implication [end times]

In the evening, Ran Yu went to the yard to get the sheets and quilts to dry.The sun was hanging in the sky, and according to past experience, these fabrics should be dried in half a day, but now they have been in the sun for a whole day, and they still feel a little damp to the touch.In the several vegetable fields next to the drying area, the tomatoes and vegetables are growing gratifyingly, and the red fruits and green leaves are very fresh.The courtyard wall is covered with vines, and the dense vines and leaves are so dense that the original color of the wall can hardly be seen.There are many finches standing on the top of the wall, their long tail feathers hang down and disappear among the leaves of the vines.

These sparrows seem to be resting here at will, but their eyes are dripping, paying attention to every move in the yard, and they are more vigilant than the dogs that specialize in guarding the yard.

From time to time, the grunting of ferocious beasts could be heard outside the iron gate. They seemed to be mutated wolves. They gathered around the yard in groups of three or four, as if on duty. When one group went for food, the other group was stationed here.Ran Yu glanced at the courtyard door, collected his things and went back to his room to make a bed.There were no blades or metal products in the room, and it was the same in the warehouse. The weapons were all emptied by Ran Qiu at some point.

Ran Yu lived like this for two weeks.There are still a lot of canned food and nutritional supplements in the warehouse, and there are enough vegetables in the field. This yard is like a safe paradise.As long as the people who live in the paradise are more peaceful, don't try to break out.

For the past two weeks, Ran Qiu wasn't always at home, he would go out to look for food, or go up the mountain by himself, basking in the sun while dazed.Sometimes the sun scorched Ran Qiu's skin until it was hot, like a needle prick, which made Ran Yu feel a little uncomfortable, so he urged him to hide in the shade of a tree.Ran Qiu was not rebellious at this time, and went obediently.

When Ran Yu was in the laboratory of the scientific research institute before, Ran Qiu always wanted him to communicate directly through connections, and he was unwilling to let him speak.Now I like to communicate more and more by speaking, as long as Ran Qiu is at home, I always have to talk to Ran Yu.

"This way of communication is very interesting," Ran Qiu said, "I can feel the process from your thinking to speaking, and it seems that you have spent a lot of energy on me. It's not like before, even if I can To obtain information, you actually ignored me."

Ran Yu didn't intend to speak at first, but when he felt that Ran Qiu was getting impatient, he replied, "Maybe."

"You have changed a lot. You were very kind to me before you entered the city."

"Is it."

"You seem very upset, is this a perfunctory in your human communication?"

"Probably." Ran Yu said.

Ran Qiu asked suddenly: "If Lou Yue didn't exist, would you still be on the human side?"

Ran Yu was silent for a while, then said, "I don't know."

Ran Qiu said: "It is indeed a mistake, we should kill him first."

Ran Yu looked up at him with sharp eyes: "I won't let you succeed."

Ran Qiu shrugged: "Don't be so sure, you are capable now, but not by much. Besides, you can't get out of here."

In the assistant office of the scientific research institute, Shi Xun turned the screen to Lou Yue and said, "Of course I'm not lying to you. His vital signs are normal now, and he is about two hundred kilometers southeast of the main city."

Two weeks ago, facing Lou Yue's cannibalistic gaze, Shi Xun reported to him that he had privately implanted a micro-detector under Ran Yu's skin.Because of this, Captain Lou was able to deploy various defense tasks in the first ring in a relatively stable state.

In the past two weeks, Lou Yue and Albert have not only strengthened the defense of the checkpoints in the first ring, but also inspected the work of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to ensure that the disinfection of various underground waterways in the first ring is correct and avoid repeating the same mistakes.In addition, Director Wei and the transportation department discovered that the number of people sleepwalking at night is increasing rapidly, and has reached the level of endangering the management order.The neurology and psychiatry departments of hospitals within the first ring worked overtime to see patients, but with little success.

Lou Yue had long proposed to see the monitoring results with his own eyes, but he had been entangled in many things, and finally got free today, so he immediately came to the scientific research institute to arrest Shi Xun.He looked at the screen for a while and asked, "Does this thing have any side effects?"

"Don't worry, it's only for medical use. I promised you that the research process won't hurt him." Shi Xun said, "It's you, you have to do what you promised me."

"Have you decided?" Lou Yue said, "Yan Ai will want to kill me when he finds out."

"It can only be me. I'll explain it to her when I get a chance."

Lou Yue: "The deputy city lord seldom shows up. Even his own son asked him to meet for two weeks. Li Shuxiu may not be able to succeed tonight. Besides blood, can other body tissues work? Like hair."

"You might as well ask me if I can read someone else's memory by reciting a spell." Shi Xun said with a smile, "What you need now may not be a scientist, but a magician or a psychiatrist."

All jokes aside, Lou Yue understood Shi Xun's decision.

The discovery of "whole life" reminded Lou Yue and others of the content of Gong Xiao's memory, which was the experiment of the city lord.Yuan Qiong said that the purpose of that experiment was to integrate more and more people, and to be dominated by the will of a specific person. At that time, they thought it was abstract, but now considering the characteristics of sea ghosts, it is hard not to doubt this. The experiment is imitating sea ghosts.Just like people in the past could imitate birds to invent airplanes and fish to invent submarines, but now it seems that some people want to imitate sea ghosts to complete a new invention.

In addition, according to Gong Xiao's previous memory, under the action of the sea's magnetic field, the wildly growing sea plants will crowd out the living space of food crops, and farmed animals will also be affected.The main city needs to analyze the sea magnetite with the Raid system, and use the anti-magnetic field generator to maintain the stability of the magnetic field.Sea magnets exist in the deep sea, which is beyond the reach of human beings, and where the sea ghosts are most closely protected. On that day, Gongxiao's sea magnets were obtained from the city lord.No matter how you look at it, the city lord is inseparable from the sea ghost, and there may even be some kind of long-term transaction.

Li Jing, the deputy city lord who has never shown his face all year round, used to be the dean of the scientific research institute. He and Commander Feng of the Military Control Department are the right-hand men of the city lord and do not participate in the handling of daily affairs.According to Li Shuxiu, Li Jing did secretly work for the city lord all the year round, and was very trusted by the city lord, but he didn't know exactly what it was.

It is too difficult to start with the city lord, but Li Jing, the deputy lord of the city, has always been known for being upright and upright before retiring from the post of dean.Now the fastest way to understand the city lord's experiment from behind is to extract Li Jing's memory like he did with Gong Xiao.

However, the improved memory reagents like Yuan Qiong's before have increased the toxicity and caused more damage to the body, and the confusion of memory needs to be overcome and discerned.At present, apart from Yuan Qiong, only Shi Xun has the experience of getting along with other memories, so he is the most suitable candidate.

Seeing that Lou Yue didn't speak for a long time, Shi Xun put away his previous joking attitude and became serious: "I may not live long, but I hope we don't disappear on the earth so soon. It's a pity, people It has evolved for so long to come to today. Although there are many cannibalistic things, there are also many warm and lovely things. These opposite things can even happen to the same person, people are really amazing.”

When he said "it's amazing", Shi Xun glanced at Lou Yue.

Lou Yue twitched the corners of his mouth: "Professor Yuan probably told you a lot of bad things about me. I guess he always likes to say that I am like the city lord."

Shi Xun smiled helplessly: "It's not, he doesn't hate you as much as you think. Teacher Yuan said that you are the same as the city lord in many ways, but there is one key difference. Indifference to life can make people cruel. If a People have people they care about, and the fear of losing them will make them feel in awe of human life and death, and they will change from caring only for themselves to being able to care for others. Even if this "other" is just a specific person, the process of empathizing with others has already passed. This is a very important step. In this way, there will be a complicated bond between him and other people, and he will be willing to stand firmly on the human standpoint."

Lou Yue didn't speak, just stared at the changing vital signs data on the screen.

Shi Xun also looked at the screen and said, "I think Ran Yu is the same way."

Shi Xun: "It's getting late, and the scientific research institute will have a power cut recently. Let's go back to the laboratory next to the checkpoint and wait for news from Li Shuxiu."

Since the power plants are mainly concentrated in the suburbs of the second ring road, two weeks after the fall of the second ring road, measures to limit power were taken in the first ring road due to insufficient power.After nightfall, the neon lights along the streets no longer light up, factories and shops stop working, and even the red, yellow and green lights of traffic lights become faint.

As the night deepened, the sound of doors opening could be heard one after another in the building that should have fallen into silence.The footsteps on the street gradually changed from sparse to dense, and people's expressionless faces were drowned in the darkness.

This is an unprecedented large-scale collective sleepwalking.

They have no purpose, no targeted behavior, just walk around the street, bouncing bodies against each other a few times, then leave, and keep going—like a giant millipede just waking up, trying to mobilize and adapt to its many legs. limb.

Yuan Qiong woke up completely after hitting a wall. He has been in a coma most of the time recently, relying on oxygen tubes and nutrients to maintain his life.He doesn't know what's going on now, he only knows that the air in his lungs is scarce, his headache is abnormal, and he needs oxygen now.

However, he didn't have a communicator in his hand, and he couldn't find anyone to ask for help in the unfamiliar streets and people walking stiffly.

This is a small alley full of rubbish, Yuan Qiong didn't have the strength to go any further, so he just sat down on the spot.For some reason, fragments of memories from the past came one after another. He remembered the lofty ambitions of his friends when he was young. At that time, their ideal was not only to build a strong and safe human city, but also to expand the territory and regain lost ground.

But now, even the city is on the brink of destruction.

When Yuan Qiong was young, he had ideals and loved reading. He once liked a poem and printed it on the title page of the textbook he wrote later.His headaches were getting worse, his heart was beating fast, and other memories of his past were becoming blurred, but the poem came to him clearly.

So he leaned against the wall brick, looked at the starry sky, and recited the poem in a voice that he gradually lost hearing, as if he was coaxing himself to sleep:

"... Whoever respects the pure faith will conquer hell and death... Lies are born and died in the dark night, and souls are dormant in the light..."

It was late at night, and the boundless darkness shrouded the main city. No one knew that a scientist who had made great contributions to the construction of the city and had the best vision for the future of mankind died beside a dirty garbage dump on the street corner.

Yuan Qiong died before dawn.

However, in such a long and chaotic night, no one knows when the dawn will come.

The starry sky on the plateau is bright and terrifying, like a whirlpool that is about to swallow everything.Under the light of hundreds of millions of years ago, any huge life seems small.

Dawn may come soon, or it may never come.

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The author has something to say:

"Whoever respects the faith of innocence, he will conquer hell and death... Lies are born and died in the dark night, and souls are dormant in the light..." →Excerpt from "Innocence Prophecy", author William Blake, translator Huang Yushi (People's Literature Press, 2017, p204) (quoted from Baidu Encyclopedia)