It started to rain outside, pattering.
Bai Su put away his hand, and returned the white buds to his fingertips, temporarily sparing the lives of the humans on the ground.
I don’t know when the rain fell. Perhaps after the first drop of water fell from the eaves and hit the stone slabs with a snapping sound, the rain shone from illusion into reality.
The black-haired young man left the two humans in the room, opened the door, and was greeted by a moist and fresh mountain rain scent.
Bai Su quickly closed the door and helped the people in the room to close the windows to prevent them from catching cold due to the draft.
He is truly a monster who cares about humanity.
Bragging in his heart, Bai Su poked his head out from under the eaves, stretched out his hand, and felt the rain falling on his palm, and then slipping between his fingers.
The rain seems to be just ordinary rain, nothing special.
Rather, it is a strange thing why it rains here.
When the Internet was still available in the afternoon, everyone also checked the weather forecast. I forgot about the ones that I had missed, but I took a rough look at the future. It should be without rain for three days in a row.
What's more, there are no clouds in the sky.
A pale crescent moon hung high in the dark sky, and the rain that came from nowhere just poured down, making the already wet ground even more muddy.
The black-haired young man stood in the yard and looked up at the sky. He couldn't find any clouds after looking for a long time.
Bai Su rummaged through his meager knowledge of natural phenomena. Even solar rain requires the existence of clouds, so should moon rain?
After standing in the rain for a while, the black-haired young man suddenly listened, and then his feet moved.
Bai Su walked toward the courtyard wall.
He hesitated between holding on to the wall or sitting on the persimmon tree in the yard, and chose the latter.
The tree can also provide some shade if you sit on it.
So the black-haired young man lightly jumped onto the tree. He leaned on the tree trunk and looked out, seeing lights floating faintly on the road in the village in the distance.
There was also a light fog covering the village where it was raining. The fog was not thick but it still reduced the visibility a bit.
The light flickered and came closer and closer. When he got closer, Bai Su realized that it was a villager wandering on the road with a flashlight. His face seemed to have been glanced at during the day. The person had been introduced by Wen Jianyuan.
During the day, the name of the village was still a simple and honest face, but when it rained late at night, that face changed.
The black-haired young man raised his hands in front of his eyes as if they were telescopes, but in fact, under the cover of the rain curtain, a white branch twisted and stretched out from the treetops.
The branches are obviously white, but they are not so dazzling under the cover of night and rain.
Getting closer, Bai Su saw that the villager's face, which should have belonged to a human, had become deformed. It started to bulge forward from the midline of the face, especially the chin, the tip of the nose, and the forehead, which were bulging. Gotta be a little ugly.
The same is true for the rest of the body, as if a fisheye filter is installed. The two eyes are no longer flat on the surface, but are embedded in one on the left and one on the right. The ears also have the shape of some fish fins. .
If Bai Su was asked to comment, he felt that humans are still a bit like fish at the moment.
But...is this how the mermaid is dressed?
Bai Su reviewed some fantasy stories written by humans and believed that the forms transformed by the villagers were more like fish-men than mermaids.
The former has a human body and a fish tail, while the latter has a fish head and human legs.
The former can be beautiful...oh no, it can also be ugly.
Bai Su thought of some human horror movies, such as The Dirty Mermaid, which were so ugly that they were off-putting.
That seems to be one of the few thriller movies that Bai Su has judged as not being suitable for eating.
But the fish-man is undoubtedly ugly. No matter how you put the human legs and the fish head together, it is a strange scene. Fortunately for the villagers outside the courtyard, the mutation is not so outrageous and they still have their hands.
The villagers walked closer and closer with flashlights swaying, as if they were just patrolling aimlessly.
When they reached the end of the path, which was the door of the house where they lived, the villagers' heads turned towards the door with a murmur.
He was observing something, his bulging eyes looked up and down, and finally he raised the hand that was not holding the flashlight, with his fingers spread out like a frog, with several thin toe webs connected between the fingers.
I don’t know what he touched or left behind on the door. The villagers stayed close to the door for a long time.
He stayed for a long time, and Bai Su couldn't help but lower his eyes from the sky.
There was only one eyeball sticking out there, and since the villagers alone couldn't see him, he generously walked around behind the villagers to observe.
There was a slippery slime on the door, as if an aquatic creature had crawled over and left traces of its presence.
——Also like a mark.
The fish-eyed villager who was concentrating on painting on the door was happily doing it. Suddenly, his bulging eyes caught something, and he turned his head suddenly.
However, he saw nothing.
In the blind spot of the fish-eye perspective, an eyeball hanging in the air followed the villagers around.
The villager turned around in a circle, perhaps because he could never find anything he cared about in his 160-degree field of vision. In the end, he could only turn his head back suspiciously, continue to face the door, and repeat his words. action.
And his eyes swayed, remembering something.
The mobile phone has no signal but is not malfunctioning. In other words, he can use some functions that are not connected to the Internet.
For example, the camera function.
The eyeball slowly and leisurely retracted, and when it reappeared, it changed its shape. Slender branches protruded from both sides, and five thinner branches branched out from the ends, shaped like fingers.
The "hand" held the phone in front of his eyeballs and adjusted the angle.
The camera that turned off the sound and flash in advance did not attract the attention of the fish-eye villagers. Bai Su even took photos from several angles, completely recording his movements outside the villagers' sight.
You can show it to humans later, and if they ask... just say that you had trouble sleeping at night.
He moved his eyeballs nonchalantly, still holding the phone seriously.
After the villager painted the door panel, as if he had completed a task, he staggered back a few steps.
Only then did Bai Su notice that the villagers' shoes didn't fit their feet. To be precise, something had grown on the soles of their feet, pushing up the shoes and leaving several gaps.
It seems that people's feet have also changed. Are they the same toe webs as the hands?
The fish-eyed villager looked at the gate with satisfaction and nodded his head up and down.
The villagers planned to go back the same way they came, and just raised the flashlight and walked the way they came. But after walking a few steps, when Bai Su was about to recover his eyeballs and mobile phones, there was a rustling sound in the woods on the roadside. movement.
Bai Su heard it, and the fish-eye villagers also heard it after a few beats.
Then, the villager suddenly turned his head to look in the direction of the sound, his whole back arched like a frightened beast, and at the same time, he squeezed out a gurgling roar from his throat.
The light of the flashlights turned towards the woods together. Soon, under the light, a dark shadow suddenly appeared in the woods.
Familiar shadows, familiar attacks, but the purpose seems slightly different.
Bai Su raised his eyes immediately, and the mobile phone he held was also hanging high in the sky.
The rainwater that changed its falling point with the direction of the wind splashed a few water marks in front of the camera. The white branches stretched out their slender buds and wiped them. After wiping them for a long time, they were still wet. They simply stretched themselves out and condensed the slender branches. Umbrella-shaped for shelter from wind and rain, and finally to zoom in on the phone.
After he finished these steps, the person and shadow below him started fighting.
It may not be appropriate to fight, because the combat effectiveness of the two seems a bit worrying to Bai Su, and it is more like a turn-based back and forth.
The fish-eyed villager jumped forward and dropped the flashlight, leaving a pool of mucus on the ground. At the same time, a black shadow shot out and scratched the villager's exposed neck, cutting a wound.
Dark red blood immediately flowed down, and the villagers howled in pain, then turned around and grabbed hard, at a completely different speed than before. They waved their hands downwards, and the toe webs scraped some black mud, and hammered the black mud to the ground. .
- They are hostile.
It’s not hard to see this as the phone camera keeps zooming in.
Bai Su felt that this fish-eyed villager could no longer be completely classified as a human being. The few wounds made by the black sludge did not cause the coma that would occur to ordinary humans, but his movements were a little slower.
The result of the battle was that the fish-eyed villager finally won. He picked up a broken branch on the roadside and threw it like a harpoon. The broken branch stained with mucus penetrated the black mud and nailed it to the ground.
The fish-eye villager walked over slowly and crawled to the ground.
The camera couldn't capture what he did specifically. By the time Bai Su controlled his eyeballs and put down his phone, the villagers had already gotten up from the ground.
The black mud on the muddy ground disappeared, leaving only a broken branch stuck in the mud.
After that, the Yuyan villagers ignored the abrupt branches and swayed back to pick up the flashlight with a broken lampshade. They still walked back as if the fighting episode had never happened.
Bai Su felt strange after witnessing all this.
He took back his phone, pressed the red circle to end shooting, and repeatedly dragged the progress bar of the recorded video.
The black-haired young man turned his head and looked inside the house, then looked thoughtfully at the muddy path outside the courtyard.
He took his wet hair and circled it twice around his fingertips, and finally got down from the tree from the bottom of his heart.
…
Cold, very cold.
The icy cold lake water rushed in from all directions, forcing him to fall downwards.
Unable to control himself, Gao Tianyi could only let his consciousness rise and fall with "Wen Tao"'s body.
Shen didn't sink to the bottom of the lake, but he kept rising and falling and holding his breath again. Occasionally, he would choke on water because he couldn't breathe in time.
The feeling of choking on water is not good, it is not pain, but it is deprived of the right to breathe. The liquid between the mouth and nose is constantly pouring in, squeezing out the space for oxygen, forcing the person to hold his neck while struggling.
Huh...huh...huh.
The sound of heavy breathing was not like that of a child. "Wen Tao" once again got a chance to escape from the water, pressing her neck with one hand and grabbing the clothes on her chest with the other hand.
Water poured down in front of her eyes like a curtain of rain. It was water dripping from her bangs on her forehead. The "girl's" clothes and hair were all wet and stuck to her body. She was even more uncomfortable than when she dived before.
They are being punished.
Because he didn't listen to the adults, he went to a place he shouldn't be.
The man just pulled all the children ashore and gave them a scolding. Gao Tianyi thought that was the end. Unexpectedly, the man smiled sinisterly and asked them, "Who has got into the water?"
There were not many children who responded at first, but after repeated questioning by adults, some raised their hands themselves, and some were pointed out by others. After several times of pointing out, all the children who had been in the water were taken out.
"If you like to play with water...then play as much as you can."
As the adults spoke, they drove the children into the lake and pressed their heads to let them be immersed in the water again and again. Those who resisted would be suppressed. Compared with the strength of adults, the strength of children is nothing.
Of course, "Wen Tao" was also one of the people who was pushed into the water, and her situation seemed to be more complicated.
The adults looked at her and whispered, but Gao Tianyi couldn't hear a word.
He could only hear the silenced sentences. The adults' words mentioned "Wen Tao's" parents and what "Wen Tao's" parents had handed over.
what is it then? His consciousness sank into the water in the next second, interrupting Gao Tianyi's thoughts.
When he could breathe again, he found that there were fewer people on the shore and fewer children were being pushed into the water.
But there were no small footprints on the path towards the shore. Gao Tianyi couldn't help but turned his head and looked towards the center of the lake.
Nothing was seen. The lake was still as sparkling as when he came. Only the area covered by clouds had changed. The areas close to the shore now looked gloomy.
"Aren't you leaving yet?" The adult beside him seemed to have left, and the adult whose face he couldn't see clearly was about to reach the shore.
Walk? Didn't they notice there were fewer people?
Gao Tianyi opened his mouth, and his control over his body seemed to have returned. The young man heard the girl ask in her voice: "Where are the others? Where is Wen [——]?"
The first half of the sentence was said by Gao Tianyi himself, and the second half was the consciousness of "Wen Tao".
The adults on the shore seemed to feel strange and replied to Gao Tianyi: "Wen [——]? Didn't that kid leave with his father a long time ago? When his father taught him a lesson, something cut off his feet. , I should be going to the village health center now."
Gao Tianyi blinked in confusion, not knowing when this happened.
Dreams do not require logic.
Gao Tianyi climbed onto the shore at the urging of the adults whose faces he couldn't see clearly. The lake was still sinking, but he dragged his legs forward as if he was used to it.
The adults were waiting there. When Gao Tianyi came ashore, they put a coat on him and led him from the road to the village.
Gao Tianyi began to memorize the route silently, hoping to come to the lake to see it after waking up from the dream.
After walking for a while, the adult whose face he couldn't see clearly turned around and started talking to "Wen Tao". He said that it was wrong for "Wen Tao" to sneak away to the lake with others this time.
"This is something that is forbidden in the village. Now that you have violated the taboo, you are probably still famous among some of the people in charge of the village... You also have to think about your parents. Your parents are originally [——]... …In case something happens then…”
The adult whose face could not be seen clearly did not finish his words. He just shook his head and kept silent.
Gao Tianyi seemed to know the identity of the other party. The familiar tone and attitude - it should be Wen Jianyuan.
Wen Jianyuan sent "Wen Tao" all the way back. When he passed by his house, he changed the coat covering "Wen Tao" into a towel and said there was no need to return it.
In the end, Gao Tianyi stood at the entrance of the courtyard like a drowned rat, looking at each other with his "parents" inside.
"You..." Tang Nuo pushed up his glasses, "Did you go into the water?"
(End of chapter)
