Before I reunited with my doppelganger Xu Fu, I had thought a lot about the situation of talking to him. If I were really split in two and formed two separate entities, "Faceling" and "Xu Fu", who among us would be more like the real Xu Fu? In an objective sense, I am the subject here; But in a subjective sense, he is more like a subject. The Faceling is Xu Fu's mask after all, and Xu Fu is going to return to life after all. At least that's what I thought. But the Turin doctor also said that his personality at this time was also quite unstable, and his psychology was extremely chaotic, and it was likely that he and I were not like the real Xu Fu. One of us must die before the other can become a complete Xu Fu again.

Yet he chose to commit suicide, which I never imagined.

For a moment, my mind flew like snowflakes, and a memory from a long time ago flashed out of it - about two years ago, when my ex-partner was still alive and I was called "Black Sheep". Facelings was a nickname that only became popular after I retired from a serious injury, and the nickname Black Sheep stayed with me even longer.

At that time, I was chasing down a first-level psionic who was good at "spatial transfer" with the intelligence support of my former partner. This man has committed a great deal of evil in Beaver City, and he is so cunning and cautious that I have failed to assassinate him three times in a row. But on the flip side, since the former partner was able to find him three times in a row, there would be a fourth, fifth, sixth. Sooner or later, he will be killed by me in some assassination attempt. So I wasn't impatient at the time. I failed once, and then there was a next; If he fails once, then all previous successes will be in vain.

When I found him again, he was playing with his wife and daughter in the amusement park. I thought he had escaped from Beaver City, and he was still playing here. Could it be that he wants to take his wife and daughter as hostages? But he also didn't deliberately keep close to his wife and daughter, and it was easy to separate them. Looking at the picture of a happy family of three, I was quite puzzled.

My ex-partner, who stood with me in the shade of a tree, explained to me, "The wife and daughter are appendages of his apparent identity, and the original owner of this apparent identity was secretly killed by him, and he used hypnosis to make the wife and daughter think that they are still the original husband and father." But he rarely comes home, and his wife always complains that he is becoming more and more dismissive of the family, and his daughter is becoming more and more unhappy. The good family gradually became gray. ”

"What is the direct causal relationship between this and him being here today, with his fake wife and fake daughter, coming to the amusement park to play?" I asked, "He's dying." ”

"It's because I'm sure I'm dying." "I mean," he said, "maybe, it was because when he was dying, when he looked back on his life, that he suddenly found that he had nothing, and he wanted to desperately grope for something in the air." Through this ...... Well, false family. ”

"It's too late." I say.

"Exactly. Late. He nodded, and sighed, "I used to hear that death is the starting point of philosophy. That's true. ”

This man started again. In the age of the Internet, anyone can read fragmented psychology and philosophy knowledge from the Internet without knowing anything, and some people will be in a show-off mentality after reading to "popularize science" to the people around them regardless of the occasion. Nine times out of ten, I think he's one of them. Some time ago, he talked to me about the nature of fear. But I've been with him for so long, and I'm used to it. So he continued, "How can you see it?" ”

"The more people are adjacent to death, the more clearly they will feel alive, and then think about the meaning of life." "For example, soldiers who survived the battlefield, such as patients who are seriously ill and die shortly, such as ......"

He gestured to the man in the distance, "This man who is sure that he is about to be visited by you, the god of death, who has only a short life left. ”

"But philosophy is not just about life and death." I say.

"That's just as well. But if there is no death, no one will think about the meaning of life. He actually talked to me about the meaning of life again, how boring this person is, "Life without death is not living, it just exists, no different from stones." It's like a marathon with no end, and no matter how determined a long-distance runner is, he will be discouraged in the face of this difficulty, and he will never be able to move forward again. There is no ideal that must be completed in the 'lifetime', and time is infinite anyway, and such a person will probably not talk about the ideal. If we think about it this way, if there is no death, we may not even give birth to a developed civilization; On the other hand, the more vivid and huge death is, the more desperately people think about their relationship with the world. ”

He pointed at me again, "You, Black Sheep. What would you do if you were to die today? ”

I was dumbfounded, and then replied, "I have to do what I need to do first." ”

And maybe think about the last words. Thinking that he had been a magazine editor in his previous life, he had a little bit of literary cultivation, and he would probably write his last words into a suicide note, and the title would be "If You Give Me Three Days of Life". Then, in the process of writing a suicide note, thinking about his short life in this life, I probably can't help but think about why I came to this world. Since you have finally come to this world, why let yourself die at this time. Rack your brain to think about your relationship with the world. But in this way, isn't it all like this guy said?

"Let's not mention it yet." I decided to abort the low-gravity topic, "How did you lock on to his location in a row before?" ”

"I managed to implant a miniature locator inside him." He said.

"Someone as cunning and cautious as he is?" I asked.

"It's not me who executes, it's her." He pointed to the man's wife, who smiled brightly, "I secretly approached her and released the hypnosis that had been exerted on her. She now knew that the man was not her original husband. Knowing that I was going to kill him, she was more than happy to cooperate with my plan. ”

"And what about my daughter?"

"Nothing."

After a long time, the sun went down.

Visitors left the park, leaving almost only a few staff members in the amusement park. Compared with the previous bustle, this place reveals a bleak atmosphere like a banquet at the end of the song. The man crouched down and told his daughter that he was going to work. My daughter, who is still in elementary school, asked, "Will Dad come home tomorrow?" ”

"Yes." The man touched her head, stood up, and said to his wife, "Take care of her." ”

The wife smiled and nodded, and left with her daughter.

I walked up behind the man, raised my fist, and shattered his brain tissue through the skull.

*

At this time, the doppelganger Xu Fu is somewhat similar to the man of that day.

It's also a short life, and he knows that his death is near. He knew that he was only my doppelganger, and that he would definitely let him die when I returned. Maybe he returned on his own initiative, or maybe I killed him with my own hands, and the result would not make a difference. Even if he escapes from me, there are still many dangerous undead and living dead outside, and he will only die faster if he is not combative. Even if he miraculously survived the threat of the undead and the living dead, after the dust had settled, and the Doctor Turin had ended the nightmare of this small town made up of a tiny fraction of the power of the dream monsters, he would still have to die if he could only exist in the dream world.

His personality was incomplete, not only was he as unstable as I was, he did not have the help of the Turin doctors, but he had to face the proposition of "death", which was too heavy for anyone's psyche. As his former partner said, he must have tried his best to think about it in that too short life. The meaning of being born in this world, the relationship with the world, what is alive and what is dead. He must have thought a lot, a lot.

Then, he finally summed up something that only he knew about "what".

And committed suicide in front of me.

I didn't have time to stop it. Why stop it? I was going to kill him. It's just that the scene in front of me was too shocking for me. He looked down at the short knife stuck in his heart, and breathed a sigh of relief with trembling. Then he looked up at me and pursed his lips with difficulty. It's like talking to me, and it's like talking to yourself.

"Sometimes you have to be cruel to yourself." He said.

He fell to the ground, his body gradually becoming transparent, and then vanished. Even the blood on the ground was gone, and there was not a trace of its existence. Only the dagger fell to the ground.

I walked over and picked up the dagger. At this moment, I felt that with his death, I became whole. Not complete in the figurative sense, but more abstract, some kind of psychological feeling. But I couldn't be happy at all, only an unsolvable confusion hovering in my heart.

When I came back to my senses, I found that my mask, cloak, and machete were gone. It was as if a ghost had taken advantage of my confusion and taken these things away from me.

I let out a long breath, then turned and walked out of the room with a questioning voice.

*

The shelter was in shambles.

As far as I could see, there were charred corpses of the living dead and traces of battle. There are still a few survivors, but there are significantly fewer than before. It seems that it has been invaded by the undead and the living dead, and now it is after the battle.

There was also a hole in the main entrance of the shelter that was large enough for a truck to pass through, but even through this large hole, I couldn't see the outside world clearly.

The outside world was filled with a thick fog, and this refuge was like an island in a sea of fog.

I'm going to find a survivor and ask what's going on. Just then, I saw the Turin doctor standing in the distance.

What she showed at this time was not an old woman's posture, but a young woman's posture, wearing a gray top and blue jeans. She also saw me and walked over to me. I could faintly hear the slightest incongruity in the sound of her footsteps as she walked.

"You're finally awake." She was the first to speak, "I extracted a large amount of curse poison from the charred corpses of the living dead, and it was also condensed, this is the ......"

She raised her right hand and held a fist-sized dark red irregular mass that looked like a heart made of clay. I had the vague illusion that the thing seemed to be beating, but upon closer inspection, it changed back to an ordinary dark red clay heart.

I looked at it and nodded, indicating that I knew, and asked, "What happened to the Vault?" ”

Looking out again, "What's going on with the fog outside?" ”

The Turin doctor looked at the fog outside, fell silent, and said, "The prophet is dead. ”

The soothsayer is dead, but the town nightmare is not over.