Chapter 51: From now on, we are separated
This was not the first time Zhang Lian met the farmers.
The first time they met was in the Tianshan dungeon.
At that time, Zhang Lian learned that the farmer had seen Li Ziyue, so he went to look for him without saying anything.
I just happened to see a farmer lying in a pool of blood.
Yes.
The farmer is not an ordinary NPC, he was once a player.
The copy of "The Suicidal Farmer" that Li Ziyue and his colleagues are in is modified and generated based on the virtual world of the farmers.
A farmer once asked Zhang Lian a question.
"You know that the probability of two people meeting in a dungeon is less than 0.1%. Your search is like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Zhang Lian shook his head: "As long as it's not 0, there will be a day to find him."
"Will you live till then?" the farmer laughed. "Or, will he live till you find him?"
Zhang Lian stopped moving, his eyes were covered by the shadow beside him. The farmer could not see his expression, but could only catch a glimpse of his tense jaw.
"He'll live to see it."
Zhang Lian nodded slowly.
But he didn't answer the first question the farmer asked him.
The farmer knew it well: "I saw him before, just in the last instance I cleared."
Zhang Lian's eyes brightened for a moment.
"He's fine, don't worry. Thanks to him, we were able to complete the main quest so quickly in the last instance."
Zhang Lian didn't say anything, just smiled.
"good."
After a while, he said softly.
"Have you been looking for him? How long have you been looking for him?"
Zhang Lian wrapped the bandage around the farmer's bleeding arm, and his voice was hidden in the sound of the gauze rubbing against each other: "It's been almost four years."
Actually, that’s not true.
It has been more than four years since he and Li Ziyue were separated.
“…Four years ago, he just fell from the top of the standings, and all this time…” The farmer stopped asking.
Because the following questions are inevitably a bit too cruel.
Zhang Lian didn't speak for a long time, and finally said "hmm" in a calm voice.
Li Ziyue will never know that he was not suffering alone for so long.
He was like a dim lighthouse, with raging, cold waves hitting his cracked foundation again and again. And in the most inconspicuous corner, there was a person bending over for a long time, filling the gap.
In the past two years, Zhang Lian basically heard no good news.
What echoed in my ears was only a sharp and hurtful laugh like a bayonet.
"Him? You mean 'No. 1'?" The man chewed the title of "No. 1" with disgust. "I just encountered him a few days ago. He was caught and taken to test the dungeon mechanism. What happened later? How should I know? There was a lot of blood on the mechanism."
"What hatred is there? Seriously speaking, Li Ziyue didn't offend anyone when he won first place, but so what?"
"There are so many rules in this instance that require human lives to test. He was very successful in his early years and so many people know him. It would be best to use him to test the rules. If he passes, people will say 'You're worthy of being number one.' If he fails, people will say 'Even number one can't pass.' Everyone should be more careful."
"It's best to use him as a shield and a test subject. Who in the dungeon would tell you so much tenderness? Jealousy is rampant."
When Zhang Lian reacted, the man's neck had already been pinched tightly in his hand.
The other person's face was so red and swollen that it was unrecognizable, and he was still cursing: "You... you kill me, so what... if you have the guts, go in and kill those people..."
"I will." Zhang Lian's eyes were cold, his hands gradually became weak, but he kept repeating every word.
"I will."
After a long time, he covered his eyes with his cold palms.
The body trembled silently.
For special reasons, Zhang Lian had an alarmingly large appetite when he was a child. Although he was physically strong, his constitution was extremely weak.
The cold, heavy snow and hunger had tried to bury him forever underground thousands of times. It was Li Ziyue who used his frozen and swollen hands to rescue him from the snow little by little.
Warm water, soft bread crumbs, and the hands that tidied the corners of his quilt when he had a fever.
The icy and snowy weather was too cruel to two children who could only hug each other for warmth. Feeding Zhang Lian food and medicine required Li Ziyue to put all his pride on his knees.
Li Ziyue was never a crybaby, but during that long winter, he cried for too long with a hoarse voice.
Most of the time, they felt sorry for Zhang Lian, and the rest of them blamed themselves for their cruelty and incompetence.
Zhang Lian was physically weak and rarely active. He often had a fever and stayed in bed for the entire day.
In the middle of the night, Zhang Lian woke up in a daze when he heard someone calling his name softly. He saw Li Ziyue closing his eyes tiredly, leaning against him, holding his hand gently on the edge of the bed.
It is rare to see a bright moon on a snowy night, but the moonlight that night was exceptionally bright. The moonlight came into the house and fell on Li Ziyue's soft black hair, making that part of her hair sparkle with a bright and gentle light.
His eyelashes trembled slightly in the moonlight.
Zhang Lian watched all this for a long time.
This is the moonlight that belongs to him alone.
Zhang Lian once thought that he could chase this faint but gentle moonlight forever, and then.
They came before the snowy nights had ended and before the spring buds had sprouted.
His moonlight was cruelly locked into another secret door.
From then on, the two were separated forever.
Zhang Lian returned to the dark room again, where he trained, bled, and was forced to take drugs to transform his body.
When he opened his eyes, he swung the knife; when he closed his eyes, warm blood covered his face.
The blood that has flowed out will accumulate again, and the broken limbs will be reattached.
When he met Li Zi Echizen, these cruel things were like eating and drinking water to Zhang Lian. The abnormal training made his mind numb to the point where he could not feel any pain.
Everything changed after separating from Li Ziyue.
Zhang Lian squatted in the corner of the basement and vomited in pain countless times.
He just realized that when he opened his eyes, he could see the man smiling slightly, and when he closed his eyes, what he smelled was no longer blood, but a hint of fragrance from the palm of the man's hand when he touched his forehead.
Zhang Lian fell in a pool of blood and heard the lingering heartbeat of the monster beneath him.
He covered his eyes with his hands to hold back the ridiculous tears.
It turns out that he was loved.
Only after being loved did he realize that he was living in an extremely absurd world, and only then did he want to struggle.
During countless long cold nights, Zhang Lian vaguely felt that pair of warm hands still carefully measuring his body temperature, and he called him softly.
"Zhang Lian, wake up."
Zhang Lian opened his eyes with joy, only to see the ferocious monster baring its fangs, which pierced into his calf, splashing bright red blood.
The monster's body was still warm. Zhang Lian had won, but he did not show any joy. He just stared at the monster's ugly body in a daze for a long time.
Zhang Lian clearly realized that Li Ziyue was gone.
Li Ziyue left forever.
Zhang Lian suffered a lot to get here, but what he was greeted with was not the joy of seeing Li Ziyue again.
But he had to watch helplessly as this already dim moonlight was rudely wiped out by others, crushed and thrown into the dirty mud.
The probability of meeting each other brings a bit of warmth of hope, but a number that is too small is cold.
The invisible barrier of the copy completely separated the two people. One was struggling to climb out of the quagmire, while the other was forcing himself to swallow the other's pain in a hoarse voice.
Language is sometimes too cruel, but it also contains Zhang Liang's thoughts and love.
Love can easily make one feel that the other party is too vulnerable.
For a long time, Zhang Lian did not communicate with anyone until the other party said that he had met Li Ziyue before.
Zhang Lian's heart, which had been so cold that it had solidified into stone, quietly began to crack.
The dim eyes finally lit up with a ray of human light.
From then on, every time he entered a copy, Zhang Lian would buy a toy puppy from the points store.
The toy puppy's four paws have built-in stickiness that cannot be torn off.
Zhang Lian often stared in a daze at the rows of puppies under his feet.
He thought that when he met Li Ziyue, he would stick the puppy to him.
Then stick to him forever.
Just like when we were kids.
Just like when Li Ziyue opened the iron door for him on that long, cold, snowy night.
Zhang Lian’s points increased rapidly, thanks to his almost non-stop underground dungeon work.
As long as you enter the dungeon, you will have the opportunity to meet Li Ziyue.
With such a simple reason, he immersed himself in the research, and this lasted for four years.
The farmer held the wrist that Zhang Lian had bandaged with his shaking hands and said, "I'm fatally wounded. I can't survive."
Zhang Lian didn't say anything, but he kept moving.
The farmer smiled and shook his head. He looked lovingly into Zhang Lian's dark and deep eyes, and his voice was soft.
"You've been looking for him for so long..."
"Not long." Zhang Lian answered without hesitation, "If we can find it, no matter how long it is, it won't be too long."
The length of time lost its meaning the moment Li Ziyue was found.
Zhang Lian only felt that he was late.
"Cough cough!" The farmer spat out a mouthful of blood and looked at Zhang Lian as if he was looking at another person.
"Soon..." He muttered to himself, "I have been separated from someone for too long... Now... I can finally go see him."
The farmer opened the system backpack, clicked on the weapon column, and took out the spear that was shining with silver light.
[Note: Voluntary donation]
Zhang Lian was stunned.
The farmer smiled and said, "Here you go, kid. I hope you can find Li Ziyue soon."
"He's a very lovely man."
Zhang Lian muffled his voice.
"Yeah." Zhang Lian knew it all along.
No one in the world finds plums cuter than he does.
It was still two years before Zhang Lian found Li Ziyue.
After more than seven hundred days of lonely nights and running around in dungeons, Zhang Lian, holding his lonely spear, earnestly inquired for any news about Li Ziyue from all the players who had met him.
He heard him sinking deep into the mud, and then he heard him climbing up step by step with tenacity, and he heard him go from being unknown to being hidden among the masses.
Listen to him being tortured and bruised from the dungeon until he could occasionally let out a relaxed smile.
Li Ziyue's back, which was bent by failure and the ridicule of others, was mended and supported by himself bit by bit.
Many long, cold nights.
Zhang Lian looked at the sky full of falling snow, his throat choking with sobs.
Due to his childhood training, Zhang Lian rarely shows obvious emotions.
But he was envious.
He envied every player who had met Li Ziyue.
It seemed as if everyone around was meeting Li Ziyue.
He just won't meet him.
Why is this?
He remembered the so-called "note of fate" he had received before coming to the infinite flow copy.
"Give up," the man gave him a bitter smile, "It shows that your relationship with him ends here, and after that... there will be no possibility of communication."
No longer possible.
The flames burned the paper into gray-black fragments, and then the wind blew it up into the sky, dissipating it into the vast sky.
Zhang Lian has come this far with the "Impossible" letter of severance in his hand.
Walked to the primary pseudo-human copy.
After he had collected 1,076 toy puppies, the clock of fate finally stopped spinning.
The relationship between him and him, which had long been severed, was forcibly pieced together by Zhang Lian.
His world was once again lit up by the bright moonlight.
The sound of rain was getting louder and louder, and the wind had turned from sultry to chilly. Li Ziyue stood quietly in front of the eaves with his back to Zhang Lian, and did not answer this question for a long time.
Maybe he answered.
Zhang Lian felt empty inside. He stretched out his hand in the air, wanting to hold Li Ziyue's hand, but then let it go sadly.
It's not his fault.
Zhang Lian thought to himself.
After all, he didn't remember anything.
I am the only one who remembers everything.
Zhang Lian lowered his eyes and realized that his feet were cold.
He wanted to leave, but his feet seemed to be nailed there.
Perhaps, he still wanted to hear Li Ziyue speak with his own ears.
Even if the answer wasn't him.
Zhang Lian also wanted to hear it.
Just as other players told Zhang Lian, Li Ziyue looked at something in the dungeon and laughed.
Even if that smile had nothing to do with Zhang Lian, he still wanted to know.
Everything about Li Ziyue.
After all, he had been absent for too long.
Thunder reappeared in the dark clouds, lightning flashed rapidly, the red sedan chair had gone far away, only the sound of gongs and drums continued.
Zhang Lian moved his body which had been stiffened by the cold, and for the first time walked to the other side on his own.
But the moment he turned around, he heard Li Ziyue calling him.
"Zhang Lian."
Zhang Lian suddenly froze in place, feeling a little dazed.
The next moment, he felt someone gently holding his cold fingers.
He heard the man he had been thinking about for a long time say.
"Zhang Lian, turn around."
“Look me in the eyes.”
Zhang Lian didn’t know what was in front of him. He could only hear the sound of his heartbeat louder than the thunder.
"Plop, plop."
Li Ziyue's eyes have always been so beautiful that people dare not look directly at them.
His eyes were a rare deep black, like shining obsidian, and there was only calmness and stability in his eyes, as if nothing was enough to make him panic.
At this moment, this pair of beautiful eyes were staring at Zhang Lian.
Wrap him up warmly.
He heard Li Ziyue whisper to him.
"It's you."
"The bride I see is you."
…
Long later, Zhang Lian would still think of the question he asked the farmer when he met him for the second time.
"You've been looking for him for six years. That's too long."
"Soon," Zhang Lian answered without hesitation two years later, "If we can find it, no matter how long it takes, it won't be too long."
The farmer smiled until his eyes narrowed into a line. He looked at Li Ziyue who was walking in front of him and asked: "How long do you think he can live?"
Zhang Lian was silent for a while.
Hide the answer in the wind that can't reach Li Ziyue.
"I will ensure that he lives a long life."
The farmer closed his mouth and said nothing more.
He had asked Li Ziyue the same question a few minutes ago.
…
Zhang Lian raised the corner of his mouth slightly.
He looked at Li Ziyue with gentle eyes.
The raindrops were dripping and the night wind suddenly became quiet.
He hooked his fingers around the hem of Li Ziyue's shirt and called him softly.
"elder brother."
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