"I don't know how to explain it, but I can be sure that the other person in Lao Zhang's house is very much like the owner of the footsteps in my dreams. Team Cao said and picked up the wine glass, shook his head with a wry smile, and dried the wine in one gulp.

Team Cao's words made my thinking extremely messy, these events and characters have no connection at all, but obviously Team Cao will not joke about this kind of thing, is this really a coincidence in the dark, or does it mean something else?

Seeing that I didn't answer, Team Cao continued: "Lao Chang, maybe I've been haunted by that strange dream for a long time, and I'm a little bit of a snake, but what I actually want to tell you is that I can make some accurate judgments about the footsteps on the tape. ”

First of all, judging from the spatial position of the footsteps, it should have been about half a meter behind Lao Zhang at first, then moved to the middle of the room, stayed for a while, and then turned to the southwest corner of the room, where the cat purred. ”

Then he continued to walk back to his original position, and this circle would not take more than half a minute even for an old man, but this footstep took four minutes. This is by no means a situation of stopping and thinking while walking, because this slowness is caused by an extremely slow cadence, and it takes four times or even five times more time than normal people to fall together, and the weight of the whole body is concentrated in one supporting leg, and it stays in the air for so long, which is something that normal people can't do. ”

"And the weight of the footsteps is even more incomprehensible, of course, there will be problems with the recording effect, but the footsteps are still far less than the weight of a normal person, according to my previous dream experience, the owner of this footsteps can no longer be called a human. ”

Team Cao finished speaking in one breath, picked up the chopsticks again and ate a few bites of food. I poured the wine for him and asked him again, "Team Cao, since you have studied footsteps so deeply, you must already have the answer." ”

"The answer is no, there are two speculations, but I'll make a suggestion first, and then let's speculate. I noticed that Team Cao's expression was a little indifferent when he spoke, and I hurriedly asked him: "Team Cao, what else do you suggest?" If you think it's right, just follow yours, and I'll listen to you." ”

"Lao Chang, Lao Zhang's matter is found here, I think it's almost, there is no need to go deeper, in the end, it was only a few cats that died, no matter how magical the things behind Lao Zhang were, or died in an accidental car accident, these facts can't be changed. ”

I nodded, expressing my approval of his words, and motioned for Team Cao to continue.

"My guess, one of them, is that the footsteps on the tape are the same as the footsteps we heard in the demon tower in the western suburbs that year, and they are not the sound of living people, so as soon as the sound gets close to the cat, the cat will purr. But I am afraid that Lao Zhang did not know about the appearance of this footstep at that time, he was wearing headphones and receiving pulse signals. ”

"Second, even if it's something like a ghost and a fox, it won't walk like a slow-motion walk, so Chang, do you think there is something like Xuanmen in the house, which makes time in it slow down? ”

I have to say that Team Cao's speculation has some truth, but there is still an obvious flaw.

"Team Cao, the appearance of the Xuanmen is ancient, even the Zhao family can only be temporarily sealed, and cannot be eliminated or moved, so it is impossible for the Xuanmen to appear after Lao Zhang moved into the courtyard. In addition, the Xuanmen Gate is deep in the stratum, so there is a sea eye well and the ground to communicate, but there is no well in Lao Zhang's house or courtyard. ”

Team Cao nodded, "Lao Chang, what you said makes sense, but Lao Zhang's receiving device, maybe not to receive the signal above? If the Xuanmen changes the speed of time passing, then the time inside the Xuanmen is in the lottery draw, and the outside of the Xuanmen has not yet started, and then you know the final number, you can use this time difference to buy the winning lottery ticket." And in the world of that time, there will definitely be radio and television announcing the results of the awards, and it is entirely possible for Lao Zhang's device to receive it, isn't it?"

"If it can be accepted, then what does Xiang Yuanlin need Lao Zhang's memory ability and his knowledge of probability for?" Although I said this, I had to admit in my heart that this was the most reasonable explanation so far.

"I can't answer this, maybe it's because of the confusion of time and space, the received signal has become garbled or number, no longer a sound? Maybe there are too many messages mixed together, and they must be selected one by one? In short, Lao Zhang must have learned the winning number because of the receiving device in the house, and because he won the lottery, he had to use the cat as a soul guide to avoid the curse. So, when Lu Xiaojuan copied the winning number, disrupting Lao Zhang and Xiang Yuanlin's original plan, the soul lead failed, and then Lao Zhang's accident happened. ”

A bottle of two-pot head, unconsciously, has been drunk by me and Team Cao, maybe there is something in my heart, or the fatigue of running between the two places in the past few days, I already feel top-heavy. Hurriedly poured a cup of hot tea and poured two sips.

"Team Cao, I agree with your reasoning, but there is one thing I think differently, what is the ultimate purpose of this matter to Xiang Yuanlin. I always felt like he was proving what the heavens were, not buying lottery tickets. In the past, we always thought that the heavenly machine was the law of the future development and change of unknown things, but if this is the case, the heavenly machine is objective, so why should we be punished by heaven if we leak the heavenly machine?"

"The speculation you just made gave me a new revelation, that is, the leakage of the heavenly machine will give people in the current time and space the opportunity to change the future and change the course of known history, and this change will cause inconsistencies in the same event in different time and space, and turn into a paradoxical dead cycle. ”

"Suppose that our world has a heavenly being, as if it were the designer of a complex program, then it encounters an endless loop, and when the system crashes, what will it choose? ”

"If this is the case, then the Xiang family must have gained insight into the heavens and are looking for a way to avoid the curse. So there was a soul guide, using a new scam to deceive the error correction mechanism. Lao Zhang had apparently found a way to gain insight into the heavens, and Xiang Yuanlin had the means to avoid the curse. It's just that in the process of verifying the experiment, the accident of Ma Wu and Lu Xiaojuan occurred, which caused the curse to return to the right track. ”

After listening to my supplement, Team Cao was stunned for a long time, then shook his head and asked me: "Lao Chang, you say, what will happen if Xiang Yuanlin and Lao Zhang succeed?"

"I don't know, we don't know what the heavenly machine is, nor do we know how to avoid the curse, how can we predict it? But if the heavens are really a more complex computer program as I likened it, then Lao Zhang and Xiang Yuanlin are like a computer virus, and the result of their success is the collapse of the computer system. ”

"Since the computer system has crashed, then I am afraid that the only way to do this is to format the hard drive and reinstall a system. ”

"Then we should all be grateful to Ma Wu and Lu Xiaojuan? Without them, our current world would have collapsed? How does it sound more absurd than asking about Yuanlin and Lao Zhang?" Team Cao shook his head and leaned back in his chair lazily.

"The collapse always starts from the part, and the area continues to expand little by little, and we will never know if Lao Zhang's matter is also a program set by God. So...... "Before I could finish speaking, Team Cao had already taken the conversation.

"So, this story actually tells us to stay away from the heavens, I stay away from the footsteps, and you stay away from the Xuanmen, and each has its own destiny, right?"

I smiled at him, "Team Cao, I can see it, anyway, it's just one thing that you've turned over in the past two days, so I don't want to check it any further, right?" No problem, we can put this matter down, but I think we should take another look at Lao Zhang's corpse at the end?"

"It's no problem, we can go tomorrow, but what will happen when we see Lao Zhang's corpse?" Team Cao picked up his glass and touched it with me.

"You just think of it as part of the program. "It was only at this point that I felt its spicy throat.

Early the next morning, Team Cao and Xiao Lei picked me up and went to the morgue of Fuwai Hospital together. The morgue is in the basement of the annex building, and because it belongs to the corpse that has not yet been closed, Lao Zhang is stored separately in the innermost part of the cold storage.

Although I have been in the morgue more than twenty times, the smell of death still makes my scalp tense and my whole body chill.

The moment Lao Zhang's body was pulled out, a large cloud of white mist spread out along his already deflated cheeks. Although the glasses have long been missing, Lao Zhang's eyeballs bulged outward because of his deep myopia, which looked like they were half-open and half-closed, and his pupils completely turned purple-black, which made people shudder.

Xiao Lei seemed to see my surprise, and whispered next to me: "Old Chang, the lower body of the corpse is almost crushed, and the fundus of the eye is affected by pressure, it should be that the capillaries under the eye are ruptured, and after the blood coagulates, it has become this color." ”

Before Xiao Lei's words were finished, Team Cao sighed, pointed to the top of Lao Zhang's head, and let us come and see. The back part of Lao Zhang's head was drilled into a hole the size of a cup, and the blue-gray brain fluid in it was frozen into a frozen tofu-like appearance, and a small piece of Bai Sensen's bones were scattered on the stainless steel countertop.

Team Cao glanced at me with a strange expression, and Xiao Lei on the side quickly took out a stack of papers from his bag, looked through it and said puzzledly: "Team Cao, there is no record of head wounds on the autopsy report, this hole was opened after entering the morgue, but what is this for? Who did it?"

"Could it be that Lao Zhang is a soul guide himself?" Cao Team muttered thoughtfully.

After that day, we stopped the investigation into Lao Zhang's accidental death. The strange dream that has plagued the Cao team for a long time, I don't know why it no longer appears, of course, when the dream reunited with the Cao team a few years later, we suddenly realized the reason.

Ma Wu discussed with Lu Xiaojuan for a long time, but in the end he still did not receive the special prize of five million, which also became the first special prize in the country to abandon the prize. But it's really weird to say,Since then,The business of the Ma Wu lottery point suddenly became hot,Sales ranked first in the whole Beijing lottery outlets for seven or eight consecutive periods.

With it, the business of small shops has completely turned around, and by the new millennium, Ma Wu has become a successful person with seven supermarket chains.

At the beginning of '99, on the endless Gobi Desert in the northwest, Xiaolei and I, who had completely lost our way, sat in an off-road vehicle without gas, waiting for rescue. Xiao Lei, who was bored, told me that Lao Zhang's accidental car accident was registered in the bureau at the time, but for some reason, Team Cao didn't touch it, but handed it over to Xiao Lei to deal with. Later, Lao Zhang's equipment was sealed in the archives, and when the equipment was collected, the technical department found a copper pipe more than 30 meters long on the back wall of Lao Zhang's house, which was inserted deep underground, and the other side was connected to the receiving equipment in the room.

Xiao Lei immediately understood the purpose of this copper pipe, and hurriedly reported to the Cao team, but the Cao team resolutely ordered him to just seal the physical evidence, and leave nothing else alone. In particular, the numbers marked in Lao Zhang's notebook have become the highest level of confidential documents, although no one will understand them.

(Whatever is decided, it will be entrusted to those who doubt.) Good use of blessings, evil use of evil, good to tempt, there is no confusion in the end. If it is beneficial, if it is not profitable, it will not be entrusted. If it is beneficial to the good and conceals it from the evil, it will not be affected and will be alienated. Therefore, there are those who make the losers, and there are those who make the victims, and the loss of this matter. --"Guiguzi")