Li Yaozhan slept intermittently until dawn, desperately wanting to dream of the mysterious altar again and see Ma Wen once. The last pair of eyes must be Ma Wen's, he is inexplicably very sure of this, but why do you want to talk to yourself about the key, but I can't figure it out, maybe it refers to the spare key in the electrical box? When I think back to entering Ma Wen's rental house, I do have the same feeling as last night's dream, maybe it is because of my daytime that I had such a dream.

Got up and cleaned up, today is Saturday, my parents are going to attend the wedding of my old classmates, and it is conservatively estimated that it will be difficult to come back until the evening, Li Yao will go to work the day after tomorrow, and he plans to investigate as much information as possible today. There are also great expectations for the next meeting, although that Prometheus makes him feel very weird, but the more this kind of person, the more unexpected help it can be.

Li Yaozhan walked out of the house early and came to the café nearly half an hour early, this café is only two streets away from his own community, facing a bustling large-scale comprehensive supermarket, the environment is not quiet but it is better than the large flow of people, which is just suitable for meeting with the mysterious Prometheus. Li Yaozhan chose a location facing the street, and the store cleverly used vines and plants to create a hidden environment around, which not only did not affect the customers in the seats to observe the street and the outside environment through the vines, but also effectively blocked the sight of the outside peeping inward. Li Yaozhan ordered a cup of espresso and drank it slowly, he slept very poorly last night, and now he needed to lift his tired nerves, and his intuition told him that the next meeting would probably be a vicious battle.

Li Yaozhan refilled a cup of coffee, raised his hand to see that the second hand and minute hand of the watch happened to overlap on the number twelve, and was about to take out his mobile phone to log in to QQ to ask if the person who claimed to be Prometheus had arrived, but the next moment his hand stopped in the air.

A tall man in a long black trench coat and an old-fashioned bowler hat walked into the café, with a pair of round-framed sunglasses perched on the bridge of his thin, tall nose. The moment he saw that man, Li Yaozhan knew that the person he was waiting for had arrived. The man turned his head to look at his location accurately, and as soon as the two of them looked at each other, two terrifying poisonous snakes seemed to crawl out from under the round-framed sunglasses, pounced out and bit Li Yaozhan. Li Yaozhan felt that all his disguises had been torn off by the other party, and fierce fear rose.

Just like a lamb meets a tiger, a milk swallow meets an eagle falcon, and a calf meets a pack of wolves, it is a sense of fear like encountering a natural enemy, and Li Yaozhan suddenly regretted meeting this time. The tall man walked towards Li Yaozhan with steady steps, step by step as if stepping on his heart.

"Hello, I'm Prometheus." The man stopped next to Li Yaozhan's seat, reached out and took off his black top hat and put it on his chest and bowed slightly, leaking out a pale and smooth scalp with no hair on it, and faintly visible lilac veins under the skin. The man was so tall that Li Yaozhan had to struggle to raise his head to meet his gaze.

"You... You... Okay," Li Yaozhan stammered back

"Don't you invite me to sit down?" The man smiled slightly, the corners of his mouth pulled at the pale skin of his face to show a terrifying smile, and the villain who dressed up like a 18th-century British horror movie

"Please take a seat, I'm Li Yaozhan" Li Yaozhan endured the discomfort and got up, stretched out his left hand and motioned for the man to sit down, "It's the person who made an appointment with you on QQ yesterday"

"Fortunately." Prometheus sat down across from Li Yaozhan and put his hat next to him, because he was too much taller than Li Yaozhan, he had to lean his upper body forward to level the eyes of the two people. Stretched out his finger and pointed to his sunglasses, "I'm often told that my eyes make people feel uncomfortable, of course I can take them off if you don't mind"

"I don't mind, please." Li Yaozhan didn't want to know what kind of eyes were under the sunglasses, "So, Mr. Prometheus..."

"Just call me Lao Pu." The man's voice was low and soft, and his pale hands were flat in front of him and his mouth were level, quietly observing Li Yaozhan.

And Li Yaozhan was also observing the man, the gray skin exposed under the neat coat revealed a sickly aura, and the hairless pale head exuded a smell of corruption, as if he had just crawled out of the grave, and this thin man with a height of nearly two meters gave him the feeling that it was more like an inexplicable aggregate of malice and terror, and it was only because of necessity that he chose the cognitive image of "human" to bind himself to something that could be observed by ordinary people. It was as if the next moment it would abandon that fragile shell and turn into a bloody beast and a demon that harvested life.

"Uh...... Mr. Pu, I would like to ask first, is it true that you said that you know everything I want to know? Li Yaozhan hoped to end this meeting quickly, but he didn't care about etiquette and asked directly

"Yes, I think I can answer your questions."

"You mean you know everything?" Li Yaozhan was a little incredulous

"Hehe, all I know is what I know, it's just what you want to know." Lao Pu smiled faintly

"So, can you tell me how Ma Wen died?" Li Yaozhan asked eagerly

"She's a good salaryman and she's back in the arms of the gods." Lao Pu spoke with a hint of relief

"Return to the arms of the gods? Of course I do! I'm asking you how she died! Salarymen? What do you mean? After looking forward to it for a long time, this man who gave him huge psychological pressure opened his mouth but completely had a magic tone, which made Li Yaozhan disappointed

"We will all return to the arms of the gods one day, and in what way will we return, and what is the difference?" Lao Pu explained unhurriedly, "As for the salaryman, this is just a title, participant, devotee, martyr, in short, it doesn't matter how to call it. The important thing is that one day we will sacrifice everything for the gods in exchange for the favor of the gods, and Ma Wen is just one step ahead of the curve. All of this is a natural thing for the gods, and my job is to provide the necessary help to the salarymen. ”

Li Yaozhan struggled to understand Lao Pu's words, and now he was a little suspicious, sitting across from him was just an irrational madman. Last night, it was just because the other party was too crazy and happened to guess his own thoughts. "In other words, you don't know how Ma Wen died, do you?"

"It was a great sacrifice, a wonderful sacrifice." Lao Pu's voice was excited, "If you want to ask how she was lucky enough to be involved, it's because she found the key." ”

"Keys?" Lao Pu's words stopped Li Yaozhan, who was about to get up, and last night's dream resurfaced in front of him, and he couldn't help but ask patiently, "What key?" ”

"Nature is the key to communicating with the gods." Lao Pu asked rhetorically, "How do you understand death?" ”

"Death? It's just dead, is there anything incomprehensible about this? ”

"So what is death? Is it the heart that stops beating, or is the brain decaying? In the end, these are just descriptions of how the body decays, but what about the soul? ”

"I don't believe in religion, and I don't believe in souls. I'm an atheist. Li Yaozhan replied with a dark face

"I also don't believe in religions that are built through lies and deception for the sake of domination and enrichment." Lao Pu sneered, "I'm just saying this to make it easier for you to understand, since you are an atheist, we might as well put it another way: if the body is a carrier, and life is a thing like radio waves, just like the relationship between electronic devices and electromagnetic waves, can we say that electromagnetic waves have disappeared because of the destruction of equipment?" It's just that we can't convert radio waves into ways that we can understand, but it's still there. ”

"Oh, I think your so-called soul is information on an electronic device, and everything is gone when the device is gone." Li Yaozhan sneered disdainfully

"The information is backed up somewhere else, isn't it?" Lao Pu didn't seem to hear the sarcasm in Li Yaozhan's words, and said seriously

"According to you, if I commit suicide now, won't I have eternal life? Ridiculous. ”

"Of course not, mortals are too small, even if they give up their bodies, they have no meaning, like a short murmur drowned in a sea of endless sounds, completely lost."

"So what's the difference between death as you understand it and death as I understand it? Isn't the result still the same? ”

"Of course it's different, if there is a kind of life, he lives in a one-dimensional world, then his life's cognition is just a point, and he doesn't know that it can be connected into a line, and for two-dimensional lifeforms, they can never understand the meaning of height like us, they can't understand the richness of the three-dimensional world anyway, as long as we pick up a two-dimensional life, it will bring him destruction, just like for us, we can never understand what the four-dimensional world is like, that is the realm of the gods, It is not a being that can be described in the language of mortals. ”

"The real gods are not something that can be understood and described by small mortals, and the clay puppets that are packaged and worshiped by religious liars are nothing more than packaged jokes, and the world we think of, the so-called reality, is nothing but a fragile and illusory bubble in the eyes of the gods, fleeting, and even calling them gods is a blasphemy and offense. In our eyes, the great changes in life and death, the world, are just an inconspicuous splash in the vast ocean in the eyes of the gods. It's just the decay of the body, you think that Ma Wen is dead, so how many people in this world have you never been in contact with in your life? Aren't they the same as death in your eyes? They don't even like Ma Wen who has left traces in your life, we are just poor worms struggling in a small world of self-conceived ones, the truth is all around us, it's just that we have been indulging in false reality and can't understand the truth. ”

Lao Pu's eyes seemed to ignite two blazing flames, and through his sunglasses, they shot into Li Yaozhan's face, making it difficult for him to look directly

"And with the help of the key, Ma Wen successfully stepped on the altar of the gods, got the favor of the gods, got the opportunity to give, and successfully fused herself with the supreme gods, just like weaving a note into a magnificent symphony, and obtained eternal glory, shouldn't we be proud of her?"

"Neurotic!" Li Yaozhan understood that Lao Pu was a complete madman, and he was targeted by cultists, "If you get the key, you will die?" You simply said that if I commit suicide, I can live forever with Ma Wen, you are a madman who claims to be a demon! ”

"Demons? Oh, gods or angels, these titles are just useless efforts by mortals to try to understand those supreme beings, and when you and Ma Wen say goodbye, you will understand the unspeakable greatness, and you will understand my words at that time. ”

"I already understand that what you're saying is crazy!" Li Yaozhan got up and grabbed his coat, he didn't have the patience to entangle with this madman anymore, he didn't want to stay for a minute.

"You've got the key, we'll meet again." Lao Puwen didn't move at all, watching Li Yaozhan get up and leave, just like looking at a vole bitten by a poisonous snake, since the snake venom had been injected, he let go and let it struggle, because the end was already doomed.

"I just don't want to kill myself and won't go to you, I warn you not to harass me anymore, or I'll call the police!" Leaving this sentence aside, Li Yaozhan turned around and strode out of the café.

"The curtain has begun, and the salarymen are in place, O gods, please enjoy this sacrifice I have prepared for you! Light the firewood and bring the fire of enlightenment to the world! Lao Pu opened his hands and read silently, grinning at the corners of his mouth leaking a row of white and neat teeth, pulling out an incomprehensible smile on his lifeless face, turning around and walking towards the bar, stretching out a slender pale finger in the frightened gaze of the waiter

"A latte, thank you"