Hidden third party
Although I was just copying on my hands, as Huang Yazi perfected the pattern, I was immediately awakened to a strong and strange sense of familiarity.
Seeing that I looked strange, Huang Yazi paused, a little uneasy:
"Counselor? What's wrong with you? Is-is there something wrong?"
I didn't have time to answer him. I just felt my heart jump up to my throat and suddenly tightened my right palm. Almost subconsciously, I raised my other hand, which was still tightly holding the blood-colored jade leech that fell out of the walkie-talkie.
So that's how it is, a voice in my heart shouted, everything is connected.
Huang Yazi was terrified: "Advisor, what on earth are you thinking of?"
I was in a state of confusion. I stood up, pushed the door and walked out. The guy I called to watch the door followed me immediately. As I walked, I took out my cell phone, scrolled through the contacts several times, gritted my teeth and called the security guard, Brother Li.
The other end was obviously busy, and the phone rang for more than a minute before it was picked up. Before Brother Li could speak, I said:
"I have a pattern. Could you help me identify it and tell me what it looks like?"
I took several pictures of the "yellow buds" in succession.
Brother Li probably just got off work and was going back to the security dormitory to catch up on some sleep, so his voice was still sleepy and dazed.
As an ordinary person standing outside the situation, he knew nothing about everything and had no preconceived perspective. When he picked up the phone, he wondered why a busy man like you thought of contacting him. The guy next door and I are helping to look after your shop, and everything is fine.
Then he muttered, took a look, and said casually:
"Wow, it's made of jade. It looks very expensive."
"Isn't this just a banyan leaf that hasn't unfolded?"
"Hello? Xiao Xu? Hello?"
I was walking so fast, and when I heard these words that completely confirmed my guess, I almost lost my mind and bumped into the wall.
Brother Li called me a few more times in confusion, and I managed to calm down. I excused myself to him, asked him to talk another day, and hung up the phone.
In my heart I cursed myself for being an idiot. Apart from the different colors, the banyan tree's oval or ovate leaves are irregularly curled up before they unfold, like tubes or worms. Isn't that the look of a yellow bud jade carving?
After many twists and turns, the mysterious "insect" that was almost worshipped by that group of people finally returned to the banyan tree and the lake.
Goddess, Divine Concubine, I should have thought of it earlier, how could there be no connection between them.
The lake, which can accommodate both comb jellyfish and banyan trees, has been silently providing nutrients and a stage for the strange stories of fighting and confrontation.
As someone who experienced it firsthand, I was actually blinded by the fact that I only saw the products growing and spreading in the water, but ignored the weirdness of the lake itself.
Who were that group of people? When did they realize that something was wrong with the lake? Why hadn't the Zhang family, the Nian family, or the people playing hide-and-seek been aware of their existence before that?
While I was daydreaming, my cell phone vibrated. It turned out to be Brother Li calling me back.
I looked at the lit screen and suddenly had a strange feeling. I felt that the person on the other end of the phone was definitely not Brother Li whom I had just talked to.
After hesitating for a second, Huang Yazi had already caught up with me and looked at me anxiously and worriedly.
I calmed myself down, told him not to follow me, and walked quickly to the nearest window, holding the phone. Before I picked up the phone, Brother Li had already hung up, as if he was simply reminding me to check my phone.
I frowned, feeling a little annoyed as I was worried. Just as I was about to ask my buddy to check what happened to Brother Li, an unexpected message popped up on the screen.
It turned out to be Zhang Tianyi’s.
"I have something to tell you. I'll tell you tonight."
This guy just slipped away, and I thought he would hide in a corner for a month to lick his wounds, but I didn't expect that he would dare to come back and stay here openly.
I stared at the screen for a long time and suddenly got furious. I found Zhang Tianyi's small account without a profile picture and started cursing at him.
Cursing aside, I do have endless questions to ask him.
I was so anxious that I fell asleep in the new ward which was temporarily cleaned up at night. When the moon was high in the sky, I heard a noise outside the window and someone came in.
I didn't turn on the lights for fear of disturbing others. In the dim light, I couldn't see clearly how serious Zhang Tianyi's injuries were or how he was being treated. The relationship between them was awkward, and for a moment I didn't know where to start.
It was Zhang Tianyi who made a gesture and asked me to stand by the window together.
I couldn't hold my breath and asked:
"Who are those people?"
Zhang Tian smiled, touched the dust on the window sill, looked up at the starry sky, and seemed intoxicated.
He asked me in a chatty tone, pointing to the sky:
"Tell me, if we take a spaceship and start wandering far away from the earth, after a long enough time, will we still remember this place?"
I held back my impatience, knowing that he must have some important clues to share when he came over so late at night. I tried to hold back my temper, thought for a moment and answered:
"Yes, at least I will remember where I came from."
Zhang Tian said, "Oh!" and asked again:
"Then do you think that by that time, this world and this starry sky will still remember us?"
I turned my head slowly and said suspiciously, "You have something else to say." I still had some dissatisfaction and resentment, "Shao Pin, what else are you hiding?"
Zhang Tianyi smiled, not wanting to pay attention to me, "I told you."
How could I be dismissed so perfunctorily? I got angry after a few words and simply took out a pen and paper from under the bed. With the help of the faint moonlight, I sneered and said, "What are you talking about? Help me recall it again and I'll write it down. I'll decide whether it's worth it or not."
He looked at me helplessly and actually said okay, letting me take my notes.
"I told you in the ward that twelve years ago, a pneumoconiosis patient accidentally entered the stone forest and escaped from the mine..."
"What?" I was stunned.
"Twelve years ago, there was a patient with pneumoconiosis."
"--What?"
Zhang Tian sighed, lay lazily and said nothing.
I was full of complaints and wanted to ask him why he hadn't started the conversation yet, but when I saw his unpredictable expression, I felt like something was wrong.
Wait, isn’t it that I didn’t hear it, and isn’t it that he didn’t say it?
I subconsciously glanced at the paper and pen in my hand. Two clear lines of handwriting were clearly written and presented there.
A strange thing happened.
I know that I heard a certain sentence, understood it, and wrote it down. But looking at those two lines of words, I couldn't feel the meaning of the sentence at all, and it seemed that I was constantly forgetting its existence.
An inadvertent but horrifying picture flashed through my mind. Yes, Zhang Tianyi did bring up some topic in the ward during the day. All those horrifying incidents about "medicine" and miners were just a lead-in to start the topic.
It was clearly only less than half a day ago, but why did I only vaguely remember it now, as if this happened?
"Why?" I felt my throat was a little dry, "Who am I...?"
"It has nothing to do with you." Zhang Tianyi said calmly, "It's because the person involved in this matter is special."
I was puzzled. Zhang Tianyi's tone was very vague. He stared at the sky and said, "I should have mentioned to you that some people are easy to get lost. The closer they are to ghost stories, the more likely they are to become bait thrown by the moving mouse to other worlds."
I still remember this, I gathered myself, "Does [getting lost] have any side effects?"
"Yes," Zhang Tianyi answered calmly, "Let me ask you a question. What do you think is the sign of a person's death in the secular sense?"
"Physical death, plus the forgetting of those around you," I answered. "When both oneself and social relationships disappear, one is dead in every sense of the word."
Zhang Tian nodded and raised his hand to make a water skipping motion:
"You see, as bait thrown out, the lost person will be constantly expelled from the new world. Even if he completely replaces himself in another world and gains new interpersonal relationships, he is destined not to stay forever."
“However, in the constant wandering, theoretically speaking, as long as one never stops, there is a one in a hundred billion chance that a lost person will accidentally return to his or her original world during one of his or her wanderings.
That is originally "home", and they will not be driven away. If they can hide well and not be captured by the migratory rats again, they may return home and stay there from now on."
I thought to myself that this seemed to be true, but was there such a good thing in the world? If it were me, with this slim hope, I would grit my teeth until the last moment.
But the key point is that since Zhang Tianyi talked to me about this topic, there will not be a fairy-tale-like "bitterness after bitterness" at the end of cruelty. I am already very clear about the cruelty and ruthlessness of the ghost story, and there is no way I can have any illusions.
As expected, he asked:
"If you were the mouse mover, how would you prevent the bait from escaping and being wasted?"
"Let them never come back from the beginning." I blurted out almost without thinking.
The method is actually not difficult to think of. As long as the native world also regards them as strangers, it will also expel them, and they will naturally think that this is still not their home.
Then there is no need to move the mice, they will actively obey being driven out in order to go home, continue their eternal wandering, and comfort themselves by saying that home is ahead.
Even if I realized the truth when I looked back for the last time, it was too late.
Even their family members, when they meet again after a long separation, will just walk past them indifferently, treating them as strangers they have never seen before.
"Yes, it's a very clever and easy way."
It was as if a bucket of ice water was poured over me from head to toe. I suddenly realized how sinister and desperate this method was. "You mean to say that the mouse is really..."
"Yes, it's very simple. Let this person die completely in this world. Erase his identity so that no one can recognize any trace of his existence, making him become a person who has been cancelled from this world and has never existed.
You see, in the familiar starry sky, people keep staring at the illusory carrot in front of them and hurrying on, and they are completely forgotten about their homeland, and gradually they can no longer recognize the appearance of the starry sky of their homeland. "
I suddenly lost my strength and could hardly sit still. I realized that what Zhang Tianyi had mentioned to me several times and what I had written down on paper but could not perceive was the story of a "lost" person. At this point, I no longer cared about what happened to this person, but was trembling with the horror of wandering itself.
Such a terrible truth, I simply can’t imagine what will happen to the people who are trapped in this desperate scam, and what will happen to them once they find out one day that they have missed their homeland.
The more a person can endure this eternal torture, the more obsessed and crazy his desire to go home will become.
In an instant, my heart beat very fast, and an incredible thought popped up:
Among the forces I am familiar with, the Zhang family is the one who intentionally controlled themselves to be appropriately contaminated by the ghost stories, and after successfully resisting, they did not completely get lost, but stayed and gathered together;
The Nian family attempted to take advantage of the ghost story, but was captured and tampered with by the ghost story maliciously. They were most likely to become bait and would find a suitable sacrifice for the mouse.
The goddess of Hongyan Village and the miner are the ones who are aware of the existence of ghost stories, have warm fantasies about them, gradually soften under their supervision, and try to coexist with the ghost stories but end up perishing.
The situation of these people is getting worse and worse.
The Zhang family changed their surnames so frequently that they lost their real names; the Nian family's original ambition to conquer nature was distorted into fanatical flattery of Yi Shu, and almost the entire tribe was submerged in the past; when it came to the miners, it was even worse.
Even so, in this process, everyone has made their own efforts, paid a painful price, or avoided or used the eyes of the moving mouse. Therefore, they can leave their descendants and traces, which are known by me now.
From this perspective, even a force like the miners who have almost completely lost their heritage and fallen into the margins and mundane world are still winners in the fight against [Lost].
So, what about those losers who have been completely lost and gradually become unrecognizable in wandering and deformation?
"—they chose medicine."
Zhang Tianyi said, with endless self-mockery, "Some of them once saw me when they crossed the 'wall', mistook me for one of their own, and offered me an olive branch."
In the world's largest sentry box, the guard was driving away a homeless person, but the homeless person showed him mercy and hugged him.
They didn't know that Zhang Tianyi had already found a home in this world that was willing to accept him and hold him tightly, so that he didn't have to wander anymore. This was a lucky traitor that made them jealous to the point of madness.
The wanderer was very frank, cruel and almost naive, explaining to Zhang Tianyi:
Since he was destined to never be able to return home, and had no place to stay in his native land, he would steal, plunder, peel off the skins and identities of others, look for bodies that were more in harmony with the rules of ghost stories, hide in their hollow bellies, and refine a golden elixir for himself that would allow him to stay.
This is the real meaning of the "elixir of life" they are pursuing.
The so-called "immortality" is in the existential sense, a permission to stay in a world, rather than the lifespan in the ordinary secular sense, because the wanderer, as an alienated bait, is originally immortal.
Zhang Tianyi turned his head and smiled at me: "Do you still remember how many injuries I have suffered?"
I was stunned and suddenly speechless.
At this time, the moonlight gradually brightened, and Zhang Tianyi in front of me was undoubtedly healthy, without any wounds or signs of injury.
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