Tentacles from the [Flower] are tangled in the palace floor.
Zheng Xiu merged with the "mayfly", turning into an illusion and walking through the gaps in the roots.
The deeper he went, an indescribable feeling of palpitations surged into his heart. In his field of vision, a distortion like a black hole filled his "field of vision", creeping silently and slowly, making Zheng Xiu shudder.
After a while, Zheng Xiu finally arrived there and came to what Orange Cat called the "source of distortion".
It was completely dark in the huge hollow.
But in Zheng Xiu's vision, when he arrived here, it seemed as if a bright light was lit deep in the cave - at least in his vision at this moment, "that thing" entrenched in the center of the cave was "bright" It's like a light.
Yes, bright.
"That thing" was pure black, as smooth as a mirror, without any support. It just hung there out of nowhere, like a black mirror standing in mid-air. In the orange cat's field of vision, the thing was as bright as a guiding light, floating quietly in mid-air.
bass.
Lady Anne's "eye opening" lost its effectiveness at the right time, and Zheng Xiu's vision returned to normal. The sudden darkness made Zheng Xiu almost instinctively reach out and wave his hand in front of his eyes. Unexpectedly, the action of "reaching out" gave Zheng Xiu the illusion of playing with the waves in the "water", and the swinging trajectory brought out a piece of ink-colored light and shadow.
This familiar painting style made Zheng Xiu's breath hitch, and he almost gritted his teeth and said two words: "Chang An!"
Lady Anne nodded her head with a tigerish face, seeming to agree with Zheng Xiu's words: "It's very close."
The two stayed in place for a while.
Didn't come forward.
Five mayflies emerged from Zheng Xiu's chest and swam around. Zheng Xiu kept his feet on the ground.
Zheng Xiu stared straight at the "mirror" as dark as ink.
After a moment of silence, Lady Anne covered her nose with her paws and shook her head vigorously: "I really still hate this smell." After saying that, Lady Anne patted Zheng Xiu on the head: "Get closer."
"you sure?"
"I'm sure!"
Zheng Xiu took a few steps closer.
At this time, Zheng Xiu felt his feet hit several grooves of varying depths.
"Snapped."
He snapped his fingers and stretched out his index finger in the void. Zheng Xiu's fingertips shimmered and drew a lamp. Snapping his fingers again, the lamp actually turned into reality, floating quietly in front of the person and the cat, illuminating the surrounding area.
"What's this?"
With the dim light, Zheng Xiu checked the grooves on the ground.
The ravines crisscross the hollows, with some vague pattern hidden behind them. The shallow grooves have regular edges and seem to be man-made. Zheng Xiu squatted down and touched it with his fingers a few times. He was slightly startled. After taking a few steps forward, he saw that the distribution of grooves actually formed a regular circle, and the center of the circle was the mirror.
In front of the "mirror", there is a flat circular platform on the ground. The circular platform is empty and slightly protrudes from the ground.
Circles of grooves spread out around the "mirror" and "round cone".
Zheng Xiu carefully circled around the "mirror" and suddenly realized: "This is... a formation?"
When the word "formation" was spoken, even Zheng Xiu himself felt a little incredible. After Zheng Xiu came to this world, all the systems he saw revolved around "paths" and "magic techniques". Now he suddenly saw "things" that had never appeared in this world but seemed to have appeared as a matter of course. Zheng Xiu couldn't bear it. He kept showing strange expressions.
"Meow." Annie turned the cat's head and looked around. Her emerald-like cat pupils vividly revealed a look of disdain. She shook her head disdainfully and sneered: "Inferior technique."
Hearing this, Zheng Xiu frowned: "Do you understand?"
The orange cat crossed his arms over his chest and said arrogantly: "Stupid container, this is obvious."
"Annie, what about the frank talks and a united front?"
"Call Lady Anne."
"Lord Anne, please speak."
"Huh." Annie, who was depressed not long ago, now felt better because Zheng Xiu called "Ms. Annie". She said leisurely: "Stupid container, for the sake of your sincerity..."
"Don't be shameless."
"...It's a 'sacrificial' ritual."
"Sacrifice?"
There was a hint of dissatisfaction in Annie's voice: "Don't you even know the 'sacrifice' of the fish-lip container?"
"I know, I know." Zheng Xiu didn't know how to express his weird feeling. After thinking for a moment, Zheng Xiu asked: "The 'sacrifice' you mentioned is a kind of ritual, right? In ancient times, praying for blessings, praying to heaven and earth, and slaughtering pigs and sheep , praying for a good harvest or good weather.”
"Haha, stupid humans." The orange cat sneered without hesitation: "If you were a god, would you covet those pigs and sheep that are even worse than humans?"
"Haha, I can't say that." Zheng Xiu twitched the corner of his mouth and returned a "smile" expression.
I don’t know about other gods. For a mere god like you, I feel that offering baskets of fried fish cakes as a sacrifice can coax you into submission.
After thinking about it, Zheng Xiu decided to save some face for the nice Lady Anne. Under the increasingly ugly expression of the orange cat, Zheng Xiu Yuan Hua added: "I think it depends on the person... No, it depends on the person... Cat, ah!...I mean, it depends on God. For example, hobbies and so on. I have heard some fairy tales before. Some people like incense, some gods like boys and girls, and some gods are lustful. , some gods like fried fish cakes..."
"Fried fish cakes are not that delicious!" Hearing this, the orange cat seemed to have been stepped on in the tail, and his thoughts were right. The hair on his body exploded and he became angry. But not long after she was angry, she seemed to feel that this was not very convincing, and weakly put the hair back: "I am not a god."
"So, what is he sacrificing?"
Anne stared into the darkness.
She pointed to the edge of the cave: "Containers..."
Zheng Xiu's expression changed slightly, and he flicked his wrist to increase the output power. Suddenly, the floating "bright light" slowly rose into the sky and exploded above the heads of one person and one cat, shining as brightly as a small scorching sun.
Under the illumination of the light, Zheng Xiu finally had a panoramic view of the entire underground cavern of the palace. I saw that the stone walls of the cave were covered with withered vines. The vines were entangled and coiled, like human blood vessels, faintly pulsating with blood.
There were undulating outlines twisted in the tangled vines. Zheng Xiu opened his mouth wide and couldn't help but step forward to check. The next second, there was a burst of sourness in his stomach. Those babies are all clearly human.
They merged with the vines, as if they had been dead for a long time, but under the influence of some kind of power, their skins still maintained a fresh color and had not rotted.
The baby's corpse, the stone wall, and the vines all blend into one.
A terrifying chill silently surged up Zheng Xiu's back. It was hard for him to imagine that everything in front of him was done by the gentle and considerate Zheng Erniang.
In this world, without Zheng Erniang, there is only the current eldest princess Wei Ruyi.
Zheng Xiu accidentally explored Zheng Erniang's past in the "Eternal Night" world line, and finally found only a token engraved with the word "美". Zheng Xiu could not infer Zheng Erniang's life experience just from the word "Mei". But if it was "Wei Ruyi"... Zheng Xiu suddenly realized that it was Concubine Mei, a poor woman who had only appeared in the roster of the cold palace.
Zheng Xiu roughly figured out the outline of "real history". Twenty years ago, there must have been a palace fight in the harem of Wei Chen, which led to Wei Chen and Wei Ruyi falling into the civil society.
Among them, Wei Chen, a natural-born "usurper", escaped under the escort of Wang Cangyun, but accidentally encountered the "tidal convergence phenomenon" and died in Baili Village.
Wei Ruyi was adopted by Zheng Haoran and became Zheng Xiu's god-sister, Zheng Erniang.
When Zheng Xiu was immersed in the shocking sight of the stone wall in front of him.
The orange cat was in the center of the cave, taking elegant steps, one step, two steps, three steps, to the dark mirror.
As the orange cat approached, thin ripples appeared on the extremely smooth mirror surface. A faint red floral pattern flashed through the ripples.
"Elegance that never goes out of style."
"Annie, never say never."
The sun disk created by Zheng Xiu was like a flash in the pan, and its light gradually faded.
The orange cat's figure grew taller little by little, and she stood up with both feet forward. Her whole body was dark except for a plump and enchanting black shadow.
Her slender fingernails were sharp and flashed with pale light, tapping lightly on the mirror.
An instant later, Annie's fingertips were bounced away like an electric shock, and she looked at Zheng Xiu's back in surprise.
…
Zheng Xiu remained motionless.
Vines, babies, containers, rocks, darkness…
As a [painter], I am extremely sensitive to art. He watched quietly. He didn't know when. The scene in front of him, the baby's peaceful facial features, the texture of the vines, and the mottled stone walls. Every trace, every strand, was like a stroke on a painting. , every ink and every stain infiltrates something called "malice" into Zheng Xiu.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Zheng Xiu felt his temples on both sides vibrate like drumsticks, and it hurt.
The "understanding" called "malice" was like invisible tentacles, penetrating through his vision, infiltrating his perception, invading his sense of smell, roughly infecting his five senses, inserting into his brain, stirring crazily.
bass.
bass.
bass.
Suddenly, the baby corpses integrated with the vines on the stone wall opened their eyes one after another. The eyes were dark and lively, as if they were alive. All the eyes were black and white, staring unblinkingly at Zheng Xiu in front of the stone wall.
Gululu...
Gululu...
Zheng Xiu even heard the friction sound of the eyeballs rotating hard in the dry eye sockets!
The five mayflies floating around Zheng Xiu were extremely weak creatures. The moment the "baby" opened its eyes, five mayflies trembled and crawled into Zheng Xiu's arms.
Plop.
Zheng Xiu felt like he was falling into water.
A dark sea.
Boundless and profound.
There seemed to be hands in the dark water, pulling Zheng Xiu down and down.
Zheng Xiu looked down.
In the infinitely distant depths, in a place called the "Abyss", there is a twisted mass of tentacles, with a bright red bud wrapped in the center of the tentacles.
As Zheng Xiu sank, the "shy" buds opened little by little.
Among the flower buds, it was like a soft hotbed, on which lay a beautiful woman.
The woman smiled sweetly and waved to him, as if to say, come here.
The woman is in the center of the flower bud, in that wet hotbed, posing in eighteen different poses.
Zheng Xiu continued to sink, and he could vaguely see clearly that the woman's face was clearly that of Er Niang.
"Meow~"
In the infinite pitch-black deep sea, a jade foot as vast and pure as a planet tore open the deep sea and stepped on it.
boom!
Raging waves arose in the abyss, crushing all filth.
Bo~
"Meow~"
When Zheng Xiu came to his senses, Lady Anne pressed her pink flesh ball between Zheng Xiu's eyebrows with contempt on her face.
"This worthless container is now contaminated?"
"I..." Zheng Xiu opened his mouth. The next second, Annie patted Zheng Xiu's head thoughtfully, sighed like an old man, and sighed like "There is no way who made you like this": "I don't blame you, your physique is indeed easy to provoke them. .”
Annie's cute pink balls reminded Zheng Xiu once again of the fear of being dominated by Yuzu.
"How come I easily offend...them?"
The orange cat was stunned and pointed at himself.
Zheng Xiu suddenly shuddered. Thinking back to the woman I just saw in the bud.
He was almost contaminated just now.
Thanks to Yuzu.
"What kind of authority do you have!"
Zheng Xiu couldn't help but complain.
Why is Yuzu so domineering?
"Meow, you have no right to know."
Annie seemed to have no intention of answering Zheng Xiu's question.
"Can't you just ask out of curiosity?"
While Zheng Xiu was bickering with Annie, he looked around calmly and found that the eyes of the open-eyed babies around him were tightly closed, as if they had never been opened. Was the sight of those eyes staring at him just now an illusion, or were the remnant souls of those innocent babies really causing trouble?
Zheng Xiu is not sure.
Anne raised a paw and smiled: "I have already told you that our existence is supreme, even if it is the real name, the tip of the iceberg of our power, even if you understand a little more, see a little more, and get closer A little bit, for your fragile human soul, is also a devastating, fatal, and indelible impact."
Anni was afraid that Zheng Xiu wouldn't believe it, so she clapped her paws, squeezed the fleshy balls of her palms, and made a "pop, pop, pop" sound: "Once I tell you, you will be like a humble and insignificant scum gnat." They were trampled to pieces, leaving nothing behind."
Zheng Xiu believed it.
These "evil spirits" from Chang Dark have their own "pollution" properties. If you look at them too much, you will lose your mind.
Zheng Xiu was silent.
"Are you feeling guilty?" Orange Cat squatted in front of Zheng Xiu and tilted his head: "I can't understand."
"You don't understand." Zheng Xiu believed that the deaths of these babies were all because he entered the ancient battlefield regardless of the consequences, and even went his own way to save his father. Therefore, he came to Red Point, with both parents and a lovely wife, as if everything was wonderful. But everything in the world has its own destiny. Therefore, Feng Bei cut off the "reason" and disappeared from the world. Except for Zheng Xiu, everything he was familiar with seemed to be cast in a tragic color.
Is there no happy ending in the world?
Why? Why must Dad and the others die?
Zheng Xiu didn't understand, so he felt guilty.
Lady Anne couldn't understand Zheng Xiu's thoughts, let alone sympathize with him, and sneered: "Hehe~stupid human being, hehe~the foolish guilt, hehe~the expression of weakness."
She first sneered three times in a row. When she lowered her head and looked up, she noticed that Zheng Xiu looked ugly. She thought for a moment, then lightly jumped on Zheng Xiu's shoulder, and patted Zheng Xiu's head gently with her meat ball.
Perhaps even Lady Anne didn't realize that her hesitant behavior was somewhat comforting. She patted and patted, raised her head and looked up across the cave, and then sighed softly: "I discovered the source of the distortion."
Zheng Xiu was stunned.
"This is also the reason why your 'Ghost'... let's call it Ghost, is infinitely expanded and twisted to the extreme, and then permanently anchored."
Lady Anne raised a paw meaningfully: "You have fulfilled a wish, so because of this wish, all the artifacts in it have twisted out a 'knot', a 'knot' that is almost impossible to resolve. '. In order to resolve the contradiction caused by this 'knot', and because of your appearance, here..."
"Hee hee hee!"
suddenly.
A burst of rich laughter came from above.
Whoosh, whoosh, a few cold rays passed through Zheng Xiu's chest almost silently.
Ripples appeared on Zheng Xiu's chest. Zheng Xiu didn't need to look back. He knew that what passed through his body was a flying knife.
The monk touched his bald head, hanging upside down, his feet like magnets attached to the stone wall above his head, and laughed: "Sure enough, the mouse got in."
A slender hand appeared from behind Zheng Xiu, pierced Zheng Xiu's back, and grabbed Zheng Xiu's chest.
At the same time, a gentle tune sounded. He walked out with a reed leaf in his mouth. The melodious tune hit his ears. At first, Zheng Xiu saw birds singing, flowers fragrant, mountains high and water far away. Then the tune suddenly changed, sharp as a knife, and Zheng Xiu's eyes flashed with flowers. Standing on a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, his eyes became a purgatory on earth.
Above the head, vines grew out one after another. The vines grew rapidly and grew at a speed visible to the naked eye. A huge flower flower grew out. The petals opened and inside sat Zheng Xiu's familiar face, the eldest princess, Wei Ruyi.
"Zheng Haoran's son?"
When Wei Ruyi saw Zheng Xiu's face clearly, she was a little surprised and showed a thoughtful expression.
In just an instant, Zheng Xiu was surrounded.
Zheng Xiu was only surprised for a moment, then looked at the orange cat in disbelief.
The orange cat seemed to have completely ignored the changes in front of him and the appearance of the "enemies", and was still chattering: "...Okay, Red Dot, the damn Red Dot was born. This is the 'answer' obtained by the calculation. In the end, Yu's 'solution'. Everything is to make the existence of this 'knot' reasonable."
The orange cat finished speaking in one breath and looked at Zheng Xiu calmly: "Don't you understand? It doesn't matter."
"You... you will understand once you die."
The orange cat slapped Zheng Xiu.
Bo~
The ball-shaped light group pushed Zheng Xiu behind.
Behind him is the mirror, which is considered to be the entrance or the exit at the same time.
"Outsiders! Damn it!"
Wei Ruyi's bright eyes on the flower buds turned black in an instant.
Rumble…
The ground collapsed and boulders fell.
The last scene of Zheng Xiu being sucked in by Chang An was the orange cat with its back turned to him, waving at him, and the next second it was submerged by countless twisted roots.
