Chapter 17: Into the Wasteland
Wedel's last advice to the sea song was to be like an owl, with eyes that can see through the darkness. There are many questions buried in the scenes where the illusion appears, and the clues to find the answers may be placed side by side with the questions, and he needs to use his wisdom to discover and even create.
"Game", began.
Haige stands in a wasteland.
The daylight was dazzling, but he didn't need to take time to get used to it, and the transition between night and day in the illusion was just a blink of an eye.
Could it have been looted by a hurricane? It was so desolate that there was not even a single grass left! Only the endless brown earth was like burnt dough, sticking to the bottom of the invisible pan, and no amount of wind could blow it away.
But now the wind has subsided, the sun is strong overhead, and the sky is as blue as a calm sea, with only occasional yellow and white blurred lines flashing in the stars, and no white clouds wandering in between.
Hai Ge's eyes widened, looking into the distance curiously. The brown earth bloomed with cracks of different shades, as if someone had carved gibberish on the mud, and it was carved everywhere. He felt like he was standing on the back of a giant sea turtle, the air that had been scorched by the sun was like waves, and the turtle seemed to be carrying him as if it were swimming slowly. But in reality, he didn't move.
I really couldn't see what kind of place this was, and it was a long time before Hai Ge noticed that something flashed about a hundred meters away from him.
"What's that?"
He trotted over to look, and when he got closer, he saw a huge skeleton, lying on its side in the sun, with eye sockets large enough to fit him into a fist. The skeleton is at least ten meters long, almost two meters high, and the longest part is the ribs, which is estimated to be three meters.
He tilted his head and searched his memory, trying to find an animal on land that could grow such a large skeleton.
After searching and searching, it suddenly dawned on him that the owner of the skeleton might not belong to a land animal population, but to the sea, such as a large sea creature that resembles a shark or a sea whale.
"Could it be that the place where I stand now was once an endless sea? Impossible! Maybe it's actually ......" The new discovery surprised Haige, who had never heard of a sea that could be dried by the sun, so he guessed that Wedel might have sent him into some ancient era, such as the Cretaceous period, and that the skeleton was only from an extinct dinosaur.
But when his eyes adjusted to the bright light and could see farther away, he had to deny the inference just now. Because in the area above the wasteland, a modern city is faintly erected. The tall buildings there reach up to the sky, but the overall color is so monotonous that only blue and gray remain. Looking at the buildings through the undulating heat, their outlines were blurred, as if they had been melted by the scorching sun, and only the afterimage rose and fell in the sky, like the wreckage of a giant ship soaked in transparent water.
He looked left and right, at a loss, not knowing which direction to go, but in fact, he didn't know the specific direction at all. In the empty wasteland, the skeleton is the only marker that can determine the position of the sun, but there is no projection of it on the land, and Haige really feels like he has seen a ghost.
There is also a strange thing, the sun is hot like fire, but in addition to the hands exposed outside the white robe, you can feel the unusual heat, and the body is always very cool.
Fantasy is just a virtual world, and no matter what is found here, and how many strange phenomena exist, it should not be surprising, because it is all pre-designed by the designer according to his own ideas.
This was the only explanation that Hai Ge could use to convince himself, and he couldn't really determine the destination, so he decided to go to the city that had been robbed of its brilliance by the sun, hoping that the city really existed, not a mirage that only appeared in the desert.
After about another kilometer, the city never disappeared from view, indicating that it was really there, but even if you changed the angle, you couldn't see the vitality and color that could match the sun. Haige understood, it was a dead city!
In addition to the dead city, there was an even more astonishing discovery, the farthest place as far as his eyes could see, that is, at the intersection of heaven and earth, a black line loomed and floated, which seemed to set an end to this originally endless world of light, and the wasteland with no signs of life also added a bit of the heaviness of death because of that black line.
Hai Ge didn't regard the black line as the boundary of the end of the illusion, he suspected that there was another world connected there, contrary to the wasteland, which was dark and cold, and even more solemn when compared to the harsh light.
He wanted to go to the end of the wasteland to see what the hidden world behind the black line was like, but he could only tell himself rationally that the place was too far away from here, there was no need to rush there immediately, it was better to go to the city first, maybe there was a clue left by Wedel? Before coming in, Wedel didn't give a hint?
But after walking for so long, Hai Ge regretted that he didn't put on the shoes next to the bed when he jumped out of bed, so that he had to walk barefoot on this path of flames. He was still wearing a white robe wrapped from head to toe, and the robe, like his hair, also exuded a faint fragrance of flowers, indicating that he did not sweat from the sun. However, he suffered from his exposed hands and feet, the back of his hands was peeled off, and his feet were so hot that he couldn't stand it.
Wedel's boasting about how powerful U-star technology is, and now he can believe part of it, that is, the immersion of GVR Shadow Glasses includes not only sight, but also smell and touch. This technology is not only a little ahead of the new VR glasses that are up to 80% more immersive on earth......
This was so new that Hai Ge was still not satisfied, and thought further about taste. If even the sense of taste can work properly in the illusion, wouldn't it be a fictional food that was not blessed to enjoy in the past, and you can let go of your belly and gobble up a meal?
Don't make such a request!
Hai Ge resisted the urge for food in time, which he thought was more humiliating than calling for help! He tried to ignore his hungry rumbling stomach and tried to walk on tiptoe.
Annoyed, seeing doesn't mean getting close, he can't count how long he's been walking, but the ruined city is always out of reach, the soles of his feet hurt and itch, he really can't walk.
Looking back, he almost screamed again, and quickly covered his mouth with his hand.
No wonder the feet hurt, it turned out that the thick skin on the soles of the feet was worn and festered, probably blisters first, and the blisters burst after a few steps, and the mixed blood flowed out, and the dried soil was immediately absorbed, leaving only pale red footprints on the mud.
"It's terrible, you have to find something to wrap your feet in a hurry, or we will fail, and then game over!"
Hai Ge is eager to win, and after competing with Wedel, the desire to eat chicken for good fortune continues unabated. But he wishfully treats the Shadow Journey as a game, and I wonder if Wedel will think it's a joke in his eyes.