Walking along the muddy path, Todd led the way, with Rachel following behind. Todd held Rachel's hand as they pushed aside the tangled branches and bushes in front of them.
A deep gray mist, like living dust, enveloped every pore of the two visitors' bodies.
Strange cries came from the sky, sounding somewhat like birds and somewhat like beasts.
Todd glanced back and saw only Rachel's hand.
If it weren't for the uneven ground beneath his feet, reminding him that the journey was still ongoing, he might have had the illusion of wandering into nothingness.
Just as Todd was wondering if the road had an end, his right hand suddenly touched something hard.
After groping their way through the fog, the two discovered a huge stone statue depicting a goddess wearing a crown of thorns.
Below the stone statue, there is a stone tablet with intricate inscriptions.
“These words seem familiar.” Todd crouched down, carefully examining the stone tablet, and said as he pondered.
Rachel ran her fingers over the relief and replied, “These are runes.”
"Runic script, the script said to have been created by Odin, the king of the Norse gods?" Todd recalled the stone tablets in the North Island ruins and asked Rachel, "Can you decipher the script on the tablets?"
“The runes have different versions in the North Island and among the barbarians, and the grammar and vocabulary of these runes look much older, so I can only understand a portion of them.” Rachel touched each character carefully, uttering words intermittently: “The path…the creator…the will…the trial…eternal slumber…”
Todd frowned as he listened to Rachel's explanation, then asked uncertainly, "It doesn't sound like a good thing."
“Rumor has it that the ‘Land of Shadows’ is the final resting place of the dead; this place has always been considered ominous.” Rachel turned her head to look at the path behind the stone statue and asked, “What should we do? Should we continue forward?”
Todd chuckled and shrugged. "Now that we're here, there's no reason to turn back."
After passing the stone statue, the two walked onto a path paved with bluestone, and the mist around them gradually began to dissipate.
As the scenery around him gradually came into focus, Todd said, "This... seems to be a garden."
Rachel looked around at the plants and said strangely, "I've never seen any of these plants before..."
Just as Todd was about to say something, the ground suddenly began to shake, and the surrounding plants twisted their branches and began to grow wildly.
The path they had come from was blocked by thick thorns, and green vines wrapped around their ankles like tentacles.
"Run!"
Todd grabbed Rachel's hand and fled for their lives without regard for anything else.
One spear after another, pierced through the bones, burst forth from the earth, pointing obliquely to the sky, completely blocking the light from above, forming a 'sky curtain' of corpses.
Using his mutated right claw, Todd broke through the "bone wall" blocking his way and ran a few more steps forward. Suddenly, he found that the resistance coming from his arm was getting stronger and stronger.
Turning her head to look back, she saw that Rachel's body was already wrapped in vines, thorns were piercing her body, and blood was being absorbed into the stems. The color of the flowers gradually changed from white to bright red.
The woman's mouth could no longer utter a sound; only her panicked and helpless eyes were fixed on Todd's face.
The latter turned around and roared, unleashing his full power to tear at the plant's roots, but the vines grew more numerous and tighter. Some even climbed up Rachel's arm and towards Todd.
Seeing the man's pained and anxious expression, Rachel, who was completely entangled by the plants, smiled slightly. She gently drew a circle in Todd's palm with her index finger, then released his hand, letting the vines drag him to the ground.
Todd slumped to the ground, staring blankly at his empty left hand, his face ashen and his lips trembling.
"No!!!"
Todd went completely mad. He stretched out his hands and dug frantically into the ground where the woman had sunk, oblivious to the vines and roots covering her body.
The ground gradually cracked open, Todd's consciousness gradually dissipated, and his body was buried in the mud.
Walking in the endless darkness, Todd watched the images and sounds flashing by.
In a coffee shop on the commercial street, a woman in a white dress said to the man in front of her, "I'm getting married next month. Don't worry, the groom isn't you. My father gave you a chance, but you stubbornly clung to that ridiculous academic ethics."
At a class reunion in a five-star hotel, a wealthy businessman adorned with gold and silver looked at his simply dressed classmate and shook his head, saying, "You've all become associate professors at a university, how come your attire is still so shabby?! Old brother, listen to my heart, what's the most important thing in this world? Money! Power! And fame!"
Under the neon lights of the night, at a table in a roadside barbecue stall, an elderly professor took a sip of baijiu (Chinese liquor) and said to his students, "How long can a person live? At most a hundred years. I don't believe in Christ, nor in Buddha; I believe in my own heart!"
If living is about pursuing meaningless things, why not turn around and give up on this journey at the very beginning?
The meaning of life goes far beyond this...
Todd slowly calmed down, a gentle breeze caressing his cheeks, and a familiar murmur reaching his ears. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying flat on the garden floor. The corpses, the strange vines, and the blood-red tendrils were all gone, and Rachel was sleeping peacefully in front of him.
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