There was only fog outside the train windows.
Zhong Chengshuo sat upright in the middle of the car seat, and the old man-like evil creature was half sitting and half leaning, less than an arm's length away from him. The window behind the two of them was like a gray reflector.
Around the "reflector", yellow talismans were moving without wind and flying upwards. After the side with the talismans was covered with paper, the walls of the carriage became a pure bright yellow that was not so scary.
Zhong Cheng sniffed and used his toes to push aside the steel pipe that was in the way. After staying in this carriage for a long time, the stench was not as pungent as it was when he first smelled it.
He bandaged the wound briefly, took out his glasses from his pocket and put them on carefully.
"Higher... Higher..." the evil creature was still whispering. It couldn't stop crying, and its cloudy eyes looked at a point in the void.
Zhong Cheng took out a pen from the sampling bag, twisted the end of the pen, and the hidden syringe popped out. With a slight hiss, the sedative was injected into the neck of the evil creature.
Since it is a "living evil creature", it must have the properties of a living being.
Sure enough, the old man's evil spirit shook for a moment. A few seconds later, he wrapped himself tightly in the blanket, with another confused look on his face.
"Ah... I... why..."
"Think of a way..."
People once again turned their attention to the old mayor, the man who once brought the town to its peak.
“Twenty-eight years ago, I should have died… I was on the mountain when the mine collapsed.”
The townspeople came to the door day and night, praying in vain.
People can't leave here.
No one wanted to reveal the truth, and everyone knew the outcome of this town - just like a patient with a terminal illness, who expects a miracle but knows that it will not happen.
"Who...are you...?"
People could not find new mines, and investors left. Enterprises withdrew, factories closed, and shops collapsed. Town residents could only do manual labor to make a living, or live off their savings. The prosperity and happiness reported in the newspapers were like soap bubbles that burst a second ago.
"Blood-red sky, black vortex. Something hit me..."
Zhong Cheng opened the notebook and carefully took notes and made analysis.
"It won't be that easy! Right, Mayor?"
The mayor thought it was just a symptom of a serious injury. He kept giving himself painkillers and continued to work diligently.
After choking for a few minutes, the old man asked in a daze.
"This is not going to work..."
At the beginning, everyone was optimistic.
"Tell me the whole story." Zhong Cheng took out the small hardcover notebook he used for taking notes and scraped the blade of the bad fruit knife with his thumb.
"Official staff." Zhong Cheng said, showing his blood-stained security card. "I'm here to deal with you."
The evil fruit was placed on the page of the book by him, and the thin gel pen was put into Zhong Chengshuo's fingers. His beautiful handwriting flowed onto the paper like flowing water, recording the whole incident in a concise and concise manner.
They were born and raised here for generations, and unlike those "outsiders" who left in anger, they have no "home" to return to except this place.
For example, he only needed to take in very little food, and he didn't need normal sleep. But he felt an inexplicable hunger in his heart. Hunger and severe pain tortured him crazily, and reality took a sharp turn for the worse.
The mine made the whole town rich, and every household had some surplus food. The townspeople firmly believed that when the disaster was over and the grief faded, the mine would continue to be developed and the former prosperity would surely return.
Mr. Evil, the mayor, happened to be on the mountain, and the falling rocks almost crushed him in two. When he was about to die, something extremely cold hit his internal organs, and the coldness spread quickly, and he fainted instantly.
When the mayor woke up, the injuries that should have been fatal were much less severe.
He curled up, his eyes wandered from the townspeople and zombies all over the place, and finally stopped at his own deformed body. The old man opened his mouth and vomited hard onto the ground.
Many changes occurred in him.
That was the beginning of all the nightmares.
However, as time passed, panic gradually spread.
"What should we do if the mines suddenly stop producing?"
The mountains after mining are extremely ugly, and there is no natural landscape to speak of. The damaged farmland cannot grow crops, let alone produce local specialties. The completed buildings cannot be rented out, and demolition will cost a lot of money.
A thick evil force descended from the sky like invisible hail, stimulating the evil creatures remaining in the anthills, causing the mine to collapse.
"Is Gengsheng Town going to end like this?"
The loop goes back and forth day after day, just as it always has. Its rumble carried so much pride, but now only so much sadness.
But he only vomited some clear mucus.
But if we tear them down, there is nothing else that can replace them.
God descends upon the world, and evil spirits are thrown into chaos.
The old man's wrinkled and tear-stained face quickly turned into deep sorrow. A few seconds later, his expression became dazed again.
"Uncle Mayor, can you change this place back to its original state?"
But as a price, he began to feel sharp pain all over his body, like his flesh was being torn apart. The pain was like countless red-hot needles piercing the seams of his bones, and it lasted day and night.
"It was all good, but now they say they don't want to sign the contract. Didn't they say they could still work for a few more years?"
"I've pledged all my family fortune for a loan. Haven't you seen the newspapers? The people above must value you. Think of a way!"
The old man panted for a long time, and when he spoke again, his tone had a strange sense of tearing, like a dream.
Paint peeled off, metal rusted. The supply of electricity and water became increasingly scarce, and the desolate city decayed in silence.
Can not go back.
At the end of the year, Gengsheng Town finally welcomed new visitors. After evaluating the situation of Gengsheng Town, the relevant project personnel brought a compensation agreement.
They asked the townspeople to leave the area and relocate collectively to a large town at the foot of the mountain. The government was responsible for the ecological restoration and reclamation of the ruins of the mine.
And this process takes a very long time, so long that a generation of elderly people will die in a foreign land.
Amid the heavy snow, the other boot fell to the ground.
The compensation is neither too much nor too little. If it were Gengsheng Village before it became a developed village, most people would have agreed to it with drums and gongs. But in Gengsheng Town today, the townspeople are confused and hopeless.
Is this the end
No one knew who picked up the weapon first, and the project personnel were driven out alive - the faces of the townspeople showed a mixture of despair and hope, as if the town could be saved as long as this person was driven away.
The mayor rushed out to try to stop them, but was surrounded by the out-of-control townspeople.
"Mayor, think of a solution." "Think of a solution..." Countless eyes looked at him.
"This is our home." "We can't live without a home!" Countless hands reached out to him.
"You are so amazing. Look, we have built such a big city." "If everyone works together, there is no hurdle that cannot be overcome, don't you think?" Countless mouths were speaking.
Chaos and sorrow lingered among the crowd like an echo. The townspeople wore stiff and anxious smiles on their faces, and their no longer young eyes revealed a hint of sadness.
Familiar people, familiar scenes, but not familiar emotions.
Surrounded by the siege, the mayor vaguely saw the day when the first mine was successfully mined.
Every household set off firecrackers, and men, women, old and young came out of their low adobe houses, with laughter and joy floating over the village. They said that the days ahead would definitely get better and better.
Perhaps it was because he didn't take painkillers tonight. The pain was like a raging fire, burning the mayor's brain and making it boil.
"This is all temporary, right? Mayor... Mayor?"
Along with great sorrow, countless pieces of information flooded into the mayor's mind. It was as if something broke inside him, and cold mucus flowed freely in his chest and abdomen. His internal organs seemed to be frozen and twisted into a ball.
The world was spinning, and everything in front of him was melting like cream.
Countless thoughts gathered into a torrent, whispering wildly in his head. They formed a cold and heavy millstone, and the mayor could feel that his sanity was being slowly crushed by the millstone.
I want to go back to the past, when the good life had just begun... A younger voice buzzed.
Our ancestors were born here, died here, and our roots have been here for hundreds of years... The old man's thoughts were sticky and kept churning in his mind.
Yes... They watched as the adobe houses turned into brick and tile houses, and the brick and tile houses grew into high-rise buildings that only existed in the city. The railway was connected, and the ring line was built. Gengsheng Town was like a growing boy, changing every year.
Everything should not be like this...
Why
Helplessness, confusion, pain, bewilderment, despair, they all rolled into a chaotic mess and eventually turned into great sorrow.
[I don’t want to disappear.]
They merged into one voice, a voice that was painful and lost, sounding like his own, yet completely beyond his control.
[I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to disappear.]
The mayor, who had fallen to the ground, was helped up by the townspeople. His eyes were dull, and the depths of his pupils were a dull red. He stared at the ground beneath his feet, and suddenly vomited a large amount of dirty blood mixed with internal organs.
A "living evil" was born.
Somehow, the mayor sensed something. There was something underground. Something rare and powerful, yet extremely ominous. It didn't matter, as long as he could use that power... As long as this place didn't disappear...
The mayor closed his eyes, and his hands became ice-cold, no longer having the warmth of a human.
"We can go back in time."
His thoughts were almost stagnant, his vocal cords vibrated on their own, and his consciousness seemed to be divided into thousands of pieces, scattered in each villager.
"As long as we all... work together," he heard himself say.
In a hazy consciousness, the conversation continued uncontrollably: "I will let everyone live as they did in the past."
Countless consciousnesses intertwined, and the expressions of the townspeople gradually became empty. Sadness and prejudice surged from all directions, blending seamlessly with his own emotions.
It was as if some of their emotions were connected and circulated continuously in this land, and he became the heart of this huge cycle.
He can direct the flow and strength of those emotions and slowly integrate new people - as long as they believe in him, respect him, and identify with him.
A strange feeling of relief swept over the mayor.
Like a drop of water merging into the ocean, through their shared sorrow they became a large, solid, conflict-free group.
No one can separate them.
It was a miracle, he thought vaguely, that Gengsheng Town would continue to exist.
"so it is."
Zhong Cheng said that the pen in his hand did not stop and he did not even raise his head.
"A god appeared. The former mayor was severely contaminated by the evil power and became half evil. On the basis of being 'widely known', the people here also placed a unified emotion on him... The way he was born is somewhat similar to that of a fierce ghost."
"You used this emotion to influence the evil creatures, achieving the result of 'driving them away'."
"But at that time, you hadn't become like this, right? Would the sinking have affected you?" Zhong Cheng paused as he spoke.
"They've been... watching me, what's in those painkillers I take..."
The old man said with difficulty.
"When I went underground to look for Huangliang, the Shenwan Society found me... They told me a lot of knowledge... In exchange, I had to continue taking the medicine... and not interfere with their... any actions..."
Zhong Cheng grunted and wrote in the notebook, "Under the conditions of God's intervention, long-term consumption of evil power will cause pollution."
The situation is clear.
What the mayor found underground were mostly "dangerous evil things" left behind by the sinking. As long as Huang Liang's cognitive interference is a little bit, it will certainly allow the townspeople to see the "prosperity of the past" and live in it.
As for those silent and stagnant evil creatures on the ground, they are just the byproducts of the high concentration of evil energy, which can be used to feed the "evil army" underground.
Underground research institute, above-ground breeding farm. The people in between are probably the most insignificant part of this experiment.
"I just remember... these..."
Tears welled up in the old man's eyes again, and his words became confused, as if he had suddenly forgotten how to express himself.
“Hometown… my… hometown… my… I don’t want to disappear…”
Zhong Cheng closed the hardcover book and said, "26 minutes and 37 seconds."
"Are you going to... kill me..."
The old man wrapped himself tightly in a blanket, but it couldn't hold back the rotten, strange limbs. They were scattered all over the ground, oozing sticky pus.
"But I still... don't want to die... everything has just begun... just... begun..."
I wonder if it is the collective will of this place that is speaking, or the mayor himself
In those old eyes, there was a dim light that hinted at hope. Through the decaying shadows in the mist, those eyes seemed to be gazing into the past, revealing a hint of the innocence of youth.
Zhong Cheng said to keep silent.
He knew he should kill this thing.
When facing some evil things, he would sometimes have this kind of... strong intuition. It was not derived from the instinct of creatures to seek benefits and avoid harm, but more like some kind of subtle impulse.
Zhong Cheng said as he put the notebook back into his bag, and the evil fruit changed to a normal blade, taking some tissue from a relatively fresh limb. The evil creature sat there in a daze, without any resistance.
After doing all this, he tightened his grip on the evil fruit, but finally let go.
Behind the lens, Zhong Chengshuo lowered his eyes and stretched out an empty hand.
The weak evil creature turned its head and looked at him in confusion.
"You have used too much power, and your cognition is also tending to be crazy." Zhong Cheng said, staring at the hanging yellow talisman, "As a human, you are too old. As an evil creature, you are too young and have no self-control... You know your end."
For the past 28 years, it has lived here, gradually losing its human form. It lives clumsily, maintaining an illusion like a deception for the "believers".
It is powerful yet broken, silently collapsing along the way, just like "sorrow" itself.
"Even if I don't kill you, you're going to die soon." Zhong Cheng concluded calmly.
“…” The evil creature did not answer.
Its fighting spirit had long since disappeared, leaving only tired panting like a weak little animal.
"If you really feel uncomfortable, you can hold my hand." Zhong Cheng said, spreading his five fingers and revealing his palm, "... You were once a human, this should have some effect on you."
"I don't want to disappear..."
"I see."
"I don't want to disappear..."
“You’re not going away.”
"The people who live here will die and forget. But you will always exist here, and I will always remember you. Perhaps in the near future, countless people will know you, and you will become data forever."
"Maybe one day someone will see your case and remember, 'My ancestors lived here.'"
Zhong Cheng said while stroking the hardcover book with one hand and explaining it seriously.
"I don't want to... disappear..."
As he gasped weakly, a trembling strange limb climbed up Zhong Chengshuo's palm. It was dry and shriveled, and still had a touch of human warmth.
"One day, eventually, this planet will end. Everything will return to nothingness, and become something else again. You too, and I too—we'll all be scattered everywhere, in everything."
Amid the rumbling sound of the train, Zhong Cheng said with his five fingers clenched.
"Your traces will remain forever. You will never disappear."
"No... I don't want to... ah..."
The evil creature swallowed twice with difficulty, and the power around it suddenly ignited as if it had a last burst of energy, but it did not take this opportunity to attack.
It just used all its strength to turn its head, and the oversized head on its thin body turned towards Zhong Cheng and said.
"… you… "
This was the first time in a long time that it had made a move that was close to being human.
It smiled with difficulty.
"Ah...you...you are..."
The next moment, its sound dissipated into the air.
Zhong Cheng's eyes widened suddenly.
At some point, a round hole appeared on the car window behind them. The evil creature was pulled away by the hole before it could finish its words, leaving only scraps of flesh and pus and blood around the hole.
Turbid liquid droplets slowly slid down the car window glass, and the talismans in the car burned at the same time, turning into fine paper ash.
The two zombies standing quietly lost control and let out hoarse roars. The light of evil flashed, and Zhong Chengshuo kicked the edge of the round hole, and the car window glass shattered.
at the same time.
Yin Ren on the Huangliang suddenly stood up, and Fu Xingchuan in the ruins opened his eyes.
The mist gradually thinned, the dusk sky darkened, and a huge black vortex gradually took shape.
"... a sense of voyeurism." Under the red cloth, Yin Ren bit his thumb nail.
"hiss."
Fu Xingchuan half-sat on the ground, glanced at his "own people", and immediately took a breath of cool air.
"Why are there two missing?"
(End of this chapter)