As the smooth, well-defined faces looked over, Lu Yanli froze in place and subconsciously took a step back. Fortunately, those people did nothing and stood quietly for a while before turning around and moving forward again.
There were waves after waves, and it seemed that all the people in the town had appeared here. In the end, the familiar family from the opera troupe appeared. The girl pulled her father's hand and acted coquettishly, occasionally stretching out her foot to trip her brother who was playing with his mobile phone. If it weren't for the fact that they all had facial features, it would look like a very warm scene.
Lu Yanli followed behind from a distance. When passing through the residential area, he found that the collapsed buildings had been repaired and restored to their original state, as if the explosion and the massacre had never happened. More and more people came out of the houses, gathered in the crowd and continued to move forward.
Where are they going
There was one last bottle of green spores on Lu Yanli's body. He quietly placed it in the place on the body where it was easiest to pick up, and followed.
That group of people had nothing to do but keep moving forward, and finally gathered near the school. The opera troupe went home to prepare for the evening show.
There is no need to wait until night. The sky is gloomy and the sunlight seems unable to penetrate the thick layer of dark clouds. The wind quickly cools down and you can already feel the thickness of moisture in the air.
Lu Yanli picked up an umbrella from a store he passed by and followed behind.
The people who were still chatting on the road suddenly stopped talking and stood there in silence, not moving.
"What are you going to do?" Lu Yanli continued to talk to himself, "My first wish is to live. The price has been paid, so you can't kill me."
As he spoke, he walked forward through the crowd. The crowd ignored him and didn't react even when he touched their shoulders. Lu Yanli came to the back of the stage and lifted the curtain. Several people were dressing up and applying something on their faces.
Everyone ignored him and pretended that they saw it, working swiftly, but... in the hazy mirror that seemed to be covered with a layer of fog, only Lu Yanli's figure was reflected.
"They are all fake." Lu Yanli said to the mirror at home, "Now the only thing that can be used in the whole town is this one."
The hazy mirror surface gradually became clear, revealing the young man's indifferent smile. He said to the mirror again: "I have no choice but to do it. I made a wish, and you can't kill me."
He thought about the future self that he had summoned through the jade pendant. One of them told him that he had to go through the cultural festival or he would die, while the other told him that he would die on the day of the cultural festival in the future.
Who was telling the truth? He didn't know. One of them was dead, and the other... he didn't know where he went.
"You want me to help you with the sacrifice, right? Even if they are all fake, you still want to do it?"
In the mirror, Lu Yanli's face was oozing blood, which was attached to the mirror surface and trickled down. He noticed a slight dampness on the ground, looked down, and saw that the ground was already covered with thick, bloody water, trickling down to his feet.
He was in the room behind the platform. In Lu Yanli's eyes, those people were still dressing up and occasionally talking to each other, but in the mirror, there was only his own face standing in front of the mirror with a sly smile. Even though he was backing away at this moment, the face in the mirror gradually enlarged.
Lu Yanli had already retreated to the door. He turned around and saw the faces of the people waiting for his family gradually showing their facial features, but they looked like the facial features of a stick figure drawn by a child, with dark eyes and red mouths curved like they were smiling. The faces of those people gradually turned pale, more like the paper figures he had seen before.
Blood flowed, paper was waiting quietly, in the air, lanterns shaped like cows were swaying in the wind. The wind was getting wetter and wetter, a strong smell of blood came from nowhere, and when it went out, it was actually raining blood.
"Is this the world you want?" Lu Yanli held up an umbrella and left the roof. He felt very cold, and his limbs were frozen stiff, but he didn't want to say it out loud. He pretended nothing had happened and walked out.
On the way, the paper-paper ...
“clang—”
The gongs and drums roared loudly.
The sound of a suona ripped through half the sky, and the dense drum beats were like raindrops, extending to the center of the stage with the increasingly dense footsteps of the people on the stage. The people on the stage had painted eyebrows, painted mouths, and painted eyes, a stiff puppet face, with stiff limbs swaying, and soon, a song that was not sure whether it was sad or happy began to play lively.
That was a song that Lu Yanli was familiar with.
The raindrops and drumbeats became more frequent. A blood mist floated in from nowhere, filling the air. It was damp, cold, and sticky.
The dead are singing for the dead. Lu Yanli suddenly thought of this sentence. He held up an umbrella, expressionless, and stood out among the fake people clapping and laughing stiffly.
"Singing can call you and make you hear, right?" Lu Yanli slowly walked down to the stage, looked up, and looked at the people on the stage whose movements were as rigid as puppets. "But, they are all fake, and the songs they sing are fake."
The wind suddenly became stronger, as if urging us to hurry up.
Lu Yanli held an umbrella in one hand and supported himself with the other, sitting on the half-floor high stage. The rain didn't hit him. He cleared his throat and sang along with the folk tune.
Generally speaking, his voice is not bad, and every word and sentence is in tune, but the effect is... Fortunately, there were live audiences at the scene, otherwise it would have been hard to say if they had all run away.
Unknown to him, in another future psychic town that was copied.
After Lin Chu spent the next day safely, she planned to go out as usual, but when she was about to go out, she found that the door was locked.
The doors and windows were all locked, and the culprit was sitting at the desk in the lobby of the first floor, painting.
"Get out, it's dangerous outside." Lu Yanli put down his paintbrush and turned to look at Lin Chu.
Lin Chu leaned against the door with a cold look in her eyes. She didn't speak and put her hands behind her back trying to remove the new lock on the door.
"It's useless. Don't run around today." Unlike Lin Chu who was glaring at the other person, Lu Yanli's eyes were gentle. However, Lin Chu did not feel relieved at all. She only felt fear, and waves of chills climbing up her back.
Lin Chu asked: "What exactly are you going to do?"
Lu Yanli was stunned: "What can I do?" He raised the paintbrush in his hand that was still stained with paint, "It's too dangerous outside, let's go out."
"What if you want to go out?"
Lin Chu didn't mean to leave the house, but to leave this town. She believed that the other party understood what she meant.
A dagger slipped from his sleeve, and a pocket pistol appeared silently in his other hand. Lin Chu pointed at him and asked again: "What if you want to go out?"
Lu Yanli smiled, as if he was watching an ignorant child pointing a toy gun at him, and waved his hand: "You are so confident, then give it a try."
Lin Chu immediately turned his hand and fired a shot at the door lock. Sparks flew everywhere. He avoided the bullet's rebound path and the door lock opened.
She cautiously opened the door with her hands behind her back, and Lu Yanli still stood there, smiling quietly, and even gestured to invite her out. She thought about it and ran out, but after only a few steps, she kept having an impulse in her mind, wanting to go back, to be with him.
This feeling made her even more terrified. Lin Chu gritted her teeth and continued to run forward. She planned to run to the edge of the tunnel, but to her despair, she ran very far and unknowingly returned to the store where she lived last night.
It seemed that her subconscious mind had made her go around in circles and return to the starting point.
Lu Yanli was standing at the door. When he heard the footsteps, he waved at her casually, as if he was calling a pet: "Come here."
But Lin Chu couldn't control her steps, she ran over and looked up at him.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow you will stand here and sing that song, understand?" Lu Yanli knew that this song could attract the attention of the "statue". He also knew that in the real town outside, a cultural festival was being held at this time.
The two worlds are blending, and the order of this strange world will briefly return to normal because of the other world. During the period when the order of the world is normal, two identical things cannot appear in the same time and space. Good or bad, only one can exist.
This is what he had done in the past, hiding in the town of the future, letting the outside world collapse and fall into chaos. After all the dust settled, he would ask Lin Chu to attract the attention of the statue and lead him into the new, integrated world.
In this way, he can get out of this town. The old town will be destroyed, but a new town will be born. The past self will die, but he can survive.
He has always done this. After the new world collapses, he will return to the past again, constantly reincarnating in the closed loop of time.
Lin Chu stood still. Lu Yanli slowly approached her and stroked her hair like he did when she was a girl. He said, "You're disappointing."
Lin Chu shuddered: "I know."
In the town outside, Lu Yanli sat on the stage. As the family sang, the night gradually faded away, and it seemed that there was a clear blue sky above the night.
He heard the sound of the waves and the roar of unknown sea beasts. It was not an illusion, the coastline was slowly appearing on the horizon, the shadow of the waves gradually became clearer, and he seemed to be able to smell the unique salty smell of the sea breeze.
The people in that world were singing, and he heard the voices from the other side. The two singings overlapped in the air, and the two worlds... slowly merged.
The paper, lanterns, blood, etc. in front of him disappeared, and the ground under his feet seemed to have turned into a strange-colored mud. Lu Yanli saw several strange-looking beasts running towards him from afar. They looked exactly like the alien beasts he had seen in Erdai Country. Those "beasts" with multiple eyes or skin covered with animal scales and fur were also looking at him.
Is this the surface world? The source of all problems
What Lu Yanli didn't expect at this moment was that Lin Chu, who he thought had died long ago, was in another place, singing the same song in advance, regardless of the ban issued by his future self.
Lin Chu felt as if there were saws stirring in her mind, causing pain and confusion, but when she saw Lu Yanli's sudden surprised look in front of her, she only felt refreshed.
"Do you want to die?"
The man strangled Lin Chu's neck so hard that she could no longer make a sound. She fell to the ground, covered her throat and coughed a few times. She laughed happily: "I know you don't want to die, but you are not afraid."
The sea belonging to another world has emerged on the horizon. Lin Chu stared at it intently and suddenly felt that the sea was a little familiar.
"Why... why?" Her expression suddenly became horrified. "Why is there a sea here?"
She was very familiar with this sea and the moving island on it.
"Why are you here? What did you do?" Regardless of the sore throat and the feeling of weakness coming from her body, Lin Chu crawled to the ground and grabbed Lu Yanli's sleeve fiercely, "What did you do?"
The time has been advanced.
Lu Yanli stared at the coastline that was getting closer and closer to his home. The land beneath their feet gradually changed. The town houses were still there, and the gray sky was replaced by the clear sky of another world. He saw the alien creatures not far away, the island in the depths of the sea, and... the huge virtual image of his home standing next to the island.
Time has advanced, and the other self in the past is not dead yet. After the worlds are completely overlapped, between them... only one can survive.
He shook off Lin Chu, who seemed to have thought of something and immediately fled to the branch location set up by the institute. She wanted to tell the institute to be careful of this person, and also wanted to report to the institute that the two worlds had merged and they had to go to the new world immediately...
"Stop." Lu Yanli's voice came from behind.
She stopped subconsciously.
"You can open the letter now." Lu Yanli knew that this chess piece had lost its function. If he let her leave, the group of people in the research institute would be implicated.
Lin Chu couldn't control himself and took out a letter from his pocket.
The ground beneath their feet became more solid, and the hazy gray haze around them dissipated. Lin Chu saw the sound of the wind coming from afar...
It’s Lu Yanli.
She turned her head and saw that it was Lu Yanli.
Her hands had already opened the letter.
There were two paintings in the envelope. The paintings showed a young woman combing her hair, a young girl sitting on her lap and playing, and a young boy reaching out to tease the girl.
In the second painting, the young woman nervously hands the little girl to a man wearing a ghost mask.
Just a few seconds after she finished reading it, the letter caught fire without any wind.
Lin Chu suddenly thought of something, and she ran towards Lu Yanli in the distance, trying hard to suppress the memories that were about to surge in her mind.
Can’t think of it!!
She tried hard to recall her days at the research institute, and her memories flowed rapidly. But when she recalled her childhood, she once again found that her childhood was blank.
Behind her, Lu Yanli looked at the two men indifferently.
When Lin Chu recalled, she would immediately commit suicide. The area was full of spies from the research institute, and he had already been targeted by the "God Statue", so he couldn't do it himself.
But... why didn't Lin Chu take action yet
He wanted to go over and catch the other person, but he suddenly couldn't move and could only watch Lin Chu continue to run forward.
"He has cooperated with that thing. He is the mastermind behind all this..."
Everything happened too quickly. Lin Chu fell down after running only a few dozen meters. She spoke her last words in a voice loud enough to ensure that the other party could hear her.
"You can't both exist at the same time..."
"Bang—" a gunshot rang out.
Lu Yanli, who came from the front, heard Lin Chu's last words clearly. He wanted to hear what she wanted to say, so he reached out to wave her hand, but she had already died.
He stood still, looking far into the distance at his future self, picked up the pocket dagger that Lin Chu was using to commit suicide, and aimed it at the shadow—
Another gunshot rang out.