"forgotten?"
This is really an incredible answer. Logically speaking, a child's memory shouldn't be too bad, but he seemed to have been thinking hard for so long, but he only said this sentence.
"It's been a long time..." he murmured, "It's been too long."
The soft gender-ambiguous tone revealed a strange sophistication, and it was not a deliberate gesture. The little boy himself seemed to be troubled, but he had no intention of asking for help, probably because he had given up hope.
"So is this the cursed ghost village that the old man said?" Ye Linghuan asked her friend in a low voice, with mottled light flowing continuously from her face. "In the end, we are still here..."
Zhongli Hanshang did not answer her for the time being. He looked at the little boy and asked without fear: "So you are trapped here too? How long have you been here? I guess you have also forgotten."
This doesn't need to be a terrifyingly long number. Some special illusions, even if you spend a long enough time in them, are actually just a matter of a moment, like a dream; some illusions, you only spend a few hours in them, It may have been ten or hundreds of years before he returned to the living world, just like a story about the Dragon Palace. Those powerful magic circles are enough to distort people's perception of time and space, creating a twisted realm comparable to the interlacing of six paths.
Sure enough, the child just shook his head and said he didn't remember.
"You are not the first people to come here...there are many before you. Some people left quickly, and some people failed to escape and became part of this place. It's just that no one has been here for too long."
According to what he said, it was no wonder that his reaction was so dull when he saw them. If you were trapped somewhere in the beginning, you would be extremely excited to see a living person, as if you were grasping at a life-saving straw. But he was probably disappointed too many times, so he was indifferent to the appearance of these intruders.
"Tell us, boy, what happens here?"
Xie Zhe tried his best to soften his attitude and make himself appear more friendly, so that the child would not be under so much pressure. But his worries were probably unnecessary. The child always had that look on his face as if he was at a loss but had given up struggling; or maybe it was because he had resisted too many times and always ended in failure. What it was, they probably didn't know. They just felt that they could only see his unrippled face through a shallow layer of water. There is air above, but it can only be suffocating below.
"'I'll kill them all. One by one, in the cleanest possible way," he said quietly.
"ha?"
It’s hard to believe that this came from a teenage boy. But looking at him, it didn't look like he was lying, let alone joking. Han Chang pointed in the direction of the door and asked:
"It's chaos out there, but you're here."
"There's another me out there."
"Another you?"
"Well... I used to stand there, constantly swinging the knife, and constantly cutting off everything I could see. But those were not living people, but some vegetation, which kept blocking my way. Things. I just want to go home, to a place I am familiar with... But I don’t recognize the roads in the village at all, and no one I know appears. I cut off branches, vines, and thorns. They come, one after another. The green sap splashes out, a little sticky. When the sun rises, they all evaporate and everything in the way disappears. I stand at home - I have gone back, But still there was no one - no one."
As he spoke, he pointed in one direction through the wall. Maybe it was where the child was standing before they came.
Han Chang pulled them aside, and the three of them lowered their voices and had a small meeting.
"Do you believe what this kid says?"
Xie Zhe nodded slightly: "I tend to trust him. He is a child, a human child."
"It's normal for children of this age to like fantasy, right?" Ling Huan thought. "Maybe he just made a mistake between what he imagined and reality. An adult will go crazy if he is greatly stimulated. What’s more, he’s a child. He tries his best to find ways to understand things that he can’t understand… This is normal, right?”
"What Ms. Ye said is absolutely true. In addition, some spells can affect people's spirits, so..."
They reached some kind of consensus. Xie Zhe turned his head and looked at the child again. He was still standing by the kang blankly, looking at the shadows with teeth and claws outside the window. He remained motionless, as if the noise that kept pouring into his ears didn't exist.
"Kid, what you just said was...'the past', right?" Han Chang seemed to have remembered something, and asked, "What about now? Since you are safely hiding here, why is the hallucination still not over?"
"...I think I realized that all this was an illusion." He stretched out his hands, looked at his real palms and backs for no apparent reason, and murmured, "Every day - every day the same thing happens. thing, day after day, until I really woke up. What I discovered was that I could never escape from this nightmare. I left 'me', and I saw 'me', which was simply... like Like a madman, he kept hacking and killing people in the village. They should all be people who lived with me day and night. I can't remember clearly. I only remember that the knife was very red, as if it was stained with blood. The white color has not been exposed for a moment. I don’t know why I want to kill, I want to kill everyone here. No man, woman, old or young, no one is spared, not even the livestock is spared... Why? What on earth do I want to do? What do you want to do? I can't stop, maybe I need to figure it all out. These words... It shouldn't be the first time I have said them. I always repeat the same meaningless words over and over again. thing."
The little boy spoke very slowly, and occasionally paused, maybe because he was imagining something in his mind, or maybe there was something wrong suddenly. He worked hard to organize his words and express everything he could think of. He might have really not spoken for a long time. Sometimes he lost his voice while talking, but his mouth was still moving, so they could make a rough guess based on the context. Rather than telling them, he seemed to be unconsciously reviewing himself, remembering in vain what he had forgotten.
"Hmm...what's your name? Do you remember it?" Ling Huan tried to ask, "We might be able to help you."
"Hey, actually I don't have much confidence." Han Chang shouted in a very small voice, "In my opinion, it is best to run away after dawn. There is no benefit in wasting time here."
Xie Zhe glared at him fiercely. What he disliked the most was the indifferent attitude of the monsters. Of course, what does human suffering mean to monsters? He didn't care that much about the truth of it all.
"Since you only care about yourself, you can leave." He said coldly, "It's enough for me to stay."
"Tsk, where's Miss Ye? Are you sure she's there?"
Before Xie Zhe could reply, he noticed that Ye Lingquan was already standing beside the boy again. He was once again confused about the name. It took him a long time to say such a sentence.
"No one seems to have ever asked me my name. So I...can't remember it very well."
"How could you forget your name?"
Ling Hu felt incredible. She thought that this kind of thing could only happen to Liudao Impermanence. She looked at the two people who were quarreling for no reason over there. They also shook their heads, with an expression of "you ask me who I ask."
"Everyone was more focused on...how to get out. No one cared who I was."
"How could it be? I care." Ling Huan comforted him, "Names are very important. What can you think of? The last time someone called you that or talked to you, they should have called you something. Right? We can't always be like us, one child at a time..."
She tried to guide him. The other two people actually knew that Ye Lingyu was under a lot of pressure. Naturally, she couldn't ignore the killing outside the door, but at the moment, she tried to focus all her attention on this child. He was indeed lovable, and it would have been better if he wasn't in such a harsh environment.
"Um...I-uh, I, I want to..."
The little boy's expression seemed to be a little painful, which he had never seen before. He closed his eyes, tightly, as if he was trying in vain to salvage a rusty needle from the ocean of memory. It was very small and colorless, as if it had melted into the sea.
Suddenly, he discovered something.
"maple……"
"maple?"
"...Feng." The boy opened his eyes, his expression almost desperate, "I can only remember this one word. This doesn't seem to be the beginning or the end, and I don't know if it is my name."
"Okay, Feng - okay." Ling Huan touched his soft hair and continued to comfort him, "It doesn't matter. It's Feng, right? Let's write it down first. No matter whether it is your name or not, no matter what it is. What is it? Since you still remember it, it is very important, right? Since it is very important, you should remember it more clearly."
The boy, Feng, nodded. Ye Lingyu needed more patience than she thought. In fact, now she knows that besides being patient and calm, what else can she do? She does have a lot of young cousins, and she has always been good at coaxing children. However, Xie Zhe didn't seem to be very optimistic about this little skill of hers.
"Be careful." He reminded her, hoping that she would remember that this guy was the most abnormal part of the whole abnormality.
"Wait a minute!" Han Zhang suddenly stepped forward with a solemn expression, "Xiao-Feng, keep thinking. Even if it's just this word, try to think more. You can do it, for yourself, For this village..."
Xie Zhe frowned and looked at him, with the four-character question "What are you doing" written on his face. Han Chang said softly that he felt Ling Yu's method worked. Even if it is an evil ghost, it does not mean that it must be eradicated with the most vicious means. Another kind of softness, as gentle as spring breeze and rain, but it is an effective weapon.
"I... think about it." Feng said softly, "I'm trying to think..."
The screams outside the window were closer. Xie Zhe's eyes kept moving between the window and the boy's face. He had a bad premonition, and what was worse, his premonitions were always frighteningly accurate.
