Prologue: The Unattended Banquet (1)
When he came to his senses, he found himself in an uninhabited hallway, with dusty floor-to-ceiling windows on his left and white walls on his right. Through the windows www.biquge.info you can see the rows of houses in the distance, the garden in the courtyard, and the dilapidated fence.
It was probably close to evening, and the sun still had its strength to shine on the mountains in the distance. At the end of the day, when people were supposed to be finishing their day's work, there was no shadow of a person in the street, and he didn't even feel the slightest breath of life, as if what was presented in front of him was just an illusion.
He searched for his memories, but he had no memory of himself being here, and even when he looked back, there was nothing but the seemingly endless corridor. Until the darkness that disappears at the end of sight, there is no such thing as a door, as if the endless road gives people an indescribable sense of oppression.
The narrow corridor didn't exist in his mind, and he couldn't remember where he had seen a street illuminated by the setting sun in the distance. It looks like a medieval relic, full of low wooden shacks, and the few tall buildings are no more than churches or towers.
He wanted to stop and observe for a moment, but his body walked forward uncontrollably, as if an invisible "someone" was taking his hand and walking forward, and whispering words urging him forward in a soft voice in his ear, so that he could not resist.
Are you dreaming again?
He subconsciously thought of this question, and immediately waved his hand and smashed it against the floor-to-ceiling window in front of him without hesitation—but it seemed to be one with the glory of the space. Not only that, but the vivid pain that fed back into his hand did not make him regain consciousness, but simply tortured his pain nerves.
I don't know if it's affected by the pain, but the things in my vision become clearer, and I can even see how many cobwebs there are in this dusty corridor. The sun shone down the hallway, but there was no way to dispel the musty smell that filled the interior of the house, and there was a feeling of dampness and discomfort.
The whole house was quiet, except for the faint footsteps of him alone on the carpet. The last glimmer of light in the dusk was about to fade, and the remaining red light thickened the shadows of the corridor, giving the illusion that something lurked inside.
Suddenly, his ears seemed to catch some movement in an unchanging steadyness, so that his tense nerves all erected and listened intently for its direction. The sounds were very soft, as if something like a blanket was being dragged on a wooden floor.
So he subconsciously lowered his footsteps and tiptoed along the corridor until he came to a door at the end of the corridor. He is quite confident in his sneak just now, and can claim to be lighter than the other party, without making any noticeable sounds...... But opening the door doesn't have to be.
The door in front of me was made of wood, and it looked heavy and heavy, and if it was opened rashly, no matter who was on the other side, it would surely be heard. However, there was probably only one chance, and he heard the sound of the dragging sound fading away, and if he didn't act quickly, he would probably have to go away.
Without doing anything, he took a deep breath and immediately pressed his weight forward, slamming into the wooden door in front of him with all his strength. However, the truth was unexpected, the seemingly heavy wooden door was far lighter than expected, and his body crashed into the room behind the door.
It appears to be a large room that has been used as a dining room, with no windows around it, only a candle on the table in the center of the room to provide some light to the room. However, the table was so strange that even a hundred people were probably more than enough to sit around.
Shocked by the scene in front of him, he even froze in place for a moment. Because his mind told him that the situation in front of him was impossible from the structure of space...... It stands to reason that the previous hallway could not lead to the current room.
He was in the middle of the room, facing the exaggerated dining table, almost exactly the same distance to the walls on the left and right, about a hundred paces away. However, he had observed before he burst through the door that there was no part of the building in front of the hallway that extended outward, which meant that the side by the window could not at best go beyond the boundaries of the window.
Sensing that something was wrong, he slowly turned his head to look behind him—but there was no sign of him when he entered, and the door he had slammed open was all gone. All that's left is the cold, hard walls, like the other walls of the restaurant, which have no entrance to the outside world.
In a word, there is no entrance, let alone door, not even a window around this "restaurant". The rooms in this building were so strangely constructed that they almost didn't follow the spatial pattern at all, and he felt like he was in a trap right now.
However, it was not easy to escape by standing and staring, and he suppressed his restless mood and walked towards the oversized table in the center of the restaurant. All the cutlery and utensils have been arranged, and the chairs have been arranged neatly and ready to receive the guests.
But can this enclosed room really be used as a dining room? People from the outside probably can't get in, and people inside can't get out like prisoners. This is not so much a place to entertain guests, but a secret room to trap people, which is quite appropriate to the empty environment.
But I have to admit that from the tables and chairs to the tableware, the utensils in this restaurant are quite high-end. Tableware, in particular, made of metal, he had at first thought to be common silverware, but it was not until he got closer that he could see that the color clearly mixed with gold reflected a faint light in the dimness.
And the chairs that lined the table didn't look cheap oak - in fact he couldn't say what kind of wood it was made of - not only were they finely made, but they were also upholstered in velvet, which would have been worth a lot if not cobwebs.
Everything was prepared before the meal, and the only downside was that there was nothing in the room that could be used as food. Of course, he didn't expect to see anything good in the old room—she didn't think it was a good food.
Tables, chairs, and even tablecloths were shrouded in an old air, except for the various cutlery, which was spotless and out of place in the room. He walked over to the place where the host was supposed to be sitting, and the cutlery here was slightly better than the other seats, shimmering in the flickering candlelight.
In addition, the huge glass in the middle of the seat is particularly eye-catching, and when you calculate a little, it can hold almost three litres of liquid. Although there are no drinks inside, the sheer size of it is enough to make people jaw-dropping.
As if by magic, he suddenly stopped beside the host's chair and flicked the rim of the glass with his fingernails. At this moment, the crisp sound of the glass echoed through the hall, making it clearly recognizable in the empty dining room.
As the soft sound of glasses spread through the hall, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change, and something unseen spread through the dining room with sound waves. Next, the scene in front of him was even more unexpected, making him almost question whether he had seen a hallucination.
Bouts of dizziness were accompanied by sharp tinnitus, as if someone had stuck a red-hot iron rod into his head and stirred it. And with this unbearable unpleasantness, something different appeared on the table, which had been only empty cutlery—the powder of light and some black substance gathered next to the host's work, and then formed a strangely shaped object.
It looked like a bottle of wine, with a slightly dark clear glass bottle containing a sparkling golden liquid, and they were like tumbling lava with a golden-red glow. He felt assured that he had never seen such a beautiful liquid in his life before, and perhaps he would never be lucky enough to see it in the future.
But the preparations didn't seem to end there, and a blank piece of paper filled with wonderful words silently appeared in the white porcelain plate. Then, as if an invisible hand had taken hold of it, it took it to a candle that was faintly glowing not far away, shook it for a moment, and then lit it.
Like all paper, the lit white paper gradually burned until it was reduced to ashes—a small handful of white ashes with a strange and indescribable smell. They were collected by the unseen hand and spilled into a huge glass in the middle of the seat.
Immediately after, the golden-red liquid was poured into the glass by his "hands", the viscous texture was like honey, and it was like freshly boiled jam, but he thought they were boiling lava. You can't feel the heat, but the thick liquid that bubbles up does make you think so.
The ash that had settled at the bottom of the cup melted into the churning liquid in the blink of an eye, and the indescribable flavor steamed up and spread throughout the room in a few moments. Although this smell is not unbearable, it is by no means a smell that makes people want to exist in the same space as it, and if you keep smelling this smell, your nose will lose its function sooner or later and you will not be able to distinguish other smells.
However, the room is obviously not equipped with a ventilation system, and if there is no way to get out of here, then it will probably have to endure the strange smell all the time. It was only then that the headache and tinnitus that had plagued him finally disappeared, and the invisible hand picked up a spoon and gently tapped the rim of the glass filled with liquid.
It was as if someone was inviting him to drink the contents of the cup.