In the barren ruined city, the green moonlight stretched the figures of the two of them, and the footprints on the snow walked deeper into Zicheng.
"In addition to the breaking method given by the collapse system, we can also try to find a safe passage for the base city and the main system." You Yu said.
Chi Nan: "Safe passage?"
You Yu nodded, drooping his eyelids and looking at the toes of his shoes wet by the snow: "The main system, the major base cities, and all the dungeons have left a safe passage."
He seemed to smile helplessly, "But the exact location of the safe passage has not been disclosed to the Dream Makers."
Chi Nan: "So we can't find it now, right?"
You Yu turned around and gave him a deep look: "I can't find him myself, maybe you can."
Chi Nan has no clue: "Why?"
"Brother Nan..." You Yu paused, his lips collapsed into a straight line, "I'm just guessing."
"Perhaps, we are heading to that safe passage." You Yu said again.
"...?" Chi Nan looked at You Yu puzzled, he felt that today's You Yu was not quite right, "Is it 206, Building 57, North Third District?"
Yu Yu nodded.
Chi Nan: "But you asked me just now, and I just casually said I wanted to go there."
You Yu: "That's enough."
Why? Chi Nan saw You Yu's silent profile, knowing that the other party didn't want to explain at this moment, so he quietly swallowed the question back.
He just felt that the city was desolate and quiet. This sense of deadness made him unpleasant. He just wanted to return to the dormitory area he was familiar with.
"I don't know if the mint you bought is dead now."
Last time I bought ten pots of mint from Smile Town, and after the copy was released, You Yu directly sent them all to 206 through the system permission.
"I just want to go back and water the flowers, if they are still alive." Chi Nan said, with a rare stubbornness in his voice.
You Yu didn't seem to expect Chi Nan to remember this, and suddenly smiled: "It doesn't matter, I'll buy it for you when I die, you won't support me for you."
Chi Nan raised his eyes to look at You Yu.
For some reason, he felt that Yu Yu's voice sounded very far away today, as if it came from a distant wilderness. He was always worried that the stronger the wind, the more Yu Yu's voice would be blown away.
"What's wrong?" You Yu met Chi Nan's gaze.
Chi Nan shook his head and said nothing.
After a while, Chi Nan looked at the ruined Zicheng, and the strange emotions that made his heart choked with sadness came back again.
"Why did the Dream Maker build this world?" he asked You Yu.
You Yu shook his head: "No one knows except the Dream Maker."
Chi Nan seemed a little regretful: "Is that so..."
You Yu looked at him again, and said, "Perhaps, the dream maker himself doesn't know."
The expression on Chi Nan's face seemed to be empty for a moment, and he said, "I really want to meet this dream maker."
He found that, in his subconscious, he had feelings for this nightmare world that could grant people's wishes.
Seeing it badly damaged, tears would flow without warning against his will.
Especially on such a night when the snow fell and the moonlight was dyed a different color.
"No one has seen it before," You Yu said, "but your words might be fine."
…
The entire North Third District has been turned into ruins, sinking in the night of the first snow in Zicheng.
From a distance, the green moonlight illuminates the night, dancing like aurora over the ruined city.
Falling snow, aurora, and broken cities give people a contradictory but magnificent sense of desolation.
Along the way, Chi Nan and You Yu did not encounter monsters or evil spirits, nor were they pursued by the hunting team. The crisis-ridden apocalypse world was unusually quiet.
Chi Nan is very familiar with the road from Beisan District to Building 57. Even if all the building numbers are covered by mildew and moss, he can successfully find the apartment building where he once lived.
You Yu kept walking behind him without speaking, penetrating the thicker and thicker snow curtain, quietly watching Chi Nan's back.
In the end, he seemed unable to hold back some kind of unease, strode forward, and grabbed Chi Nan with his gloved hand.
Suddenly being held, Chi Nan froze subconsciously: "What's wrong?"
You Yu slightly curled the corners of his lips as usual, "I'm afraid you'll get lost and won't be able to find you."
"No, I'm very familiar with this place." For some reason, he suddenly heard a bit of loneliness and anxiety in You Yu's tone.
He can't appease people, and he's not good at giving people psychological counseling, so he just quietly shakes You Yu's hand back, intertwining his fingers.
They quickly found Building 57, where they once 'cohabited', from the ruined apartment building.
The lights in the stairwell had been broken long ago, but from a distance, the two saw that there was a room on the second floor that was out of harmony.
"It's 206." Chi Nan said with certainty.
You Yu looked at the warm yellow light from the window of 206 from downstairs, and a slightly complicated emotion flashed in his eyes.
On the one hand, there is the joy of getting to the bottom of the story and all mysteries and doubts have been settled, and on the other hand, the anxiety and fear of facing the unknown.
It is ironic to say that he has always been keen to play with human fears and insecurities, and he never thought that one day he would be deeply involved in it and be swayed by it.
Chi Nan pulled him, walked through the dark corridor with determination and calmness, and walked towards the only lit 206 in the whole city.
More than a dozen pots of mint were neatly placed on the corridor. The green leaves were wet by falling snow. You Yu picked a mint leaf and put it in his mouth, which was fresh and cool.
"Looks like we've got it right," You Yu swallowed the chewed mint leaves, refreshing from his throat to his stomach. "As a safe passage between the base city and the main system, even if the system is severely damaged by bugs, the connection port is still located. Some of the energy that can maintain the normal operation of the base remains."
The light from apartment 206 and the normal growth of mint leaves on the balcony illustrate this point.
Although it was his own room, Chi Nan politely knocked on the door as usual: "Is there anyone?"
The door was locked and no one answered.
So Chi Nan took out the key and unlocked the door just like when he came back from the customs clearance copy.
With a 'click' sound, the door opened, and a ray of light shone on Chi Nan's face through the crack of the door.
But when they saw the scene in the house, the expressions of the two of them froze for a moment.
The interior of the house is not the 206 layout they are familiar with, but the appearance of Xiaoyou Yu's bedroom.
The curtains in front of the spacious floor-to-ceiling windows were half-closed, and it was dark and damp outside the window at midnight.
The quilt on the bed in the center of the room was lifted to a corner, and the folds of the sheets seemed to have been slept in not long ago.
There was no one in the room, only a dead silence.
The picture frame on the west wall caught Chi Nan's attention. The picture frame was sunk in the shadow of the light and could not be seen clearly from his position.
Chi Nan's shoulders trembled slightly, and his body approached the frame before reason.
"Brother Nan." You Yu's unease became stronger and stronger, and he stepped forward to hold Chi Nan's hand even tighter.
At almost the same time, the half-open door behind them closed, the two of them paused at the same time, and the clock stopped on the wall suddenly started to turn.
"11:20," Chi Nan took out the pocket watch in his pocket, and the dial that had been stationary started to move again, "The time of the pocket watch is the same as that on the wall."
When you encounter the bedroom in the old mansion and the time full of death metaphors, it is easy for him to think of that night in the eleventh year.
You Yu died at 12:20 on the night of the fire.
You Yu said with a sullen face: "It seems that we have an hour and must find a way to enter the safe passage before 12:20."
The re-rotation of the pocket watch as a "death birthmark" can be explained as a result of the system crash caused by a bug, but at this moment there are too many coincidences to collide with each other, and You Yu has to suspect that this is the countdown given to them by the crash system.
After all, it's not a good thing for someone who has died a long time ago to start running again.
And 12:20, as the end of his life, may imply some kind of end.
Chi Nan found that on the white carpet there were residues of Xiao Youyu's intentionally knocked over the medicine, and the "Crying Boy" on the wall was only a wet and rainy night with no end in sight, and the 'self' in the painting disappeared without a trace.
Only complete frames and incomplete paintings remain.
Why is the connection point between the system and the base city hidden in the bedroom where the door number of his apartment is written and You Yu was a child? Why does this painting, which has long been deleted from human memory, appear here again
What does this apartment, this bedroom have to do with the Dreamworld master system
What about yourself and the dream maker? What's the connection
He inexplicably thought of what Yu Yu had just said—
Perhaps, the dream maker himself does not know why he created this world.
Chi Nan suppressed all doubts and suspicions, and He You Yu quickly searched the bedroom, but they didn't find any mechanism that could be used to leave the passage.
The glass on the window was sealed, You Yu lifted the stool without hesitation and smashed it at the window glass, but no matter how hard he tried and changed various props, the thin layer of glass was as indifferent as steel, not even a single crack. Appear.
Outside the window, like "The Crying Boy", there is endless night and rain.
For a moment, he had the illusion of being trapped in the painting.
On the other side, Chi Nan opened the door that closed automatically, and with the sound of the iron lock twisting, the door opened in response, much easier than he expected.
Outside the door, just like when they came, the spotlessly brushed balcony was filled with fresh and green mint, but the rustling snow turned into cold rain, and the moon disappeared.
But when the two returned to the corridor again, they found that the doors of all the rooms on the second floor had the house number 206 hanging on them. The doors painted in indifferent white were like the works of obsessive-compulsive patients, and they were neatly arranged in the long night. , there is no difference.
Chi Nan tried to insert the key into the key hole in the next room, and with a 'click', the door with the same room number 206 opened again.
The inside of the door was the same as the door they opened for the first time, and it was what You Yu's bedroom looked like when he was a child.
Even the angle at which the curtains were drawn, the 'boy' disappearing from the frame, the clock that kept turning on the wall, and the time displayed on the clock were all the same.
As Chi Nan opened the doors of the five rooms with '206' written on them in succession, You Yu's face became darker and darker.
"Go to the top of the stairs and see." Chi Nan quickly climbed the stairs to the upper floor of the apartment, but no matter whether he went up or down, all floors were repeating the crashing room 206.
"how so?"
"This is the safe passage for the main system and the base city, but the entrance was blocked by a bug and replaced with an endless loop mode."
In order to maintain the collapsed state of the sub-city to the maximum extent, the bug automatically entered the self-defense defense system correction, and set the safe passage entrance to the infinite loop mode.
The endless loop also means that they stay in place forever, and there is no way to get out of the safe passage.
The pocket watch in his hand kept moving 'tick-tock', and the time pointed to 11:50.
Chi Nan opened his pocket watch and suddenly many uneven wounds appeared on his finger, as if dehydrated, curled and slightly scorched skin had been burned by the fire.
You Yu was very keen to notice the changes in Chi Nan's body, and his expression was unprecedentedly cold: "We have to hurry up."
He had a hunch that if he failed to leave the cycle of 206 before 12:20, Chi Nan would likely be burned to death by an invisible fire.
The still time suddenly began to flow, and the consequence of the countdown should be that the fire that year came back and completely destroyed You Yu's body.
Chi Nan looked at the burn marks that quickly covered his arms, and was stunned, and said to You Yu apologetically, "I'm sorry."
He thinks that he didn't take good care of this body, which made You Yu look so worried and sad, after all, this body belongs to You Yu.
I don't know if the burns on their bodies will recover after they go out. Chi Nan is thinking seriously, if they can go out successfully.
"Does it hurt?"
"No pain at all." Chi Nan said truthfully, the pain nerve was cut off, as if this body no longer belonged to him.
You Yu frowned and tried to connect to the main system again, but the only answer to him was silence.
Just when he was so anxious that his breath was trembling, Chi Nan's system suddenly made a 'zillazla' sound of poor contact.