Lorenzo's memories were over, and he stopped talking, as if remembering the good old days, and he looked out the window in silence, and after a long time, the silence was broken by Hercule.

"047 sounds like a keen seeker of knowledge. ”

Hercule didn't know the details of the baptism of the gods, but judging from the unique knowledge, 047 must have collected a lot.

"He's not like me, he's a restless lamb with a passion for everything...... In fact, the life of a witcher is very difficult, not only after officially becoming a witcher, but we have to undergo hard training when we are young, from divine to swordsmanship, and everyone is eliminated at different stages.

Became a priest, followed by a Templar...... In fact, we are glorious beings, and in Frierean it is a very noble profession for both priests and templars, but we wild dogs, who are already homeless, have this honor.

There were many people who envied us at that time, who thought that these young children were the descendants of the great ones, and that they could achieve this kind of achievement at this age, but in reality these were only compensation for the price, and those who knew our fate always looked at us with such disdain. ”

Lorenzo's voice was calm, probably the day he remembered the most in all these years, and the blurred images gradually became clearer.

"It's like the lambs to the slaughter, they're going to die anyway, and it doesn't matter what ridiculous glory is given, right? Most of them died in the implanted blood, but I survived, 047 and 016 survived, they were my best friends, everyone survived. ”

Hercule was silent, he analyzed his past from Lorenzo's words, and from his words at this moment, it could be heard that Lorenzo still believed that he was 042, and that this 042's existence ran through all his memories, from childhood to the present.

"And then?" asked Hercule.

"Later ......"

Lorenzo paused, but no longer seemed to feel the pain of the wound, and replied simply.

"Except for me, both 047 and 016 died in the night of the Arrival, both died, both died......"

Lorenzo got up suddenly, closed the open window, and kept the wind and rain out.

"You look a little tired. ”

"It's okay, it's just mentally exhausted, and this exhaustion is very difficult to recover. Lorenzo replied.

"Do you want to take a break?"

"Is this all right?" Lorenzo asked, feeling like he was just beginning to reminisce about the past.

"The existence of a person is not something that can be described by a simple sticky note...... Human beings are contradictory and complex," Hercule said, looking at Lorenzo, "like you, Lorenzo Holmes, you are a vicious and violent detective on the surface, but behind the scenes you are supporting the poor orphans.

Are you a wicked man? It doesn't look like it, but who's to say you're a good man? ”

Hercule took a deep breath.

"So that's what humans are, whether it's 042 or 047, and if they're just a simple word that can be described, then that person must be ridiculously fictional, isn't it?"

"You want to reconstruct someone from my narrative?" asked Lorenzo.

"To be precise, let yourself try to restore, find those clues to the past, and of course, the best is to make you remember those logical gaps. Hercule said.

"You have to know one thing, Lorenzo, humans don't remember something, like hunger, and you don't think of it when you talk to me, right, only when you're hungry...... I know it may be abstract to say that, but I hope you do your best to understand it.

Every moment of our life becomes a part of the past, a part of the memory, and it is so big that we don't remember it all the time, we only remember it when the outside world gives us a stimulus.

For example, the day before, if I didn't ask it, you wouldn't have remembered it, but when I asked, you would have been able to retrieve the memory corresponding to the word from that huge memory. Memory is like a huge library, a library hidden in the palace, and we are the librarians, when there is a stimulus from the outside world, we find the corresponding books according to the needs of the stimulus, that is, memory. ”

This is also the prototype of the memory palace, an existence that can be described in language, Hercule continues.

"But now there's a problem with your library, the books are scattered all over the place, the names on the covers don't match the contents, and some of the shelves are blank...... That memory is gone. ”

Hercule said as he looked at Lorenzo and muttered.

"Even the librarian was beaten to the point of a trance. ”

"But human memories will not disappear without a reason, our life is very long, there are too many repetitive and cumbersome memories, they are like useless books, they just occupy important places in vain, so they are usually thrown into the corner of memory, or the basement in that palace, but this does not mean that they do not exist, they are just forgotten. ”

"All I have to do now is retrieve and fill those?" Lorenzo asked.

"Yes, I don't know exactly what happened, but I can feel the heaviness of the night of Advent...... Lorenzo, you have to figure out everything about that night, which is at the center of all the mysteries. ”

Hercule stood up with Poirot in his arms, lit the light, and dispelled the darkness in the room, seeing that it was almost night, but it was already pitch black outside due to the thunderstorm, and he didn't know how long this weather would last.

"I'll tell you about the memory palace later, but I'll trouble you to rest early after that, you're in a bad state of mind right now. ”

Hercule said, pointing Lorenzo in the way.

"That room is reserved for you, and I'll sleep next door. ”

......

His tired body and tired spirit lay heavily in the dimly lit room, he was so cold that he only had time to take off his soaked clothes, and then huddled up in a ball with the futon.

The curtains were closed, and no light could penetrate them, and after a long time, Joey slowly raised his head and looked at the void in front of him.

Outside the door there was the subtle ticking of the large Geiger indexer, and the sound of people walking and whispering, there were still people on duty in this bad weather, they were only separated from Joey by a door, but they wanted to be separated from the whole world.

Joey slowly hugged his head, and then the phantom under the bloody curtain flashed in front of his eyes again.

It had been a long time since Joey had been discharged from the Black Mountain Hospital, but now the things had come back to him, those immature, blood-stained faces.

Joey took a deep breath, he tried to calm himself down, he wasn't the same as before, he needed hallucinogens to escape this, but now that he was out of that nightmare, he couldn't go back there.

But suddenly there was a thunderbolt, and a brief light flashed through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the room for a moment, and in the dimness Joey saw the stinking red.

Joey stiffened sluggishly, then slowly turned his head, and a childlike black silhouette was standing beside his bed, just as Joey had done when he had killed him years earlier.

"You're dead. ”

Joey struggled to stay calm.

But the shadow didn't respond to him, but only made a strange childish sound, as if countless children were laughing at Joey in the dark, and then they all pounced.

It was a similar nightmare in Whitechapel, but it was so real, so real that Joey felt as if he was dying, and the shadows covered him heavily, gnawing at the flesh and blood, trying to spread the pain to the maximum.

But then Joey relieved his strength, he was sure that the child was dead, and that the dead would not come back to life, so he rolled down from the bed with all his might, and pulled out the folding knife beside the bed in the tumbling gap. This thing is just an inconspicuous iron rod in its shrunken state.

A flash of light flashed in the dim room, and it slashed through the wriggling black shadow, but the black shadow quickly converged again, and in the next moment, countless scarlet cracks cracked in the pitch-black shadow.

Blood poured out of the crack, and when the crack came white teeth, hundreds of biting mouths, followed by the shuddering laughter, the laughter of children.

All the darkness became Joey's enemy, and in this darkness there was only the only light, the light between the doors.

Joey hurriedly got up from the ground, he was not far from the door, only a few steps away, but now these few steps were so long, the darkness around them was wriggling, they grabbed Joey, and the next moment the bite of the mouth closed, and the sharp teeth added more wounds to the flesh and blood.

Fear, depression, anger, countless emotions welled up in Joey's heart, and he roared, and mortal iron beat the darkness in vain, but it was all useless.

The pitch-black hand dragged him to his feet and slammed it to the ground, and Joey felt like he had broken a few bones, but then more blood poured out of his wound.

The monster pressed Joey, biting him at the same time, constantly exerting force on this poor body, more and more blood gushed out of the wound, he was like a squeezed orange, his bones were also shattered under this pressure, and the last remaining strength stretched out his hand, Joey no longer felt that he could escape, but he still stubbornly reached out and tried to push the door open.

The next moment the door opened.

The light poured in, the strange sensation vanished, and consciousness was on the verge of coma, and the man rushed in, lifted Joey up, and kept calling his name.

"Joey!"

It was so long, and when Joey woke up from that trance, he was already lying on the ground, the blazing white light was on it, and someone was standing next to him, as if injecting something into his body, and then his vision became clear.

"Can you hear me? Joey!"

Kestrel patted Joey's face vigorously, looking at the still dull pupils, he shook his head and said to the people around him.

"Another Florent potion. ”

The man looked at these with some concern, and at the moment there were still several used syringes scattered on the ground, and no one knew what would happen if Joey was injected again.

"Red ...... Kestrels?"

Joey woke up at the critical moment, and although his eyes were still a little glazed, he could already do basic communication.

"Alive?"

Seeing this, the kestrel slapped him in the face harder, and after a long toss, Joey seemed to finally recover, and he sat down in his chair, looking like he had lost all his strength.

"What happened?"

After waiting for a long time, Joey said such a sentence, and his pupils were still a little cloudy.

"That's what I want to ask you. The kestrel on the other side said.

"I came on duty, but it went off the alarm not long after I arrived. ”

Kestrel said and pointed to the middle of the living room, the large machinery that ran through the entire building, it was the large Geiger counter, the mechanical device used by the purifier to detect erosion, but its detection method was vague, and it could only be judged by the index, the color of the lights, and the frequency of warnings.

"It's not the usual kind of alarm, with a slight increase in the Geiger index and an increase in the frequency of alarms...... A weak degree of pollution is in the proximity, very close. ”

The kestrel looked at Joey with a scrutinizing gaze.

"We were going to search the neighborhood, but suddenly there was a strange noise in your room, you were roaring, as if you were fighting some monster, but when I pushed the door open and there was nothing, you fell to the ground with a folding knife, your whole body twitched slightly, your eyes glazed over, this ...... This is very similar to the reaction of being hallucinated.

When I injected you with Florente's potion, the Geiger index returned to a stable ......"

It may be that someone else was there, but the kestrel didn't say anything about using hallucinogens.

"Is that so......"

Joey didn't explain anything more, just lowered his head slightly, not knowing what he was thinking.

"I'm not using hallucinogens," Joey said, exposing his arms, which don't have any needle holes for injections except for a few scars, "of course you'll have to check elsewhere." ”

Kestrel didn't speak, and Joey looked at the people around him, both Joey and Kestrel were their superiors in terms of position.

"You go out first. ”

There was no question, after all, the purification mechanism was an iron-blooded mechanism against demons, and they all knew very well what they were dealing with, and everyone walked quickly, and after a while, there were only two people left here.

"What's going on, Joey?" the others left, Kestrel asked.

"I don't know, but I'm sure I didn't use hallucinogens and I haven't touched it since I left the Black Mountain hospital. ”

"Geiger indexer...... I'm eroded by something, polluted. Joey thought about it all.

"What's going on?" the kestrel suddenly realized the complexity of the problem.

"I haven't been on a combat mission against demons recently, but damn on duty and on duty, I haven't been in direct contact with any demons, even if I do contact demons, unless it is deeply eroded, otherwise those light pollution will gradually subside over time......"

It seemed that Florent's potion had worked, and Joey's train of thought gradually became clearer.

That is to say...... At some point in the past, I was eroded and silent. ”

Joey made a conclusion, and then he looked at the large Geiger indexer on the side, in order to ensure the safety of the city, these large machines are extremely sensitive to erosion, probably thanks to this, Joey lives a few meters away from this thing, otherwise this slight difference really can't be noticed.