The first thing Zhao Pengcheng did after he was released from prison was to go to Liuying Lane.

Liuying Lane is not as lively as it used to be. The shops along the street looked dilapidated, and many of the shops had broken doors, and the signs on the doors were full of dust. There are few pedestrians on the street, and no one has cleaned the garbage all over the street, only the row of old willow trees is still swaying in the wind as before, untouched by the changes in the world.

In the years that humanity has been battling parasitic consciousness, people have been dying from the gray brain virus. Despite the development of a vaccine for the virus by medical organizations, vaccine rollout has been difficult. Parasitic consciousness controls most of the resources in society, and in the face of money and power, all ideals are.

The United Nations Space Management Committee and the Parasitic Consciousness Organization Dream Society have entered into peace talks to recognize the legitimacy of extraterrestrial consciousness bodies. Anyway, they have inherited the memories of people, and as far as individual humans are concerned, there is no difference between the person who was parasitized and the person who was not parasitized except that it may cause the couple's bed life to be unharmonious.

The Dream Society also agreed with the geoscientists, acknowledging the rationality of the method of continuing the human race, and ensuring that the existing achievements of human civilization would not be destroyed, and that human civilization would continue as much as possible.

In fact, these so-called inter-ethnic agreements are all nonsense, not to mention scientists, even ordinary people know that it is impossible for those parasitic consciousnesses to abide by this agreement, and in a few hundred years, maybe only a few decades, there will be no human beings on the earth. When the resources are exhausted, they will leave the earth, and at that time, even the human shell will not be able to survive.

A small number of scientists, led by Mei Yiqiu, still insisted on fighting, and they established an underground resistance group and went into hiding. Now the United Nations and governments are hunting down members of these underground organizations.

Zhao Pengcheng walked along Liuying Lane for a while, feeling the comfortable feeling of the warm wind blowing on his face at the turn of spring and summer. There is no such comfortable air in the prison.

In the past ten years, his spiritual strength has improved a lot, and it is so strong that even he himself is unbelievable. He really wanted to fight Aoki again, to see if he was still as vulnerable.

The full force of the scalpel's mental power in the dream was still in front of him, but his memory of Aoki's power was quite vague, but he still can't forget his special image.

Zhao Pengcheng stopped and carefully checked the address.

In front of me is a wide pavement of three rooms, and the original exquisite decoration on the outer wall has gradually corroded and fallen off in the wind and rain, but the mottled traces make it even more literary and artistic. The signboard on the door is incomplete, but you can still see the four big characters "Ruhua Bar".

On the second floor, there was a huge hornet's nest hanging under the eaves of the windows, and some wasps, which had just been awakened by the warm wind, flew around in front of the windows. The glass was gray, and there were faint traces of words pasted. Zhao Pengcheng carefully identified it for a while, and only recognized the words "dog" and "name".

Zhao Pengcheng walked to the gate and tried to pat the door.

The thumping sound was like knocking on a broken gong, and there was no response from the door, but a lot of ash fell from nowhere, falling on Zhao Pengcheng's head, dyeing his hair, which was already gradually turning gray in prison, even whiter.

It looks like the bar hasn't opened in years.

Zhao Pengcheng took out his mobile phone to open the memo and checked the house number again. The number is not wrong, and indeed it is here. He wondered if the information given by the organization was wrong.

The sound of footsteps sounded, and a middle-aged woman in her thirties walked at the corner of the street, wearing a dark gray sports sweatshirt and short hair.

The woman walked to the door of the bar and stopped, looked Zhao Pengcheng up and down a few times, looked at the palm print on the door, and asked, "Who are you looking for?" ”

Zhao Pengcheng seemed to see hope and said, "I'm looking for Aoki." ”

"Who are you and what are you looking for him?" The woman looked wary.

Zhao Pengcheng said: "I ...... It's his friend, come and see him. ”

The woman looked at Zhao Pengcheng, as if looking for a flaw, and after a long time, she turned around and walked towards the small alley next to her, and said, "Follow me." ”

Zhao Pengcheng was sure that this woman knew Aoki, so he followed and asked tentatively, "May I ask if you are ......?" ”

"Lifelong flowers." The woman was not impatient, but her voice was full of indifference, as if she didn't care about anything.

Zhao Pengcheng followed the woman to the path behind the house, and the bluestone slabs on the road looked a little old. There were several pots of succulents on the steps of the back door, and he bent down to move a pot of star beauties all his life, and he did not shy away from the existence of Zhao Pengcheng, so he took out a key from under the pot and opened the back door.

Zhao Pengcheng didn't ask, and Bishenghua didn't speak. Zhao Pengcheng had no choice but to follow quietly, watching Bi Shenghua enter the kitchen and put the vegetables and fruits in different categories, some put them in the refrigerator, and some soaked them in the water with disinfectant. Then Bishenghua took a towel and a basin, carried a kettle, and went upstairs.

Zhao Pengcheng also followed upstairs. The hallway on the second floor was full of miscellaneous things, and there was a row of old chairs by the window, like the one waiting in the hospital, which was very old and old, but they were all clean, and it was obvious that they were often cleaned.

After a few steps along the aisle, I saw a door with a sign of "Shenwu Studio" hanging on the door, and couplets on both sides:

Only Aoki,

Can dwell on the god Wu.

The couplet was written on red paper with a brush, and the color had faded very lightly, so it should have been pasted a long time ago.

The room in the door was small and boxy, with all kinds of books neatly placed on the shelves against the wall. A desk in the middle, a sofa and coffee table on the left. There are many magazines thrown seemingly randomly on the table, on the couch and on the floor.

As a surgeon who was too busy to tidy up but had to flip through many professional publications every day, Zhao Pengcheng's former home was also full of magazines, so he could see at a glance that those magazines were not natural at all, someone deliberately placed them like this, and the magazines were very new, and a few of them were just published this month. It didn't match what he saw when he walked through the door.

He guessed that the woman in front of him deliberately did it to commemorate something, probably due to some kind of human emotion.

When he saw the couplet at the door, Zhao Pengcheng was already sure that he had found the right place. This is Aoki's former studio.

There was also a door in the studio, and Bishenghua didn't use the key, just pushed it slightly, and the door opened.

The room was very simple and hardly furnished. Four white walls, a bed in the middle. There was a small cabinet at the head of the bed with a lamp on it. On the other side is a bird shelf with a black crow on it.

To Zhao Pengcheng's surprise, this room was a little too clean, with almost no trace of dust. As a surgeon, I am very sensitive to a dust-free environment, and this room seems to be cleaner than the operating room in a hospital.

Of course, what attracted Zhao Pengcheng's attention at this moment was Aoki lying on the bed.

Aoki was still wearing that outfit — a close-fitting cotton T-shirt inside, an old gray trench coat on the outside, cut-out mesh bell bottoms, and a pull-up board neatly placed in front of the bed.

His hair was still messy, and his face looked a little pale, but not pale, but as warm white as white jade.

When they got to the bedside, the crow on the bird rack was still motionless.

Zhao Pengcheng realized that the crow was not alive, it should be a specimen, but it was too delicate, and there was no trace of the specimen at all.

When he looked back at Aoki on the bed, he had the illusion that this person was no longer alive, but a living specimen.