Li Li showed a meaningful smile and said, "I've seen you on camera several times, sir."
"You're not doing anything good anyway, are you?"
"In my opinion, most of the time you were just wandering around. But there were a few times that impressed me very much. By the way, Mr. Zhou Yu, I remember that when you first explored the sewers, my equipment was unfortunately used by you. That keen-eyed friend noticed that you were wearing a bright yellow sportswear that I lent to Ms. Zhou Yu. Its style was modeled after a deceased martial arts actor. To be honest, I quite liked it. of."
"...Do you want me to compensate?"
"I'm just suggesting that you change your style of dressing once in a while, sir. Life will be much more interesting that way."
Zhou Yu lowered his head and glanced at the suit and shirt he was wearing. He didn't even think Zhou Yu could match the ponytail.
The old man in front walked into a residential building. Because it was an old-style community, the floors were not very high, and there was no elevator installed. This made Zhou Yu frown involuntarily when he saw the stairs.
The old man was like a zombie in a ghost story, barely bending his knees as he bounded up the stairs. Seeing that he was about to disappear around the corner, Zhou Yu threw away the obstructive crutch, grabbed the rusty iron railing next to him, and gritted his teeth to catch up with him.
Li Li supported him beside him. Fortunately, when he reached the third floor, the old man stopped in front of the door closest to the stairs.
The dilapidated, rust-red security door had an upside-down word "福" stuck on it, as if it was a deliberate irony. When the old man approached, there was a very clear "click" sound from the door lock, and it immediately opened on its own.
The old man went indoors and put on his slippers in the entrance hall. Because he couldn't bend down, his posture when changing shoes seemed particularly strange and awkward: first he waddled like a penguin to get rid of the cloth shoes on his feet, and then he kept kicking his feet forward, trying to put his toes in. In slippers.
Zhou Yu, who witnessed this scene, not only couldn't find it funny, but felt inexplicably depressed. Even when he witnessed the old man's sudden change on the train, he was not as unhappy as in this state.
Finally, the old man put on his shoes and walked towards the bedroom. He walked to the bedside in the darkness, sat down facing the window, and then his figure became motionless.
The two of them followed into the room. When Li Li turned on the light next to the door, the old man's back remained unresponsive.
"...Li Li?"
"As you can see, sir, this is the final destination for our traveling companion."
With slight confusion, Zhou Yu walked around the end of the bed and came to the front of the old man. He found that the old man's expression was constantly changing. His smile that had been fixed on the train gradually disappeared, his wrinkles deepened, and his eyes became blank. That is the state of a lonely person who has insomnia late at night.
Contrary to his tired look, the silver strands on his head were mixed with a little black hair, blending into mottled gray. This rejuvenation phenomenon lasted very short, and stopped completely in about ten seconds. Apart from his hair color, the old man's face has hardly changed.
Just when Zhou Yu was in a daze, Li Li also walked over from the door.
“When I found that I couldn’t leave Migenzhu City too far, I started to try to change the way I studied this matter.” She said, “For example, I managed to visit a professor at Migenzhu University who was majoring in macroeconomics. He is very insightful. I asked him about the industrial structure of Migenzhu City, and the answer he got was very interesting. He said that Migenzhu City is a typical service industry city, such as catering and entertainment industries - but I noticed that when I When asked about the status of tourism, he became vague. The proportion of industry is about 20%, and agriculture is almost non-existent. This made me curious. It is obvious that the cultivated land in the city is not enough to meet the needs of the population. So, then Where does the food in supermarkets and wet markets come from? I had to go and investigate the logistics industry here, and then the matter became more complicated, forcing me to pay attention to land prices and weather issues. In just a few months, Over time, I almost became an expert on this city.”
Perhaps remembering some unpleasant past events, she waved her hand as if to shoo away flies, and then continued: "I have taken many detours, and there is no need to go into details about the process. When I realized that I had been ignoring one of the oldest and most important It was only when I became one of the industries that I understood the significance of the existence of Cage City - Mr. Zhou Yu, have you ever seen a cemetery in Migenzhu City?"
Zhou Yu was stunned for a while, shook his head and said, "I didn't pay attention."
"Cemetery, this is an indispensable building for human settlements." Li Li said, "People want to avoid it, but they have to build it. If Migenzhu is really isolated from the world, it must have a place to bury the dead. . In fact, it does exist, located in the northern suburbs of the city. However, when I counted the number of graves in the entire cemetery and the age groups of the deceased, I realized that this did not match the population structure of the city. Most of the people buried there The people were all quite young and died of accidents or sudden illnesses. And, although I have no clear evidence, there are various signs that they all came from other places. So where are the old people who settled here buried? My conclusion is that when their When their lifespan is about to end, they will come to Cage City, recreate the scene of a certain moment ten years ago, and then freeze that moment forever. They are not buried underground, but fill the scenery of the old city. Here is A cage dedicated to holding specimens.”
"Wait a minute, according to what you said, will everyone go back to a certain day ten years ago? Then there will be a contradiction? If two people who died on different dates happened to be in the same position ten years ago... ...How to deal with this kind of conflicting situation? Overlap the two people?"
"I believe that if this situation really occurs, there will be a corresponding set of rules to deal with it. However, according to my observation, this has not happened so far."
"Aren't there even places like elevators and parking lots? It should be easy to use the same location, right? As long as the time span is long enough, such a small probability event is inevitable."
Li Li looked at him deeply and repeated: "If the time span is long enough."
This time Zhou Yu understood what she meant.
"This can only be a conjecture, sir," she said. "Of the three places that the train can reach, Cage City is the one closest to a modern city, although you can still see things that would have been popular ten years ago. Old style home appliances, and everything that can express the year is written ten years ago. So I guess that this city follows the same mechanism as its residents. Its ten years ago is not relative to Migenzhu or ours. Ten years ago, but ten years before the moment of its death. However, if all its population comes from Migenzhu, we can also make an inference based on the number of people here: its 'death time' distance It’s not that far away now.”
"Does it matter?"
"Obviously, it is of great importance. I have studied the city map and architecture of Migenzhu in detail, and I can guarantee that there is no city in the country that is so similar to it. However, the history of Migenzhu itself is full of ambiguities and contradictions. There is no history here. A historical celebrity has no scenic spots, no special food or dialect. Can you imagine a region with a long history but leaving no trace of its customs? This is what I want to say, Mr. Zhou Yu, if everyone now A dead old man of Migenzhu can find his place in Cage City, so the real history of Migenzhu is no more than ten years. It is a temporary ecological box built to support ants. The previous box was called Cage City was Hongluo a hundred years ago, and Wangshu a thousand years ago. As our group of ants is updated and iterated, the owner is constantly replacing the boxes. However, out of a certain mentality, he keeps the old boxes "Put it aside to collect and preserve the dead ants - it's a really weird fun thing."
