Hint (fix typo)
After shocking all of us by demonstrating his "superpowers" on the spot, what Xu You received was not admiration and curiosity, but our all-round suspicion.
Fang Ao, as always, took the initiative to stir up trouble, and then he shrank behind me and whispered, "Advisor, don't trust him. Even if the sky falls, it's impossible for this wicked leader to have superpowers. Even if he can trust Guang, can Guang trust him?"
I nodded repeatedly and asked the still heartbroken No. 1 henchman captain to get us two sweet potatoes. I wanted to watch Xu You roast them for me with his bare hands. The heat must be authentic. I don't believe that if we have an Ultraman here, the spot will fall on this guy.
Xu You was helpless when he heard this, and he laughed and scolded: "Are they going to hold a public trial? Why would I lie to you, little devil?"
I thought to myself, that's hard to say, you're the type who harms others and doesn't benefit yourself, and you're just talking nonsense. God knows what you, an old liar, are up to.
"As a team leader, he can't even afford to give his wife a roasted sweet potato snack."
Seeing that he still didn't know how to give in, I sighed and said shamelessly, "Master's wife, how do you think we can live like this?"
The old fellow Xu You immediately glared at me and said angrily, "How can I be called "young"? He doesn't have a bastard like me."
I looked at him and asked him to think about it carefully.
"Master's wife is Master's wife only because of me, a good kid." I patted him, "Who is supporting this family, uncle, don't be confused."
The broker smiled and thought for a moment, "Xiao Ran is right. We are already divorced."
This sentence was plain, but quite devastating. Xu You looked like he was punched in the chest. His face turned green. His bandit spirit was gone. He was so choked that he couldn't speak.
Seeing that we were all blocking him, he had no choice but to surrender:
"Okay, okay, it's just a little trick, just to amuse you. What can I find out about this?" His tone was very sincere.
I had originally thought of it as a joke to make fun of myself, but when I heard him say that, my heart suddenly skipped a beat and I suddenly realized that he was lying to me.
This is a serious matter. No way, does it really have "super powers"?
Having seen so many weird things, I have a rough idea in my mind that even if there are so-called superpowers, most of them are just like Gao Liu's recovery ability after being parasitized by comb jellyfish, which is just some kind of contaminated trauma left by ghost stories. For this kind of specialness, the price paid is extremely huge and irreversible.
In the past, I had not deliberately sought to know the experiences of my companions, nor had I asked too many questions about the wild cat, because I did not want to dig into people's wounds. But at this moment, things seemed to have become serious.
"Master, you have seen how crazy I have been for several days." I sat up slowly and stared into his eyes. "This question is very important to me. I must know."
Xu You was silent for a moment and looked at me: "I'm not sure whether Zhang Tianyi is willing to let you know some things."
I was stunned for a moment, then looked at him, and saw some extreme torment and confusion in his eyes.
He thought about it and asked me a question first:
"Disciple, have you ever thought about why we all use nicknames and rarely reveal our real names?
When we fell into the trap, we almost never revealed our real names to you, which was how we avoided the punishment mechanism of the womb. But that was just a coincidence.
What about before that? Before we knew the rules of the trap, in the past ten or twenty years, could we have foreseen the future and taken precautions in advance? "
He is right.
I held my breath for no reason, and looking back on this issue, I found it to be very suspicious.
Just like the broker's wife, in order to hide her identity, she could just change her surname to Zhang. At worst, there are so many surnames to choose from, such as Zhao, Qian, Sun, and Li. As long as she is clearly called Nian Ziqing, who would find out that she is an orphan of the Nian family?
Xu You said: "For us, the main families not only change our surnames every generation, but we also don't have any given names at all.
The difference between the main family and the outside family is that the outside family has an identity, or in other words, identity proof and household registration information, which can help us maintain contact with the secular society and avoid becoming lonely souls abandoned by society. "
He paused, giving me some time to digest this information, and pointed at the team leader: "Most of the Zhang family members, like him, only have code names. Most of them are numbers, time of day, or heavenly stems and earthly branches.
He is Zhang Jia, Fang Ao is of the same generation as him, and his pseudonym is codenamed Liu Bing; I am Zhang Wei. "
As I listened to him introducing them one by one, a layer of sweat broke out on my back.
If I remember correctly, the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches emphasize the "Image Method", and the meaning of each character comes from trees.
The interpretation of Xu You's "未" should be "the sun is at its zenith and is about to set, and the sun is heading towards darkness." It means that the sun is setting and is about to enter darkness.
Thinking back further, Gaoliu is a number, and Yanjinger means the sound of "mao". These codes all seem to have a meaning and strictly follow some metaphor.
Moreover, they are all closely related to trees and time.
"Like the banyan tree and the night, these names are meant to protect us from being singled out by something."
Xu You handed me his hand with a strange look on his face: "Apprentice, as for my "superpower" if you really want to know, the only thing I can do for you is to ask you to shake hands with me."
I was startled and looked down subconsciously. Suddenly my hair stood on end and I felt that something was going to happen.
Because Xu You handed over his other hand, not his left hand that was holding the hot milk.
But when he lifted up his sleeve, his hand was pale blue, as if he had suffered severe frostbite.
My mind buzzed and I suddenly understood.
It wasn't heating, it was a kind of inversion and symmetry, as if all the heat from one side of Xu You's body was folded and transferred to the other side. So on one side, the temperature was rising, while on the other side, the body temperature dropped so much that the blood circulation was blocked.
This is clearly some kind of distortion caused by the pollution left over from the migration to the Snow Mountain.
But why, did Xu You experience a fog disaster before? The clues of that fog many years ago were hidden in Xu You?
“I used to think so.”
Xu You looked at me quietly: "I once thought that I might have been [lost] when I was young, or that I had participated in a fog in a lost world many years ago, but unfortunately I had forgotten everything, and was led to the town again in the dark.
This can also explain why you found that there was a fog outbreak many years ago, but we didn't notice any traces left."
However, I understood what he meant. His reasonable explanation was shattered by someone.
It was Zhang Tianyi who caused Xu You to overturn his conclusion and fall into darkness.
Taizi didn't lie. Xu You did have a brief collaboration with Zhang Tianyi. That was more than ten years ago. At that time, this young and mysterious teammate, who had not yet had any disagreements or splits with them, once looked at him for no reason and said:
"You haven't gone missing. There's no trace of that on you. So you'd better change your name and hide yourself as soon as possible. Maybe you can turn things around."
Xu You's reaction was to be stunned for a moment, thinking why this little brat was acting weird, which was not what he should do at that age.
But his temper was even more volatile at that time, so he asked directly: "Then how do you explain this strange deformity of mine?" In his heart, he was determined to give this little brat a hard time and not indulge his nonsense.
Zhang Tianyi seemed to think for a long time before slowly answering him, saying that this was an advance "reward".
That tone of voice made Xu You instantly alert to danger, and he actually stopped the nonsensical conversation.
For many years, Xu You had never understood this sentence. It was not until the incident with Gao Liu and the female tour guide, after my reasoning, that this old-timer suddenly realized it. It was like a bolt from the blue.
Because I don't know one thing, but as the partner of instructor Broker, Xu You sometimes helps take care of the bear cubs, so he has some impression: Gao Liu's recovery ability did not start at the age of six, or in other words, it did not start from the time she was borrowed by Rongshu to become the daughter of tour guide Gao.
But it is almost innate.
The same is true for wild cats.
As for himself, although the forgotten childhood is still not found, a terrible guess has emerged. Xu You suspects that this kind of distortion also existed when he was very young. But for the time being, he can't find the source of the distortion.
Until recently, when we experienced a snowy mountain fog disaster in our small town, the confusion and panic we had felt for many years finally had an answer.
"Apprentice, do you understand what this means?"
I looked at Xu You stiffly, feeling a little frightened.
The ability to distort comes from the contamination of a certain strange story that one has experienced, and it directly manifests the characteristics of the strange story. I have always agreed with this conclusion. However, the two examples of Xu You and Gao Liu are undoubtedly saying:
The strange story had already given them the result of this pollution many years ago, when they were still young and had no experience, as some kind of seemingly beautiful distorted ability. And many years later, they set out on their destiny, destined to walk into the strange story that marked them, and pay a heavy price for it.
"If it weren't for your accident, Gao Liu would have lost her brother Yemao first, and then her mother. And I would have watched An Nian become a witch."
Xu You nodded vigorously as if to confirm it with himself, and smiled fiercely with gritted teeth.
This is not a gift, it is a forced transaction.
The ghost story chooses its prey well and will take a bite of it at the beginning of time, taking away the price, the part they cherish most. And the prey will most likely be buried there after entering the arms of the ghost story.
Someone once compared fate to someone firing a gun at a young age, and years later, when walking on the road, he heard the sound of wind behind his head, and was hit by the bullet he fired when he was young. At this time, Xu Youming realized a similar tragic picture.
I suddenly understood Xu You's hesitation and silence just now.
Because this means that, up to now, Gao Liu and he are actually safe, because they have completed the exclusive closed loop set for them by the ghost story and survived by chance.
But for example, Wildcat, where is the fulfillment of his strange story? Why hasn't it happened yet?
If Wildcat discovers the end of the price only after his entire life, does it mean that the ghost story has not been ended by the Zhang family until that time?
As long as there is one person who possesses similar "abilities" like Xu You, Gao Liu, and Wild Cat, it means that Yishushu will always exist and overshadow everyone's fate.
In fact, after I was swept away by the turbulence, Xu You once went to find Zhang Tianyi to ask whether this guess was correct.
Zhang Tianyi's answer was to ask him coldly, if they didn't know that the Snow Mountain Underground Palace was destined to be indestructible before then, why did the Zhang family and the Nian family continue to make sacrifices for so many years? Why didn't they just blow up the underground palace to quell the active volcano underneath?
It is because of this moment that the banyan tree will be weak enough, weak enough for people to carry its last young back to Foghorn Town, and the young banyan tree will mature and break through the ground, enough to support the snow-capped mountain and absorb all the remaining geothermal heat.
Of all the unexpected things that happened to us, this was the only thing that was almost destined to happen. However, in the original ending, the person who would become the "young man" and be swallowed by the banyan tree would most likely be the broker, the witch who was willing to sacrifice himself.
"Disciple, among people like us, there really are some who are like prophets. That's why Nian Ziqing was able to use this to gain a reputation and try to deceive us, and we would rather be more cautious in calculating him and wait for him to join the game.
Only with you here, we finally understand that the so-called prophet is just relying on the vision of the comb jellyfish. "
Xu You said this, paused, and gave me an answer I had never thought of.
He said that I, the second generation of the "young master of the Zhang family" in name, almost immediately gained the trust and respect of the guys in the team. It was because after he was accidentally rescued by me, he once thought that I was also a "prophet."
It was just that he thought I was not mature enough at the time and wanted to protect me and let me grow up. So there was a group of people in the Zhang family, including brokers, who worked hard to confirm my identity.
Before I faced this bizarre world head-on and was completely naive and ignorant, I sat in the convoy and looked around with curiosity and resentment, while many of the guys already knew me and had developed a strong sense of confidence and joy in me.
The "Tai Zai" I am talking about is one of the "prophets" in this circle who has been famous for a long time but has never been found.
At that time, when Xu You was preparing materials to prove my identity as the young master of the Zhang family, it was Taizi who came to me and personally provided me with the notebook. There were many details in it, which actually far exceeded their understanding of the exploration of the underground palace.
But Xu You did not completely believe it. He handed the black notebook to me and forced me to memorize it, hoping that I, a "prophet" among his own people, could judge whether there were any scams or traps in it.
Xu You's tricks with hot milk and baked sweet potatoes were not only to tempt my second-year curiosity, but also to desperately hint that I could reveal my cards and trust him.
As the guys around the bonfire said with great trust, "It doesn't matter, the young master will do it."
That's why he kept offering me milk and winking at me. But the frustrating thing is that I was always like an innocent piece of wood, as if I didn't understand anything and often argued with him.
"In the end..." Xu You suddenly laughed and cursed, "I've been waiting for you to use your superpowers for a long time, hinting at you for a long time. In the end, you actually relied on your brain."
"What do you mean? Are we the only ones who are stupid?"
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