Chapter 103: Sour as a Lemon
Zhang Ruoruo has been living in the online world for the past few years, immersed in the virtual world. Her online friends cannot see her face, do not avoid her, and do not cautiously consider her emotions. She feels that she is living a happy life, as if she is still the same as she remembered.
Only occasionally, when the screen went dark and a hideous face appeared before her eyes, she would be frightened so much that her heart would beat wildly, and she would be stunned for a few seconds before finally remembering that she was disfigured. Apart from that, it seemed to have no impact on her life.
She was constantly online, and of course she knew about the Fantasy Park, which had become extremely popular in the past three months and had been on the hot searches from time to time. She was even one of the many online tourists.
Her mother was very attentive when taking care of her. It didn't take long for her to discover her love for the fantasy park. As early as August, she offered to take her to the park, but Zhang Ruoruo refused.
In such a hot climate, other tourists would definitely be surprised to see someone wearing a mask and sunglasses and wrapped up tightly!
There are so many young people and children there, so it’s better not to scare others.
With this in mind, Zhang Ruoruo repeatedly rejected her mother's suggestions. She reasoned that her home was separated from Jin'an by a city, and a trip there would be incredibly troublesome. Besides, the amusement park would surely be packed. In this heat, traveling would be torture. Staying home would be perfect. Nothing could be better. As long as the screen was big enough, the scenery seemed the same everywhere.
This idea was unconsciously shaken until the opening of Prank City.
The red-eyed elf's transformation magic was really interesting, and they were having a lot of fun, but for Zhang Ruoruo, this kind of fun was exactly what she rejected.
She doesn't like crowded places.
That evening she huddled in a dim room watching the live broadcast replay, and only perked up when Atalan showed up.
It was not because of his beauty, nor because of the mermaid gimmick, but because of Atelan's temperament. She didn't know how to describe it, but as soon as she saw him, she would think of her mother, her teacher, and her best friend. It was a non-aggressive, kind and gentle temperament, just like her mother, her teacher, and her best friend.
Zhang Ruoruo was stunned, but Atalan's appearance was like a flash in the pan, disappearing in the blink of an eye, replaced by a scribbled inscription.
Zhang Ruoruo couldn't sleep that night. The image of Atalan resting in peace lingered in her mind for a long time. His closed eyes when he looked up at the light, the smile on the corners of his mouth, and the ends of his hair that seemed to melt in the light, all seemed like a ball of terrible, scorching light. Just thinking about it burned her heart, causing a suffocating tightening in her chest.
Zhang Ruoruo didn't understand what was going on. It was clearly just a paper man modeled after a fantasy park. She was already 23 years old. Could it be that she suddenly became obsessed with a paper man like a little girl?
She got up in the middle of the night and checked her phone to see the comments about Atelan under the second-generation video.
——Fantasy Park has no heart, the director has no heart, why did you kill my Atlan with a knife.
——I hope the director knows that people can die if they are stabbed. Why doesn’t Fantasy Park have an official app? Otherwise, I will give it a bad review anyway!
—Fantasy Paradise should stop running an amusement park and start a film and television company instead! Let Atelan debut, please!
Atelan's modeling is truly amazing. In fact, if you look closely, his skin is flawless, and it's like he's been filtered, making him look slightly different from the real person. But why is he so unforgettable, while other Chinese models, no matter how delicate their features, look fake? Because Atelan has a soul! He feels like he really existed!
Atalan has a soul... This comment seemed to hit Zhang Ruoruo, and she fell on the bed, thinking.
That night, the entry #Atlan really existed# became a hot search, and many people posted messages with real feelings for this short-lived "paper man". Perhaps this attitude touched Fantasy Park, and that afternoon, the official released a short video about Atlan.
It was a city-state that was extremely similar to the City of Mischief. Atelan, with a childish face, took the sword from his mother, the King of the Thorns Empire, and vowed to fight to the death to repel the monsters and protect the Thorns Empire.
He went to war with his contracted Purple-Eyed Thorns, winning great victories time and time again. When he returned victorious, the whole nation lined the streets to welcome him, and the king praised him highly. At that time, he was full of vigor and spirit, and when he left the battlefield, he would go outings with his friends, having fun and being carefree and happy. At that time, he loved to laugh heartily, and that smile was more scorching than the midday sun.
Then, just as the audience feared, nineteen-year-old Atelan went to the battlefield for the seventh time and was infected by a monster.
Because of the infection and mutation, his body seemed to have turned into a ball of unstable liquid trapped in rags, and from time to time, some unsightly extra limbs would leak out from various places. The medical officers removed those extra parts for him. After the anesthetic wore off, he would often groan and cry in pain at night. When his relatives came to visit, he would repeatedly say to them with hope, "I feel much better today. Please look at me. Will I be well soon?"
Atelan: "When I get better, I'll go back to the battlefield. I can still fight monsters!"
Things did not go as Atalan wished. His injuries finally healed, but his legs were gone and turned into a silver fish tail. Within the specified time limit, he was unable to turn back into a human.
The attitudes of the people around him gradually changed. Although his face did not change, and even his body with a fish tail was very beautiful in the eyes of Earthlings, it was a mutation, and in that world, no human would have a fish tail.
He secretly crawled out, trying to prove his harmlessness to others, but everyone who saw him screamed in fear and retreated. He twisted this strange body desperately, praying for someone to recognize him, but wherever he looked, the people on that side dodged desperately, as if they were afraid of contracting some disease.
He stopped where he was, his expression blank, not knowing what he was thinking.
"Get away, you monster!"
So people beat him with sticks, drove him out, and pushed him down the steps. He rolled in blood and mud, and the city guards who came after hearing the news pierced his fishtail with a spear and nailed it to the ground as if he were catching a fish.
He went up to the interrogation table.
Only then did people realize that Prince Atalan, who was rumored to have died in battle, had turned into a monster.
He was tortured on the rack, and the interrogator asked him over and over again, "Why didn't you commit suicide if you were infected? Why didn't you commit suicide if you mutated?"
Atalan opened his mouth blankly, unable to say anything.
…
As she watched, Zhang Ruoruo felt her vision blurry. She wiped the screen and realized that it was her own eyes that were blurry.
She was stunned for a moment, the screen went dark, and Atalan's eyes gradually turned into her own.
It was not until then that Zhang Ruoruo understood why she was attracted to Atalan in the first place, why she tossed and turned because of Atalan, because she saw herself in Atalan.
"I feel much better today. Look at me. Will I be well soon?"
Mom, after this operation, will my face recover?
"When I get better, I'm going to go back to the battlefield. I can still fight monsters!"
When I get better, I will take the college entrance examination again. Although it is delayed for a year, I will still be able to pass it.
"Get away, you monster!"
Oh, she looks so scary!
"Why didn't you commit suicide if you were infected? Why didn't you commit suicide if you mutated?"
If you didn't provoke that boy, why would he splash you?
…
Zhang Ruoruo covered her face and burst into tears.
Imprisoned in an underground cave, Atalan sharpened a stone and scraped off the scales from his tail row by row. Using both hands, he chiseled a hole through the fish tail from the middle, imagining he could cut his legs out from inside the tail. The scales were scattered in piles, and the blood dyed the water red. The moonlight cast through the cave entrance, making the scales sparkle like a pile of sharp broken glass.
And he got nothing but pain...
Zhang Ruoruo vented her emotions and wiped away her tears.
Atelan woke up from his coma and grabbed the food dropped from the cave entrance for the first time...
The daughter was crying in the room, so Aunt Zhang moved a stool and sat next to the door.
The next day, Aunt Zhang carefully asked her daughter if she wanted to go to Fantasy Park.
Zhang Ruoruo thought of Atalan and agreed.
***
On October 13, the weather was very strange. There were dark clouds outside the park, but the sun was shining brightly inside the park.
Zhang Ruoruo raised her sunglasses slightly and felt a little dizzy because of the overly bright sunlight.
Staff member Qiao Qiao had been waiting for a while. When she saw Aunt Zhang coming in with a tightly wrapped girl, she did not rush over, but nodded to Aunt Zhang from a distance.
Aunt Zhang then took her daughter towards the City of Pranks. She was a little too cautious along the way. Zhang Ruoruo saw it and sighed in her heart.
Today is a weekday, but the bustle of Fantasyland remains unabated.
Most of the tourists along the way were in a hurry to have fun and had no time to pay attention to others. Even if some tourists glanced over, they quickly turned away. In this place, there was nothing else to do except to have fun and have fun.
Even Zhang Ruoruo herself felt inexplicably relieved, as if an invisible hand in the paradise had taken away some of the pressure from her shoulders.
At nine o'clock in the morning, the City of Pranks was already bustling with activity. Meng Linlin had been catching red-eyed elves for a long time, wanting to get a pair of beautiful big wings. Oh no, she would have been satisfied with ordinary small wings. However, the red-eyed elves turned her into a big cake. She was depressed for a while, thinking that a big cake would be fine, and it would be nice to smell good all over. However, not long after she entered the Transformation Street, she was bitten several times by the children, which scared Meng Linlin so much that she ran away from the Transformation Street.
She was squatting on the side of the road assembling a sculpture, planning to scare a tourist for fun, when she suddenly saw Zhang Ruoruo and her daughter walk in.
Ah, coming at this time, we won't be able to play for long, and each tourist can only enter once a day. I guess these two didn't check the guide before coming! What a shame for them.
Then Meng Linlin watched helplessly as the moment Zhang Ruoruo came in, a red-eyed elf rushed over and raised a thorn fork towards her.
With a puff, the tourist who was tightly covered with glasses and a mask completed a gorgeous transformation in an instant.
Meng Linlin's mouth opened wide, her saliva dripping with envy. Oh my god! Why?! Is this guy the King of Europe? So jealous! So jealous! So jealous!
The red-eyed elf moved too quickly, and Zhang Ruoruo, who was wearing sunglasses and a hat and walked in with her head down, didn't notice it at all. When she noticed some changes on her body, she looked up and the first thing she saw was a huge cake on the side of the road, with cream dripping from it.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
