Strange Tales from the Deep Mountains (Part 23)
"Rou Rou, I'll get rid of that little monster..."
The man's face was flushed, his mouth almost stretched to his ears, and he was immersed in his own joy. He wanted to share this joy with his wife, but before his hand could even touch hers, it was pulled away.
Rou Rou didn't even glance at him, and ran straight inside through the flames and thick smoke.
The man watched as his usually gentle, virtuous, and considerate wife rushed into the flames without the slightest hesitation. His pupils dilated, and he muttered, "Crazy...she's really crazy..."
This little monster changed even his wife!
Fearing that the fire wouldn't kill the little monster, the man hurriedly retreated as the flames rushed towards him.
"Ouch!" The man stepped on a round, red fruit, his ankle twisted at a terrible angle, and he fell heavily to the ground. He didn't dare to linger for a moment, gritting his teeth and dragging his sprained, swollen ankle away as he scrambled away.
Inside, Rou Rou staggered from the heatwave that hit her. Her red dress had been consumed by the flames and burned into patches of blackish-brown. Her beautiful, smooth black hair had also been burned to ashes, crumbling into tiny sesame-seed-sized pieces at the touch.
Her skin was already blistered from the fire, but Rou Rou didn't stop.
"Baby?" Rou Rou covered her mouth and nose with her hand, breathing in the thin air with difficulty. Her originally fair and slender hand was burned beyond recognition, swollen, and the skin was charred, with tissue fluid flowing out.
Rou Rou, however, seemed oblivious, continuing to run into the house, searching every corner where her baby might be hiding.
"Stop looking!" Tears welled up in Li Su's eyes. He was a vague, ethereal consciousness, but he knew clearly that the child in the closet had stopped breathing.
The flames started burning the wardrobe, whose door was firmly latched shut.
No matter how hard Li Su tried, she couldn't touch the latch that was stuck, and could only listen to the little dumpling's cries for help in the closet gradually weakening.
"Mom...Mom..." The little dumpling's face was blackened by the smoke, and finally let out an almost inaudible cry. Its big, vibrant eyes finally closed weakly.
The moment the little dumpling closed its eyes, Li Su felt like he couldn't breathe. Even though he was just a mind without a heart or body organs, he still felt heartache and sadness...
He couldn't save the little dumpling.
"Stop looking! Stop looking!" Li Su desperately rammed into Rou Rou, trying to stop her.
Rou Rou is in a very dangerous state. Her body has been burned so badly that she is almost unrecognizable, but she has not stopped.
I don't know what kind of belief could sustain a woman to this extent.
"Stop looking! He, the baby is already dead..." Li Su collapsed and rammed into Rou Rou again, trying to push her out of the wooden house.
But perhaps because he was already burned to the point of being delirious, Li Su's consciousness actually managed to penetrate Rou Rou's brain this time!
Li Su felt that she could control Rou Rou's body.
At the same time, he now felt all the pain that Rou Rou had experienced. The pain in his limbs and bones was beyond description. Li Su felt that he was about to faint from the pain as soon as he entered this body.
I couldn't see anything in front of me anymore; it was all pitch black.
Li Su then realized that Rou Rou's eyes had been burned and she was already blind, but she was still instinctively searching for her child in the fire.
Every breath was excruciatingly painful. Li Su could no longer discern which parts of his body were issuing warnings; he could only desperately try to communicate with Rou Rou's consciousness in his mind.
"Rou Rou! Listen to me, stop looking! Xiao Bao is already..."
Whether Li Su said those last two words or not, he knew how much pain it would cause a mother in dire straits. Perhaps if he said those two words, Rou Rou would stop searching, but he also knew clearly that once he said those two words, Rou Rou's life would be frozen in time forever.
"Go out first! Call the villagers to come and rescue Xiaobao, okay?"
Li Su's voice was trembling uncontrollably. He desperately suppressed his sobs and tried his best to keep his voice normal.
Every second is important to Rou Rou, and he cannot hold her back because of himself.
"You know where the baby is, right?" Amidst the sea of fire, Rou Rou finally stopped moving. Her dark eyes seemed to be looking somewhere, and her voice was very soft, like a feather swirling in the air.
“Can you tell me where he is?” Rou Rou said.
"I want to see him one last time."
Two streams of bloody tears flowed from his dark, hollow eyes, but the words of comfort stuck in his throat and he couldn't utter them.
My heart was beating slowly, and my body felt heavier and heavier.
Every nerve in the body was constantly screaming that the body's owner was enduring inhuman pain.
"Please." The soft voice was incredibly calm and gentle.
"Wardrobe……"
Li Su eventually told Rou Rou.
He felt he had no right to deprive a mother of the opportunity to see her child one last time before she died.
Rou Rou's consciousness had mostly faded into darkness, and her perception of the outside world was almost gone. After a moment of reaction, Rou Rou smiled, but her face was so burned that it was impossible to tell whether she was smiling or not.
"thank you."
Her voice was drowned out by the crackling sound of the firewood exploding.
Rou Rou, still supporting her incomplete body, walked towards the innermost wardrobe.
Li Su took a deep breath, but the pain inside his body almost made him faint.
"Rou Rou, leave him to me. You rest first, and come out to see him after we find Xiao Tuanzi..."
"I'll take over your body temporarily."
"I promise I'll show you the little dumpling..."
It took Rou Rou a while to respond to him: "Thank you..."
Li Su could sense that Rou Rou's consciousness was almost completely falling into darkness. He took over the body, which was unrecognizable, and endured the pain Rou Rou had just endured. Step by step, he slowly and firmly crawled toward the wardrobe.
The short two-step distance felt like an eternity; time seemed to have stood still here.
The two arms, which ran forward below the chest, remained intact, but the two legs that dangled behind were not so lucky. They had long been burned, the flesh charred and gone, leaving only bare bones.
Rou Rou's body had lost all sensation of the outside world, so Li Su had no idea where she was.
Li Su struggled with all his might, dragging Rou Rou's incomplete body, and finally breathed a sigh of relief when he could no longer move forward after several attempts.
arrive……
He finally got to the wardrobe...
Li Su stretched out her hand with all her might, reaching for the location of the latch she remembered.
"Boom—"
The wood on the roof beams was burned through by the fire, and it fell down with sparks.
The hand that had just been raised was slammed down hard.
But I couldn't feel anything in my body; I felt no pain or any other changes.
Rou Rou's frail, incomplete body was left only with numbness, or rather, all her nerves had died. This turned out to be a stroke of luck amidst misfortune; if she could still feel pain, this young mother might not have been able to endure it.
"Have we arrived?" Rou Rou's long-dormant consciousness slowly returned.
"Thank you for helping me." Rou Rou firmly but undeniably took control of the situation. "I'll do the rest myself."
Before she could refuse, Li Su felt her consciousness being squeezed out of her brain by Rou Rou.
He transformed back into an ideology floating in mid-air.
Only now did he finally see clearly what Rou Rou's body had become.
Li Su looked away, unable to bear watching any longer.
Rou Rou is blind, and her tactile nerves are completely dead, so she has no way of distinguishing between wood and metal latches. She is relying entirely on intuition and her remaining memory to feel for the latches on the cabinet door.
Now that he's separated from Rou Rou's body, Rou Rou can't hear him, and he can't possibly speak.
Li Su could only watch as her soft, bloody, half-exposed, bone-covered fingers repeatedly brushed past the iron pin.
After countless attempts, Rou Rou finally managed to pry open the pin that was burning and on the verge of collapse with half a finger bone.
"Baby, don't be afraid, Mommy's here."
Li Su watched as Rou Rou groped around little by little until she finally found the little dumpling in the corner of the wardrobe.
He saw Rou Rou using her broken body to tightly protect the little dumpling beneath her. Her bare, skeletal arms no longer had the strength to lift, and could only weakly encircle the little dumpling beneath her.
"Baby, don't be afraid anymore..."
The soft voice grew softer and softer until it was finally inaudible.
The cabinet door was opened, and flames swept in, engulfing the wardrobe and turning the mother and child red.
"No...no..."
The scene before her was blurry and distorted, whether from the heat of the flames or from her tears, she couldn't tell. Li Su wanted to separate the two of them from the flames, but could only watch as the flames passed through a mass of intangible consciousness.
Please, someone, please save them...
[Warning! Warning! Player Li Su's self-awareness has been detected as blurred.]
[The consciousness space is about to close. Player Li Su, please awaken as soon as possible.]
[The consciousness space is about to close. Player Li Su, please awaken as soon as possible.]
[...]
The system's mechanical voice repeated itself over and over, giving its final reminder.
"Su Su! Su Su!"
"Wake up, wake up!"
The person on the bed lay quietly, with two dark marks on their fair cheeks. They did not respond to the man's calls, only a tear remained at the corner of their eye.
The man's hands trembled uncontrollably as he carefully kissed away the tears at the corners of Li Su's eyes.
It's so hot.
Hot tears were smothered between his lips, and Qi Wuyi's lips trembled slightly as they slowly moved downwards.
Cold tears slid slowly down the man's handsome face and landed on Li Su's lips.
Their lips met.
"Su Su, wake up..."
"Are you going to leave me alone again...?"
The man bent down and carefully pulled the person on the bed into his arms, as if handling a fragile treasure.
"Please wake up soon..."
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