Doubts
When I woke up again, the reassuring smell of disinfectant made me realize that I was back at Zhang's Hospital.
I was dizzy and could vaguely hear many people coming and going, and many familiar or unfamiliar faces came to visit me. However, I was still in a semi-powerless state. I just looked at the concerned faces of the visitors and subconsciously nodded to indicate that I was fine.
After being in such a state of disarray for more than half a month, I gradually regained some vitality, and my brain, which had been as stiff as if it were filled with stones, finally recovered from the trauma of the shock.
Zhang Tianyi said that I was very lucky, as I was able to face the true nature of the prophet without having my brains boiled, and that I had accomplished my goal safely.
I just felt a slight pain in my head, as if two kilograms of salty white sand could pour out of my ears at any moment. Hearing this, I angrily said:
"Stop talking nonsense. I haven't settled the score with you yet."
My trip to the mines and stone forests was inexplicable, and I came back confused. I had a lot of complaints and problems waiting to be solved. But Zhang Tianyi, the unreliable thief, took advantage of my unconsciousness and tried to escape again. If I hadn't held his arm tightly when I fainted, I wouldn't have known where he ran away.
It is said that I was not in a clear mind when I was rescued. The first sentence I said was that I vaguely told my bank card password to my parents, the second sentence was that I entrusted the fat cat Dongzai to the broker's wife, and the third sentence was "Don't let him run away."
After saying that, he closed his eyes and looked like he was about to die, which scared the guys around him so much that they immediately blocked Zhang Tianyi and almost handcuffed him.
Fortunately, after an emergency checkup, the doctor who was treating me didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and waved his hand: “It’s okay, I fainted from hunger.”
After that, he gave me an IV bottle of glucose, and that night my complexion became rosy again.
As for the symptoms of mental confusion, after all, he had just returned from a strange story. It would be strange for him to be in high spirits. The doctor also said that he just needed to rest for a month or so to calm his brain.
When the team leader Zhang Jia recalled this incident to me, I was still quite unconvinced. I was suspicious and said, "I had gone through a lot of hardships on this trip. How could I just faint from hunger with all these injuries? I'm not that fragile. Don't tarnish my innocence out of thin air."
He also said that at the critical moment, I was brave enough to sacrifice my life and refused to give in, and I almost died together with the evil prophet. He asked the team leader to cut two more fruit plates for me because of my good style.
The team leader was stunned when he heard this, and immediately opened two cans of yellow peaches for me.
Zhang Tianyi just laughed at the side, as if he saw a silly boy, which was particularly speechless.
There is one more thing I have to mention. While we were talking, my cheap second uncle came to visit again with his staff. I was a little confused, thinking that he had come here four or five times today, why did he come again?
I guess it was because my look was too obvious, Xu You looked at me unhappily and stuffed something hot into my hand.
I was stunned, and then I heard a rather resentful cat's cry. I lowered my head and saw the round face of the little fat cat approaching me. I was immediately embarrassed, and quickly hugged the cat and petted it a few times.
It was only then that I noticed that Xu You was bringing people over one after another. It turned out that they were moving Dongzai's pots and bowls, as if he wanted me to stay in the ward for a few more months.
I felt a little embarrassed, but still wondered, "I'm already well, I'm fine, there's no need to waste a bed here."
Xu You sighed, sat down on the edge of my bed, and then stared into my eyes and said helplessly: "Even so, how can you let us feel at ease?"
I've known Xu You for so long, but this was the first time I heard him speak in this tone. I was stunned and speechless. When we looked at each other again, I was shocked to find that Xu You, who was still in his prime, had two eye-catching white hairs. My heart skipped a beat, and I felt ashamed.
He didn't scold me. Seeing that I looked uneasy, he just sighed again, patted my shoulder and said:
"Don't leave any last words in the future. Do you think it's fun to see the young die?"
Only then did I realize that the few unintentional words I said while drowsy had such a huge impact, and it really caused worry among my colleagues and elders.
A mixture of emotions filled his heart for a moment. He held Dongzai, whom he had almost entrusted to someone else, in his arms and nodded. His throat felt a little cold and he couldn't speak.
Xu You pointed at the guys following behind him.
"During the time you were recovering, I brought all the family members who had never seen you here and asked them to recognize your face. If you die outside someday, I will let everyone pay respect to your spirit in advance."
Hearing his serious words, team leader Zhang Jia immediately pulled him in front of me and shouted, "Not really, it's not the consultant's intention."
Xu You became even angrier after hearing this. He cursed in a low voice, then raised his eyelids and stared at Zhang Tianyi coldly.
"Yes, my good-for-nothing nephew is always bullying others and doesn't know how high the heaven is or how deep the earth is. But he can't stand the ulterior motives of some people."
Only then did I realize that Xu You came here today for Zhang Tianyi.
Originally, Xu You was a person who was cruel and ruthless, but he would not easily get angry with others. In the past, it could be seen that he was actually very cautious about Zhang Tianyi. Even if he had some hidden anger, he would remain indifferent and maintain his shrewdness.
Seeing that he was really going to get angry, my eyelids jumped, and I thought to myself, is there something I don't know that caused such a mess? If I hadn't been really badly tricked at the moment of life and death, Xu You would never be so shocked and angry.
But I also know that Zhang Tianyi is my blood relative and has protected me a lot along the way. Although he never wanted others, including the Zhang family, to know about our relationship, he would never hurt me.
There must be some misunderstanding here.
He immediately took a deep breath and tried to mediate.
Zhang Tianyi smiled, not taking it too seriously, and said to me:
"Ranzi, you may not know how scary it was when you were first rescued."
I frowned, and for some reason my heart skipped a beat. I was silent for a moment, then I held Xu You's shoulders and said slowly:
"Then let's talk it out clearly."
I believe everyone in the room could see my expression at this moment, which was absolutely resolute and calm.
I had to make it clear that I wasn't acting on impulse.
The room was silent for about a minute or two. Finally, it was the team leader Zhang Jia who broke the stagnant atmosphere and told me in detail what happened that day.
He first asked me if I remembered how I got involved in this strange story.
I shook my head, then nodded. I had nothing to hide, so I confessed that I had made an appointment with the fake people in the game to go to the Stone Forest Mine Cave to seek some secrets. However, an accident happened when we met at Zhang's Hospital, causing me to lose some of my memory, so I didn't know much about the experience of the departure.
Before I could talk about my specific experience in the stone forest, the team leader looked grim and shook his head repeatedly.
I felt something was wrong and asked him what was wrong.
He asked me another question, saying that the Zhang family's territory should be strictly guarded, so how could I be kidnapped under the eyes of the Zhang family and taken to a deserted village and stone forest thousands of miles away. How could the Zhang family not come when I was on an adventure?
I was a little nervous about the question, so I asked him to speak frankly.
As a result, Zhang Jia’s first sentence was beyond my expectation.
He said that I did not disappear from Zhangjia Hospital or go to Shilin, but had always been in the reception room of Zhangjia Hospital.
It was also in that living room that I was rescued.
Zhang, the guy in charge of security, noticed that I had not appeared in the reception room for a whole day, so he broke into the room and found me lying in a pool of smelly black water. The walls of the entire reception room were covered with dark red leeches, and the patterns on their backs were a very dangerous and strange bright yellow. The red and yellow alternated to form a very huge picture.
When the door was opened, the leeches were dead and fell down with a crackling sound, and all dissolved in the black water.
The guy was so shocked that his hands and feet were numb. He rushed forward and saw that I had my eyes tightly closed. My body was covered with wounds drawn by the smelly black water, so realistic that they seemed to be drawn into my bones.
There was also a piece of tight human skin wrapped around my body that kept shrinking. At first glance, it looked eerie and had all the facial features of a child who had been disemboweled.
As for Zhang Tianyi, he was sitting next to me, tapping the floor with his fingers absentmindedly, and looking down from time to time, as if waiting to see whether I was dead or not.
The guy was horrified and immediately shouted for help. At the same time, he made up his mind and risked his life to come up and save me.
As a result, he let out a muffled groan, and before he could react, the world turned upside down and he was knocked to the ground by Zhang Tianyi.
Zhang Tianyi pressed his head to the ground and said with a half-smile, "How about waiting a while? He's not dead yet. No one should disturb him now."
Zhang Jia only said a few words, but I could imagine how thrilling it was at that time, and my heart couldn't help but beat faster.
Zhang Tianyi said nothing, patiently waiting for the team leader to finish speaking, then he smiled and looked at me:
"Did you understand?"
I thought about it seriously, slapped my face, still feeling a lingering fear, and looked at him helplessly: "I barely understood. You didn't explain this clearly to everyone, no wonder everyone is on guard against you."
The team leader looked back and forth between us, and seeing that I didn't seem to be angry, he was a little confused:
"What?"
Xu You's gaze shifted to me with some surprise.
I sorted out my thoughts and realized that I couldn't sell the lawsuit at this time, so I said something to keep calm and asked them to listen to what I encountered in the mine.
The prophet, the quarrying map, the nameplate of the Foghorn Town Hospital, Wang Ping, and all the things about the goddess and the mine.
I have no idea how many times I have regurgitated this information in my mind. It comes out so smoothly now, almost like it flows out of my mind without me having to think about it.
The more they listened, the more solemn their expressions became. They finally got to the point where I was knocked unconscious by Zhang Tianyi under the sky crack. I felt a little dry in the mouth, so I drank a glass of warm water first.
My throat was still smoking, so I said wait, drank two glasses of water in one breath, and then explained:
"After I woke up, there was actually a question that I couldn't figure out. What exactly is that invisible giant corpse in the mine, and why is it imprisoned in the prophet's body?"
I only now have the answer to this question.
In all past experiences, no matter which ghost story it was, the rules had to be followed without exception.
In the Stone Forest Mine, one must not reveal oneself or have one's identity confirmed, otherwise one will be trapped to death; once revealed, one will be cut in half by the invisible canvas the moment one escapes from the quarry, or be eaten by the prophet, parasitized by those hair-like ink marks, and turned into a monster or a pile of broken limbs and white dust.
This set of rules also applies to prophets.
At this point, Xu You's facial muscles twitched.
"You mean... the prophet, like the pseudo-people on it that serve as predators, also has a cognitive barrier."
"Yes, the prophet has also been missing a very important self-identity."
I felt a little emotional, and whispered, "Under the rule of the ghost story, the prophet and the fake person are both trapped in front of an extremely simple truth that they can never realize, so they keep pursuing it but are doomed to fail."
"The huge corpse trapped by it is none other than the Prophet himself."
This is the key issue that I have always felt vaguely uncomfortable with, but I have never been able to remember it as I was assimilated into the serious pollution of the Prophet.
This truth, which could never be known to a prophet, saved my life.
In fact, the original deduction of the goddess was not wrong. The prophet was waiting for death in endless decay. But this conclusion and the information that was transferred to me were twelve years ago. In the past twelve years, the prophet has died silently in decay and hunger.
Its final roar during its struggle must have been destined to be silent and unheard by anyone.
But perhaps it was fortunate, perhaps it was unfortunate, those strict rules of identity recognition not only deceived and shackled the prey that entered the quarry, but also allowed the prophet to deceive himself in the face of death.
Because of the "unknowable", the prophet forever forgot the fact that he was dead.
Just like Bi Gan, whose heart was cut out, he acted like a normal person until the old woman selling vegetables pointed out that "a man cannot live without a heart" and then he screamed and fell to the ground and died. The prophet was in the same situation as Bi Gan, whose heart was cut out.
Therefore, although only an unwilling corpse remains, its remains still run the original hunting desire, hoping to continue to live in self-deception, and to carry out various abnormal transformations on the organs in its body that have long been corrupted.
But it was indeed dead and rotten, so the predation attempt had always failed. This was the bottom-level truth that I had not been completely devoured, and it was also the fundamental reason why its digestive organs continued to rot and turn into transparent water during those dripping events.
The prophet could not understand this, so he could only avoid it in deceiving me, which made me feel that something was wrong.
I think Zhang Tianyi must have discovered the prophet's abnormality when he was saving me.
He was not chosen by the prophet as food to be assimilated, and therefore was not blocked by the barrier of knowledge and insight. He soon discovered the prophet's tragic end, and knew that he only had to wait quietly for the prophet to completely perish in his unknowing and futile struggle.
Until then, all he has to do is watch out for preventing me and the Prophet from discovering this.
In fact, the prophet did burn his boats in an attempt to assimilate with me and become "Xu Ranxing".
It even devoured the huge corpse that it had trapped, and abandoned and destroyed the deformed hunting organs that it had transformed with years of hard work. It let the mandrills die in the fire, staring blankly at the moon, and also lifted up the bloody heads of the pseudo-people.
In order to completely transform into Xu Ranxing, the prophet destroyed and abandoned everything about his existence. Even his original state of "not knowing that he was dead" was destroyed.
There was nothing wrong with its original plan to assimilate with me, use my identity to confuse people and cheat the rules, and escape on my behalf. As a top predator, this instinct to be at ease in desperate situations is enough to scare me.
It's a pity that it's all too late, twelve years too late. It's too late because it died early.
In mythology, the giant serpent of creation bites its own tail and devours itself, symbolizing endless greed and cycle.
But the prophet is not a god after all, but just a strange rule. Even to the cold rules running at the bottom, the prophet may be like a pseudo-human, just a representation organ that seems to exist.
Therefore, from the moment it completely eats itself, it is destroyed by its own strong desire to survive.
"I escaped because the prophet was deceived by his own rules and perished before he could completely assimilate and replace me, right?"
I asked Zhang Tianyi, and thought of those fake people, who were also moths to a flame and died in the final scam. I felt sincere sadness and irony.
Zhang Tian nodded and smiled again:
"Speaking of which, I can finally talk about the scene where you were trapped and escaped in the living room."
I looked at him and felt a headache. I glanced again and found that Xu You and Zhang Jia's faces looked ugly again.
Well, I thought to myself, it’s because we were born from the same mother, I really owe him.
I gave him a look, telling him not to cause trouble and to wait for the right moment to run away.
He continued:
"The wounds on my body eventually turned into ink marks, including the human skin that wrapped me. Is that the last remnant of the prophet?"
Zhang Tianyi sighed.
"Yes, after all, it has long been nothing but a rotten picture."
"You can say you have entered a perverse pirated version of Peach Blossom Spring and then fell out of a tattered painting."
"Those injuries and parasitic pollution are like trees without roots and water without sources. After the prophet's originally false existence disappeared, naturally only some scattered and rotten ink stains remained on you."
"All I did was wake you up from the painting without completely waking the prophet up from his nightmare. The crack in the sky is just a tear in the canvas."
It was rare for him to speak so clearly, so I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to smooth things over:
"Okay, now that we have made things clear, he stopped them because he was afraid of waking up the prophet and causing him to violently counterattack."
"I was indeed rescued, so isn't that all right?"
Xu You didn't buy my trick and said stiffly:
"But those people who were hiding in the dark were brought in by Zhang Tianyi after he had a connection and made a promise. You were trapped in the living room by the quarrying map, which was also related to him."
"The Stone Forest Mine is more than a thousand miles away from here. If he hadn't been playing tricks on you, how could you have been attacked and nearly died in the reception room of our own hospital?"
I lowered my head and thought to myself, it's over. My second uncle is so smart this time. This time I really can't excuse my troublesome brother.
Or we should just say it out loud. He is my brother and it’s not a big deal. It’s not like Xu You will acknowledge another nephew, so it shouldn’t matter.
After all, isn't he suspicious because he is an "outsider"?
As I thought about it, I gave him another tentative look and asked him if he wanted to tell me.
In the end, all the tacit understanding and cooperation were bullshit. I was almost pissed off when I heard him say:
“Okay, I admit it.
To put it simply, the Stone Forest Mine had long been sealed underground. I was the one who tricked all the fake people who were playing hide-and-seek into coming here, and then dug out the incomplete copy of the quarrying map, brought it to the reception room, induced the prophet to operate, and caused all the people in the reception room to be swallowed up by the quarrying map.
If your consultant had been unlucky, he would be gone now."
The more he talked, the more outrageous it became. I almost got angry and wondered why he was still arguing with me. How could he be so ridiculous?
"Xu Ranxing, I won't lie, you know."
"……What did you say?"
"I brought the quarrying map. I was the one who arranged for you to be involved this time."
I was stunned, and looked at him with an "ah". I felt like I had heard it wrong.
When my eyes met his, I found that there was no smile on his face and he was actually serious.
My thoughts suddenly slowed down, I opened my mouth and looked at him in confusion.
After a while, in the overly silent and solemn atmosphere, I don't know when Xu You and Zhang Jia had stopped me behind them.
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