Greed (lower) (revision)
Before Zhang Tian started speaking, Dr. Hu put down the crushed coffee cup in his hand and buttoned up his sleeves neatly.
"Stop the car." She said seriously, "I don't care what grudges you have. Stop the car now and let all my patients get off."
I was a little surprised. She didn't look at me, but slowly straightened her back and said, "The topic you are talking about is too dangerous. I don't think my patients need to listen to it."
While she was speaking, she had already stood up. She had to half-bend over due to the height issue in the van, which looked a bit funny, but her attitude was firm. She used herself to block all the people with limited mobility in wheelchairs.
Both Xu You and Zhang Jia were stunned at this moment.
Zhang Jia shouted, "Doctor Hu, there's actually nothing wrong with us. The worst that can happen is..." He was interrupted before he could finish his words.
"I know. Each of you is an expert and has your own ideas. It's none of my business." Doctor Hu said calmly, his eyebrows raised. "But I don't care about that. I'm just an attending physician. I want my patients to arrive safely and not miss the expert's flying surgery. I stayed up for two nights to make that appointment."
"What about you?"
Sanyi suddenly interrupted, with a half-smile, "Are you leaving too?"
"I'll stay." Dr. Hu answered simply, "The consultant is also my patient. I haven't forgotten."
Sanyi said, "You stay to take care of Xu Ranxing?"
"No. I mean, I'm staying alone."
Dr. Hu was not in a good mood and said something that none of us expected. "If you just want to talk to the consultant about something important, there is no need to keep the consultant in the car to talk to you face to face."
She held out her hand to me. "Give me the phone. I'll open a video call for you to keep in touch. After you're all far away, you can listen to the rest of the story through this phone. Consultant, stay away." She quickly glanced at Zhang Tianyi, who looked exactly like Sanyi, and said without disguising, "I don't believe you."
After answering these questions without hesitation, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said nervously:
"I know you may not agree to my proposal... I'm a civilian and I don't know how to fight. Come on, if you two want to fight, please don't let me die too ugly. My colleagues will be inconvenient to sew later."
In the car, several men looked at each other without laughing. They all blushed a little because of this unexpected scene.
After a while, Xu You sighed, "Only at the critical moment can we know what a great hero's true character is. We who just listened to the story in silence seemed to be idiots." He shook his head and became serious, "Doctor Hu is thoughtful, but if anyone wants to stay, I'll be the one to stay."
Seeing that they were about to argue, I sighed inwardly, patted my stiff cheeks, and stopped the others from saying the following:
"Brother, since this is a family matter, let's talk about it behind closed doors. Doctor Hu is right. We shouldn't let them hear about this anymore."
Speaking of which, this scene is somewhat familiar, as if I had said the same thing when I kicked the security guard Brother Li out of the car, and then embarked on this embarrassing road of no return.
I sighed and smiled. Zhang Tian nodded slightly and said seriously, "That makes sense. We should be polite." He really stopped the car.
Five minutes later, Zhang Tianyi knocked Dr. Hu unconscious, kicked Xu You and the others' wheelchairs out of the car one by one, and ignored the glares of the gangsters.
Fang Ao, who had been sleeping soundly the whole time and had just woken up, was even more confused and asked in confusion: "Did the car overturn? Are there little monsters?"
I burst out laughing, waved to Fang Ao and Huo, who was also confused, said let's get back to the conversation, and hung up Yan Mo's video call.
After doing all this, I miraculously felt relaxed.
That's good too. When we first set out on this road, helicopters and convoys led the way, which was extremely arrogant and not in line with the new era style of hard work and simplicity. Now that we're going home, it's time to return to basics.
I sat down on the floor of the carriage, hugging the cat who was still burping (now I think, the cat kept burping because it was nervous), and told me, whatever secrets of the universe or the sea of hatred and love, just bring it to me, I can bear it. At worst, Dongzai and I will die together for love.
This time Sanyi didn't act sarcastic. Zhang Tianyi and I thought he was talking too much and didn't listen to our advice, so we taped his mouth.
The three of them stared at each other for a moment, and after a moment, Zhang Tianyi leisurely honked the horn and started the car again.
As the wind slowly poured in from the window, Zhang Tianyi said to me casually:
"Ranzi, do you remember I said that I once tried to make a wish to the banyan tree to see Pingping, but failed."
"That damn thing ignored me and directly rejected my wish."
I remember it. God knows how this bastard could be so indifferent in front of the banyan tree.
I looked at Sanyi. He had a cold face and shook his head reluctantly, which meant that his wish had failed as well.
My mentality has been adjusted very well now. I have a kind of broken jar and am prepared to let Sanyi stab me twice in the back at worst. I moved forward and said, "What do you mean? Has any of you done something immoral and got caught, and got blocked by Rongshu? You can't blame me for that, right?" I nudged and squeezed to the middle of the two seats.
Zhang Tianyi looked at the road ahead, adjusting the steering wheel from time to time, with a strange expression on his face.
"No, I-we just can't see Pingping."
I said oh, and after a while, I froze, white sweat broke out on my body, and my breathing quickened.
"Begin with what?"
"Always."
I might be crazy. I touched my forehead carefully and found that I didn't have a fever. I tugged off the tape on Sanyi's mouth and asked, "Am I hallucinating?"
Sanyi also looked at me with strange eyes. At this moment, I felt like a bucket of cold water was poured on my head. I suddenly realized why Zhang Tianyi had warned Sanyi so mercilessly not to take action.
In the face of this secret that is about to unfold, if the companions in the car are still there, Sanyi will not allow anyone to hear the truth.
Wait, wait, I covered my face. What do you mean I can't see Ping Ping? Ping Ping is real.
This is not just my own imagination or nonsense, nor is it the pathetic story of a mentally ill person making up a one-man show. Too many people have personally proven that they have actually had encounters with Pingping.
Zhang Tianyi asked again, "Do you remember that Xiao Yu and the college student couple gave you a glass of water?"
"That cup of apple cider vinegar?" I was a little upset. What was he talking about? Why did he ask such a random question? "I drank it. It's fine."
"That's not apple cider vinegar." Sanyi said strangely, "Your grocery store has never stocked this stuff. You just occasionally heard people mention that it is sour. So you don't know that apple cider vinegar is usually light yellow or light green."
“……”My language ability deteriorated again and I was unable to speak for a long time.
Isn't apple cider vinegar colorless? Sanyi shouldn't be fooling me at this juncture.
Then maybe I just made a mistake and said something wrong; maybe it was just a glass of plain water, and I was too nervous and felt a little acid reflux no matter what I drank; maybe the cup had originally contained a carbonated drink and was not cleaned properly, maybe... it's no big deal.
But the problem is, when I said that the transparent thing was apple cider vinegar, no one, whether Xu You or anyone else, objected or showed any surprise. It was as if no one knew the real apple cider vinegar.
This is also agreed upon by more than one person, it is impossible for me to make it up unilaterally.
Zhang Tian asked again and again, "Do you remember what the names of the Zhang guys you've come into contact with were all? I'm not talking about code names. Think about it, besides the names that you voluntarily told you, have you ever asked for any real names yourself?"
I froze, "I don't know."
Does Fang Ao count? This was asked by Yan Mo and I when we were joking, but Fang Ao is also a pseudonym. All the other names I know seem to have been introduced by the other party first and told to me. Even the enemy is the same.
If they don't tell me, I won't ask. In my heart, I will just call them "so-and-so fellow" or give them a nickname like "Tai Zai" so that they can adapt to my habits.
In fact, unless I am told by someone, or unless I encounter something serious related to a ghost story and have to know it passively, I never take the initiative to care about other people's identities, names, or past.
For so long, I never asked: I am already a consultant, so apart from Xu You, Yan Mo, and the brokers, who are the rest of the senior people in the Zhang family, where are they, and why don't they ever come to see me.
Also, do I really not remember the name of the "Jia Er" who broke into the house back then? Or did San Yi, who was disguising his identity at that time, not tell me, and I never asked, so I don't even know what pseudonym he used at that time?
"Where is your past?"
Zhang Tianyi's words were like a soul-stirring sound, coming closer and closer to me, leaving me no room to escape and making it hard for me to breathe.
"Except for the Rongxing community where you lived, I told you about Hongyan Village, and the Wuhao Town stop sign of the Nian family was the one that Nian Ziqing accidentally brought you to."
"Then tell me, what is the name of the tour group that Gao Rui's mother is in, and where is it? What is the specific name of the valley where the comb jellies are? What is the name of the community where the banyan trees sprouted that you just visited? Which county and road is it on, and what is the house number? Where are the different Zhang's hospitals that you have stayed in located?"
"These major events you have experienced, in what year, month, time, Monday or Friday did they happen?"
I felt like I was struck by lightning.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
Those names, places, hours, minutes, and seconds all exist in reality, and I can find out by simply asking someone around me. But if no one tells me, I won't ask, look, listen, or care, and I won't invest any energy or emotion in them.
I never take the initiative to contact strangers or make friends. Before I met the Zhang family, I only had one acquaintance, the security guard Li Ge. All my close companions came towards me on their own initiative, which led to the subsequent fate.
...Am I too cold and antisocial at heart, indifferent to everything, and just pretending to be a decent person, trying my best to appear gentle and curious?
I was shaking all over, and my voice was no longer my own. "What's going on? Why have I never noticed it?"
Confusion struck me like thunder, reminding me cruelly that I have always been like this, trying not to establish connections with the world unless necessary.
This can't be said to be a natural limitation of personality, it's more like...
——Like rules I must follow.
"What am I? Is there something wrong with me? Will my cognition affect and pollute other people?" I said, and suddenly everything seemed so ridiculous and strange. "If I lose control, will Sanyi kill me for the sake of world peace?"
Countless absurd possibilities exploded in my mind. I touched my face and thought, what the hell? I have been an ordinary person all my life. Am I going to become Ultraman and become the mastermind behind the scenes that even ghost stories admire?
But please don't tell me that the force that Yan Mo kept silent about and was forced to mention vaguely, which was more domineering and brutal than the banyan tree, was me.
Then a scourge like me can be taken away and cremated right now. The world can be destroyed.
The fear was growing like a balloon. I was thinking wildly and couldn't help but think of Ding Jiu who jumped off a tall building.
He told me that time is a lie.
Did I hear him wrong? Could he actually have said, “The world is a fraud”?
"...The Truman Show? Are all of you acting together to deceive me? This can't be the routine of a domestic horror movie. Am I crazy or dreaming?"
"Could it be that I am the last god in the world?"
I kept asking, but in my heart I said that these should not be the correct answers because they were too stupid and insulting.
Here our ancestors are struggling to survive, while over there there is an Ultraman dancing the yangge. That's not fair.
"Don't worry, you're not that unique." Zhang Tianyi smiled and touched my forehead. "It would be nice if that were the case."
Yes, my mouth was full of bitterness and I smiled dryly, thinking that it would be nice if it could be like that.
"Let's start from the beginning." Zhang Tianyi sighed, looked at Sanyi with a cold face, waiting for this stubborn donkey to speak, and touched the back of his head in distress, as if muttering that naughty children are difficult to raise.
"Ranzi, you should know by now that before we were born, countless people had explored strange stories and made various efforts."
I tried to calm myself down and act as a supporting actor: "So?"
"The banyan tree is not the only attempt made by previous people."
Sanyi finally answered, "Hongyan Village worships the Goddess and the comb jellyfish; the fake people pursue and create artificial strange stories; the wanderers throw themselves into the banyan tree; the Nian family imprisoned and deceived the mouse... What do you think of these actions?"
I thought about it and said: "The ambition may be wild, but the strategy is still cautious enough and has sufficient restrictions."
So what did the Zhang family do in this regard? In my impression, it seems that they did nothing at all. They seemed harmless, cute and innocent.
"The Zhang family didn't make it in time. Just like when they took over the Rat Moving Underground Palace from the Nian family, they didn't know whose mission they took over, and all their energy was put into controlling and cleaning up the mess left by their predecessors."
"It's hard to tell who exactly that person was, but Nian Huairen has been pursuing that plan for many years, so I know a little bit about it."
At this moment, Sanyi was like a worm in my stomach. He was now confessing his secret so frankly that I even suspected that he would say gloomily and cheerfully next, "After hearing the secret, you will die. The dead cannot know any secret."
"To put it simply, those people hope to obtain the most primitive power from the moving rat. It is not a wish like the banyan tree, which is full of pitfalls and does not require paying such a harsh price."
"—they want their wishes to come true directly and without restriction."
I say, are these people mentally ill? How could they have such a good thing? Are these vagrants asking for trouble by being hanged one by one?
Now even Sanyi smiled helplessly.
I really wanted to say something serious, because you were going to stab me later, but I held back from saying any trash talk and listened to Zhang Tian, "The ultimate goal of that plan is to hold a collective wish-making event so that all the lost participants can return to their homeland."
"However, they did not leave this world. Instead, they used the power of their wishes to pollute and distort this world, transforming it into the old home in their minds."
"In order not to forget their long-cherished wish, they gave this plan a name. It's called the Yu Ren Blue Star Project."
Sanyi went on to say that from some clues that Nian Huairen had found, that group of people should have split from the original wanderers, and were excluded as heretics because of their different ideologies.
By the way, he corrected them, saying that the wanderers were probably not all willing to hang themselves, and most of them knew only a little about the banyan tree, and just followed the instructions of the core personnel. For example, the group of people who went out to search for Huangya and attacked Hongyan Village would not have been easily scared away by the corpses of their companions and Zhang Tianyi.
But, Yu Ren’s Blue Star Project?
I muttered to myself, and the back of my head began to ache: "Blue Star Project... is it going to happen?"
Xu, Blue Star?
"This is a plan that has completely failed and lost control. Because of the strict restrictions on the banyan tree, it was still able to achieve a certain degree of equal exchange. However, the wish-fulfillment program they directly introduced has no restrictions at all. It is not an exchange, but a reward that can be moved at will."
Sanyi said that at the moment when the large-scale prayer to Yishu was launched, the altar collapsed, and the promises from Yishu spread out indiscriminately, contaminating more than 100,000 newborn babies in almost an instant.
Among them, some babies who were completely ignorant of strange stories survived; some powers sank and lay dormant, and only emerged after decades or even hundreds of years, or after being passed on and parasitized for many generations, and perhaps will never be triggered in a lifetime.
The bad news is that the so-called "holy child" who possesses the power to make wishes come true is completely different from what those people imagine. It is not a pure machine that can make wishes at will with a blank piece of paper.
Because babies are completely unable to control their own thoughts, cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, and don't even understand what life and death are.
Because their personality and cognition have not yet been properly established, newborns contaminated by transplanted rats will randomly absorb information around them and believe that it is real, creating countless exaggerated and illogical distortions.
Before they make a wish or listen to a wish, they will be killed by their own infinitely divergent subconscious.
“But there have been exceptions.”
Zhang Tianyi said, "Looking at this long period of time, only a few babies survived. The power of the migrating rats to make their wishes come true has been latently passed down through generations, and when it was activated in them, it only lasted for a short time. It was not short enough for them to gain any extraordinary power, nor was it enough to kill themselves or the mother."
"In order to control these babies and make them grow up safely as normal humans without becoming deformed into any alien species, the ancestors who inherited this responsibility, including the Zhang family, paid a heavy price. It was like putting out a forest fire with their own bodies. They were completely annihilated, and even the current Zhang family members have forgotten their existence."
"Of course, the Zhang family has not hidden anything from you. The members you have seen and the ones they have mobilized for you are all they have at the moment. The others have become the price one after another many years ago and have also been paid."
Zhang Tianyi said this, and finally said the most important sentence:
"All these children have the same name, Blue Star, due to some unknown force."
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