Chapter 86
After doing forced labor in the mine for half a day, Cen Xun finally understood why so many prisoners couldn't hold on.
Because I'm really tired.
They work from 1:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., nearly ten hours of work, without a break for a moment. They have to fall into strange hallucinations from time to time. Once they stop, they will be electrocuted by the prison guards. Although it is not fatal, it is a double torture to the body and mind.
After finishing the work, the soreness all over the body was the least of my worries. The most serious problem was the splitting headache. I felt groggy and drowsy, unable to think deeply. I had lost all my strength and wanted to faint on the spot.
In this case, even if you want to escape from prison, your physical condition does not allow it.
Back in prison, Cen Xun was handcuffed again. He sat down against the wall, suppressing the uncomfortable dizziness. He took out the necklace from his neck, touched the knot, took it off, and ran his fingertips along the cold metal chain.
He felt an uneven texture under his fingertips and touched a thread wrapped around a black metal necklace.
Wire?
Cen Xun opened his eyes and stared at the smooth metal necklace. It was obvious that there was no thread on it that he had touched.
He tried to peel off the wire wrapped around the metal surface and placed it in the palm of his hand. From the naked eye, there was still nothing else in his palm.
Is the thread too thin, or is it invisible?
The two ends of the wire were connected to the two ends of the metal chain, effectively preventing it from being lost. Cen Xun held the invisible wire, thought for a few seconds, then moved to the corner of the wall and aimed it at the chain connected to the wall.
The next second, the chain broke easily, and the extremely smooth cut showed the sharpness of the wire.
Cen Xun was silent for a second, secretly glad that he had cut the section of chain connected to the corner of the wall. The prison guard only wanted to untie his restraints and would not have the frivolity to look closely at the corner of the wall.
The wire is sharp and can cut chains, maybe even doors, but I don't know if it can cut prison guards.
Cen Xun stopped the dangerous idea in time. It was so evil. How could he think of using dangerous objects to hurt others?
He deserves to die!
Shouldn't he hand over such dangerous things to the prison guards?
Cen Xun: “”
Cen Xun pressed his solar plexus hard.
Hand it over to the devil!
It's only a matter of time before he blows up this damn prison.
This unforgivable thought naturally led to a long and sincere confession. Cen Xun's temples were throbbing due to the two voices in his mind. He had to temporarily clear all thoughts in his mind in order to curb the righteous words urging him to hand over the dangerous items.
0001 said that midnight every night is the time for atonement. There are still more than ten minutes before midnight. Cen Xun closed his eyes and waited quietly.
Just when Cen Xun was becoming groggy and about to fall asleep, he was suddenly stepped on his leg. The sudden touch startled Cen Xun awake. When he opened his eyes, he saw a black figure on all fours disappearing into the darkness.
What?
Cen Xun touched the place where he was stepped on and found nothing unusual.
That thing just now
An idea flashed through Cen Xun's mind. At this moment, midnight arrived, and Cen Xun's consciousness gradually sank into darkness.
When he woke up again, he was lying in a thick and warm quilt.
Snow is falling outside the window. It is a quiet winter day.
Cen Xun vaguely felt as if he had had a nightmare. He closed his eyes and felt around, but there was no one there. However, there was still warmth in the quilt. Obviously, the person lying next to him had just left.
Feng Jihan has been acting strangely these past few days, always sneaking away for a while. No one knows what he is doing. Cen Xun has been indulging him for several days, but today he finally couldn't suppress his curiosity.
He walked silently on the carpet to the door of the study, and then suddenly opened the door.
The person inside panicked, hiding what he was holding and turning around in panic: "Are you awake?"
Cen Xun ignored his attempts to cover up and ordered him bluntly, "Take it out."
Feng Jihan tried to get away with it at first, but seeing Cen Xun's firm attitude, he had to reluctantly take out the things behind him.
It was a pile of colorful balls of yarn, a crochet hook, and a half-finished glove.
"I was planning to give it to you on New Year's Day," Feng Jihan said to him helplessly, "Now there's no sense of surprise at all."
Cen Xun picked up the unfinished product and played with it, raising an eyebrow and saying, "It's quite a surprise now."
"Stop playing with it. I haven't finished knitting yet. I'll tear the thread apart later." Feng Jihan stared at the ugly, gaudy half-finished product in Cen Xun's hand. He was also very ashamed of this ugly thing. He reached out to grab it back, but he didn't expect Cen Xun to give it back to him directly.
"How long will it take to finish weaving?"
Feng Jihan reported a number cautiously: "Probably another two or three days."
Cen Xun nodded and sat on his lap as a matter of course, looking like he was going to supervise the work: "Hurry up and weave, my hands are cold."
Feng Jihan's body stiffened as Cen Xun nudged her vaguely. With great willpower, she picked up the crochet hook and the unfinished product again, and continued crocheting the gloves with Cen Xun in her arms. She gritted her teeth in his ear and said, "You did this on purpose."
Cen Xun said nonchalantly, "What's the point of doing that? I'm just sitting here casually. If you don't let me sit, I'll just leave."
He didn't leave. Feng Jihan held his waist tightly and said stiffly, "Why leave? If you want to sit, sit down."
Under Cen Xun's constant harassment, Feng Jihan had not finished knitting the gloves for several days, and New Year's Day had quietly arrived.
It snowed again on New Year's Day.
They went out shopping in the snow. When they came out of the supermarket, Feng Jihan took out a box from the shopping bag and said in surprise, "Hey, is this what we bought?"
Cen Xun took it without any precautions and saw the colorful gloves in the transparent box at a glance.
He glanced at Feng Jihan, who raised his eyebrows slightly, and did not ask him when he had knitted them. He slowly took out the gloves from the box and put them on his hands politely. They were neither too big nor too small, just right.
The colorful patterns are dazzling. If people with normal aesthetic taste take it into consideration, they will think that this is an extremely ugly and bizarre work.
But in Cen Xun's eyes, it was exactly what he wanted.
Feng Jihan saw him put it on directly, and the corners of his lips couldn't help but rise, and his tone could hardly suppress the smile: "Is it warm enough, brother?"
Cen Xun spread out his five fingers and said, "That's it."
Feng Jihan didn't get a satisfactory answer, so he kept asking, "Is it really like that? Really? Isn't there anything good about it?"
Cen Xun didn't answer and walked forward. As he walked, something fell from his body. Feng Jihan helped him pick it up and was about to return it to him when he suddenly discovered that the box that fell also contained a pair of gloves.
He looked up in surprise. Cen Xun had stopped walking at some point, his hands in his pockets, and looked at him quietly: "Since I already have new gloves, I'll give you these two useless gloves."
Feng Jihan couldn't hide his surprise: "When did you weave it?"
Cen Xun flatly denied it: "I didn't weave it."
Of course Feng Jihan didn't believe it and put on the gloves happily. There were flying bird patterns on the back of both gloves, one was a black bird on a white background, and the other was a white bird on a black background. The patterns were woven so vividly.
Feng Jihan liked it very much, but he still felt a little unwilling to be outdone: "How did you knit it? Why is it better than mine?"
"Is this kind of thing difficult?" Cen Xun stabbed him in the heart. "You should be able to do it after just one look, right? Only you still can't figure it out."
Feng Jihan was hit hard, and as soon as he got home he hid in the study and practiced his crochet skills frantically.
Cen Xun was used to it. Anyway, when it was time to go to bed, Feng Jihan would naturally appear in bed obediently.
Feng Jihan appeared on the bed, still wearing his new gloves. Cen Xun felt his hands under the quilt and couldn't help but frown, "Are you going to sleep with gloves on?"
Feng Jihan happily admitted: "Yes, what's wrong?"
Cen Xun was at a loss for words. After a while, he sighed and said, "Whatever you want."
Feng Jihan turned off the lights, held him in his arms, and after a few minutes of silence, he whispered in his ear: "Wife, I also want a new scarf."
Cen Xun closed his eyes and said, "You look like a new scarf to me."
Feng Jihan was inexplicably amused by his words, and the whole bed was shaking with his laughter. Cen Xun pushed him impatiently, but Feng Jihan shamelessly clung to him and begged him half-coquettishly: "Brother, knit me a new scarf. I want a new scarf knitted by you yourself."
Cen Xun opened his eyes and glared at him unhappily in the darkness for a while, then he threw back the quilt, turned over, and rode on him directly, saying condescendingly: "Since you can't sleep, then do it."
This time, Feng Jihan finally fell silent, but when he held his waist, he still did not take off the gloves on his hands.
In the middle of the night, Cen Xun opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling solemnly.
Feng Jihan's regular breathing was close to his ears. The quiet night was as usual, but Cen Xun suddenly had a premonition that something unusual was about to happen.
He stared at the window, an inexplicable sense of crisis running up his spine. In his sight, two lines quietly snaked in from the window cracks, with the tips pointing directly at them.
Cen Xun made a decision immediately. He quickly woke Feng Jihan up and dragged him out of bed.
Feng Jihan was still dazed and asked with a nasal tone, "Huh? What's wrong?"
Cen Xun lowered his voice and said concisely: "Something is coming in, hurry up and leave."
As soon as he finished speaking, the two silk threads flew over and hit the door frame, instantly creating a big hole in it.
Feng Jihan also woke up: "What is that?"
"Who knows what it is." Cen Xun took him to the kitchen to find the knives, then went to the toolbox to get the electric saw, and walked out of the room cautiously.
Cen Xun quickly figured out the source of those silk threads. They all came from a huge black and white cocoon-like object floating in the sky.
Countless silk threads spread out from it and fell into thousands of homes. The end of each thread wrapped around a person and dragged them rapidly towards the cocoon-like object in the air.
Many people had their limbs cut off by the overly sharp silk threads while being dragged into the air. Blood and broken limbs fell like raindrops, creating a purgatory-like scene.
Cen Xun saw many familiar faces being dragged into the sky, their limbs falling, houses collapsing in the dense silk threads like a surging tide, and the flowers in the flower beds turned into mud.
Several silk threads had wrapped around Feng Jihan's legs at some point, trying to drag him away. Cen Xun, of course, did not allow it. He held Feng Jihan's hand tightly and struggled against the force.
At this moment, a voice suddenly told him in his mind that as long as he gave up Feng Jihan, he could survive this disaster.
Cen Xun was slightly startled and looked at Feng Jihan. Feng Jihan also looked at him anxiously, his lips moving as if he was saying something to him, and he tried to pry his hands open with his other hand.
Cen Xun's eyes darkened, and he held his hand even tighter, almost shouting, "Don't move!"
But the glove on Feng Jihan's hand began to slip at this moment. No matter how hard Cen Xun tried, in the end, all that was left tightly held in his hand was the glove with a black background and a white bird.
The sound of the wind around seemed to stop suddenly.
Cen Xun held the glove in his hand and searched aimlessly among the broken limbs on the ground. Finally, he found another black bird with a white background stained with blood from a severed hand.
Cen Xun thought almost blankly.
I haven't finished knitting him the scarf I promised him.
A feeling of suffocation came from my heart, and the pain spread belatedly, but was quietly soothed by another force.
Are you sad? Not really. It's just that I lost someone close to me. In a few years, I might forget him.
It wasn't my fault that I didn't catch him.
Yes, it’s not my fault.
Cen Xun repeated this sentence many times, as if he was trying to hypnotize someone. When he finally calmed down, opened his eyes in the cell, and confirmed that all this was just an illusion and that what he had dreamed of did not actually happen, he became even calmer.
It’s just an illusion, nothing more than that.
It didn't hurt him at all and he remained calm.
A familiar voice called out from the small visiting window across the door: "0000, are you okay?"
Cen Xun stood up and stood at the visitor window and said, "I'm fine."
0001 was a little surprised to hear his tone was the same as yesterday: "What did you choose last night?"
Cen Xun smiled: "Choose your husband to die."
0001 was even more surprised: "Then you should have lost your memory of last night. Aren't you sad? Prisoners who come here are often so miserable on their first day that they don't want to wake up, but you..."
Cen Xun was stunned for a moment: "What do you mean by losing memory?"
0001 said helplessly: "If you choose to let the person you care about die, then the memory of last night's illusion will become blurred."
Cen Xun tried to recall, and sure enough, his memory of the gloves was already fragmented.
He could no longer recall the look on his husband's face when he received the gloves.
Cen Xun fell silent.
0001 called out to Cen Xun several times, but received no response. After a few minutes, he heard 0000 say coldly, "So what?"
"Memories can be recreated." Cen Xun said rationally, "If I die here, we will be separated forever."
0001 was stunned by his words and was speechless for a moment.
He was about to speak when he suddenly noticed the ground beneath his feet began to shake continuously. This unprecedented movement made 0001 look slightly serious and frowned.
Under 0001's vigilant gaze, a prison guard nearly two meters tall appeared in his field of vision.
0001 didn't recognize the prison guard at first sight. It was not until he opened the cell door of 0000 opposite that 0001 realized in disbelief that this prison guard was actually 0000's exclusive prison guard?
It's only been one night, why did the prison guards suddenly become so angry?
0001Pupil earthquake.
Cen Xun was slightly surprised when he saw the prison guard who had suddenly grown taller, but he soon fell into deep thought.
The prison guards came to take the prisoners to the classroom to study. After leaving the cell, Cen Xun reunited with his other three teammates.
0006 was in good condition, with tears all over his face, and no other problems. However, 0088 and 0113 had bigger problems, their faces were pale, and their eyes were dazed, as if all their energy had been sucked out.
Cen Xun deliberately observed the prison guards of these three people. Due to the cover of the black cloak, he could not tell whether their prison guards had changed.
Among all the prison guards, only Cen Xun's prison guards improved significantly in just one night.
why is that?
Cen Xun asked 0006: "What did you choose last night?"
When this was mentioned, 0006 burst into tears and confessed: "I chose to kill my brother. I didn't want to do this, but alas, I am really not a human being! I want to die, Brother 40, please kill me, I don't want to live anymore! Let God judge me for this heinous sin!"
Cen Xun turned to 0088 and 0113: "What about you?"
0088: "Suicide."
0113: "Suicide."
Although the two looked pale, their mental state was much more stable than 0006.
Cen Xun was just wondering why this difference had occurred when 0001 interrupted and explained, "If you choose to commit suicide, you can retain your memories, but your body will become weaker, and it will be more difficult to go down the well."
So that's how it is. Cen Xun finally understood the entire deep logic of the so-called "atonement".
If you choose to kill someone else, you will lose a part of your memory. The self-blame and pain may make the prisoner unable to recover and fall into a deep sleep. Even if he wakes up, he will be deeply trapped in the emotions of remorse and self-blame and unable to extricate himself.
When the memory disappears to a certain extent, the prisoners lose the reason and motivation to be released from prison, and eventually lose hope and die in prison.
If they choose to die, their bodies will become weak. If this weakness accumulates every day, then by that time, there is no need to think about getting out of prison. They may be beaten to death by prison guards when they go down the well.
It seems to be an unsolvable dilemma.
But the problem is
Why is his mental state so stable even though he chooses to kill people?
Cen Xun looked at 0001, who was looking at him thoughtfully. Noticing his gaze, 0001 smiled awkwardly and turned his head away as if nothing had happened.
Cen Xun's gaze turned to the prison guard beside him who had grown noticeably taller overnight.
He always felt that there was some connection between them, but for a moment, he couldn't grasp the clue.
After walking into the "classroom", each prisoner sat down in his or her seat, and the prison guard began to play educational films for them on the multimedia projector.
The educational film is a brainwashing video of the warden, in which the warden repeatedly repeats the importance of atonement and requires them to sincerely repent in prison.
The same contents were repeated over and over again, but those words seemed to have some magical power, easily pulling Cen Xun back to the illusion of last night, the moment when the two clasped hands suddenly separated.
0006 started crying loudly and almost hit his head on the ground. 0001, 0088, 0096, 0113 and others also had tears in their eyes.
0009 was in great pain as well, so he banged his head against the wall until he fainted, so that he wouldn't be bothered by it.
Only Cen Xun's breathing returned to normal, and his clenched fingers gradually loosened.
The suppressed emotions surged in like a tide, and receded like a tide, smoothing out all traces of ups and downs in my heart.
The same thing.
It’s just an illusion, nothing more than that.
Suddenly there was a loud noise above my head, and several bricks fell down with a crackling sound.
Cen Xun looked up and saw that his prison guard had grown taller again in just a few minutes.
Its head had already penetrated the ceiling, and its body seemed to have grown even larger.
I don’t know if it was Cen Xun’s illusion, but in Cen Xun’s sight, the prison guard’s black cloak seemed to have come untied, with several short threads emerging and wriggling like tentacles. It actually looked a bit weirdly cute?
Cen Xun: “”
Cen Xun thought expressionlessly, he must have gone crazy.
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