Flowerpot (1)
That was the end of our speculation about the "wall". Not to mention how many people couldn't sleep that night, we spent some time and quickly arranged the personnel and supplies for the trip. A few days later, we set off with the convoy at dawn.
Originally, Xu You was worried and wanted to dig out my small grocery store again and bring it to me. Considering the possibility of a "rat in the wall", he also planned to replace the walls with bulletproof thickened glass to ensure physical transparency.
But the guy who went there was holding a bucket of newly bought snack gift bags, squatting on the curb and calling us. He said with a bitter face that the store was not closed yet and we had to wait a little longer.
When I received the call, it was the night before we left and it was almost dark.
I finally pulled myself back from the weird things in the ghost story, and I was too lazy to criticize Xu You's bad idea. Thinking of my dismal business, I was surprised: "My store..."
The guy grinned, pointed to the full snack bucket in his arms, and replied to me with four powerful words:
“Business is booming.”
In an instant, spring returned to the earth, and I jumped from the gloomy and dark world of ghost stories back to "Congratulations on your prosperity", and couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Then I remembered that my shabby shop is no longer what it used to be. It has been entrusted to professionals for a long time. It seems that life has not let me down when I have been unlucky and evil all the way. A leisurely future of modest wealth and prosperity is just around the corner.
What else is there to dig at this point?
I thought to myself that when a person is in trouble, nothing works. Rather than destroying my hard-earned business for a little unreliable "safety", I might as well go and fight the ghost stories myself.
He waved his hand on the spot, asked the guy to reimburse his car fare and went home to rest early.
Xu You heard about it and came to see me specially. He seemed very confused in the middle of the night and asked me which was more important, my life or the store.
What I'm saying is, when everything is settled, I'm going to go back to live my life, okay?
After looking around, I picked up the sleeping Dongzai beside me and shook him awake. I said cheerfully, "I'll give you a snack tonight. Open two cans of food."
The little fat cat tried to open his eyes while sleepily, licked my palm in confusion, and his head slid down my arm bit by bit.
It was sleeping, and I picked up the cat and put it on my shoulder like a scarf. After opening the can, I shook the cat awake again in a wicked way.
The man and the cat looked at each other. The little fat cat looked at me in shock, slipped out of my hand again, fell to the ground with a "bang", and tiptoed away.
I didn't give up and kept shouting, "It's already open, why don't you consider it?"
The only result was a rather resentful and aggrieved cat's cry from the corner.
Well, it seems that Dongzai and I are not yet at the point where we are in sync with each other and can share joys and sorrows.
I shook my head regretfully, looking around the room with ill intent, wondering who I would pick on next.
Someone nearby couldn't stand it anymore, and kept looking at me, saying indignantly:
"Advisor, why don't you go to bed early? Why are you bothering the cat for no reason?"
The person who spoke was the old man who was in charge of restoring the map. His eyes were red from staying up late, and because of the intense fatigue, he looked several years older than the previous two days.
I have become familiar with him in the past two days, so I am not polite anymore. I said "oh" and lowered my head to mutter to myself in confusion:
"So I can sleep?"
The old man was stunned for a moment, then he realized what I was doing with my strange accent, and slapped his thigh in embarrassment:
"Forgot, forgot, this was not intentional... Counselor... You all should go and have a rest."
The person in the room responded to his words and fell asleep with a series of snoring sounds, which were like thunder and almost blew the ceiling off.
Don't blame me for making trouble. It's because ever since the conjecture of the "wall" came out, the old man's initial fear has subsided and he's like a chicken with blood injected. He kept asking us a lot of questions.
By the time we reacted, we realized that a group of guys and I had been staying up for two consecutive nights and were so exhausted that we were about to faint.
But seeing everyone yawning in the room, the old man was completely unaware. After asking a hundred thousand whys, he thought about checking the map he had redrawn again, saying that he needed to make some corrections to avoid any mistakes in the future.
My friends and I were on the verge of collapse, and looking at the old man's condition, we were afraid that he would not be able to hold on and something bad would happen to him.
I really couldn't persuade him, so I had to catch the little fat cat and take advantage of the situation.
The old man felt a little embarrassed by the snoring in the room. He finally stopped snoring and covered his face, saying, "I'm going to sleep too. Aren't we leaving tomorrow? Let's go."
I laughed to myself, but I didn't want to say much at this time, so as not to make the old man angry and embarrassed.
I watched the old man go to the next room. The snoring in the room was really deafening. I shrank my neck, picked up my son, and found another empty room to sleep for a while.
There was no conversation at that moment. By the early morning, everything else had been settled, so we all got up early and set off.
The Zhang family arranged a RV for me, which was neither too big nor too small, so I could rest and hold a small meeting on the road. I slept for a while in the car, and when I opened my eyes again, I felt much better. I looked out the window to see the road conditions.
This sight woke people up completely.
The scene outside was not eerie or desolate, on the contrary, as soon as I opened the window, all kinds of sounds and smells came in. The first thing I smelled was the aroma of the breakfast stalls, the sounds of hawking, laughing, and car horns intertwined, and people were flowing outside the cars. It was as if I had entered a strange county town, and it was very lively everywhere.
Seeing that I was still dumbfounded, a white-haired head popped out from another temporary compartment in the RV, holding a bag of hot fried dough sticks in his hand: "Are you awake?"
I was still in a dream, and quickly asked him what happened, wondering if he had taken the wrong path.
There had been heated discussions before, and I had a rough idea of the destination of this trip. Since there was no water and a dead lake, and there were large and complex architectural ruins where wanderers could hide and cause trouble, it would probably be some corner.
Even if I wake up and find them dragging me to a crater or a desert, I won't be too surprised.
But outside, there were so many people coming and going that our convoy was broken up in the ordinary flow of vehicles. The RV I was in was obviously driving very carefully because of the height and speed limits in the city. Everywhere I looked, it seemed more and more prosperous, which made me feel nervous.
The old man was still yawning, chewing the dough sticks with great relish, and said, "That's right, go this way."
My heart sank. What the hell? It involved strange stories and a bunch of crazy people. Why would the destination be in such a place where ordinary people are concentrated?
Seeing my grim expression, two guys who were on night duty came over. The leader smiled bitterly and said, "That's right. Our first stop is a residential building that is still in normal use. It's just around the corner from the overpass in front."
I really couldn't understand: "Old man, didn't you just ask me to carry that map? How can it have anything to do with this county town?"
If my brain is not wrong, the map given by Huang Yazi and the map she asked Huo Bingbei to draw should all depict a large old building complex. I was deeply impressed by the densely packed walls in the restored map, most of which were broken and incomplete, and the walls were stepped down layer by layer, like a solid vortex twisted into a knot by a huge force.
In my opinion, it would be more appropriate to hide this thing in a valley or desert.
And what does “first stop” mean?
I don't doubt the ability of these companions to do things, but I do have some doubts.
During the interrogation, someone knocked on the door and said that the traffic was too congested and asked me if I wanted to just get off the bus and walk for a while, as the destination was not far away anyway.
I calmed myself down and thought that I would come right away, but I felt even more bizarre.
After getting off the car, the team leader Zhang Jia came over to lead the way and told the driver that they could go to a small park not far away to park the RV and charge it.
I glanced around and noticed that Xu You and Zhang Tianyi were not there. When I asked, I found out that they had gone ahead to clear the way.
At this point, I had no more ideas and just followed Zhang Jia into the crowd.
It's a bit helpless to say, probably because I haven't been in a normal social environment for too long. When I passed by many unfamiliar faces, I shivered twice in an instant. I always felt that something wrong was lingering around me, and it seemed that there was unsafe everywhere.
Seeing that I suddenly became quiet and didn't talk, Zhang Jia was a little uncomfortable. He blocked the flow of people to lead the way for me and gave me a brief explanation.
It turned out that although the old man restored the rough draft of the map, the message left by Huang lacked a description of the surrounding environment. The terrain under the world is undulating and bizarre, and it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a corresponding one immediately.
But here's what happened: while he was still worrying about where to start, one of his subordinates reported a strange incident and asked if, according to custom, a few veterans could be assigned to take a look.
I was surprised, then I understood a little: "So this is a clue that just happened to be delivered to my door?"
The team leader sighed and said, "Watch the road." He pulled me behind him.
Then he continued, this strange incident was not big or small, and it started with a very strange suicide case.
This happened about a month ago, just downstairs of a residential building in front, two families were arguing over a trivial matter of water dripping from the balcony onto the quilt downstairs.
The older sister upstairs insisted that she had no conscience to water the flowers in the middle of the night. The student downstairs was so angry that his face turned red. He stammered that his quilt was still hanging on the balcony and a large area of it was soaked. The evidence was conclusive and the older sister had to apologize to him.
The eldest sister became anxious when she heard this, and rolled up her sleeves to try to break them apart. As the two of them were pushing and shoving, they suddenly heard a bang. Looking up, they saw a figure falling straight from a high altitude, and it was smashed into pieces just two steps in front of them, and blood all at once flowed to their feet.
The two men's minds went blank and they were all frightened.
It is said that when the man jumped down, there was a huge noise, not only the two unlucky people heard it, but in fact most of the corridor heard it. A resident on the fourth floor even leaned out to look, and he almost bumped into the face of the deceased who fell down. He didn't react and watched the person disappear. The shock was so great that he had a heart attack on the spot, and it almost caused the second tragedy.
What’s even more terrifying is that it is said that the man did not die immediately after he landed on the ground, and his extremely miserable wailing continued for a long time before stopping.
This incident caused panic among the people, but fortunately it was later determined to be suicide and not related to any major homicide case, which made everyone in the community feel relieved.
I felt something was wrong when I heard it: "First I heard something heavy falling, and then I looked up and saw someone falling? Isn't this order reversed?"
Moreover, the person who was frightened was on the fourth floor, which means that the accident happened at least on the fifth floor or above. At this height, two eyewitnesses who were at close range said that the deceased was broken into several pieces. He probably died in an instant and had no time to make any sound. How could he have been wailing for a long time?
Zhang Jia also said that the guy who reported it just felt that something was wrong here. This wasn't Conan, so there shouldn't be any murderous plots. The guys who were out patrolling everywhere were suspicious and would rather kill someone by mistake than let him go. When they encountered something that might be unusual, they were not afraid of doing useless work and would immediately rush to the local area to check.
But when the guy heard this anecdote, it had been a while since then, and many things could not be verified. There were many different opinions in the community, and the rumors were too exaggerated to be taken seriously.
The guy was careful and rented a house in the residential building. He lived quietly on the second floor for more than half a month. He also planted a row of flowers on the rooftop, including common roses, bougainvilleas and other flowers. He would climb upstairs to take care of them when he had nothing to do.
Running up and down, it is inevitable to bump into neighbors on other floors. The guy's surname is Lin, and he is very honest. He greets everyone with a smile and helps people with heavy parcels. After a while, everyone in the building got used to it and greeted him as "Old Lin" when they met.
Lao Lin felt that the time was right, so he started chatting with the people upstairs and downstairs, asking about the case of jumping off the building that day. On the same day, the Zhang family received the report from Lao Lin, and after some consideration, they decided to have two experienced people take a few new recruits to practice.
At this point, I don't know why I suddenly felt a little nervous.
It was really the element of jumping off the building that touched my sensitive nerves, and made me involuntarily think of that group of homeless people.
Besides, after two tests, the matter should have been resolved long ago. But we came here with a large force, which meant something went wrong and got involved in a bigger matter.
Well, it’s not entirely a bad thing to have some clues about the wanderers.
I consoled myself with this, but my heartbeat was still a little faster, so I asked Zhang Jia:
"What about Lao Lin? What fatal thing did he find out?"
Zhang Jia stopped and let out a long sigh.
"We're here. It's in this building."
"...As for Lao Lin, he can't come to report in person."
I looked up and saw that the old neighborhood was not too quiet in the early morning. In the distance, old men and women were doing aerobics and dancing to warm up. In one building, there was a tape recorder playing the Great Compassion Mantra, accompanied by the smell of sandalwood. The residential building in front of me had no more than seven floors, and the rooftop looked open without any obstruction.
But you can vaguely see a row of flower pots on the top floor, almost stuck on the edge of the balcony and about to fall off, which makes people feel very uncomfortable.
I felt that bad omen again and asked coldly, "Where's Lao Lin? What do you mean he can't come to report?"
"Dead. He jumped off the building three days ago." Zhang Jia looked up at the rooftop, with an incomprehensible fear on his face. "We checked it and it's confirmed to be suicide."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
