Chapter 257: Inhuman (65) (1st + 2nd) [VIP]
"Fuck, stop hitting me, stop hitting me. I think I heard a kid's voice."
Before the triggerers who were standing there in a daze could take the next step, the thugs who were beating up the kids in front heard what the kid said and stopped what they were doing.
"Hey? Kid?"
"Kid, why are you here?" Among the hooligans who stopped, a guy wearing a black T-shirt looked back in their direction, threw away the iron rod in his hand, shook off the dust, and actually walked straight towards them.
"What is he going to do?" Dita asked alertly.
"Can you see us?" Huangmao quickly stood in front of the child, and asked nervously, "Where are your parents? Why did you come here alone?"
But in the face of Huangmao's series of questions, the child seemed not to hear them and stood there without saying a word.
Seeing that these gangsters noticed the child, they all stepped forward vigilantly and stood in front of the child.
The gangster who was walking towards the child could not see them. Unexpectedly, he walked around Guan Hongyan who was in the front very naturally, and then walked sideways through the crowd. Under the vigilant gaze of everyone, he squatted down and picked up the child with one hand.
"Big brother said it's time for dinner, so I came to call you back to eat," the child seemed to know him, and he didn't look panicked when he picked him up. He answered seriously, "I'll come and call you."
"Is it time for dinner?" The other gangsters behind seemed to have received some signal. They stopped what they were doing and walked over one by one with laughter.
The iron rods, various wine bottles and other things in their hands were thrown casually into the corner of the wall, making a clanging sound of collision and breaking.
"Oh oh oh, it's time for dinner."
"What are we having for dinner today? Is there any wine?"
"You cook whatever you want to eat, and you get to choose!"
"Let's eat!" The gangster who had just shouted "Beat him to death" was the last one to stop. He dropped the steel pipe in his hand, walked over with a smile, and smeared the blood on his hand on the kid's face in a mean manner. The fierceness in his eyes had disappeared.
“Sixth brother…” The child leaned back, frowned, and looked mature, “You touched my face without washing your hands. It’s dirty, bloody.”
"That's right, your hands are all fucking bloody, they're so dirty, don't touch kids!" A thug with ear bones pierced nearby pushed him, causing him to stagger.
"Hey, hey," the thug stood up, the blood on his hands not yet dried mixed with the sand on the ground, and he leaned over and pinched the child's face, "Just touch it, just touch it, so you can dislike your sixth brother."
The child dodged left and right, and the hand chased left and right.
“Get lost!” Finally, the man in the black T-shirt holding the child rolled his eyes and turned around holding the child, “Don’t touch my face with your f*cking hands.”
"Tsk——" "Sixth Brother" shook his head triumphantly, tugged at his clothes, and wiped the child's face, which was not clean to begin with, until it looked more like a cat's paw. "Alright, alright, I've cleaned it for you. Don't have a stern face!"
He wiped the blood off his clothes, took the child into his arms, and threw him toward the sky carelessly: "Let's go! Let's go home!"
The seriousness and maturity on the kid's face finally broke when he was thrown into the air: "Sixth brother! Catch me!"
"Hey, of course I'll catch you. Who is your Sixth Brother?" The Sixth Brother curled his lips. "I'm different from that idiot Old Three!"
"Who are you calling mentally retarded, you idiot!" someone scolded with a smile.
"Whoever takes the next step will do it!"
A group of people walked away laughing and joking.
The contrast between this group of people's performance before and after is too great. The triggerers stood in place with different expressions on their faces.
"What... is going on?" Xiao Tang opened his mouth in confusion. "Does this kid know this group of people? He seems to be their younger brother?"
"Sister Tazi?" She subconsciously looked in the direction of Dita.
"I don't know either..." Dita frowned, "But... can this child see us?"
If he could see, then why didn't he respond to the yellow-haired man's question?
If you say he couldn't see, what he just said was "Brothers and sisters, you are blocking me", right?
The thugs in the alley are all men, there are no "sisters" at all, and only among them, the triggerers, are there women.
If he was mistaken, the communication between the child and the thugs showed that his intelligence was definitely higher than that of ordinary children of this age. He was already three or four years old. The people in the alley might be his relatives who he lived with day and night. It was impossible for him to mistake a man for a woman or call the wrong name.
That's strange.
Could the child see them?
Just when everyone was puzzled, a painful groan suddenly came from deep in the alley.
Everyone realized it later and looked back.
After the group of thugs left, the man who was surrounded and beaten by them was left in the alley.
Watching the crowd walk away, he finally turned over, facing the sky and groaned in pain.
From this angle, his exposed skin was covered with blue and purple scars, and the places covered by clothes were covered with all kinds of dust and shoe prints.
"This guy is also from Purple Street," Dita lowered her voice, "He's dressed like a typical Purple Street guy."
The style of the gangsters is easy to recognize.
"So this is an internal fight in Purple Street?" Xiao Tang asked subconsciously.
"Not necessarily..." Dita hesitated a little, "Purple Street is actually just a nickname for a group. It's very chaotic here... Various fights are common. This may be a fight between two gangs or something..."
The man in the alley was stumbling and trying to stand up.
Perhaps because his arm was broken, he tried several times but couldn't keep his balance. In the end, he fell to the other side halfway through standing.
"I'll go take a look," Bai Jinshu walked towards the man, "Sister Ta, do you know the distribution of forces in Purple Street?"
“I don’t really understand…” Dita shook her head and followed him over. “Inside Purple Street… the power dynamics change quite frequently.”
"What exactly is Purple Street?" Huangmao couldn't help but ask.
"Purple Street is not actually a street. It refers to an area in the City of Violence. It's just that there is a purple street in this area that is the most famous, so everyone calls it Purple Street," Yuan Shanming explained. "That's all I know. You still have to ask Dita about the details."
"Purple Street is a special place in the City of Violence. It was originally a gathering place for homeless people to keep each other warm. However, due to the special customs of the City of Violence... well, most of these homeless people are hooligans," Dita answered as she walked. "When there are too many people, conflicts are likely to arise. If there is a conflict, the party with more people will definitely have the upper hand. Not to mention that this is the City of Violence, so the hooligans in Purple Street were originally divided into gangs based on where they live."
This is how the unique ecology in Purple Street developed.
"Well... after the residents gather together for warmth, they will form small groups. Where there are people, there will be rivers and lakes. Conflicts between members of small groups will lead to fights, and then to turf disputes," Dita said. "In this process of development, some vagrants who have no intention of participating in these disputes are forced to leave Purple Street and wander around or join a group to seek shelter, which in turn forces this place into a place with complicated gangs and many forces. As time goes by, it becomes like this."
"Most citizens of the violent city look down on Purple Street, thinking it's a gathering place for hooligans. Moreover, the probability of violent incidents here is higher than in other places, and the quality of the people is relatively lower than in other places. Therefore, in the battle record table of the Daleme software, disputes related to Purple Street are at the bottom of the food chain. If you show your struggle experience related to Purple Street, you will be ridiculed."
She squatted down next to the gangster and observed his clothes and appearance, trying to find some clues: "This guy... I can't tell what gang he belongs to. I'm not familiar with this place."
She frowned in embarrassment: "Besides, I'm not familiar with this place."
"This seems to be deep inside Purple Street," Dita stood up and looked around. "Under normal circumstances, we team leaders will try to avoid this accident-prone area. First, to protect ourselves. Second, because the forces inside Purple Street are complicated. We team leaders have to stay in the violent city for a long time. Whether we offend the gangs there or make friends with a gang, it will bring unnecessary trouble to the subsequent team leaders."
She showed unexpected expertise on topics related to the violent capital.
"This illusion master is a little strange," Dita paused, "No, it's very strange."
Normal citizens of the City of Violence would not go as deep into the Purple Street. Most of the citizens in the City of Violence should be like her, who don’t know much about this place. They just know the origin of the Purple Street and that it is very chaotic.
Who is this person?
"So what should we do now?" The fitness guy looked around in confusion, "Where should we go now?"
The man with a broken arm deep in the alley was limping away. Now they only met two groups of people in this nightmare. One group was the gangsters who had just left, and the rest was the man who was surrounded and beaten by them.
Who to follow?
"How about we divide into groups?" Dita frowned and looked around. "This illusion seems to be much bigger than the last one."
In Master Zhan's illusion, as soon as you leave the hotel, the outside environment begins to become vague and illusory, but here, looking from this direction, the Purple Street in the distance is also clear.
"It may be caused by the different people who created the illusion," Yuan Shanming responded, "Well, you are more familiar with the situation in Purple Street. You go follow the man who was beaten and find out why he was beaten and whether his beating is related to this illusion. Let's catch up with the gangsters who left and find out what happened to the kid."
"Okay," Dita nodded, "Then Xiao Hong and I will go together. We will meet here after we find out something."
After a brief exchange of words, Dita, together with Guan Hongyan and the fitness guy from her team, caught up with the limping man and followed him to see where he was going.
The remaining few people in Yuan Shanming's team rushed in the direction where the group of thugs left.
At dusk, Purple Street looks like an ordinary residential area. The intricate alleys form a spider-web-like new traffic line. After leaving the slightly remote alley, you enter the residential area of Purple Street people.
The sound of firewood and rice cooking smoke gradually increased.
The residential area of Zi Street is composed of some very old-looking bungalows. The doors of each household do not have the thick anti-theft doors like those in the homes of normal citizens in the violent capital they entered. Looking around, the front doors of each household are very simple wooden doors or iron fences.
Worse still, some of the more dilapidated houses don't even have doors. Their doors are just a greasy wooden board next to them. On the board, there are patterns painted by nobody with spray paint. The patterns are stacked up together so that no one can tell what is painted on it. However, one can vaguely make out some cursive words like "FUCK".
"These are probably the residents of Purple Street that Dita mentioned." Yuan Shanming looked around.
Contrary to their stereotype, the people of Purple Street are not all those young thugs just now.
On both sides of these streets, there are elderly people, middle-aged men with half baldness and worn shirts, young girls walking on the streets carrying transparent plastic basins on their heads, and unleashed dogs shuttling under people's feet. This place does not look like the purple street full of gangs that Dita mentioned. If you have to say, this place is more like the old city streets in some cities that have not been demolished.
It really seems to have nothing to do with Purple Street.
The group of thugs walked in the crowd, and the surrounding residents greeted them one after another.
"To Sixth Brother!"
“You’re back!”
"Sixth brother, how are you today?"
"Try this, an orange I bought from outside."
"It's fine. It's fine."
"I'm back. I came back early today."
As the sixth brother answered, he handed over an orange from the neighbor and put it into the child's mouth: "Child, try it. Is it sweet?"
The child frowned, was silent for several seconds, and uttered a word: "Sour."
There was a burst of laughter all around.
"It's sour," the man who handed over the orange patted his chest, "It's a good thing I didn't eat it."
"You kid—" Sixth Brother widened his eyes and kicked him, "You're waiting for me here, right?"
"How can you say I'm waiting for you?" The man who handed the orange pulled the corner of his mouth and smiled cunningly, "This is not for you, Sixth Brother, to eat. This is for children to eat."
The sixth brother rolled his eyes and said, "Get lost."
The child lying in his arms was silent for a while and then spoke seriously: "Sixth brother, it's so sour, water."
"Did you hear that? Water!" The Sixth Brother kicked the man again, "Hurry up! Didn't you hear the kid shouting?"
"Here I come!" A pretty girl walked out of the room, holding a white porcelain bowl that looked a bit chipped, with a little yellow water in it. "Sugar water."
"My sister is here!" The man handing over the oranges yelled, "Kid, my sister specially saved some sweet soup for you!"
"Go away," the girl glanced at him and put the bowl close to the child's mouth, carefully avoiding the gap. "Can you hold it?"
"Okay, thank you, sister." The child took the bowl seriously and started drinking while leaning on Sixth Brother's shoulder.
"Next time, ignore my brother," the girl rolled her eyes and said to the sixth brother, "If he plays a prank on you again, just hit him in the face. Two punches will make him stop."
"Are you my real sister?" the boy next to her screamed.
"No," the girl stepped on him with a smile, crushed him amid his howling, and said rudely, "You were picked up from the garbage dump."
The crowd burst into laughter.
The thugs holding the children continued to move forward.
As they moved forward, every household poked their heads out and everyone was able to talk to them for a few words.
"Third brother, the thing you left with me has been fixed!"
"Fifth brother, I got the goods you ordered from me a while ago. When can you come and take a look?"
"Brother Xiang Liu, do you want the skirt you left with me the day before yesterday?"
"Shhh..." The sixth brother glared, raised his hand and made a "shhh" gesture in front of his mouth, and bowed to the middle-aged woman who opened her mouth to shout at him, "Aunt, please keep your voice down!"
He subconsciously glanced in the direction of the girl as if feeling guilty.
"Oh——" There was a burst of booing from the surroundings.
"This skirt can't be..."
"Hey you guys!" Sixth Brother's ears turned red. He angrily threw the child in his arms into the hands of the thugs next to him, rolled up his sleeves and started fighting with the person who was making the most noise next to him.
"You fight first, we have to go back to eat." The thug who caught the child ran away without mercy, "Don't worry, we will definitely not leave any food for you, if you come back late, you will just have to eat white rice."
"Sixth brother, white rice doesn't taste good." The child said in a serious tone.
"Get out of here!" Amid the laughter of the crowd around him, Sixth Brother pulled the people around him into a fight.
"This..." Xiao Tang scratched his head, his tone strange, "Isn't this too normal?"
"Is this Purple Street?" Huangmao also asked in a confused tone.
"This is just the Purple Street created by the master of the illusion," Yuan Shanming frowned and said, "Maybe the real Purple Street is different from this."
"Even if it's an illusion, this is a little too real," Bai Jinshuo said, looking around. "The reason why Master Zhan created the Chef Contest before was probably because the Chef Contest that was canceled halfway through filming became his eternal regret. If the person who created this environment is in the same situation as Master Zhan, could it be that not being able to bring harmony to the chaotic and complicated Purple Street neighbors is his lifelong regret?"
"This person is very conscious..." Xiao Tang twitched his lips. "If it were in the outside world, his regret would be like saying that the regret of a cadre who went to the countryside to help the poor is that he failed to lift the poor mountainous areas out of poverty."
"Don't tell me, it's really possible," Yuan Shanming thought for a while, "As far as I know, Purple Street is a very chaotic place, and it has always been the cancer of B City. The city government of the City of Violence has always wanted to eradicate Purple Street and has managed it many times. However, due to the special customs of the people in the City of Violence, Purple Street is just a nickname. Even if you get rid of Purple Street in the geographical sense, you can't get rid of Purple Street in people's hearts. There are always homeless people in a city. As long as these people exist, Purple Street will never disappear completely."
"If you say this is the obsession of a civil servant in the violent city, then maybe it's really possible," Yuan Shanming observed the surroundings and laughed, "Maybe this person's obsession is to make all the residents of this place live in harmony and not fight or brawl?"
"There is such a plan?" Xiao Tang crossed his arms, "Then this highly conscious poverty alleviation cadre could be that kid, right?"
After all, so far, the only one who had shown any attention to their existence was the child.
"But if he is the creator of the illusion, why doesn't he pay attention to us?" The yellow-haired man was confused.
"They are all children, so it's normal for them to think differently from adults," Bai Jinshu thought for a while, "Maybe because there are so many adults here, he doesn't dare to pay attention to strangers like us."
"I can't guess it," Yuan Shanming shrugged, "Why don't we follow them and see?"
No matter how much we speculate, it will be useless until solid evidence emerges.
Following the group of thugs forward, after passing through a residential area, we finally arrived at their "home".
Compared with other bungalows, this place is much larger, but there should be many more people living in it.
Several thugs walked into the house. The one holding the child put him on the ground, rolled up his sleeves and shouted, "Brother? Is dinner ready?"
"It's time for dinner," a man with green dragons on his arms came out of the kitchen. He was wearing an apron and holding a cigarette as he looked outside. "Wipe the table and tidy up the floor, then come in and serve the dishes."
"Wipe the table? Why wipe the table?" someone asked curiously.
"We dealt with something this afternoon," a tall, thin man walked out of the kitchen, "It was pretty ugly, and there was blood. Wipe it off, otherwise it will smell bad when we eat."
"Okay, let's clean up."
Inside the restaurant, the round table was covered in dried blood, and there were a lot of broken glass and wood chips under the table. It looked like someone had been involved in a fight and there was no time to clean up. One of the parties involved in the fight suffered heavy casualties, leaving a lot of blood.
A few hooligans, some holding rags and some holding brooms, were cleaning while asking, "What happened this afternoon, brother?"
"In the afternoon, an uncle I had seen before sneaked in," the child next to him continued, "Luckily my older brothers and sisters reminded me, and I told my eldest brother, who stopped him, and then they started fighting here."
"Before... the hardware dealer on the street, who lives next door, sneaked in to look for something." The tall and thin man leaned against the door frame, lit a cigarette and took a puff. The smell of cheap cigarettes filled the air. "Maybe he thought the kid was ignorant and didn't guard against him. As a result, the kid saw him and ran over to tell Lao Guan."
"Lao Guan was chopping bones at the time, so he went out with the knife in hand," he waved the slender fingers holding the cigarette behind him, "and that's what happened. He was half disabled, and I called a few people to drag him away. It's no big deal."
The triggerers nearby looked at each other.
Isn't that right?
Didn’t the child say “brother and sister” to remind him?
Why did the tall and thin man say that the person who sneaked in was not prepared for the child to be seen by him?
Who discovered the person who sneaked in?
"Damn it, I told you those bastards next door are restless. This afternoon we even met a spy who wanted to come over to investigate." Someone threw a rag and cursed loudly.
"That grandson got a good deal!" someone shouted.
"They all sneaked in here! What's the job of the gatekeeper on the front street?"
"I've noticed that boy has shifty eyes!"
"Come on, come on, why are you talking after the fact?" The tall and thin man rolled his eyes at them. "Have you finished cleaning up? If you have, serve the dishes."
A few thugs shrank their necks and ran towards the kitchen.
"Brother," the child walked up and tugged at the tall and thin man's sleeve earnestly, "It wasn't me who discovered that uncle this afternoon. It was my older brother and sister who discovered him."
"Yeah, yeah, that's right, my brother and sister saw it," the tall and thin man flicked the ash off his cigarette perfunctorily and looked around, "Where's your sixth brother? Why hasn't he come back yet? He's still fighting outside? Go call him to eat!"
"Oh, I'll go find him." The child turned and ran away towards the door.
The two sentences were incoherent. Xiao Tang frowned and watched for a few seconds. He couldn't help but chase the tall and thin man and asked him a few questions. Seeing that he didn't respond, he stopped and said, "If this kid is the owner of the illusion, then he must have some problems, right?"
This appeared several times, and once they were even called "brother and sister". What exactly is this?
"Paranoia?" Bai Jinshu suddenly spoke.
"What do you mean?" Xiao Tang turned his head to look over.
"I don't know if you have ever taken care of a child..." Bai Jinshu frowned slightly, "When children are young, especially when they are three or four years old, they sometimes imagine some non-existent friends. If the situation is not serious, it is okay if you don't intervene. It will disappear naturally as they grow older. But if it is serious, it may affect normal cognition and turn into paranoia."
According to this tall and thin man, it was the child who clearly saw the people sneaking in in the afternoon, but in his mouth they became "brother and sister".
It happened in the afternoon too, when they were standing at the entrance of the alley, and the child said "brother and sister" blocking his view, but then he ignored their presence.
Could it be that the “brothers and sisters” that the child is talking about do not really exist, and are actually non-existent friends that he imagined?
"If that's the case... then didn't we find the wrong person?" Yuan Shanming said in a strange tone.
In an illusion where everything is generated according to the consciousness of the illusion master...will the illusion master still have illusions that the illusion cannot manifest?
The author has something to say:
Well, it is normal for three or four-year-olds to imagine friends who do not exist. The diagnosis process for delusional disorder is very complicated. It is not that just imagining friends who do not exist is delusional.
First 20 + Random 20
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