In the countless nightmares of those three years, this feeling of being submerged in ice was no stranger, even familiar to the bone marrow.
Unforgettable memories resurfaced.
The first is the fall.
The body fell into the empty, dark and endless space, falling continuously in the cold air current. Then there were sharp laughter, mournful cries, and hoarse roars, from far to near, from sparse to dense, spreading and intertwining under her body to form a huge net, engulfing her in it.
Then there is the unknown.
The sound of footsteps, climbing, sticky sliding and tinkling water, these invisible things rushed from behind at an extremely fast speed, as if a second later, they would drown her Drowning in place.
But Tang Xinjue knew that all these sounds and colors, tangible and intangible existences were all for the purpose of breaking her psychological defenses, causing her to collapse, fear, lose her mind, and then make wrong judgments and choices.
The purpose of the darkness from beginning to end is to devour her and assimilate her.
Then her spirit must be completely crushed in order to tear off the protective layer outside the soul and take it into the bag.
And she never made it work.
But this time, all the fleeing and struggling seemed to be erased, and the darkness like falling into an ice cave instantly covered the sea of consciousness, pulling all the senses into the bottomless abyss.
Unwilling... Hatred... Anger... Pain... Crazy...
The endless coldness did not freeze her consciousness, but instead made these heart-piercing emotions burn with the icy cold fire, piercing her heart bit by bit, and finally burning into a mass of chaotic ashes.
"Am I dead?"
Tang Xinjue heard his own voice in his faint consciousness.
There was no answer in the dark, and she didn't continue to ask. It seems that she doesn't need to answer at all, and she doesn't feel that there are any answers that are worthy of entering her ears.
Amid the growing sense of stalemate, she let her consciousness sink down again.
After being corroded and reshaped the soul, all the emotions of the original human beings have been quietly replaced. Like a clean and tidy house before, the room has not changed, but all the furniture is covered with a layer of dark mucus, which seeps continuously from the inside to the outside, and will never stop.
That is endless malice.
Greed, cruelty, and the desire to kill were everywhere without her having to bring up any thoughts. Her heart and soul seemed to be pierced and burned into a hollow piece, and her body turned into a huge stomach.
This stomach never seemed to be full, and she could only swim up under the burning of hunger, through the thick and thick black mist, looking for something to fill her appetite. Otherwise, she will eat herself, or be swallowed up by the darkness.
"This is where?"
In the extreme pain and devastation of the soul, a trace of consciousness quietly wandered outside. Tang Xinjue heard his own voice again.
"..."
The darkness remained silent.
Tang Xinjue didn't care how abrupt this scene was in the dark abyss like hell. She also tried to break away from the rotting body and look into the distance. But as soon as her thoughts moved, a sharp pain pierced in, reminding her not to act rashly.
"All right."
She smiled lightly, sank into consciousness again, and let her body float upwards in a daze.
In the dark, even "kind" is fraught with danger. When there is no food, they will often kill and devour each other. Sometimes it is an unconscious instinctive behavior, and sometimes it is a desperate vent after regaining a little thinking ability.
These supplements made it more and more stable and more and more awake. But with the clarity of thinking, the only remaining fragments that can remind it of its human identity also completely sank and melted. At the same time, another world slowly unfolds in front of it.
A world that is more cruel, treacherous, chaotic and dangerous, but also its only hope.
When the black mist splits a dazzling light, and the new identity is slowly realized from the mind, all the senses and pictures are instantly turned on five hundred times faster, and they are running at a speed that the brain can't imagine and understand.
If Tang Xinjue's consciousness is complete at this time, she will tell somewhere in the dark: In addition to fast forwarding, there is another way to pull the progress bar called "jumping" in the world.
But in fact, her self-awareness was covered by some kind of power, and she could only see a vague light and shadow through the gap, so she couldn't complain.
When the fast forward finally ended, negative consciousness and pain hundreds of times stronger than before descended without warning, dragging her into a torn body.
It can be vaguely seen that this is the body of a young girl, which has been carefully designed and is the closest to the human shadow in its memory.
Of course, it is also possible that it is just a messy assumption, which is not important anymore.
Because it has been chopped and dissolved inch by inch by hand, wrapped in a thick layer of oil in the stench of tar, and decorated on the plate.
In the hot air mixed with black blood, severe pain filled every inch of perception, but the owner of the body was laughing maniacally.
[The way out? I have no more. ]
[Instead of letting me keep rotting away and sinking back into the ground and turning back into mindless silt, it's better to end up in such a way that at least proves that I've lived... I've lived, right? ]
[… have I really lived? ]
The last sentence was almost inaudible, but Tang Xinjue's consciousness became more vigilant than ever. Sure enough, the moment the sigh fell in the sea of consciousness, it suddenly became as heavy as a thousand weights, smashing heavily into the bottom of the subconscious mind.
The world is once again plunged into darkness.
This time, Tang Xinjue could clearly feel that "myself" was cold - literally cold.
The heat in the food court is very heavy, but the food is cool. Its already depleted consciousness was divided into countless pieces, attached to the marinated meat, with price tags on it, and it stayed like a real dead thing.
I didn't know how long I was in this daze until vague figures appeared at the end of the street: they were four young girls.
They came together, with different expressions, and their bodies were full of familiar and unfamiliar human breath. Then, one of the light-footed girls with ponytails stopped in front of it.
In the other party's hand was a long tool that exuded a ferocious aura that made food creepy. The girl seemingly unintentionally put the thing on the booth, which suddenly aroused the last remaining consciousness of it. At the last moment of the long and painful [life], it miraculously returned to the light, and remembered the deep buried in the soul. An old saying:
[Don't beat me! ! ! ]
Snapped!
The smoke cleared, and everything was like a passing cloud.
When Tang Xinjue opened his eyes again, he realized that everything he experienced just now was just an illusion condensed in an instant.
She was pulled into the perspective of a ghost, and received countless fleeting messages in a condensed moment, as if she had really died once.
But that wasn't what touched her the most.
What impressed her most was that she saw the real "university town" from the ghost's fleeting perspective.
This is a world of ghosts.
Those distorted substances, mutated souls and bones, and countless screaming shadows were suppressed by an invisible force field that couldn't be touched. It was forced to hunker down in a body that was half human and not a ghost, so it didn't pounce on the candidates with infinite malice, and didn't really release the desire to kill.
Only then did they have everything they saw now.
The back of the iceberg was revealed to her for a brief moment, but it was enough to make Tang Xinjue brainstorm.
At this time, the voice of the commentator sounded again, impartially:
"Now, are you still not ready to try these foods?"
Compared with failing to clear the dungeon, dying completely, or even becoming the existence of the eternal hell in the illusion, it does not seem to be the most unbearable thing to carry out some kind of subtle contamination and fusion with ghosts.
Tang Xinjue panted quietly for a few seconds, then suddenly asked, "Is that how you persuade other people?"
The narrator was stunned, and immediately explained professionally: "From today to now, only a few lucky people have entered the food street..."
Tang Xinjue shook his head, and repeated the question again, but the voice was clearer:
"Is that how you coax other people, for example, my roommates?"
The instructor's smile remained unchanged, but he didn't say another word for a long time, as if he had already made it clear whether Tang Xinjue was fishing or really.
After a while, he replied: "Aren't your roommates just walking in front of you?"
"The lecturer is not allowed to lie."
Tang Xinjue stared at him, softly sighing: "But now, you lied."