The journey was uneventful and Lin Yuan arrived safely in the imperial capital.
She said goodbye to the sentinels around her and returned to her home.
She pushed open the heavy door and walked through the deserted courtyard. The little crab hiding in the porch poked its head out to greet her.
Seeing Lin Yuan carrying a large box, Guo Suo quickly reached out to take it. When his fingers touched the box, he jumped as if he had received an electric shock.
"What's in there?" The little girl's face turned pale, and she almost wanted to throw the box in her hand. "It seems a little scary. Is it something similar to me?"
Guo Suo keenly sensed a powerful will and curled up in this not-so-big box.
This brought back some memories of her past. That was many years ago, when she was still living in the polluted area, leading a muddled life.
In that bizarre world, there seems to be a powerful will like this one. It is the core of the entire area, so powerful that all creatures living in it are afraid and bound by it.
Although the box that the young lady brought back was not exactly the same, it also vaguely carried a bit of the aura of the "Pillar", which made her feel scared.
"It's the gardener, the gardener I hired." Lin Yuan didn't say anything extra, nor did he explain why the gardener was in a box. He just told Xiaosuo, "Prepare a room for him. It should have a terrace and plenty of sunlight."
She took off her dusty shoes and coat and walked up the wooden stairs barefoot.
The little crab called her at the bottom of the stairs while carrying a box. He raised his head and asked hesitantly, "Miss, did you have a good trip?"
The fair little face with bob hair showed a bit of worry, and the bright almond eyes were filled with genuine concern.
Is it going well? Lin Yuan wondered.
After many twists and turns, I saw the dark world and almost died there.
She recalled the moment when she was on the verge of death, and the only thing she missed was this deserted and silent house.
What worries me most is the little crab that is secretly living in my house.
At that time, I was lying in Ni Ji's arms, and I almost wanted to entrust my little crab to that friend.
"The person inside is the gardener." Lin Yuan said abruptly, "He is also... a family member. He will live with us in the future. Just like you."
Just like you. A family member.
family.
Only after she said the word did she go over the specific meaning of the word in her mind.
This is my home.
Although it is desolate and quiet, it is a place called home.
The people who move in will become the so-called family. They will become the people who are attached to you and will also worry about you.
Lin Yuan filled this beautiful word into his heart, as if it was filling a small piece of the huge gap in his chest.
Returning to her own attic, she opened the window and sank into the soft mattress.
The wind blew in from the window, and the moonlight looked very gentle.
The fatigue brought by the long journey disappears in this familiar small space, as if the world is quiet and peaceful, without any troublesome things.
Lin Yuan lay on the bed and reached out to touch the head of the killer whale doll on the bedside table.
After taking it off, the small wooden box that the killer whale was guarding under its body was revealed.
Lin Yuan sat up, took off the heart-shaped pendant from her neck, and touched the groove on the box.
The size doesn't look right.
The necklace pendant that Windsor gave her was originally an ordinary heart-shaped stone. But after it was dripped with the tears of the golden tree, it turned from an ordinary little stone into a heart of pure gold.
Lin Yuan went to the Golden Tree Contaminated Area in order to find gems that could be embedded in the box.
But the situation in the Rose Camp at that time made her have no time to think about her own affairs. When everything settled down and the contaminated area collapsed, she remembered that she had not yet obtained the gem she was looking for.
She got nothing else from the contaminated area of the golden tree, so she tried to put the golden heart into the groove of the wooden box.
On the worn wooden box, a golden heart-shaped pendant was placed in the groove where the shadow of the golden tree once appeared.
As soon as Lin Yuan's fingers left, the golden heart melted into liquid.
The golden solution flowed, filling the small grooves seamlessly in front of Lin Yuan's eyes.
The shadow of the golden tree reappeared once again, floating above the wooden box filled with golden solution.
The miniature golden trunk slowly turned, the golden branches and golden leaves swayed in the air, gently colliding with each other, making beautiful sounds, as if Windsor was singing that cheerful ballad.
The golden gem was embedded in the groove, fitting perfectly. Golden veins began to spread on the wooden box, like a map, flowing from under the golden tree, along the texture on the wooden box to the next empty gem position.
There, the golden fluorescence lit up the empty groove, and a single eye emerged above the groove. The eye was staring blankly in the air, and the pupils were gray, as if blind, and a tear of blood slowly flowed in the air.
The shadow of the eye represents a new contaminated area.
Blind eyes.
Lin Yuan looked at the eye pattern for a long time, but for a moment he couldn't figure out what specific area it represented.
She took the golden pendant back, and the golden solution deformed again, returning to its heart shape and was worn around Lin Yuan's neck.
Lin Yuan lay back on the bed, gently touched the pendant on her chest with her fingers, and closed her eyes.
I remembered everything I saw in the Golden Tree contaminated area.
Weird minotaurs, pig-faced butchers, giant spores.
The breeding farm that imprisoned humans in iron cages to lay eggs, the Rose Camp that repeated for four hundred years, the giant scarlet egg wriggling in the cave, and myself with a hole in the abdomen...
Those darkest images slowly settled in my mind, like a nightmare that had passed long ago.
After going through that death experience, the massive loss of blood, the body turning cold, the soul sinking into the dark abyss... She felt as if she had become worse.
Something seemed to be awakening deep inside her body, making her feel that she had become colder, weirder, and more difficult to control at times.
She wondered if she was becoming more of a monster.
But it wasn't all bad. She experienced a lot and gained a lot of emotions that she had never experienced before.
I have tasted anger and reluctance, but also experienced happiness and joy. I have understood the reliability of my partners and learned to sympathize with my fellow countrymen who are suffering.
Thinking about it this way, it seems like I am a human being again, with a real flesh and blood body that has experienced all kinds of emotions.
Lin Yuan touched the place where his abdomen had been pierced, grabbed the little killer whale doll and held it in his arms.
A strange sense of familiarity arose, as if she had once slept sweetly and beautifully while holding a baby killer whale in her arms.
When did it happen? Lin Yuan kept his eyes open and thought for a long time, but he couldn't remember.
Lying on the bed at home, holding the soft killer whale, Lin Yuan had a dream.
In that dream, there were scarlet pulsating blood vessels everywhere.
She was crawling in a deep underground place where there was no sunlight, using her tentacles to wriggle around.
In the darkness, the tentacles captured a body.
It was a human being, different from any human she had ever known or seen before.
He was exceptionally soft, exuding an alluring scent that tasted sweet.
The golden trees and scarlet blood vessels formed a fragmented picture that swayed before my eyes like an apparition.
This might be an illusion. No one knew who it belonged to, nor did anyone know when it was captured by the tentacles and left in the subconscious. It appeared in Lin Yuan’s dream. The tentacles tightly wrapped around their prey, preventing it from breaking free.
Lin Yuan heard an extremely strange voice in the darkness, and it took her a moment to realize that it was herself speaking.
"Come here," she heard herself saying to the captured prey, "let me see what you look like."
She heard the sound of tentacles crawling in the water and the guttural sounds of prey struggling.
She couldn't see the face of her prey, it seemed as if she had no eyes.
Lin Yuan suddenly woke up from his sleep, and the killer whale doll fell from his arms.
It was already bright outside the window, and the bright sunshine shone on the weed-covered courtyard, dispelling the sticky and ambiguous dream.
Lin Yuan rubbed her face. She didn’t understand why she had such a dream.
It was so absurd and yet so realistic, as if it was something someone was experiencing in a fantasy world.
She thought about it carefully. In that cave, when she fell into the illusion created by the scarlet egg, she should not have seen such a shameful scene.
Lin Yuan patted his chest. Fortunately, this was just an absurd dream of his own and would not be seen by anyone else, such as a sentry.
After breakfast that day and asking Xiaosuo, Lin Yuan went to the annex building to visit the new gardener.
Xunhua was placed in a room with a terrace and plenty of sunlight.
There were two buildings in Lin Yuan's courtyard, the main building and the secondary building, with countless empty rooms. Only three people lived there, and it was so empty that Lin Yuan had to walk for a long time before he reached Xunhua's house.
Xunhua, who was taken home in a box, was wrapped in a large blanket and curled up on the terrace to bask in the sun.
Lin Yuan sat with him on the terrace for a while.
From here, you can see a large courtyard.
The sun was shining brightly in the sky, driving away the long-lasting gloom.
The overgrown courtyard was bathed in bright sunlight, with insects chirping and birds singing in the courtyard, and various wild animals burrowing around in the grass.
A groundhog poked its round head out from under the tree roots, rubbed its hands, and soon disappeared.
Xunhua was lying on the terrace, wrapped in a thick blanket, revealing her short silver hair, basking in the bright sunlight, motionless.
The body under the blanket seemed to have recovered a lot, and it could vaguely see limbs and hands growing back.
Lin Yuan sat with him for a long time, watching the little mouse crawling in and out underground, and found it very interesting.
"You... don't you think I'm dirty?" A deep voice came from under the blanket.
"You must have made a mistake." Lin Yuan thought for a moment and said with certainty, "It's not you who is dirty, it's those people and that world."
She said no more words, took out the golden necklace, hung it on the window, and stood up to leave.
The pure gold color sparkled in the window when illuminated by the sunlight.
After Lin Yuan came back, there were suddenly more visitors.
The first to arrive were Nicole and several other guide friends.
It was the new gardener who opened the door for them.
"Oh my God, where did you recruit the gardener from?" Nicole kept craning her neck to look out the window until she sat down in the living room.
The gardener who had just led them in had a silver mask on the upper half of his face, revealing only his cool jaw and his thin, tightly pursed lips.
His short silver hair was neatly combed back with gel, his limbs were thin, he wore gloves on his hands, a scarf around his neck, and his manners were that of an old family.
He doesn't look like a gardener at all, but rather like a nobleman from a century-old world.
He was a little cold and didn't like to talk to people. He brought the guests into the living room, bowed slightly, and then retreated to the courtyard without saying a word.
Under a big tree, I was teasing a groundhog that had just come out of its hole with food.
"Yes, his craftsmanship is good. Although your courtyard is still desolate, it is much better than the last time I came. Now it really has a unique wild charm." Shu Jingtong praised.
"I'm lucky. I came across him, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to invite him." Lin Yuan said.
The next person to visit was Roy, a colleague from his special research institute.
"I can't believe my ears." Roy's expression was extremely exaggerated, and his words were a little incoherent.
"It's spread all over the White Tower that Contaminated Area 77 has collapsed. It was a guide who opened the door, and it was also a guide who caused the contaminated area to collapse."
"As soon as I heard it, I guessed it was you. No other guide could do such a thing except you."
"This is truly unprecedented explosive news. Everyone is talking about it now. Even Her Majesty the Queen has expressed her concern and contacted our Special Research Department."
Roy was talking until his mouth was dry. He took the tea handed to him by Xiaosuo, thanked him, and took a sip of tea.
"Well, the tea is pretty good. But why is the yard you live in so dilapidated? No one is hired to take care of it. When I came in, I thought it was a haunted house."
Lin Yuan answered him, "I have hired a gardener. It will be better soon."
Roy was successfully diverted from the topic by her and began to care about the living conditions of the girl living alone.
"There are too few people. Such a large villa should have more people to make it more lively and safer. You should have maids, butlers, butlers, bodyguards and cooks..."
"Oh no, I was just about to tell you that you clearly promised me that I would not go to Contaminated Area 77, so why did you sneak in?"
"Do you know how dangerous that is?"
"Are you injured? I've applied for subsidies and leave for you."
"During this period of time, stay at home, attend more dances, get to know more decent sentinels, and stop thinking about running around."
After seeing off the mumbling Roy, Lin Yuan received a new guest.
He was a sentry, with a broken arm and extremely thin, but his features showed a firmness that had not been extinguished by the vicissitudes of life.
He saw Lin Yuan at the gate, knelt on one knee, lifted up Lin Yuan's fingers and kissed her hand.
"This is the most solemn etiquette of our family." The sentry stood up. "My name is Yunluo. Do you remember me?"
Lin Yuan remembered him. When he was helped out of the cage in the Golden Tree contaminated area, he was tortured and seriously injured. He looked helpless, miserable and extremely weak.
But now he had tidied himself, and the warrior's determination returned to his eyes and eyebrows, and he stood in front of her as a sentinel.
"I remember you." Lin Yuan stretched out her hand to him. "We agreed to meet each other alive."
The two people's palms touched each other and shook gently.
Each other's palms were warm and alive. They did not die in that dark place, but met each other alive in the sunshine as they had agreed at that time.
Lin Yuan asked Yun Luo about the injury on his arm.
"It doesn't matter. As long as you are willing to spend money, you can get a mechanical arm." Yun Luo calmly moved the small part of his arm that was left. "Compared to being able to get out of that place alive, being a little disabled is not a big deal."
He left a gift, his address and an invitation letter to Lin Yuan, hoping that Lin Yuan would have the opportunity to visit his home.
In addition to Yunluo, there were quite a few sentinels who came to visit. Some of them had escaped alive from the contaminated area No. 77. After hearing about the situation, they came to express their gratitude.
In addition, some noble families sent invitations to the banquet. Perhaps they had heard the recent exciting news and became curious. They also wanted to see what kind of supernatural guide could open a contaminated area that had never been opened for hundreds of years.
Lin Yuan soon became impatient with such bustle and closed the door, no longer receiving the endless stream of guests.
She stayed in the living room, eating various desserts stored at home and drinking the tea that Xiaosuo made for her.
Xiaosuo’s tea-making skills are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the snacks are also very sweet.
The new gardener planted a rose by the window.
Soil cultivation, transplanting, watering. The rose plant shook its branches in the moonlight, looking tender and juicy, as if it had taken root and sprouted in an instant, and would soon bloom.
After finishing his work, the new gardener glanced at Lin Yuan, who was sitting in the living room holding a cup of tea.
"You really didn't notice?"
Lin Yuan stuffed his mouth with cookies and didn't have time to swallow them. He puffed up his cheeks and said incoherently, "What did you notice?"
"You should be able to catch him." Xunhua sighed, "He has come here several times. Every time he stands in that alley for a long time, watching other people coming in and out. He seems a little pitiful."
"Yes, I mean the killer whale."
(End of this chapter)