Withered Dynasty
The Memory Master pretended not to hear anything and continued to say to Qian Xiao: "Senior sister, my role is handed over to you. I have just recovered from a serious illness and I am physically exhausted. Only you can play this role."
Qian Xiao's smile froze, and she looked at Du Ziming for help. Du Ziming didn't say anything, and his face was a little dark.
The illusionist guessed that the young master felt that she had not given him face, so she coughed twice and said weakly: "I really want to complete this performance with everyone, but my physical condition does not allow it."
Someone nearby tried to smooth things over: "Let Qian Xiao act. Ziming, you need to hurry up and practice your movements. It will be too late to adjust your movements once the costumes arrive tomorrow."
Du Ziming nodded but didn't move. The others tactfully walked onto the stage, giving them some space to be alone.
"Did someone boring say anything?" Du Ziming asked with concern.
"No, I'm really not feeling well. You see, I'm not wearing any makeup today."
Du Ziming believed it immediately. He asked knowingly with an ambiguous and greasy expression: "Then why did you come to the drama club?"
The illusionist had every reason to suspect that the Du Ziming in front of her and the handsome guy she saw from afar at the door were two different people.
But she had questions to ask people, so she had to force herself to keep smiling: "Of course I came to see you."
Seeing Du Ziming's happy expression, the illusionist struck while the iron was hot: "Senior, when is your birthday?"
"August 27, 1980. It's been a long time since you called me senior."
After chatting with him for a few more words, the Memory Master watched him go up to the stage, and couldn't wait to move a folding chair, sit down and take out his mobile phone.
She held the phone and thought for a while, but ultimately did not try using Du Ziming's birthday as the password.
On the surface, dating is an integral part of Liu Tianyi's college life, but all of her boyfriends are more like fashion items than "love objects" - fashion items that are no different from her diamond-encrusted manicure and perfect makeup.
She liked them, only the part of them that could benefit her, only the part that she could use to show off to others.
When she thinks the fashion items are not good enough, she will immediately throw them away and look for the next one.
In Liu Tianyi's mind, these fashion items even rank behind getting a high GPA to study abroad. The notebooks full of notes prove this. She definitely has no time to pay attention to her boyfriend during class.
A female college student who gets up early every day and puts on makeup, studies hard in class, joins clubs and the student union after class, and also takes time out of her spare time to date and change boyfriends.
A woman who tries her best to live her life as an "enviable woman", the memory analyst believes that she would not use the birthday of a male classmate with whom she is in an ambiguous relationship as the lock screen password.
The drama club was unable to provide any useful clues, so the Memory Master prepared to find an excuse to leave and unpack where no one would disturb him.
She glanced at the stage, where a girl playing the role of a counselor seemed to be persuading the two protagonists and another male supporting role.
With a creaky sound, the heavy door of the old auditorium was pushed open, and the Memory Master immediately turned around.
No one came in. There was a clothing rack at the door, which was filled with gorgeous and complicated European dresses, the kind that could be worn directly to perform Shakespeare's plays.
The Memory Master turned around and asked: "It's not our clothes, who sent it by mistake?"
Time seemed to be paused, with the actors on stage and the support staff off stage all frozen.
The male supporting actor maintained a funny squatting posture with his head in his hands. The girl who played the counselor behind him had her mouth slightly open with an angry expression and her arms raised high. The two main actors stood dejectedly beside them, and everyone was motionless.
Before he could feel fear, the scene disappeared from the illusionist's retina like a frame taken out of a movie, and everyone in the auditorium took action.
The male supporting actor excitedly shouted: "The costumes are here!"
He jumped off the stage and led the charge toward the door, followed closely by the rest.
The illusionist grabbed Du Ziming and said, "Are those our clothes? Don't make a mistake!"
Du Ziming stared at the clothes without turning his head: "It can't be wrong, I paid for it."
Everyone seemed to already know which piece of clothing belonged to them, and they couldn't wait to get their clothes and go into the backstage dressing room.
When she was the only one left in the hall, the illusionist walked closer to observe the remaining clothes on the rack, but she did not dare to touch them.
Some of the clothes were not as gorgeous as the dresses worn by the male and female protagonists, but they were far beyond the standard of a university club.
Two of them were obviously guard uniforms, with heavy metal medals hanging on them. The medals were engraved with unfamiliar words, and the surface had a delicate and mysterious luster.
Does a play in which a director plays the leading role need such gorgeous costumes? The play they just rehearsed was just an everyday school play, so ordinary that it had nothing to do with these clothes.
The Memory Master circled the rack anxiously.
The actors didn't let her wait too long. They put on their complicated dresses at incredible speed and appeared on the stage.
The screen next to the stage displayed two lines of text.
Act 1: The Original Forest
Gaia and the Morning Star are walking in the forest. 】
The male announcer's deep and textured voice sounded: "In the past, the world was in chaos. The world's consciousness was called Gaia. Gaia had a son named Morning Star."
The protagonist wearing a blood-red tragedy mask came on stage: "All living beings are born dull! I am a natural-born star spirit, a god of chaos. I will be the ruler, the controller, and the immortal. One day I will become the king of kings!"
Announcer: "For the first time, an emotion called 'fear' appeared in the world, because Gaia was panicked by her son's declaration."
Gaia wore a pure white mother mask: "Not everyone is born dull, my dear child. At the junction of fog and light, a person who is born with knowledge is about to be born - Meleagro."
"She is both your servant and your teacher, but I hope she can be your friend even more."
Announcer: "So the future King of Kings, now the Morning Star, set out on a journey to find the one who knows by nature."
Morning Star: "I wandered in the mist day and night, unable to enter the gathering place of light. In the place where the light gathered, my desire to be king burned like firewood."
"I am in great pain! Why does the light refuse to accept me? I stare at the light for a long time, but the light resists me! My eyes shed tears for this."
Announcer: "Spring goes and autumn comes, the Morning Star has been waiting here for many years."
Two masked men in tattered clothes knelt at Morning Star's feet and cried.
Morning Star: "There are so many fools in this world. The first fool who saw me mistakenly thought that I was weeping for all the living beings in the world. So countless fools came to pay homage and weep with me."
"That day I saw light and fog intertwined, and the crystal-clear and light souls of those who knew gradually emerged. The cries of the fools became louder and louder, and the annoyance in my heart accumulated more and more."
"I suddenly realized something! I came here not to find someone who knows everything, but to cry alone while looking at the light. Only when I am alone can the light belong to me."
"The Land of Mists has no need for such fools - the Light never accepts fools!"
The heroine wearing a silver wise man mask appears.
Meleagro: "Not so. It is because you are not selfless, my lord, my king. He who is born knowing is all-knowing, and he who is all-knowing is selfless, and he who is selfless is born from the light."
The illusionist was stunned.
She had no idea why a good college drama suddenly turned into something so strange. She shouted to the stage: "Hey! What are you guys acting in? This is not what we just rehearsed!"
The two fools kneeling on the stage were unwilling to stand up: "This is how the show should be."
"Stop kidding! You two are in the logistics team. You don't have to perform on stage. You should be controlling the lights and subtitles!"
The actress who played Gaia poked her head out: "That's what the script said."
"You're even more outrageous! The counselor you just played spoke in plastic Mandarin, and when you played Gaia, you inexplicably changed to a broadcasting accent. Now when you talk to me, you speak back to plastic Mandarin. What's wrong with you?"
"Don't yell like that." Qian Xiao's voice came from under the mask, "You're disturbing our normal rehearsal."
The illusionist climbed onto the stage and strode towards Du Ziming. Without warning, she stretched out her hand to personally remove the red tragic mask.
The moment Du Ziming stretched out his hand, he grabbed her wrist and slowly tightened it.
The fools wept and uttered a prayer-like phrase:
"The king of kings, the leader of the withered army. A lone figure behind the scenes, with the setting sun as his skirt. The iron pole has twisted branches, the moon is hidden and the stars are hidden. The king's shadow is long, the night is low. The mist crown is heavy, the flowers should not bloom. Blood flows on the floating hill, the mourning song is endless..."
The wrist was clenched so hard that it made a teeth-grinding sound. The illusionist shouted: "Let go!"
Du Ziming loosened his hand and looked at her quietly. The illusionist pulled open his coat sleeve and found that his wrist was bruised.
"Where did the script come from?" She rubbed her wrist.
Qian Xiao looked at the silent Du Ziming, as if he had received some instructions: "In the storage room of the complex building."
With one last look behind the scenes, the Memory Master picked up the package and turned to leave. As he walked out the door, he could still hear Qian Xiao's exaggerated aria-like recitation.
The storage room of the comprehensive building is easy to find. It is located in the corner of the building on the first floor. This corner is too small to be used as a classroom, but it is just right as a storage room.
The memory master gently pushed the door, and it opened. A round-faced girl holding a broom stood in the room. The girl was startled by the memory master.
There was a huge safe standing in the middle of the room. The illusionist walked straight towards the safe, and the round-faced girl timidly made way for her.
The safe was unlocked, and the Memory Master's heart sank.
She opened the metal door with a combination lock, and there was another lock inside. She opened the second unlocked door, and there was another ancient mechanical lock inside.
Holding on to the last glimmer of hope, the illusionist stretched out his finger to touch the mechanical lock, and a delicate gear fell off the mechanical lock, indicating that the last layer of protection had long lost its effect.
The thing protected by three layers of locks appeared before her, a document written on special paper.
[Withered Dynasty is a tragedy in five acts whose author is unknown.
The script will cause the actors to become individuals with highly suggestible or dependent personality traits. They will perform the play uncontrollably according to the script and spread contagious psychological suggestion and deep hypnosis to the audience.
When they perform the drama for a long time, contagious mental illness will develop among the crowd, leading to mental disorders, mutual attacks and even self-harm, and the character of the King of Kings in the play will appear.
Withered Dynasty is a self-evolving source of memetic pollution, spread through dramatic texts and actors' performances.
All materials related to the Withered Dynasty are organized in a triple-locked safe, and removal of items from the safe is prohibited.
No relevant information is allowed to leave the final level of the safe, including manuscripts, photographs, videos, sounds, electromagnetic and particulate signals, or parapsychological projections.
When leaving, be sure to inject yourself with the short-term amnesiac in the outermost safe.
If there is no short-term amnestic or the drug is ineffective, take other effective measures in time. If there are no effective measures to take, immediately implement emergency plan A. 】
The illusionist reached into the safe and searched it carefully inside and out. There was no play text, let alone any potion. She turned her head suddenly and stared at the only living person in the room.
The round-faced girl was even more frightened. From the moment she found the safe was unlocked, she realized something was wrong. She trembled and said in defense:
"I didn't open the safe, and I wasn't the one who cleaned this place before..."
"I know it wasn't you who opened it. Have you seen what's inside?" The illusionist interrupted her and snatched the dustpan behind her. There were only wisps of dust in it.
"I don't know! I really don't know! I don't even dare to touch it. I'm just cleaning for others!"
The illusionist then asked: "Before you cleaned it, was there anything else on the floor besides the dust?"
The round-faced girl hesitated.
"Student, you must cooperate with the investigation honestly." The illusionist said seriously.
I don't know what the round-faced girl thought of, but she suddenly wasn't so nervous:
"When I came in, I saw a syringe packaging bag that was different from the usual ones. It looked expensive and exquisite. I thought it was a prop that fell from the shelf, so I put it back."
There was indeed a small silver bag made of strange material on the shelf behind the door. The Memory Master asked her: "You didn't touch the safe, did you?"
"No." The round-faced girl shook her head repeatedly.
"Don't touch it, and don't touch anything else in this room. When the technicians from the Superpower Administration arrive—" The Memory Master stopped talking, realizing that she had an occupational disease.
"Forget it, just don't touch it. You just said you were cleaning for someone else."
The round-faced girl spilled the beans and told the whole story: "I came here for my friend. We got a cleaning job from the work-study center when school started."
"She is in charge of this storage room, and I am in charge of the conference room in another building. But she received a part-time job as a photographer this morning, so she gave me the key to the storage room and asked me to clean it for her."
"What's your friend's name and where is she?"
After hesitating for a moment, the round-faced girl said uneasily: "Her name is Huang Zixuan, and she is now taking graduation photos for someone in the classroom on the second floor of this building."
"Police sister, that syringe was not used by her. She would not do such a thing. She is very poor."
The Memory Master was helpless: "I'm not a police officer from the Super Management Bureau."
"Ah, then why are you asking me so much?"
"Because I'm a detective."
After stuffing the documents found in the safe into her coat, the Memory Master warned her: "There are super-powered criminals and some weirdos with unknown abilities out there."
"Lock the door and don't go out. Don't touch anything in the house. Don't listen to or read any strange texts. Don't open the door for anyone, not even your parents or teachers. They are just monsters disguised as people you know."
The round-faced girl was so frightened that her teeth were chattering. She had endless questions to ask, but before she could open her mouth, the detective sister in front of her rushed out like the wind, leaving her with only her back.
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