what the true appearance of the salt dust and quicksand is, and whether I can see that shadow, all these need to be confirmed again.

The message popped up at this moment:

"Found it. Both caregivers are there."

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