Almost all the elders were saying that the city they were in was the imperial city of some glorious human dynasty from a long time ago, and that the city was much better before than it is now. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info This is one of the few things that adults in this place can talk about. They certainly can't boast about it among themselves, so they can only talk about it to their own children.

The life of most people in this urban area is very monotonous, getting up, starving, eating, starving, checking the light source at the door, sleeping, not even daring to go out the door. It is only during the season when it is necessary to grow food or harvest that they are driven out of their homes and lined up to leave the city one by one under the protection and supervision of other high-ranking people carrying lanterns. They ploughed with their heads bowed and trembling, not even daring to look around, and with their trembling hands they completed the tasks given to them by the old men, and after getting the supply tickets, they hurried home, closing the doors and windows.

After all, it was too dark at that time.

Lynch wondered if his elders, or his parents and neighbors in this life, had ever seen the sun in the seven years since he had been in the world, not even at dawn.

It is a city shrouded in black fog and shrouded in darkness forever.

Lynch once asked his cheap mother what was beyond the black fog.

"There's only black fog outside. Then the emaciated woman hesitated, and repeated to the child in her arms what she had said many times: "Don't run around, don't run to a place where there is no fire, don't think of touching this black mist, you know?"

"What's in the black mist, mother?"

The house was brightly lit, and his mother pursed her lips and looked at her airtight window, which had been covered with paper, and then quickly withdrew her gaze - the black fog on the slum-like paths was thick, and lanterns hung at the door of every house, and the light of the fire in these lanterns could not penetrate into the homes of these people.

"There's horrible villains in there. ”

Presumably, his mother thought that the child could not understand more complicated words, so she made this explanation.

Lynch, of course, wasn't really a child, but he didn't ask any more questions. At the age of four, he easily became sleepy and soon fell asleep in his mother's arms. And the mother, who looked a little haggard, was still keeping vigil, waiting for her father to get up in the middle of the night before going to bed.

Since the natives of this world are afraid of this kind of thing, he will not risk his life to satisfy his curiosity about the black fog.

Black fog doesn't always permeate the city. Every once in a while, the thick black fog will fade as if it has melted, and at the same time, the lanterns hanging all over the city will become very bright and bright, and the whole city will be like daylight, except for the black fog over the city, there will be no black fog everywhere else.

At this time, the people of this city will carefully open their doors and come out to receive food or make some trade after confirming that there is no condition. They won't swarm back until the bell rings.

When Lynch was able to walk on his own, his parents would take him out of the house instead of leaving him home alone. After receiving the food, his parents would take him to visit their friends, and probably three or four families would gather, just like the family gathering of Lynch's last life, where a group of people crowded into the house of a larger house, and talked about the whole thing, and the content was nothing more than the yearning for the upper town, or when he was sleeping and heard a movement outside, when he went out to work and encountered something, and so on. But they never spoke directly about the Black Mist, and they were deliberately avoiding the topic, as if they would invite ominousness if they did.

The little ones would gather to play. There are not many toys in this world, and there are not many things that children can play with, and they can't even go out, so children are even more boring than adults.

Lynch, who actually has an adult soul in his body, actually doesn't bother to play games with these little kids that are more boring than playing at home, and he usually finds an excuse to stay alone and eavesdrop on the adults.

What he was most looking forward to hearing was about the "Night Watch".

The adults called them "Night Watchmen". It's the people who guard the city. The lords of Uptown are generally talking about these people and their families. Adults always expect their children to pass the "night watch" test when they reach the age level, so that they can become part of the old men of Uptown.

The supernatural ability of the "Night Watchman" is probably the last thing Lynch has in this world as a time-traveler. After all, I have been living in a rental house-like environment for the past eight years, and it is too boring to live a life of eating, sleeping, and waking up hungry, and it is not easy for a modern person to last so long.

Today, the fog faded, the city was lit up again, and Lynch, who had been hungry for a day, and his parents couldn't wait to get out of the house. This time, though, his cheap father didn't intend to act with them. He gave the supply voucher to his wife long before he went to bed last time, and said that he would go to the trading market to have a look.

Truth be told, this was the first time Lynch had heard that his father was going to the trading market, because there was nothing in the house itself that could be traded. It is not too much to describe his family as destitute, and there is nothing of value other than pots and pans. His mother did have an iron ring painted gold (Lynch thinks so), which is said to have been left by his grandmother.

But Lynch never met his grandmother. Or rather, Lynch hadn't seen any old people in this place at all.

He certainly asked his parents where his grandparents were, or where other people's grandparents were. His parents did not answer the question.

It made him strange and a little thoughtful.

Now he was following his mother to carry the rations, after his father had rejected his request to follow. In fact, Lynch also knew that it was impossible for him to follow his father, because his mother was now pregnant again, and her belly also had a more obvious bulge, and there was no way to carry these supplies alone, and the main weight was water.

"Sister Fang is finally going to have another child, congratulations!" The neighbor aunt next door said hello to his mother, and then leaned over to the expressionless Lynch and pinched his face: "Is Little Lynch helping his mother work?"

They had been urging Lynch's parents to have more children at a family gathering a long time ago. Because almost all the families around them have more than one child. The specific reason Lynch can also guess that there is a probability that there will be a "night watchman" in the family with one more child. Moreover, the supplies issued above are given on a per capita basis, and there will not be a problem that the livelihood of the family will be unsustainable.

Eight-year-old Lynch struggled to hold a bucket as high as his own legs and slowly dragged it home, his mother looking at her child with a smile and walking slowly home with dry food in her hand.

"Mom, aren't we going to find Uncle Wang?" asked Lynch, holding the bucket with difficulty.

"Not this time, we just need to go home now and wait for your dad. His mother seemed to be in a good mood after chatting with the neighbors, smiling as she answered her child's questions.

"What is Daddy doing there?" Lynch stopped, gasping for breath to rest for a while.

"Mom doesn't know. Lynch's mother looked at her child's tired appearance and couldn't bear it, and planned to do it herself. But it was blocked by Lynch.

"How many more times do you have to move the water, or wait for Dad to come back?"

"I'll be on my own, Mom. ”

Lynch's father didn't come too late, but he was still surprised when he saw that the family had been moved and the buckets were neatly stacked in the corner. Apparently he was planning to get home quickly and then move these things.

Lynch's mother motioned for him to be quieter, and then gestured to Lynch, who was asleep on his small plank bed. Then the two of them began to prepare the meal, after all, they had been hungry for some time.

Lynch was woken up by his father, who also smelled the diffuse aroma of food. Although the food distributed in the lower city was far less than the various meals in his previous life, he still couldn't wait to get together.

At the same time, the hustle and bustle outside the house was long gone, and with the sound of a bell, the black fog became thick again, and the lights returned to their previous brightness. People fled back to their homes, and their mood became depressed again.

Here is dead silence again.

Lynch, who took over the job from his mother, also noticed that the atmosphere at home was not right at this time. His parents were silent with their faces composed. Except for the sound of dishes and chopsticks, the whole room was very oppressive.

At this time, it is necessary for an "innocent" child to break the silence. Lynch also wanted to figure out why the two of them had become such a situation when they woke up.

He saw a few apparently shattered red crystals on his parents' bed. He realized that this was most likely the culprit responsible for the atmosphere in his home.

Lynch held the bowl in one hand and grabbed his father, who was sitting next to him with a black face, and asked, "Dad, what's that red thing on the bed?"

"Huh?" His father saw his child coming over, quickly put away his black face, and touched Lynch's little head: "This is the stone that Dad found outside, it's beautiful, right?"

It turned out that this red spar was forcibly pulled out by the lords of the upper city a few days ago, and when the strong man was repairing a city wall, he secretly picked it up outside the light. Outside the walls it was dark, and no one but the night watchman stepped out of the light-filled area.

But Lynch's father, who was moving bricks at the time, was attracted by the flashing red light of that place, as if he was enchanted, and his yearning for that red light broke through his fear of darkness, and he sneaked over while no one was paying attention, and picked up the light source, which was this crystal. When he returned to the light, he realized how abnormal he was before, and he broke out in a cold sweat.

He also thought it strange about this crystal, but he kept it hidden, and planned to try his luck in the trading floor to see if he could meet a night watchman who happened to need something or someone from Uptown, who could take a fancy to the crystal in his hand and give him a small sum of money, so that he could add a table to his house.

Very few night watchmen come to the trading grounds in the lower town itself, and most of the people who come are also for the treasure hunt, and this time Lynch's father was not lucky, he did not run into the night watchman. And on the way back, the crystal that was originally a piece was inexplicably broken into several pieces.

Lynch's mother wanted him to throw the crystals away, as she instinctively felt uncomfortable and palpitated when she saw the red stuff, and the stubborn father wanted to keep it and trade it until the next time she received supplies.

Lynch, who is a traverser, immediately senses that something is wrong with this crystal, and he tries to persuade his father to throw it away.

He looked at the fragments of crystals, and was about to speak, when the lights in the house suddenly went out.

The room was dark, except for the few crystals that glowed estrangely red.

The three people in the room stopped their movements, their hearts furious, and they didn't know what to do.

In this place, all the light sources used for lighting never go out naturally, even if you blow on it.