After coming out of the military control office and saying goodbye to Roy, Lin Yuan got on the bus home.
She leaned against the car window, tilted her head, and watched the scenery outside the window receding.
The car window reflected a delicate, cold and bored little face.
The shape of the bus is very strange, like a weird doll that was patched together with various messy materials.
It swayed and grunted all the way, making all kinds of noises of being overwhelmed.
In this era, the level of human technology and production has seriously deteriorated. If you want to get the spare parts of most machines, you have to go to the relics of the past. It is impossible to get a complete one, and patchwork is the norm.
The sun hung in the sky, like a salted egg yolk that was about to melt, dyeing the bloated and huge imperial capital with a light orange-red.
Even in such a far suburb, you can still see the white tower from afar.
Standing in the center of the city, it is the symbol of the entire empire.
The whole body is white and towering into the clouds.
"Mom. Look, it's the White Pagoda." A young boy in the car pointed out the window excitedly.
He opened a huge atlas in his arms and began to repeatedly compare the White Tower recorded in the album.
"Mom, this book says that hundreds of years ago, it was the White Tower and the King who saved humanity from the Great Cataclysm."
His mother, who was sitting next to him, reached out and touched his head perfunctorily.
The tired mother didn't care about the king or the White Tower, she was only worried about tonight's dinner and tomorrow's life.
"The book says that the clouds in the sky used to be white. As white as sugar."
"The book says that at the beginning, there were the same number of sentinels and guides. They walked towards the battlefield hand in hand."
"The book says..."
The tender voices of children continued to ring out in the carriage.
The passengers in the car all smiled tolerantly.
Children are innocent and what they say is very funny.
How can the clouds in the sky be white? Everyone knows that clouds are either purple or green.
How could a delicate guide possibly go into battle? It was simply a fantasy.
The bus picked up and dropped off passengers along the way and took a long time. The two sides of the road, which were initially filled with crowded and messy adobe, shanties and wooden houses, gradually became neat, grand and luxurious.
The White Pagoda also becomes huge, holy and cannot be ignored in the field of vision.
The White Tower is the center of the capital. The closer to the White Tower, the more likely it is that rich people and nobles live there.
Lin Yuan got off the car here and walked slowly up along the clean and tidy stone road.
It was already very late, and the light from the street lamps was only sporadically lit up on the sparsely populated streets.
In the corner of the road, there was a couple with a young daughter, running a small fruit stall.
There were only three small green apples left on the worn-out cart. The apples were huddled together listlessly, not looking very good.
Even so, the family selling apples was still reluctant to close their stall and go back.
Fruits are very expensive these days. They wait for customers in the dark night when there are few pedestrians, hoping to sell even one more.
Lin Yuan had no interest in apples. She took standard small steps and walked forward, lifting her skirt.
[This must be the most delicious apple in the world] I suddenly heard this voice in my mind.
It is not a sentence made up of specific words. It is just an emotion from the superficial consciousness.
But because it was so strong and pure, even if the tentacles did not deliberately capture it, the sound was still clearly transmitted to Lin Yuan's mind.
Lin Yuan looked towards that location and found that the voice in his mind came from the skinny little girl behind the apple stall.
The little girl, about four or five years old, stared at the green apple in front of her intently, her eyes sparkling.
It seems as if it can turn the dry little apple into some kind of exquisite delicacy.
Lin Yuan glanced at the girl, then looked at the apples, and continued walking forward.
[If you take a bite, the sour and sweet juice will burst out, flowing through the gaps between your teeth and across your tongue]
[It quenches your thirst and is very enjoyable.]
Lin Yuan paused.
[Can fill your stomach]
[It can also be sweet to the heart]
[I want to take a bite]
[I really want to eat it]
One sentence after another, clear and loud.
The tentacles raised their heads one after another and looked towards the apples.
Really, is it that delicious
Lin Yuan stopped, turned around and walked back.
She stood in front of the stall, looking at the three apples that were neither green nor yellow for a long time, and finally took out a few imperial coins and put the three apples into the bag.
The moment you pick up your bag and leave.
The gigantic sound of dripping saliva instantly came to my mind.
Too clear, too intense.
So much so that Lin Yuan had to pick up an apple by the stem and put it into the little girl's hand.
Lin Yuan was tempted by the sound of swallowing saliva while walking on the road. He took out an apple, wiped it on his clothes, and took a bite with anticipation while walking.
It’s so sour.
Lin Yuan’s house is very big, with a blue brick and white wall and a carved gate.
The vegetation in the yard is lush and green, with branches and vines intertwined and climbing over the wall with great vitality. From a distance, you can see a triangular retro-style roof behind the towering tree canopy deep in the courtyard.
No one opened the door. Lin Yuan took out the key and opened it himself.
The creaking sound of the door opening suddenly rang out in the silent and deserted cold night.
I closed the heavy door and walked inside. The grass and trees in the yard were shadowy in the dark night. They grew too lushly and there was almost no place to stand. I could only walk in along a barely cleared path in the middle.
The main building has five floors, with a peaked attic on the top. All the room windows are dark and stand quietly in the depths of the garden, like a house that has been uninhabited for a long time.
Only a dim light was on in the entrance hall on the first floor, breaking the thick and dead silence.
Lin Yuan walked into the entrance hall and, under the dim light, took off her cumbersome ivory coat.
From a corner of the roof, where the light could not reach, a pale female arm stretched out and took Lin Yuan's coat.
"Is everything going well?" A voice came from somewhere.
"Yes, it went smoothly. All the formalities have been completed." Lin Yuan bent down to untie the laces on his boots without even looking up. "From now on, I can live at home forever."
"I'm sorry," the voice said timidly, "I was careless today and I think the cleaning lady saw me. She ran away screaming and she probably won't come back again."
"It's okay, I'll ask her again. If she doesn't come, then hire another one. Maybe the family still needs a gardener."
Lin Yuan finally untied the troublesome shoes and threw them away. The shoes were picked up by a pair of white arms.
She took off her heavy clothes and ran up the oak stairs barefoot in just a thin silk petticoat.
An arm stretched out from the shadow and nimbly caught the apple.
The white apron of the maid's outfit swayed in the air.
"Thank you, miss." said the voice hidden in the dark.
"Ah, so sour."
Lin Yuan's bedroom is in the top attic.
The room is not big, and there is a soft bed by the window.
The bedside and all the cabinets are filled with large and small, strange things, filling the small bedroom.
There are some wind chimes made of energy stones, fluorescent signs that can only be found in old ruins, and broken simulated robot heads.
There are also dolls and stuffed toys of various sizes.
It's like a child's room with a weird collecting hobby.
The windows on the wall are very large. Looking through the glass, you can see the white tower in the night, the houses of different heights, and the roads with street lights on.
On the bluestone paved road, a family of three who had just sold apples were walking on their way home.
The mother held her daughter in her arms, the father pushed the cart, and the three of them took turns eating the apple that Lin Yuan had left behind.
It tasted so sweet, as if the apple in their hands and Lin Yuan’s were completely different.
Lin Yuan placed his fingers against the cold glass as he stood behind the window, staring at the three small figures from the high attic.
A drop of rain hit the glass in front of my fingertips. I don’t know when it started to drizzle.
The father took off his coat and put it over his daughter and wife's heads.
Three small figures huddled together in the rain, pushing the cart forward quickly.
Lin Yuan just stood behind the glass window and watched.
Until their figures were covered by the rain and could no longer be seen.
Why do those three people look so happy
Lin Yuan felt that what the people in the White Tower said was right. She had a problem with emotional deficiency. Most of the time, she had no emotions, and could neither feel particularly happy nor sad.
An emotionally absent guide.
Lin Yuan was stunned for a while, then remembered something, climbed onto the bed, and rummaged through the toy cabinet at the head of the bed for a long time.
He dug out a palm-sized, half-new killer whale doll.
"That's what I told you. I seem to have seen this thing somewhere." Lin Yuan became a little happy. She lay on her back and picked up the chubby doll to play with it.
She couldn't remember when she got this toy. There were countless things like this in this room that she couldn't remember.
Lin Yuan has no memories of his childhood.
Those people told her that when she was very young, she and her family experienced a fire.
Both her parents were burned to death in the fire, leaving only the young her alive.
However, no matter how Lin Yuan tried to recall the past after growing up, he could not remember the fire or the things that happened in his childhood.
That period of time was blank.
It's like a period of time covered with a layer of white fog. When you want to look at it, it's always blurry and blurry, and you can't see it clearly no matter how hard you look.
She only knew that she was taken to the White Tower and raised. Her mental strength was assessed to be very high since she was a child, and she was matched with her fiancé of distinguished family background very early on.
Only recently was I finally allowed to return to this home that had been abandoned for so many years.
Lin Yuan was playing with a small killer whale doll. There was a thread loose on the doll's tail, and a bit of white cotton came out. She reached out and poked the cotton in.
The killer whale puppet is chubby and very cute, with a black back, a white belly, and white eye spots on both sides of its head. It looks like it is smiling. It seems that it can make a whale cry at you at any time. It is very elastic when you poke it with your finger.
It’s a little different from the killer whale I saw in that spiritual sea today.
Lin Yuan opened his palms and made a grasping gesture, recalling the feeling he felt from the tentacles at that time.
The fish was too thin. When it coiled around him, he felt bony and his skin was covered with criss-crossing scars.
Not particularly nice to touch.
Lying on the bed, fiddling with the soft doll in his hands and thinking about what happened during the day, Lin Yuan slowly fell asleep.
In my dream, I seemed to be back at the bottom of the sea.
She was wearing a little white dress and standing in a strange room. Outside the window was the deep sea and a huge whale was swimming by.
The whale made a whimpering sound, as if reminding her of something, or singing a sad song.
"Xiaoyuan, Xiaoyuan." Someone was calling her.
Lin Yuan turned her head and saw a couple whose faces she couldn't see clearly rushed into the room and picked her up.
"At least send Xiaoyuan out." She heard someone talking.
I don't know when the fire started around me, and it burned very fiercely.
Lin Yuan was protected by two pairs of arms, tightly held in a warm embrace.
It turned out that they were his father and mother.
The mother is a strong sentinel and the father is a gentle guide.
The fire all around was very big. Her mother held her in her arms and ran all the way through the sea of fire with her long legs.
Little Lin Yuan curled up in his mother's arms, but he didn't feel afraid at all.
She felt neither the heat nor the pain, but only peace in her heart.
Her father, who was her guide, blocked her senses and reduced her five senses.
So that she can't feel pain or sense terror.
In the blazing sea of fire, her mother protected her body and her father guarded her spiritual image.
Time seemed to pass very slowly, and they seemed to be running in the flames for an infinite time.
Lin Yuan heard her father's gentle voice.
"Xiao Yuan, come here, Dad will teach you how to control the Sentinel world."
She couldn't see her father's face, but the gentle voice rang directly in her mind.
"Xiao Yuan, you are a genius. You can do it."
"You and mom will walk the rest of the way together."
No!
Lin Yuan suddenly opened his eyes.
The dream disappeared, and most of the memories in the dream also dissipated.
She lay on the bed, feeling her heart pounding.
The sound of rain outside the window became very loud at some point, and the night was as thick as ink.
The cold rain hit the glass, leaving countless winding water marks on the glass.
Lin Yuan sat up blankly, looking out the window at the dark rainy night, and was in a daze for a long time.
Suddenly she thought blankly,
The fish,
No, that sentry, is he still sitting in that alley
(End of this chapter)