The wind was more urgent than yesterday, and the temperature was much lower. The debris rolled in the wind began to carry fine ice particles.
Ning Gu squatted beside a broken wall, pulling his hat up to the bridge of his nose.
This is a ski cap, which Uncle Crazy gave him before. It is old and can't withstand the wind. Usually, he would wear a big fur hat outside, but he didn't wear it when he came out today.
Not far from him, there was a small pile of fire surrounded by a low gravel wall. Because of the special fuel, it frantically shook in the strong wind but never went out. It could keep warm, but Ning Gu did not pass.
Warm places tend to attract all kinds of weird life forms, which may be dangerous or not, and he is generally unwilling to take such a risk.
Someone came over from behind the wall, his footsteps were very light, and there were only a few short and crisp sounds that were cut by the strong wind in his ears.
"Did you bring it?" Ning Gu asked.
The footsteps stopped, and it took a while for the king to turn over from the wall.
"Did you bring it?" Di Wang sat down beside him and glanced at him, "What kind of clothes are you wearing?"
"Protect my handsome face," Ning Gu turned his head, "Have you brought it?"
"Is your goggle broken?" Diwang knocked on the goggles under his hat, "I have new ones, do you want them?"
Ning Gu lifted his hat impatiently: "I'll give you a chance to say something, take it or not, if you don't take it, I'll give you another two seconds to escape, if you're late, you'll die."
"Bring it." The king said.
"Bring it." Ning Gu stretched out his hand.
The land king looked at his hands: "Ning Gu, it's not that I can't trust you, the rules can't be broken, an exchange is an exchange, one hand for another."
Ning Gu also glanced at him.
Ning Gu's goggles were indeed leaking, and his eyes were still squinted in the goggles. It was very difficult to look at the King of Earth, tears were blown out, and he said with tears in his eyes, "Get away."
The king looked at him.
"Then take it out and I'll take a look first," he said, "I don't trust you."
The reason why the land king is called the land king is not because he has a lot of land, but because he is familiar with ghost cities.
The name ghost city is given by the general public in the main city.
This piece of space is free from the main city, has no borders with the main city, and even cannot determine each other's location. It is only at certain times that no one knows that it will suddenly communicate with the main city.
The main city once wanted to call this a satellite city, but obviously they couldn’t agree. It’s not certain who’s satellite is which, and for the people in the main city, this haunted, dark, and windy space with no boundaries is more like a ghost town.
Fortunately, the people in the main city did not follow this line of thinking to call the people living here ghosts.
Instead, they continued to call themselves, traveler.
The land king is the veteran of the traveler. He was hunted down because of the ability mutation without system authorization, and he got mixed up with the earliest batch who fled here from the main city.
No one is more familiar with this place than him, if you want to find any weird things, or want to get any supplies that are in short supply, most of them can be solved by him.
But the king of land is an old profiteer.
Very rascal.
Many people have suffered from the land king, but Ning Gu refused to suffer from it.
Although Ning Gu is one of the rare species among travelers who has not yet seen any ability to mutate, and does not even have the ability to spark a spark.
But in Ning Gu's eyes, land kings are as rare as him.
For many people who have meaningless abilities like pink snot bubbles, Ning Gu, who punched pink snot bubbles and kicked lighters since childhood, can be regarded as a bully.
So the land king didn't hesitate, and stepped back a few steps.
Ning Gu stared at his hand.
Land Wang reached into the inner pocket of his coat, quickly pulled out a folded piece of paper, quickly shook it towards him, and quickly put it back in his pocket.
"Did you bring it?" asked the King of Earth.
Ning Gu knew that the piece of paper was fake without even hesitating.
What he wanted was a painting, a real painting, one with colors, and one could tell what it was, not the kind where the crazy uncle scratched a few times with a stick on the wall and said it was a caracal cat.
The folded paper in Di Wang's hands was blank against the light, and there was not even a Dao on it.
Moreover, this kind of difficult thing, based on the understanding of a profiteer like the land king to a bully like him, it is impossible to put it in the inner pocket that is only separated by one layer.
No matter what, you have to take it out of your underwear.
Because bullies may rob.
"Hand in hand..." Ning Gu jumped up before the King of Earth finished speaking.
This is to grab.
The Land King reacted quickly, turned around and rushed into the darkness.
But Ning Gu was faster than him, when he swung his arm on the back of his head, he hadn't even taken the third step, and then he was swung to the ground.
Ning Gu rushed over, and his knees hit his lower back, so he couldn't move, he could only turn his face and shouted: "What are you doing! Beating up the elderly! And robbing things? Be careful, I'll tell the leader! A person of high morals and respect actually raises a robber like you!"
Travelers gather together to form a tour group, and the leader of the tour group is the head of the tour group. The head of the group is Ning Gu's uncle, who is regarded as the person who raised Ning Gu.
Ning Gu is quite afraid of the head of the regiment, but he is only afraid when he meets him face to face, not now.
He tore off Di Wang's coat and took out the folded paper from his inner pocket.
He knew it was fake, but when he opened it, he still looked forward to it inexplicably, maybe he wanted a real painting too much.
So when he saw that it was really just a blank piece of paper, the disappointment in his heart couldn't even be blown away by the wind.
"You dare to lie to me with this thing?" Ning Gu pressed his knees on the queen's waist, and put his hands on his neck, "Are you afraid that your bones are tight?"
"Don't complain about injustice, do you have what I want!" Di Wang shouted with difficulty.
Ning Gu stared at him for a while, then touched the boots.
"What! You still need to use the knife!" The King of Earth shouted.
"You deserve me to hold the knife?" Ning Gu slowly pulled out a feather from the small dark pocket inside the boot, the gray and white gradient color is very beautiful.
"Huh?" Di Wang desperately squinted his eyes in the direction of his hand.
"I have." Ning Gu pinched the feather and waved it in front of his eyes.
The King of Earth fell silent, but his eyes widened.
"Do you have new goggles?" Ning Gu put the feather back into the hidden pocket carefully while pressing on the leather pocket hanging on Di Wang's waist.
"Feather for goggles?" asked the land king.
Ning Gu was furious, grabbed his hair and knocked his head to the ground violently.
The King of Earth immediately rolled his eyes and passed out.
Ning Gu opened the leather pocket, rummaged a few times, and found a goggle, which was indeed new.
He tore off the old goggles on his face, hung them around his waist, and put on new ones.
The old ones can be repaired to give nails. Recently, the wind is so strong that the eyes of the nails are almost blown away.
But Ning Gu went back to the shelter and turned around and didn't see the nails. When he got home, he saw the leader standing in his room.
"Uncle," he greeted, and cleaned up the piles of things on his bed, "sit."
When he was a child, he lived with the head of the regiment, and when he became an adult, the head of the regiment found him this hut, and he usually lives alone. There is nothing in the house, except for a small iron cabinet and a small table, and even the beds are piled up with all kinds of old cushions. Almost all the single-person huts in the shelter are like this, only young couples can tidy up the house better.
But Ning Gu's hut is much messier than other single huts, it's full of all kinds of useful and useless things he exchanged... basically useless things in the eyes of the group leader.
"I can't sit down," said the head of the group. "Didn't someone bring you a chair last time? Where did you go?"
Ning Gu coughed and sat down beside the bed without speaking.
"Have you changed things?" The head of the group bent down and looked at him, "Can you change things too?"
"You can change anything you want." Ning Gu said.
"Oh," the head still looked at him, "I thought you only rob things?"
Ning Gu frowned, the old profiteer, Di Wang, was actually a villain and first sued the head of the group.
"Be more honest these days," the group leader frowned, and didn't tell him about the robbery. "I'm probably going to take someone into the car tomorrow, so don't cause trouble..."
"Tomorrow?" Ning Gu raised his head.
"Yeah." The head of the group responded, "You stay at home..."
"I want to go." Ning Gu said.
The captain looked at him in surprise.
Ning Gu has wanted to go to the main city since he was a child. Among all the children in the shelter, he is probably the most persistent. He even secretly followed him into the car twice, but because he stayed where he was and did not run around, the head of the group pretended not to know. .
Ning Gu knew that the head of the group was unwilling to let him go to the main city, so he would rather secretly follow the car, and never mentioned it.
This is the first time that he directly said "I want to go".
For a moment, the leader didn't know how to answer.
"Let me go," Ning Gu said, "Tail's brother has been there, isn't he about my age?"
"It's not a question of how old you are," said the leader, "You can't go. The main city looks bright, but it's actually much more dangerous in the dark than here."
"Because I'm just an ordinary person?" Ning Gu stood up, "Isn't the main city also full of ordinary people? Those who can be killed by mutations have been killed, and those who can't be killed have rushed here..."
"Shut up." The captain frowned.
"I'm not afraid of death," Ning Gu said, "I'm afraid that when I die, I don't see anything, and I don't know anything."
"You," the leader pointed to the things he bought in exchange for a whole room, "you have seen more than me."
"You know that's not what I meant." Ning Gu was a little annoyed, and he was definitely not so aggressive when talking to the head of the team.
"You can't go no matter what you mean." The head of the group turned and walked out of the room after speaking.
Ning Gu wanted to come out and say something more, but the door closed right in front of his nose.
Bang.
He grabbed the handle and tried it, but it wouldn't open.
It was the captain who did it.
The door will not open until he has walked a certain distance.
In fact, it won't do much, but what this move now expresses is that he doesn't want to chat with Ning Gu anymore, maybe he knows what Ning Gu will say if the chat continues.
"It can't be stopped like this," Li Xiang walked over from behind a lantern next to him, and glanced at Ning Gu's hut, "He is not someone who can be persuaded with a few words, it took so many years to tell you that he wants to Go, it's hard to come by."
"I can't go this time." The group leader said calmly.
"Want to bring goods?" Li Xiang asked.
The head of the group didn't make a sound, walked a few steps and stopped, looking at the red lanterns lined up in two rows in front of them, extending to the distance, like a bridge on the void in the darkness.
The lanterns are all made of glass, and the red flame dances in the strong wind, but it can persist for a long time without going out.
The shelter uses these lanterns to mark the roads leading to various places in the dark, and there is a special person to light them, who Ning Gu jokingly calls a human body lighter.
"Did you feel it?" Li Xiang stood for a while and asked.
It is not uncommon for the ground to shake, and it will happen once in a while.
However, no one knew what the vibration represented.
There was once a person who guessed that the vibration might affect some people's abilities, but it was just a guess.
This person possessed the ability most feared by those hiding in the deepest buildings in the main city, but he disappeared after a shock and never appeared again.
Ability and ability are unpredictable things. No one knows whether they will have them, what they will be, and how strong they will be, but they are very precious. They are a part of them, like bodies, hands, and feet.
The disappearance of any ability is a tear that the leader cannot accept.
"You confirm with them again." The leader continued to move forward.
"I've confirmed it," Li Xiang said, "There is only one."
"Not to confirm this," the head of the group looked up and looked around, followed the lantern and turned into the path, walked out of the range of the shelter, stopped again, turned and looked at Li Xiang, "There must be a self-destruct device, and there must be a self-destruct device. Error."
"Understood." Li Xiang nodded.
"It's not easy to guard this place," the leader tugged at his collar. "Any possible interference must be removed, and tell them that if we can't guarantee it, we won't cooperate in the future."
Li Xiang glanced at him and nodded slightly: "I'm still looking for that one, but not yet... Maybe the self-destruct device is just delayed?"
"Don't have such illusions," said the captain, "everything must be prepared for the worst."
"The worst," Li Xiang frowned, his voice was low, "on purpose?"
"We have no allies." The captain glanced at him, then turned and walked into the darkness.
Ning Gu was holding a cold light bottle and walking on the uneven, cold and hard ground. He was going to the garbage dump, and he had to go through the garbage dump to the other side.
When he was a child, he asked the group leader how big the ghost town was.
The captain didn't answer him.
In the eyes of others, ghost towns have no boundaries.
In other words, it's not that there is no margin, but that no one can come back from the margin.
From the day it appeared, the ghost town has been wrecked by strong winds and thick black fog. The black fog is the edge, and the outside of the black fog is still black fog. The thickest and darkest part is the part that travelers will never cross again." marginal".
The nearest "margin" is on the other side of the garbage dump. Ning Gu and Nail went there when they were young. They sat at the highest place and watched the black mist that was constantly blowing towards them with the wind.
like a tongue. Nail said.
Later Ning Gu knew that it was indeed called Tongue Bay.
Under normal circumstances, Ninggu will not come here alone. Travelers rarely go deep into the garbage dump alone. Travelers living in the shelter will not even go to the garbage dump, let alone go to the other side of the garbage dump Tongue Bay.
We all know that the natives of ghost towns are not travelers, the real natives are lurking in the dark.
Crazy Uncle once said: "You know, they have no shape, no vision and hearing, but they can sense all temperatures higher than the cold wind..."
Then devour.
Ning Gu often went to Tongue Bay and stayed for a long time each time. He wanted to know what was inside Tongue Bay more than the danger of encountering the aborigines.
Crazy Uncle held the cup and squatted on the spire made of scrap metal parts, watching Ninggu gradually walking into the depths of darkness.
And that shadow that flickered past at a distance where he would never be seen.
Crazy Uncle took a sip of the already cold water: "Let's see whose fate is hard."