Dark Star Field [Interstellar]

The tram wobbled along the rails.From time to time, the joints of the car boards make a clanging sound of iron sheets, which makes people worry that it will fall apart during driving and become a pile of tattered iron sheets.

Xue Yelai supported the rough pole, walked a few steps towards the front of the car, inspected it carefully, then turned his head and asked, "Bai Yang, tell me, why is there no one guarding here? We have been walking for so long, and there is no one there. Encounter. If we are armed invaders, wouldn't the residents here be in danger?"

Bai Yang thought for a while, "I don't know. Maybe they think it's hard for outsiders to find this place. You came here purely by accident. If the rain didn't make the ground collapse, you wouldn't have stumbled into the underground passage by mistake."

"It is indeed difficult to be discovered, but it is not absolutely impossible to be discovered." Xue Yelai shook his head in thought, "This dungeon has existed for so many years, I think it is impossible that no outsiders have ever entered. Although we now I haven't seen the dungeon itself yet, but all the signs I've seen so far indicate that the scale of the city should be huge. It's hard for me to imagine that such a large city would be undefended."

"Then what do you think is the reason?" Bai Yang asked back.

"I don't know either. That's why I find it strange. And the more I observe, the more doubts I get. For example, the tram we are taking now." Xue Yelai pointed to the creaking iron plate under his feet, "It It’s so simple, it looks like a coal truck. But no matter how simple it is, there should always be an engine. But I haven’t found such a structure. I have visited the manufacturing factory of a spaceship before. The nuclear fusion engine is the most important part of a spaceship. It is small in size and is an independent unit. If the spacecraft is attacked, even if the hull is damaged, as long as the unit is not hit, the spacecraft will not crash.”

"What do you want to say?"

"I would like to say that the technology used in this broken tram may be much more sophisticated than it appears on the surface. Not only this car, but everything in this place is like this."

On the surface, everything here seems to be incompatible with high technology, and there is an old and decadent atmosphere like mechanical punk everywhere.However, there is a steady stream of electricity in the depths of the ground; the tram is so simple that it seems to have no engine, but it can run forever.There is also the mental disruptor encountered in the dark tunnel before. The empire only has the theory of this technology, but it is already in use here.

It's a well-disguised tech city.

"It looks like there is no defense here, but maybe we have been watched as soon as we got here. We'd better act carefully and don't damage anything, so as not to trigger the alarm." Xue Yelai looked around and said.

Bai Yang nodded, "However, there is no checkpoint here to check the identity, how can we determine which people are foreigners?"

"Do you know how computer anti-virus software checks and kills viruses? It scans the signatures of viruses. The human body also has many signatures, such as fingerprints, voiceprints, irises, and even the wavelength of brain waves. I think there may be a database here that records The signature code of the permanent population. The unfamiliar signature code that is not in the database will be judged as an outsider and will be monitored. ——Of course, these are just my guesses. It is also possible that this place is indeed undefended, and we happened to take advantage of a loophole.”

The tram started to turn at this moment, and Xue Yelai's voice stopped there.

Grids appeared on both sides of the rails, and dark red rust mottled all over the grids.A tall lamp post stood outside the grid, which was also corroded by rust.Garbage was thrown everywhere on the ground, greasy food packaging bags and shriveled plastic bottles, broken disposable tableware, and some unrecognizable objects.Under the pale light, these rubbish are displayed like corpses.

Xue Yelai felt uncomfortable for a while.Seeing rubbish in an empty place always gave him an indescribable sense of decadence, as if a gray hand had grabbed his nerve.He closed his eyes and let himself sink into his imagination: a sunny roof garden with crabapples and roses.Bai Yang squatted on the ground, using a small shovel to loosen the soil, his face and eyelashes were dyed golden by the sun.Suddenly, he seemed to feel Xue Yelai's gaze, and he raised his head and smiled slightly.

The picture is real and warm, as if it actually happened.Xue Yelai curled his mouth in imagination, how he wished that he had everything like this now, instead of sitting on a dilapidated underground tram, driving to an unknown place among the garbage in the lane.

The tram clangs clang clangingly, after listening to it for a long time, it resembles a musical beat.In my imagination, Bai Yang was still squatting there, picking up the flower scissors, and repairing the twigs that the crabapple had just pulled out, while humming a tune to the beat.Xue Yelai was full of joy and walked towards him slowly.

However, Bai Yang's movements became weird, cutting and cutting the begonias to pieces.The fallen petals turned into a semi-solidified liquid, spraying his face and eyelashes.

Xue Yelai wanted to retreat, but couldn't move his feet. He wanted to ask for help, but no sound came out of his throat. He could only watch Bai Yang approaching him with the flower scissors.The tune Bai Yang hummed turned into two repeated lines:

ORomeo! whereforeartthou Romeo

Denythyfather, andrefusethyname.

(Oh, Romeo! Why are you Romeo?

Deny your father, give up your last name. )

In this spell-like lines, Bai Yang grabbed his hair.Xue Yelai's hair grew as long as before, and like those fallen crabapple petals, it turned into a semi-solidified liquid, flowing slowly down Baiyang's arm.

"Ye Lai, tell me, what should I do to make you give up your surname? What should I do?" Bai Yang muttered to himself dreamily, and the flower scissors in his hand suddenly dropped.

Xue Yelai saw that his head was separated from his body like a cut flower branch, and flew up among the scattered crabapple petals.Bai Yang held his hair, with a weird and gentle smile on his lips: "Is this okay? Is this okay? This..."

Xue Yelai's whole body shook, and he opened his eyes suddenly.Damn it, he accidentally fell asleep.The mental distractions of this place are literally everywhere and pervasive.He hurriedly looked to the side, Bai Yang was sitting next to him hugging his knees, dozing off like a child.

"Baiyang, wake up!" Xue Yelai patted Baiyang awake, "Listen to me, from now on until we go out from here, you must not get sleepy. If you feel tired or the surrounding environment is monotonous, immediately use your nails or sharp Prick yourself hard with something to get the adrenaline pumping. Do you hear me?"

Bai Yang blinked his eyes in a daze, then suddenly came to his senses, and focused his gaze forward: "There is someone."

Only then did Xue Yelai notice that there was a figure tens of meters ahead, who seemed to be waiting for them.The speed of the tram began to slow down, and finally stopped in front of the man.

"Master Xue, hello." The man stepped forward with a polite voice, not rushing.

"You know me?" Xue Yelai looked at the other person's face, it was a strange face he had never seen before.

The other party answered irrelevantly: "My master said that there was no need to take you to this place. But since you have come to our territory, it is not the way to treat guests casually. My master wants to invite Master Xue to our home Sit down for a while, have a cup of tea and chat. Of course, if Young Master Xue is unwilling to go, I can also arrange channels to send you back to the ground immediately. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask."

Xue Yelai suddenly asked a question: "Is there a mental interference device here?"

The other party did not show a look of being caught off guard, but nodded calmly, "Oh, yes. That thing is similar to an instrument that continuously emits ultrasonic waves. People with stronger mental abilities are more likely to be affected. Ordinary people like me It’s completely fine. But please don’t get me wrong, it’s not aimed at you. We just don’t want people with psychic abilities to trespass on our territory.—Any questions?”

Seeing that the other party was so calm, Xue Yelai knew that he had better adopt a straightforward attitude, "I want to know why you have such a technical level. Or, who are you. If I want to deal with you, I Always know who you really are."

"Master Xue is really an open-minded person." The man smiled, "Many years ago, there was a song in the city, do you remember? I can remind you: the first three are perilla grass."

Xue Yelai was taken aback.Of course he remembered the ballad that concealed the family's disgraceful history, but why did this person suddenly mention this?

"Please think about it again. There are more secrets in that ballad than you think."

Xue Yelai turned his head and recalled the content of the ballad.

Perilla grass, purple flowers bloom, and wormwood grows in the perilla garden.

The autumn wind arrives everywhere in Artemisia Lai, and the doves fly away and never come again.

In the ballad, "Zisu" alludes to the Su family, and "Hao Lai" alludes to the Xue family.But in the last sentence, a bird that was not mentioned before suddenly appeared.

In terms of sentence meaning, the last sentence seems to be incoherent with the previous one.If this ballad was made up by people who sympathize with the Su family to curse the Xue family, then according to the usual thinking, the autumn wind is everywhere in Haolai, and the next thing should be the tragic ending of Haolai dying in the autumn wind.

However, the protagonist of the story is suddenly replaced by a dove in the last sentence, which has nothing to do with Zisu or Haolai.

And if you think about it carefully, the meaning of this sentence itself is also very puzzling.

"Flying away and the dove will never come back" can certainly be understood as: the Xue family, whose dove occupied the magpie's nest, was driven away and will never come back.However, if the "autumn wind" here is a metaphor for a major disaster that is about to come, then the perilla and wormwood rooted in the garden cannot escape, but the dove can fly away freely and never return, thus avoiding the disaster. This catastrophe sweeping the earth.

Is this strange ballad really cursing the Xue family?Or does it mean something else?

Xue Yelai recited the ballad silently in his heart again, and suddenly had a feeling: the protagonist of this ballad has always been the dove.The ups and downs of perilla and wormwood are just the scenery in the garden seen from the perspective of the dove.When the garden is full of wormwood, the autumn wind blows, and everything begins to go to depression, it is time for the dove to leave this place and find another home.

And who does "Jijiu" refer to?They are not aboriginals in the garden, but foreign sojourners, temporarily settling here.They stay out of the situation and observe the ecological environment in the garden all the time.When the environment becomes uninhabitable, they will leave.