372

After 1,000 heartbeats, Daeric waited a few more moments before he felt himself enter the temple of silence and tranquility.

As soon as he opened his eyes, scene after scene flashed back in his mind, as if an external force instantly poured all the lost memories into his head.

Some of those scenes are: a collapsing wall; white and blue buildings; The "Fallen Creator" temple in a similar style to the Silver City; A mural detailing the coming of the end and the "fallen Creator" resisting the six evil gods and protecting the remaining human beings; the beautiful and dangerous "mushroom lonely"; Out of nowhere, the unusually weird yellow-haired boy Jack.

This scene is repeated over and over again, a full five times, but each time there are some differences in details:

The first time, outside the temple of the fallen Creator, all the animal skin lanterns were extinguished, almost causing a tragedy, the second time, someone couldn't control himself and almost swallowed the "mushroom", but fortunately Chief Colin stopped it in time, the third time, the little boy Jack told a story, that is, he and his father were chasing the Creator's sanctuary in the ocean with no edge, and they encountered a huge storm, the fourth time, Joshua was seriously injured by the little boy Jack who had changed without warning, and the fifth time, the temple completely collapsed, Blocked the exit from the underground area.

And each time, it ends with the "Demon Hunter" Colin killing the little boy Jack, and begins with resting in the camp and preparing to enter the ruined city, beginning with each other, repeating the cycle.

We have explored the temple five times...... We've been living this experience and there's no real end to it! The more Daerik understood his sudden memory, the more frightened and creepy he felt.

Audrey, who was sitting on the other side of the bronze table, originally wanted to greet Mr. "Fool" and everyone happily and briskly as usual, but when she swept her eyes, she immediately found that the mood of the little "sun" was wrong, and immediately asked:

"Mr. Sun, what's going on? The action to explore the real, uh, fallen Creator Temple isn't going well? ”

"Sun" Derick seemed to grasp hope, and quickly described what happened in general, and finally said:

"After the little boy was cleared by His Excellency 'Chief', we all closed our eyes and woke up in the camp outside the city, ready to start a new expedition, and there were no more memories of the past."

"This process was repeated five times, with only slight differences in the details."

"If it weren't for Mr. 'Fool' to remind me, I wouldn't even know that I have been living a repetitive life all this time."

He took it for granted that the extra memories of coming to the gray mist were due to Mr. Fool's reminder, so he stood up and bowed solemnly to the figure of the model lake sitting at the top of the long bronze table.

I still listened to your description to understand what happened...... "Fool" Creon was a little confused from just now to now.

He kept his original posture and bowed his head lightly in response.

In the case of not understanding the cause of the problem, the superior cannot easily express his position and cannot speak rashly...... Crane secretly reviewed the knowledge he came into contact with when he was a keyboard powerhouse in his previous life.

Seeing that Mr. "Fool" seemed to have a deep ancient well without waves, "Sun" Derick felt a lot more relieved, and felt that the matter could be solved after all.

He turned to "The Hanged Man", "The World", "Justice", and "The Magician" and asked sincerely:

"Guys, do you know the root of the problem? How to solve it? ”

Brainstorming, in order to help the "sun" get out of this cycle as soon as possible, everyone immediately began to think. "Justice" Audrey would love to help, but she had never experienced such an extraordinary event and had no clue for a while, as was the case with "Magician" Furth.

Crane relied on the supernatural horror movies he had watched to make a few bold guesses, trying to control the "world" to speak his mind, but no one around him spoke, so he also kept a low profile and remained motionless, waiting for others to speak first.

In the end, it was the experienced "hanging man" Alger who took the initiative to speak, combined with the actual situation encountered by Derick, and extrapolated based on his own experience, and tentatively gave two guesses:

"I can only think of two possibilities, one is that you have encountered a dream demon or hallucination ability that exceeds the level of a demigod and a half-human, and after you retrieve your memories with the help of Mr. 'Fool', as soon as you return to the real world, you should be able to immediately detect that something is wrong, so that the problem can be easily solved."

"The second is that you are forced or actively entered into a peculiar space or state at a certain node, where time maintains a certain degree of flow, but is fixed within a certain range, the cycle repeats, and the balance continues, that is, it is relatively static."

"In this case, there are not many ways to end the cycle, either there are external forces to forcibly break that balance, or find the key points that connect the time warp."

Hearing the external force breaking, everyone couldn't help but think of Mr. "Fool". But "Sun" Derrick didn't say anything, and informing him of the memories he had lost in five cycles was already a gift from the gods. Mr. "Fool" is undoubtedly a benevolent deity, but he can no longer be ignorant and continue to ask for help.

Darek came to his senses and thought for a moment:

"Mr. 'Hanged Man', let's assume the latter case first, what do you think is the key point that connects the before and after time warps?"

Without waiting for the "Hanged Man" to answer, "Justice" Audrey guessed with interest: "That little boy Jack?

"When you face him, you can't deal with it by killing him?"

"The Hanged Man" Alger nodded: "It's possible." ”

He pondered for a moment, hesitated and said:

"The Sun's description of Jack and his father reminds me of something."

He turned to Miss Justice, "Did I mention that I once hunted down a 'listener' of the Aurora Society at sea, and his goal at sea was to find the sanctuary of the 'True Creator'. ”

Audrey recalled carefully, and said uncertainly: "It seems that there is such a thing." ”

"The Hanged Man," Alger immediately said in a deep voice:

"The 'listener' also had his children with him, and they were very close in age to the Jack described by 'Sun'."

"You mean, that Jack came from your world around Silver City?" "The Sun," Derick asked, stunned.

After a short period of precipitation, he felt a little happy in his heart.

Because this means that the area where Silver City is located has not been completely sealed, and there is still a chance to connect with the normal world where the "Hanged Man" and "Justice" are located!

"All I can say is that it's possible." The "hanged man" could not give an affirmative answer.

He thought for a moment and suggested:

"You can find an opportunity to mention the Sunia Sea, the Kingdom of Rune, and the Port City in front of the little boy Jack, and maybe you will have a different reaction, of course, try to avoid your Silver City chief.

"Also, the key point is not necessarily on the little boy Jack, there are other possibilities to consider, you tell the details of the specific situation, such as the details of the mural, maybe we can find something useful."

With that, Alger began to look forward to the information he could get.

373

Wen Xia carried a bucket and walked through the streets of the town. It was late afternoon, but every house in the town was closed.

There were no children playing on the road, the shops on the street were not open, there was occasionally a passer-by or two in a hurry, the old man sat by the door and rested with his cloudy eyes, the young man was nowhere to be found, and the whole town was lifeless.

After walking on the main road for a while, Wen Xia pulled up her veil and hurried to the path leading to the door. Because soldiers often pass by on horseback on the main road, if they collide with them, or if they are noticed, they may die.

There was no one along the way, and Wen Xia breathed a sigh of relief.

She pushed open the creaking wooden door and opened the closed window, letting the sunlight shine in from outside, adding a little light to the dimly lit room.

On the old cabinet was a sketch portrait of a family member, unframed and unframed, and the sketch paper was yellowed and brittle.

The people of Bailang would retrieve the bones of their dead elders and pick out the most meaningful piece of them as a memento and place them in the most conspicuous place in their homes, while Wenxia's home was empty.

Her father went far away to dig gold for foreign merchants, which was a relatively lucrative job, but after a few years he was out, no money came back.

When his father was still alive, Wen Xia could still go to the city to learn to read and paint, and work odd jobs with his younger brother to earn money after school.

Later, at some point, the family became more and more struggling, and could no longer look forward to the living expenses sent by his father, and his mother became more and more silent, and finally was captured by slave traders when he went out to buy food, and disappeared into Wenxia's life with his father.

The disappearance of his younger brother became the last straw that crushed Wen Xia, and the activities of slave traders became more and more rampant, and young adults continued to disappear in the town. The police department didn't accept it at all, and some even swore that they had seen them trade people with Rune's soldiers.

Obviously, she had told her brother not to go out, and she had tried her best to keep her brother with her, but after only two hours of staggering, her lively, well-behaved, and lovely brother disappeared.

In just 6 years, his family fell apart.

Wen Xia went crazy and went from house to house in the town, but when she knocked on the door, she saw sad faces similar to hers.

Eventually, she got word from a friend: her brother was last seen in the town's small post office, with two other kids in the town, saying that someone in the town who worked for a company in the town had introduced them to a job.

Later, the town learned that that person was a member of the trafficking team, not only Wen Xia's younger brother, but more than a dozen people in the town had left with them, and then disappeared from the world.

In Byron folklore, there is no clear distinction between the living and the dead, and the dead relatives will return and live with the living. But if the bones of the loved ones cannot be enshrined in the home after death, then the souls of the loved ones will not find their own home.

Wen Xia didn't have a single bone in her family, and even after she died, she couldn't reunite with her family.

This was a great blow to her, and she was in a daze for a long time, almost insane, and finally her playmate, who had grown up together, couldn't bear to look at it, and dragged her into a prayer meeting of a group of desperate young people.

She also prayed hopelessly for a few days, thinking it was just nonsense, but she didn't expect to get a response.

She sat down in a single chair, holding a red candle in her arms in her palm and staring at it infatuately.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and the visitor shook the dilapidated wooden door, and dust fell from the door.

Wen Xia shuddered, friends wouldn't knock on the door so rudely! She quickly picked up the firewood knife leaning against the door, stood by the window, and shouted in the direction of the door, "Who is it?" ”

Someone outside the door whispered something, but not all of them were frank, and she didn't understand.

The knock on the door was louder and louder, as if it was already kicking the door, and the plank seemed to be kicked off in the next second.

Wen Xia was so frightened that she wanted to scream, and she clenched the wood knife even harder, the only thing that made her feel safe.

Suddenly, the sound of kicking the door stopped, there was no sound outside the door, Wen Xia was nervous, and he didn't know what to do.

After more than ten seconds, she mustered up the courage to take half a step forward, and stretched out her head to see the situation at the door.

At this moment, a pair of powerful arms suddenly reached in through the window behind her, covering her mouth with one hand, grabbing her arm with the other, and directly pulling her upper half out of the window with her upper body on her back!

Wen Xia struggled in horror and saw a pair of cold and impatient eyes in the violently shaking sky. She suddenly didn't know where the strength came from, and stabbed the firewood knife in her hand in the direction of these eyes!

There was resistance from the tip of the knife, as if it had indeed stabbed something, and he let go of his grip on his hand, and Wen Xia fell heavily from the window, but fortunately the window was not high, and the ground was soft earth. Now that the situation was dangerous, Wen Xia immediately rolled around to keep himself from falling to the ground on his back. A foot in leather shoes suddenly appeared in her field of vision, and before she could stand up, she was kicked two or three meters over, and the smell of blood was in her nose and mouth.

The fierce man had a small cut in his chest, and beads of blood were pouring out. He kicked her hard and said something in his mouth. Wen Xia couldn't understand a word, but she knew that it must be some insulting words. After more than ten kicks, Wen Xia's one eye was no longer visible, and the man finally got angry enough, probed her face to sniff, cursed something, and wiped the dirt and blood stains on his leather shoes on her in disgust.

When he was in the lake, Wen Xia suddenly understood what the man said:

"Damn, in vain."

"It's worth a few bucks just for this face, and it's rotten now."

She heard the sound of the knife being picked up.

The great fear and despair instantly consumed her heart, she could not hear the sound anymore, only the man's mouth opened and closed in front of her, and the wood knife was raised, and the reflection was as bright as the sun. She wanted to escape, but the flames of pain and hatred grew wildly in her heart.

When the man squatted down and aimed the knife at the girl's neck, eager to see if he could cut off the neck with a knife, the corpse-like piece of flesh suddenly moved, and she sat up reluctantly, and the fleshy and fleshy face made the man instantly break out in a cold sweat. In a moment when he was stunned, the wood knife came out of his hand, and the corpse pressed against him, knocking him to the ground.

Wen Xia bit down on the man's throat.

The sharp pain came, and the man frantically beat her back, tearing her hair desperately, tearing off a large handful of jet-black hair along with her scalp and bloody, but Wen Xia had almost lost all consciousness, only knew how to bite the other party's throat and close his mouth little by little.

Click.

The teeth are lightly clasped together.

The smell of blood came up, and the man opened his mouth wide in vain, and finally kicked his leg a few times, staring at him and dying in disbelief.

The piece of meat slipped from his mouth, and Wen Xia turned sideways with the last of his strength, falling onto the warm earth, and slowly closed his eyes.

It was so quiet before death that even the wind stopped.

She thought that she would see the picture of her life flashing in front of her eyes, as the old man in the town said, but it was dark in front of her, and it turned out that her life was so short that there was not even a momentary picture. She thought of the mythical story that her parents had told her, that more than a hundred years ago, this land was under the patronage of the god of death, and the dead would go to the river where the god of death slumbered and find eternal peace with the god of death.

But the gods of the Northern Continent have captured here, and the Grim Reaper's curly has disappeared, and when I was very young, I had watched soldiers execute cultists en masse, and the people who believed in Death quietly made the soldiers fearful, and they were still calm in the face of guns, they should have been calm.

Her consciousness was foggy, up and down, and then, she saw a red candle.

Do you light it up? Someone seemed to be saying it behind her back.

Light it up, and you will gain power, and from now on, you will live by hurting others.

She was silent, confused, and did not speak. Suddenly, she saw something at her feet, a corpse, whose left eye had burst and deflated into its socket, its teeth broken, its mouth covered in blood, and its nose tilted to one side. The hair was almost all gone, and the entire scalp was covered in blood. Who is this? She suddenly realized, this is Wen Xia, this is me.

I died because I had no strength. I want power, I'm going to kill those who hurt me.

She reached out to the red candle, and the moment she touched it between her fingers, the wick lit up with a blue flame.

Someone suddenly pushed her back, and she fell. After a moment's pause, Wen Xia sat up, and was greeted by the hideous death of the slave trader who had come to capture her.

In disbelief, she reached out and touched her cheek, her intact but bloodstained face, her tattered and dirty clothes, her full of teeth and black hair, but the torn headband was at her feet.

At the same time, Wen Xia felt a lot of knowledge in her head, and she instinctively reached out and grabbed his spirit from the man's skull.

And Wen Xia didn't feel much panic, she felt as if she could do a lot of things now. She ate the man's soul and understood the cause and effect of the incident. She staggered to her feet, jumped upward, and floated up like a weightless cloud.

Wen Xia turned into a translucent ghost, and she followed the route the man remembered all the way to the outskirts of the city, to a remote warehouse.

There were several people with guns standing outside the warehouse, and Wen Xia floated down and merged into the body of one of them, and the man immediately turned around and shot his accomplice standing beside him.

Immediately afterward, the accomplice who had exploded his head slowly stood up again, raised his gun, and aimed his other accomplices who were already frightened to the point of urine.

After a few gunshots, only living corpses remained.

The living corpses felt around their waists and pulled out the keys to the warehouse. Opening the door of the warehouse, Wen Xia saw that the small warehouse was crowded with people, the stench was blowing in his face, and there were dead bodies in the corner.

Faced with the abducted people who looked at them in horror, the living corpses smiled stiffly, walked away step by step, and lined up into the river themselves. After a long time, people poured out of the warehouse and fled.

Wen Xia came back to her senses from a trance, her body had fallen uncontrollably, and she turned into an entity and fell to the ground.

She felt that the gifts of the gods were about to dissipate from herself, and in the last few minutes she took the red braided rope from her wrist - the red bracelet was braided into her brother's hair.

She closed her eyes, prayed for the gaze of the Great Being, and slowly uttered the words of divination:

"My brother Sha Yin's current position."

She hung her head and fell into a dream. Wen Xia saw the blue sea and saw a freighter.

Occasionally, while the ship was moving, the crew would open the secret door on the deck and drop some food inside.

Dark, sultry, confined and filthy conditions, coupled with severe hunger and unadaptability, several cargo fell ill. To prevent them from infecting more goods, they were disposed of.

The First Cause of All Worlds

Wen Xia saw her brother, who had been missing for two months, her cute and well-behaved brother who was so thin that he was almost out of shape, and was dragged out of the dirty and hot cabin by the crew. Ignoring his cries and pleadings, the crew tied him up with several other sick people and threw him into the sea.

Her Shayin died on the third day of her disappearance.

Buried in the sea, unable to find the bones, unable to return home.

Wen Xia opened his eyes and sat down on the ground in his tattered bloody clothes, a strange smile gradually appeared on his face.

She laughed, first in a low voice, and then suddenly burst out laughing, so hoarse that her shoulders trembled and her whole body twitched, as if she were about to tear her vocal cords, and the creepy laughter echoed across the middle of nowhere.

Laughing, laughing, Wen Xia's voice gradually weakened, lowered, and turned into a mournful cry.

She fell backwards, fell to the ground, tugging at her hair, and she became a madman.

TBC

——————

The big smog is just around the corner...... What a card player......!