Chapter 1 Rain
In the past twenty years of his life, Yu Sheng has always believed that he is just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things, and in the foreseeable future, this ordinariness is destined to continue - until the day when his ordinary life ends.
Yes, he had always thought so—but those days seemed so long ago.
The sky was dark, and gloomy clouds gradually spread from the northeast like thick cotton wool, covering the entire city. The air was filled with a damp smell, and a rain was brewing in this smell, and it might start in a dozen minutes.
Carrying the vegetables and seasonings he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng mingled among the pedestrians, hurriedly crossed the street, and walked towards his residence in the increasingly dim sky.
When passing by a store, he subconsciously stopped and looked at the sign at the door of the store. He stared at it for several seconds before retracting his gaze and continued walking forward in a hurry.
The number of pedestrians on the road gradually decreased, and the huge city seemed to be becoming quiet in the atmosphere of impending rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes and looked at the commercial street in front of him illuminated by the lights of the ground floor shops. Although it was a familiar scene, an indescribable sense of strangeness still arose from the bottom of his heart.
Yes, a sense of strangeness - he has lived in this city for more than 20 years, but now, this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless "boundary city" is a very unfamiliar place to him.
Because this city was not what he "really" remembered. Although some places were very similar, more places were vague - the Jiecheng where he grew up was not so huge. He remembered that the building in the city center should be called Boyuan Building, not the current "Director's Tower". He remembered that the store at the intersection of Siyuan Street was originally a wall, and his original home was not the huge, dilapidated and crumbling old house deep in the old city.
And more importantly, the city in his memory would not have so many... "not quite right" things, including but not limited to old-fashioned telephone booths that randomly appeared at certain intersections and were designed in the style of the last century, steam locomotives that drove over the rooftops late at night, empty classrooms with constant sounds of reading, and...
In the evening when it was about to rain, standing under the street light, there was a dark shadow as thin and tall as a telephone pole.
Yu Sheng raised his head and stared at the street lamp not far away. A human figure as thin as a bamboo pole was standing there stiffly. The body was three or four meters tall and on top was a dark face that made it impossible to see the facial features. The shadow seemed to have noticed this side as well, but it just stood there stiffly, confronting Yu Sheng's gaze from a distance.
Passersby in a hurry walked under the tall and thin shadow, as if no one noticed this strange thing standing next to the street lamp. Some people even walked directly through the shadow without being affected at all.
Only Yu Sheng himself can see that thing.
So after a few seconds of meaningless staring at each other, he withdrew his gaze, suppressed his pounding heart, changed his route and hurried away.
Yu Sheng was never quite sure whether it was the city that suddenly changed, or whether it was himself who changed, but he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life in his memory left him one morning two months ago.
He remembered that on that sunny morning, he pushed open the door of his house and went to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy some oranges.
That was the last time he opened the door of "his own home". After that, he never saw the home in his memory again.
He had also analyzed that perhaps this was some kind of "time travel". When he opened the door of his home, he stepped into another parallel world that was similar to his hometown. He could no longer find the door that could return to his original world because the passage of time and space collapsed the moment he stepped through the door.
Another possibility is that something "strange" happened to him. When he stepped out of the door, or maybe at some point after that, due to some unknown influence, he became "different from ordinary people", so his eyes began to see some "things" hidden under the surface. He still lived in the place he was familiar with, but he could no longer see those familiar things...
But these analyses are meaningless.
In any case, he can no longer go back to the "ordinary and normal world" in his memory. This strange and huge city is like a boundless forest, imprisoning a dazed drifter among its gloomy, intertwined branches and vines. Two months is not enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest".
In fact, he has just roughly adapted to the familiar yet unfamiliar "new home" and has barely resumed his "daily life" here.
Fortunately, he is still "Yu Sheng" in this border city that is incompatible with his memory. He has a normal identity certificate, a legal and valid address, some savings and a seemingly unreliable job. If this is really some kind of "time travel", then at least he does not have to face the three major problems like most time travelers: "Who am I, where am I, and where should I go to apply for an ID card?"
Considering that this is a well-ordered modern metropolis, the above-mentioned problem becomes particularly important. After all, modern society has a perfect population management system, and it is not easy for a time traveler to get rid of his illegal status in such a city.
Of course, from another perspective, traveling to a chaotic old society or a different world with barbaric laws may also bring other small troubles - for example, being chopped off as a spy from an enemy country, being chopped off as an alien invader, being chopped off as an evil creature emerging from the ground, being chopped off and stewed as temporary rations by the goblins in the cave...
With these random associations that suddenly popped up from nowhere in Yu Sheng's mind, he walked through the old path next to the commercial street and headed towards "home" from another road.
The sky was getting darker and darker, and it seemed that precisely because of this darker sky, those "not quite right" things were slowly starting to increase.
At the edge of Yu Sheng's vision, some staggering figures were reflected on the mottled and old exterior walls of the buildings on the roadside. An agile cat jumped out from the shadows on the wall, lightly climbed up a beam of light that came from nowhere, meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction, and then melted and fell with the raindrops, splashing water on the ground.
The rain started earlier than expected.
The wind became a little cold, and the cold air swirled around like it had substance, penetrating into the gaps in clothes.
Yu Sheng sighed and could only hold the shopping bag on his head and quicken his pace.
If he hadn't wanted to avoid the dark shadow under the street lamp, he could have walked along the main road and returned home faster - although the house was somewhat strange and eerie, it was at least a place to shelter from the wind and rain.
Thinking of the dark shadow under the street light, Yu Sheng felt somewhat annoyed.
Based on experience, he knew that the strange things he saw were basically harmless. At least if he didn't provoke them, those things would ignore him just like ordinary people ignored them. But even though he knew this in his heart, he would instinctively avoid those things that looked too weird - but now it seems that taking a detour today is not a good idea.
It's getting colder.
For a rainstorm, this was ridiculously cold.
Yu Sheng found that the breath he exhaled was slowly turning into condensed ice mist. The raindrops falling from the sky were like sharp nails, hard and cold, and hurtful.
And the ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror in the freezing rain.
The huge uneasiness made Yu Sheng alert instantly. He realized that something was wrong, very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had seen such a situation.
Unlike the "shadows" he had seen in the past, which were at most a bit unsightly, this time he felt...malice.
This rain has malicious intent.
He looked up suddenly, only to find that the small road, which had previously been populated by people in twos and threes, was now deserted, and he was the only one left in the narrow street.
There was no one in sight, and the lights in the distance became hazy and unreal. The intersection at the end of the field of vision seemed to be blocked by something, and it was sometimes far away and sometimes near. All around, there was nothing but rain, cold rain, except for the cold and closed buildings.
He felt as if the whole world was raining just for him.
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Yu Sheng took a deep breath and ran quickly to the nearest house. There stood an old iron door, which looked like the back door of a shop somewhere - no matter what it was, he had to find someone to help him as soon as possible.
Because the water drops in the rain have begun to have the sharp texture of a knife blade, and the temperature around has dropped to the point that every breath brings a piercing pain in the lungs.
After a few steps, Yu Sheng ran to the door and slammed it with his hand: "Someone..."
His eyes widened and his voice stopped abruptly.
He slapped his hand on the wall where the door was painted.
The nearby windows are also painted on the wall.
A rustling sound came from nearby.
Yu Sheng slowly turned his head and looked in the direction where the sound came from.
In the freezing rain that was falling like a knife blade, a strange-looking thing was slowly rising from the mirror-like water surface. It gained entity from the pitch-black shadow and looked at Yu Sheng coldly.
It was a frog, nearly one meter tall, with a head densely packed with eyes, and its body reflecting the freezing rain.
The frog opened its mouth and its sharp tongue shot straight towards the heart of its prey.
"Fuck you..."
Yu Sheng's words were elegant and his reactions were quick. Before the interjections in his mouth even landed, his body had already reacted one step ahead - he dodged to the side, one hand had already reached out of his pocket to take out the baton he usually used for self-defense, and he stepped forward, twisted his waist, and leaned forward...
The frog's tongue made a sharp turn in mid-air and pierced Yu Sheng's heart from the back.
Yu Sheng: “……?”
He blinked and watched the frog's tongue protrude from its chest, a heart beating rapidly at its tip.
"…F*ck this, this thing is mine…"
He thought about it and cursed in his heart.
Then died.
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