Context
If you don't agree, there's no need to talk too much.
This is actually the end of the intersection between Nian Ziqing and Zhang Tianyi, but from Nian Ziqing's perspective, he thought he had Zhang Tianyi's lifeline in his grasp and was very relaxed and unguarded towards him.
In the half month after we left the valley, Zhang Tian's whereabouts were unknown. He was secretly searching for traces of the remaining activities of the Nian family and comparing them with those of the fake people.
Here, for the sake of easier narration and understanding, I will summarize the information Zhang Tianyi told me:
If the pollution of ghost stories is likened to diving deep into the ocean, then based on the degree of our understanding of ghost stories, we can roughly divide the people we come into contact with into five categories.
The first category is ordinary people who have no contact with ghost stories and are blind to them.
This type of people will never realize the terrifying shadow beneath the surface of ghost stories throughout their entire lives, and their worldview remains stable and materialistic.
The second type is the people who occasionally have a flash of inspiration and get a glimpse of a strange story.
But this kind of encounter is very passive and accidental, and will not have much impact on them. For them, ghost stories are just a nightmare that they can't remember, a flickering light or a slight high fever, a mysterious but unprovoked adventure, and the impact will fade quickly. If there is no accident, they will not be associated with ghost stories again.
The representative of this type of people is the security guard Brother Li.
The third category is the majority of the Zhang family and the Nian family, who can actively contact strange stories and are actively hunted by strange stories. However, they are not sensitive to all the rules, and sometimes they even instinctively maintain a certain degree of dullness to avoid consciousness pollution.
This type of people can see the banyan tree and the goddess' concubine, and can see the mother's womb in the underground palace, but it is difficult for them to realize the existence of comb jellies and sponges, nor can they see the prophet who is close at hand.
They will not be used as food by the Prophet, nor will they recognize or touch the core essence of the rules.
After getting away from the ghost stories, if you can maintain a normal life for a long time, you may even gradually turn to Li Ge’s safe state and hope to stay away from the ghost stories.
The fourth category is people like Xu You, Gao Liu, and Nian Ziqing who have been marked as prey by ghost stories, have acquired so-called "superpowers", and will reach the death node arranged by fate at some point.
Faced with this vicious "fate", Nian Ziqing eventually met his destined end on his own, while Xu Yougaoliu survived.
The greatest danger faced by such people is that they may be included in the list of delicacies by the prophet. They can directly witness the fake people and occasionally feel frightened when the prophet peeks at them, but they cannot hear or recognize the true nature of the prophet.
The fifth category is the "Tianyi" fake person.
People like me and Zhang Tianyi whose transformation has been interrupted can actually be roughly placed in this layer.
The price of cognition is to become a lonely outsider, or even to be confused and have your sense of existence dismantled, becoming a "non-existent" person in the cognition of others.
But in comparison, at least we are still clear-headed.
The false person himself will always be trapped in the obstacle of knowledge and perception and unable to break free, and throughout his short life he will be tortured by the inner demon of whether the self exists.
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The reason for making such a detailed division is to explain what everyone did actively or passively during the long period of time that the ghost story was running.
The answer Zhang Tianyi found is that, in fact, pseudo-people have been unconsciously trying to imitate the prophets in order to gain the cornerstone of self-identity.
This is the case with the human skins that Taizai is wearing.
Those human skins themselves are actually useless and are just a form of self-consolation. The fake people instinctively sensed their own pathetic nature and tried to keep hinting and warning themselves, but they were always a little short of the truth.
Therefore, although Taizai was furious after his human skin was destroyed by the mountain people, he did not suffer any actual harm.
Because of their deep and filthy nature, these pseudo-people have an extraordinary keen understanding of ghost stories. Although they cannot get close to the core of the ghost stories, they are undoubtedly living charlatans.
Because they cannot answer their desire for strange stories and find it unattainable, a group of pseudo-people began to do one thing: artificially create strange stories. They hope to find a way to control their desire for strange stories within a controllable range, and know what the unsolved mysteries in themselves are.
For ordinary humans, it is a fantasy to try to strip away part of the weird story and take it away. But for the pseudo-people who are essentially just the outer fur of the prophets, they themselves are the best embryonic carriers of weird story pollution.
The underground palace in the snowy mountains and the stripped and stolen banyan tree are all masterpieces of pseudo-humans.
Many years ago, the Nian family discovered the failed imitations left behind by the fake people. Based on this, they built defensive fortifications to prevent these semi-finished products from getting out of control and dispersing.
During this process, the Nian family's inheritance was interrupted and misunderstandings and distortions occurred many times, and a large part of it was because the correct existence and memory were confused by false people and prophets.
In order to preserve the correct cognition, the Nian family sacrifice came into being. Through various cruel means that we are still unknown, people are turned into human-faced murals, making the sacrifice teeter on the edge of the definition of "human", so that the prophet can be seen and early warning can be issued.
But this deliberate approach to and distortion of strange stories is not without cost. It makes them deeply attracted to strange stories and even fall into a kind of unspeakable fanaticism and fear.
In this process, embracing the ghost story ultimately led to the complete distortion and demise of the Nian family.
Here, Zhang Tianyi gave me an example that left a deep impression on me.
He said: "Dongxue is a piece of pollution from the moving rats that was preserved by the pseudo-humans using themselves as a carrier.
The Nian family built walls outside the cave, constructed underground palaces, and reduced the impact, so that we are facing a safer Snow Mountain Underground Palace and Foghorn Town. "
I thought, "Then the quarries that Nian Ziqing mentioned are traces of large-scale activities left by the Nian family during the process of transforming the site. The collateral pollution in such places is more shallow, making it the easiest to be witnessed."
Later, because the pseudo-human's cognitive information was also constantly lost and distorted, the remaining traces such as the quarry attracted the new pseudo-humans to explore.
But at this time, the new pseudo-humans who know nothing about it will be delighted to misunderstand and find that these places are not as repulsive to them as complete ghost stories, but are almost within their reach and can be observed and inferred.
"The answer must be in there," the pseudo-people said, searching hard. After arriving, they would find some traces of the remnants of the long transformation, or observe things left by the last batch of ancient pseudo-people.
It’s kind of funny to say that in the whole situation, only the Zhang family members were wandering around with a clear and simple neurosis. They didn’t have much awe towards the weird stories, and they couldn’t see what the fake people were doing.
The Zhang family, with their unique banditry and simplicity, adheres to the bizarre principle of exploring the weird stories when they are found, leaving after solving them, and not thinking about the rest for even a minute. Even if someone explains the nature of the weird stories in detail, what the Zhang family can get is a kind of surprise and amazement similar to listening to crosstalk in a group.
My two Crouching Dragon and Phoenix Chick are good examples. Team leader Zhang Jia was simply too lazy to listen, and Fang Ao didn't understand but that didn't stop him from having a sudden idea and making a lucky buck.
The few who do keep secrets have no intention of sharing or discussing them with others, and would rather keep the secret to themselves until death.
All the truths, secrets, mysteries, and even the information that might lead to deeper insights into the essence of the strange story, were directly cut off and sunk to the bottom of the Zhang family's house, as if they had hit an unreasonable silencing sponge.
To some extent, this blind ignorance is the most effective way to avoid confusion and tampering.
Viewed from this perspective, it might be puzzling that Xu You and his team managed to miss the truth about the quarry.
However, now that we have come to this, I seem to understand what Zhang Tianyi wants to tell me.
If you want to maintain the stable and healthy ecology of the Zhang family, you must keep them away from the overly dark and mysterious nature of the story.
My excessive and almost obsessive desire for knowledge is actually harmful to the Zhang family.
Zhang Tian talked in a roundabout way for a long time. Firstly, he wanted me to clarify the context, and secondly, more importantly, he hoped that I would not subconsciously reveal too much to my companions again.
However, after thinking about it for a while, I suddenly realized something important:
The quarry is a byproduct of a ghost story that has been repeatedly processed. I am afraid that it will be more straightforward and easier to understand than those unpredictable ghost stories.
When the barrier between people and ghost stories is too weak, contamination and distortion will occur more easily.
The person who would like to follow me on this trip to the Stone Forest should preferably be a "fool" who is completely ignorant of strange stories, or an outlier who is as deeply immersed in strange stories as I am.
I need some guys who have never been to the ground before to accompany me.
Considering that there were guys who were hunted by the prophet in Shilin, people like Xu You and Yan Mo, who could easily arouse the prophet's appetite, must not be brought along.
Even out of caution, Zhang Tianyi and I couldn't get close to there to avoid being attacked by the prophet again.
However, when I thought about it this way, I found that staffing became much more difficult.
"There is another way." Zhang Tian said, "I will arrange another group of people to go to the fields for you."
My eyelids jumped. "Who is it?"
"Food residues that have been eaten by the prophet." He said with a strange look on his face, "This time, we will go underground with the fake people."
Damn, my scalp exploded and I got goosebumps all over, but I found that his idea was feasible.
"You, me, and the hide-and-seek guy?"
I thought about it and said, "The Zhang family is responsible for logistics and equipment, as well as the storage and screening of real information, acting as a safe and necessary objective observer; so letting the fake people take charge of going underground is indeed the most efficient and safest."
However, my expression became strange, and I thought this was a bit scary and immoral.
Everyone is trying to survive, but we two counterfeit guys are cheating one guy and then another, doing Infernal Affairs. Are we still human?
Moreover, the two of us who had just gotten rid of the prophet were now planning to blend in with a group of human-skin "heavenly clothes" that could mutate at any time. This scene was really a bit creepy.
Once the car is overturned and discovered, the ending will definitely be extremely miserable.
All kinds of thoughts were swirling in my mind, but what came to my mouth were the words sent by the gods:
"Then how do I get in?"
"Does Mi Zang also need an ancestor?"
Zhang Tianyi was slightly startled, then laughed. We looked at each other and unexpectedly touched our nonexistent consciences at the same time.
Well, I am a naughty kid, I argued in my mind, and hide and seek might need me.
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