distinguish
The doubts raised by Xu You made me think for a long time.
The definition and rules of "people" by Yishu should not make any exceptions for any one person.
Although there is indeed the mystery of the "man in the wall" surrounding Zhang Tianyi, it seems feasible to use this to explain his uniqueness.
But I still have a kind of inexplicable intuition that there is something wrong with this statement. And this unnaturalness must have happened right at that moment, which is why I felt rejected so quickly.
If I must say something, it's probably because I always feel that humans are fragile creatures that can be easily hurt and die. To doubt that he is not a human at this time because of this phenomenon that is originally common sense is like a confusing and twisted tongue twister. I really can't get over this threshold.
"...Master's wife is in the lounge. I'll go see her." I subconsciously changed the subject. I felt that the room was a bit crowded after standing for so long, and I wanted to get some fresh air. "Is it okay to disturb you?"
"--Won't."
The broker's voice rang out, and I was startled. Then I saw the broker appear behind the bar, leaning on a small door, with very little blood on his face.
It seemed that she had some problems standing, which was really beyond my expectation.
I apologized to the others and went forward to help the broker back to the room.
This person is my elder, so I have no reason to avoid him. I try to let the broker transfer his weight to me. When I supported her, I could feel that her body temperature was very low, and a layer of cold sweat broke out on her thin body.
That unnatural feeling came back.
I calmed myself down, and as the two of them walked into the small room, the abnormality became more and more obvious, but I had no clue what was going on.
"Uh... Xu You, I mean, won't Master come in and take care of you?"
I was a little absent-minded, trying to find something to say and almost bit my tongue.
The broker closed the door, sat down on the only wooden chair in the room, and looked at me for a long time.
"Child, do you still have the energy now?"
My eyelids jumped at the question. "Yes, why?"
"See it? That exhaust fan." The broker pointed it out to me with relief. "Go out from here and you'll find the alley behind the bar. Go straight to the right for 200 meters and you'll find a crossroads. It's daytime now, and you can see the small building on the platform from there."
She wants me to sneak away now and go to the platform? That's what she means.
I was very surprised and didn't quite understand:
"What are you doing?"
What answered me was two knocks outside the exhaust window.
"Haven't you talked enough?" Zhang Tianyi's voice sounded relaxed through the wall, and he said with a smile, "What's the point of staying in the house and chatting all the time? Come out and take a walk."
I was really surprised, but the broker seemed to have expected it and just said softly, "Go, kid."
For a moment, my hair almost stood on end. I reacted immediately, following their instructions, stepped on the edge of the bed, and grabbed the exhaust window.
With a slight "click" sound, the exhaust window was removed and pushed open. I fell to the ground and was pulled into a small car.
The "small car" literally means a small square tricycle, covered with a crooked iron sheet, which separates it from a very clumsy and funny iron box.
Zhang Tianyi was pedaling the broken tricycle, with the hem of his dark green windbreaker tied into a knot in an ungraceful manner.
This was the first time I saw the driver's seat of a three-wheeled vehicle covered, and I was a little puzzled.
Moreover, I couldn't help but look up, and I saw that the exhaust window moved and was reset by the broker inside.
Now I am in the alley, with only a layer of iron sheet separating me from the grayish-white fog. It would be a lie to say that I don't feel doubtful or nervous.
I myself found it strange why I took such a risk and sneaked out.
No, I should say, how can the rest room be so easy to get in and out of? With so many people like Xu You, didn't they assign a guy to reinforce it? What if someone climbs in?
No matter how many questions I had, the broken tricycle started moving with a squeak.
The guys were immediately alarmed, and someone shouted, "Who?"
The broken tricycle suddenly jumped, and Zhang Tianyi smiled and said, "Hold on tight," and headed towards the platform that the broker had just mentioned.
I couldn't help but look back at the tall window again, feeling a vague worry in my heart, as if there was a layer of window paper that I couldn't break through.
What is it?
I looked at Zhang Tianyi who was pedaling the tricycle very skillfully and thought to myself, what the hell, it seems like I have lost my mind since I came in and have been following this guy's arrangements all the time.
Seeing the noise of the bar behind me, I asked tentatively, "Does the Master's wife know you?"
“Not familiar.”
I sighed, then moved forward and pressed him, "What's the riddle you guys are talking about? How did you come to cooperate?"
Zhang Tianyi shook his head: "Whatever you want to ask, just give me the details. What if my broken tricycle gets distracted and flips over with such a big frame?"
I angrily said, "Stop talking nonsense. I haven't rested since I came in. Can you please be quiet?" "From now on, you must get my consent first if you do things first and ask for your permission later. Otherwise, get out."
As I said this, I noticed that Zhang Tianyi's eyes were actually a little strange.
From what I heard from his behavior after he came in, he was as arrogant as he could be. A person who could do such a thing should have a carefree and casual look in his eyes, which was consistent with my understanding of him. But when I looked at him from the side, I felt an inappropriate fatigue and slight confusion in his eyes.
He was missing an answer, too, I thought, and he was looking for help. But did I have the necessary puzzle pieces to help him capture the missing light?
However, unlike the previous ghost stories, the moving rats encountered after entering were quite fair and aboveboard, and the rules seemed to be right in front of them, with nothing hidden.
Could it be that there are some hidden contradictory rules?
I thought hard and said to myself, take it slow, and look at each thing one by one from the beginning.
First of all, why was I worried about my wife just now?
Xu You and his team were also forced to cooperate with Zhang Tianyi. It can be seen that everyone is now reluctantly standing on the same front. It is difficult to tear each other apart when they rely on each other. Therefore, my worry about her is definitely not just because she helped the two of us to meet up. Once exposed, it will be difficult for us to do so.
Should be something more direct.
Yes, that’s it. The window paper is right in front of me, and it only needs a little external force to push it open.
At this moment, I realized that my palms were sweaty.
It's not mine, it's the broker's. She's too weak.
--weak?
I was suddenly startled.
Yes, weak.
No one in the room, including me, looked too weak, no matter what their condition was. Including Lei Zige, I often felt amused and helpless at his blunt and rough words, and I almost forgot his tragic disability several times.
But broker, the moment she appeared in front of me, the first thought that popped into my mind was that she couldn't stand and needed to rest. This forced me to immediately go forward to support her, fearing that she would fall to the ground.
Where does the difference between the two come from?
As I grabbed hold of this strange thing, a terrible feeling quickly rushed to the soles of my feet.
Then, I recalled two very small contradictory scenes:
The first scene was that tall, white-faced guy was surprised to say that I was not injured. I agreed with this statement, but I was shocked to find that I had been scratched in the car.
The second scene was me being rescued and just entering the house. I couldn't see because of the huge light of the flare and was crying. My body was covered with wounds from the parasitic tree roots. Someone cut open my clothes and applied cold ointment on me. The female team doctor also told me to use tweezers to remove the remaining roots that had drilled into my flesh.
But, since when, it seems that after I mentioned the preserved snow and saw the bugs inside, I, the female team doctor, and the other guys who were busy taking care of me just now, all seemed to have forgotten about it.
My wounds and those tree roots no longer existed.
In the eyes of everyone, including myself, I became an unharmed person.
So much so that when I slowly remembered that the car was scratched, I naturally thought that was the only injury and thought it was normal that they didn't know that I was "injured".
Damn, how did this happen? Why was there no sign at all?
I looked at the tiredness in Zhang Tianyi's eyes and it felt like an electric shock.
A voice inside me yelled, yes, people are bound to get tired, get hurt, and die. How did I get so distracted in the bar that I could accept without question that being weak and hurt was abnormal?
He and the broker were still able to remain normal, which at most only meant that they had not been contaminated by the moving rats.
Instead of suddenly sliding down the slope to the point where they are no longer human if they don't conform to the rules of moving the mouse.
The scary thing is that, before I left the bar, I didn't feel for a moment the absurdity of this gradual decline in logic.
It was at this moment that all the pain that I had forgotten suddenly started burning up again.
"There are disinfectants under the seats, take them yourself."
Zhang Tianyi said while looking ahead, as if he was really focused on pedaling.
Sweating all over, I lifted up the seat, took out the small medical kit inside, and gritted my teeth to disinfect and treat my wounds.
Since no one had dealt with the tree roots for a long time, almost all of them had drilled into places that were beyond the reach of tweezers. I had to snatch a sharp dagger from Zhang Tianyi, disinfect it, light it on fire, and then use the fire to disinfect it and then re-cut and enlarge the slightly scabbed wound.
I really can’t describe how painful this process was. After only treating one arm, I was shaking all over and almost fainted.
"There's beer at the bottom of the medical kit."
Zhang Tianyi added, "It's smooth when we're eating barbecue. Ranzi, can you do it yourself?"
I glared at him and told him to get lost. I gritted my teeth, opened the medical kit, and forced myself down two gulps of beer. My poor alcohol tolerance made my face, which should have turned too pale to be seen, turn red in an instant.
The intoxication reduced the pain a bit, but it was still hard to bear. I took ten minutes to relax, and the tricycle was very close to the platform building. I wiped the cold sweat that could not be stopped and continued to be cruel to myself.
This kind of unconscious cognitive bias is so frightening, and I don’t want to waste the painful feeling I’m feeling right now, so I just start to sort it out based on the pain:
"At first, we just understood the rules that Yishu made for us, for 'humans'... but after discussing it for a long time, it gradually became a normal phenomenon that we all recognize. Is Yishu's definition of human gradually replacing the original definition of human?"
Like Brother Lei Zi or myself now, because the physical injuries cannot be ignored, they have been reminding my subconscious mind intermittently, and I can also have the concept of "injury" from time to time and feel confused.
But what about the others? It seemed that even the female team doctor forgot that the medical kit she took out was for me.
Everyone just allowed me, a wounded person who had just been rescued, to chat and talk so openly, without any fear that I would die suddenly from the severe parasitism of the tree roots at any time.
The more I thought about it, the more something seemed wrong.
On the one hand, this made me realize that the reason why the broker was able to remain clear-headed was that he also had serious and persistent wounds on his body, so serious that they could not be ignored, so he could remain clear-headed.
On the other hand, she chose to let me go without hesitation instead of reminding Xu You, her former partner.
Is it that Xu You and others' cognitive biases are too deeply rooted to be corrected for the time being, and will they be quickly forgotten after correction?
"No, are we really not going to bring the Master's wife with us?" I felt a little uneasy. "If we leave her alone in the room, will something bad happen?"
"fine."
Zhang Tianyi rarely stopped the broken tricycle, turned his head and looked me in the eyes, and said softly:
"They can't get into the lounge and touch her."
What does that mean? I immediately broke out in a cold sweat.
"Literally." Zhang Tianyi smiled and said with some emotion, "You are right to remind me. I almost forgot why I did those things with such fanfare."
"Of course, it was right for me to come back to you for help in time."
——What things?
After this fatal fog was lifted, my thoughts became extremely clear. I no longer had the intermittent confusion and trance caused by cognitive bias, and I immediately thought of the answer.
However, this answer, which was a bit jumpy and almost like a ghost's whisper, made me shudder.
"...I remember that my first impression of bars and lounges was that they were crowded and small." I said slowly, sweating profusely. "Based on the size of normal people, a bar should be able to accommodate about a hundred people, right?"
In the lounge, I need to climb up on the edge of the bed to reach the ventilation fan, which means there is no problem with the floor height, it is at least three meters.
According to normal building specifications, a three-meter-high lounge, even if it is only five or six square meters, is sufficient for a weak broker to take a rest.
At this extraordinary moment, would I reflexively think that such a lounge is too cramped?
“If the room isn’t objectively crowded… then what is it crowded about?” I said, my voice tightening as I suddenly thought of more.
"Brother, when you forced everyone to go out for barbecue, you said two-thirds of them left, right?"
"Since you called for help to avoid possible invasion of fog, why did you only call some people? Did you subjectively give up on those people... or objectively, you couldn't call them?"
No, I thought, my heart almost beating in my throat. That's not a clear enough question. I should ask -
"Yes, this is what I have forgotten time and again due to cognitive bias caused by moving the mouse." Zhang Tian said, "Now, you remind me of it."
There was no reason for the one-third of people to shout out.
It's very simple, because they can't go out.
The room and the door were too small for those "people" whose cognition was gradually distorted. So small that in a blink of an eye, people who could originally enter and exit freely were suddenly trapped in the room and unable to move.
They are connecting with the part of themselves that was lost in the mist, and thus their forms are becoming immensely larger.
Maybe I was misled, or maybe even they were unaware of the fact that the fog did not only appear on the streets.
At the beginning, Xu You casually said that there was not originally so much dust in the town, and the dust increased after many guys were attacked.
And from my observation, the room was also covered with dust.
In other words, the fog has actually been floating in the room all the time, which causes the dust to accumulate quickly.
It’s just that the fog in the room is too thin, so thin that it is difficult to distinguish and there is no difference from the air.
Everyone who thinks they are protected by the room is actually still exposed to the pollution of the fog.
The reason why I had been feeling unnatural was precisely because during the discussion, the part about the confused guy pushing the door and walking into the fog actually concealed something that seemed fatal.
If they push the door open, won't the fog flow into the room?
Such a terrible thing was completely ignored and glossed over in their retelling of it to me, as if it didn't need to be considered at all.
It wasn't until I climbed out of the bar and was dragged into the broken three-wheeled vehicle that I was forced to be exposed in the fog. This time, I sat in the car safely.
The mist was absent between these two things and became benign and harmless.
It was the combination of these two events that made me instinctively feel conflicted.
But now it seems that if the fog was everywhere, it would be understandable.
Having been polluted by the fog, I have become accustomed to it, and even gradually connected with the part of myself in the fog... I have naturally lost my normal vigilance against the fog. At this time, being exposed to the fog again will only cause a little more pollution.
"Then why are the people who are actively attacked by the mist directly transformed into insect eggs?"
I shook my head, feeling even more uneasy. "Why are we gradually shifting our cognition? What is the difference between the two?"
Could it be that the fog is temporarily full, and our batch is just temporarily stored because it can't finish it?
"We're almost there." Zhang Tianyi suddenly said, "There's something in the small building on the platform. I need you to help take a look."
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