The word Nibelungen comes from German and refers to the people who live in Niflheim, the "Land of Fog" in Nordic mythology. It is also called the "Land of the Dead" in Nordic mythology and is closely connected to the land of the underworld. , since there is no clear boundary with the underworld, only the souls of the dead will echo in this land, and the name "The Kingdom of the Dead" is worthy of its name.
Su Xiaoqiang had been exposed to Nordic mythology, but did not understand it deeply. However, no matter how shallow the theology was, she could tell that this was not a good place. As for the name of the Lord of Bronze and Fire, she had actually heard of it, and Yu Linnian helped her popularize it. I learned about it when I was reading "Dragon Genealogy", an introduction to dragon history.
The four great monarchs hidden in the depths of history, the noble first generation species, the controllers of earth, fire and feng shui, no more titles can describe their greatness. The text of history says that humans learned fire, not because of the flames caused by lightning striking trees. , but the monarch named Norton gave mankind the knowledge of "fire", so mankind learned to drill wood to make fire and awakened the original line of bronze and fire spirits.
The Sahara Desert where oases instantly turned into dust, Attila's destruction of Western Rome, the fire of Rome in AD 64, the mysterious drying up of Lop Nur, the Sea of Death... there are countless histories behind them that have made people look at them from a distance and feel panic. The shadow of that king.
It is a flat knitting machine that spans millions of years. The majestic atmosphere of history makes its silhouette so huge that it is awe-inspiring and terrifying. Those who face it are like facing the entire history of mankind, with a sense of heaviness and oppression. The feeling was overwhelming, but even so, the hybrids had made it their lifelong goal to kill him, and they had pursued him for centuries, until today everything seemed to have finally come to an end.
"This is the Nibelung of the Lord of Bronze and Fire." The man whispered, as if he was reciting the whispers of a nightmare. Anyone who heard it would feel pain or hatred, and they would hug their knees with a distorted face or resentment. Staring resentfully at the man who brought up old things again.
But so what, the man did not shut up because of the fear caused by those sights. He just stated the most straightforward and unvarnished reality, the plight of everyone in this room and this entire castle-like villa.
"...Where are the mixed-races? Don't you care about the mixed-races?" After letting go of the restrained man, Su Xiaoqiang on the sofa immediately asked this common-sense question. Although he had only been in contact with Kassel Academy for a short time, But Ling Ling Zongzong also roughly knows what the world really looks like.
No matter how creepy and terrifying the background of the world is, the real world is still dominated by humans and hybrids. Pure-blooded noble dragons are not hunters, humans are the real hunters. The resurrection of such a king should be the first to cause trouble. Ant colonies are usually hunted by hybrids, right?
He twisted his sore arms and sat back on the sofa... After seeing Su Xiaoqiang's gaze, he thought for a moment and sat on the ground beside the sofa. There was nothing wrong with them at this point anyway.
But after the man heard the question Su Xiaoqiang subconsciously asked, he looked at her with a particularly strange look, but suddenly he sobbed twice and couldn't say anything. He lowered his head so that Su Xiaoqiang could not see his face clearly. expression (the reason for the beard and hair cannot be seen clearly).
"It's all dead... It's all dead. Whether it's humans or hybrids, they all died in the war. Those monsters are simply unstoppable... Even humans have their secret hands. How can we be an opponent when we are dealing with internal and external problems?"
"Are you dead?" Su Xiaoqiang's face suddenly tightened, but then suddenly relaxed - she was reminding herself that although she didn't know what the situation was, this place should be just an illusion... In her perception, the world was still that world. Singing and dancing, everything was peaceful, and there were at least half-breeds running around the world slaying dragons and grabbing alchemy items. How could it be possible that the world would end as soon as I woke up?
...Unless she "travels" like the heroines on the Danmei platform... But she is not a stupid girl who doesn't believe in those things at all.
Quietly, she grabbed her arm again, but she still felt no pain. I heard others said that people can't feel pain in dreams. Was she really dreaming? Before the dream, she was still in the 3e exam room, so this was her...spiritual vision?
Lin Nian's voice still lingered in her mind. She was clear about the situation, reaction, and composition of the spiritual vision, but she still couldn't be sure whether it was the so-called spiritual vision or something worse... If this was Doesn't the spiritual vision mean that she is a pure "hybrid" like Lin Nian?
His mind was in chaos, and it was impossible not to be in chaos. Anyone in Su Xiaoqiang's situation would be confused. In comparison, Su Xiaoqiang was even calmer now. He could also restrain his impetuous emotions and try to straighten out the current situation one by one. ——But if Lin Nian were here, everyone in the room would have been sitting in rows with guns pointed at their heads to answer his questions one by one. After all, it was still a question of the strength of the wrist.
"How...how is it outside now?" Su Xiaoqiang asked after considering his words.
"Outside? Where do you mean outside?" The man surprisingly did not dig into the various bizarre reactions shown by Su Xiaoqiang. Compared with the other "dead people" in the room who were as desperate as the walking dead, in front of Su Xiaoqiang he It seems more "lively".
Although he still had a strong aura of decay, his dialogue still seemed relatively normal... at least it was much better than the Indian who had been pinned to the ground and howled and cried in agony.
"It's just outside the house." Su Xiaoqiang didn't quite understand what the man meant. He looked around and hesitated and asked, "Why do you want to hide in a place like this?"
"Because we will really die if we don't hide here..." The man stared at Su Xiaoqiang for a while and realized that the other party was serious about this question, and lowered his head with a wry smile. He now really understood that this girl really didn't understand her situation. She didn't even seem to know what environment she was in before she asked such stupid questions.
"What's outside the house?" Su Xiaoqiang keenly heard the meaning of this sentence. In addition, a voyeur could only tell from the wooden strips on the sealed windows of this huge living room that these people were not hiding here. Like a beggar, he willingly joins the group to keep warm, but he has no choice but to huddle in this place...shelter? It was the closest thing to the truth she could get out of her mouth.
Since this place may be a refuge, it is naturally to avoid some kind of "disaster", plus the words similar to "Lord of Bronze and Fire" and "Nibelung" that the other party mentioned before, even if the man has not answered yet, Su Xiaoqiang As he sank lower and lower, his somewhat cold heart roughly guessed the answer.
"Deadpool." The man answered.
Su Xiaoqiang took a slight breath, and the smell of copper in her mouth made her sneeze again. Why did she still have this wonderful stimulating feeling when she no longer felt pain... She was no stranger to the deadpool that the man said, Pearl Tower She could still remember the incident clearly, it was a nightmare that she would never forget.
Those pale dead cheeks, and the power that is strong enough to tear human body limbs into pieces, the monster named Deadpool has long become the source of fear in her heart that she does not want to touch. If there is something that scares her most when she comes into contact with Cassel Academy, it is undoubtedly those "Deadpools". Even though Lin Nian and Professor Guderian have explained that Deadpools are not such common and crowded creatures, she is still Full of fear of this monster.
Seeing the resistance and fear in Su Xiaoqiang's eyes, the man shook his head and breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the girl knew about common sense, otherwise there would be too many things to explain. He wanted to say it for a while. There may not be enough to say.
"How long have you been trapped here?" Su Xiaoqiang didn't even ask the man why no one came to save them. She already had a rough idea from the previous conversation... It seems that the background of this dream is the end of the world? Of course, when the world ends, there won't be all the reinforcements. Being trapped in a room with a group of dead men and lingering is tantamount to waiting for death. It's no wonder that this place is filled with despair.
The man did not answer Su Xiaoqiang's question, but pointed to a wall in the distance. Su Xiaoqiang looked up and saw scratches on the wall one after another... They should be markings that record time. Someone used a blunt instrument to scratch the wall. Left behind on the wallpaper, four vertical lines were interspersed by one horizontal line to form a group representing the five days, and this kind of engraving... took up the entire wall!
Su Xiaoqiang was a little shocked, but he still counted numbly. There were 400 sets of scratches in total. If one set of scratches was counted as 5 days...a shocking and desperate number was born.
5 years.
This group of people was trapped here for 5 years.
"What have you been eating and drinking all these years?" Su Xiaoqiang asked a common question. Although there are not many people here, if you want to supply food rations for five years unless there is a basement full of food, and the stored food is still It has to be concentrated munitions so that it makes sense.
"Is this your first time entering the Nibelung? We don't need to eat... Everything in the Nibelung is 'dead', and 'dead people' naturally don't need food or even excretion." The man Said, "There may have been fights over food during the formation of the Nibelungs, but later we discovered that we did not need food to survive and there were no more fights... We will not die, but The body will only get closer to 'dead matter'."
He opened his clothes to reveal his skinny abdomen. The shocking scene made Su Xiaoqiang couldn't help but turn his head to avoid it.
"If we are not really killed here, we may be able to wait until the day when we become dry skeletons." The man said with a sad smile, his eyes full of pain and helplessness.
No wonder the people in the room were not surprised by Su Xiaoqiang's arrival... To them, she was just another poor person who strayed into the Nibelung Sea of Bronze Trees. Finding this refuge was her only luck and misfortune. In this place, one day the clothes on her body will rot and her clothes will not cover her body. The body that was originally desired will rot and shrink, becoming a skinny monster, no different from them. Everything is just a matter of time.
"Have you never thought about escaping?" Su Xiaoqiang shuddered slightly, hugged her knees on the sofa and asked in a low voice.
"We can't escape... There is a maze in the sea of bronze trees outside. The maze is full of ferocious dead warriors. Some people broke down and rushed out, but they were killed by things in the sea of bronze trees before they could escape a hundred meters. ." The man said quietly.
"Sea of Bronze Trees...So we are in a forest?" Su Xiaoqiang paused. How could such a mansion (visual inspection from the living room) be built in a sea of bronze trees?
But when he met the man's eyes, he suddenly realized that he had asked a stupid question... The man had already told him where this place was.
The Nibelungs, home of the Lord of Bronze and Fire.
It was not that there was a sea of trees first and then a house, but that there was a house first and then a sea of trees. The dragon king forged a majestic dark forest made of bronze trees between the roaring heaven and the earth. Countless dead waiters and The corpse guard wanders in the bronze forest, and the center of the sea of trees is naturally the Dragon King's palace, the palace made of bronze - Baidi City.
"No one can leave Nibelungen without the permission of the monster in the Bronze City. No one can come to save us. People here have given up hope." The man said.
"But you are not dead either." Su Xiaoqiang whispered.
"..." The man opened his mouth, then closed it, revealing a miserable smile.
"How did you get here...or where was this place originally?" Su Xiaoqiang asked in a low voice. She didn't mind asking more questions before the dream ended.
She had a hunch that compared to the man and these poor people being trapped in this illusion called "Nibelungen", she was just a passer-by when she came here, and she was not worried that she would be left here as well. ..She will leave...and soon...This is an unfounded but extremely certain premonition from the depths of my mind. It is really like a dream to determine the continuation and development of the dream.
"Everyone knew this place before, the north bank of the Yangtze River, the Three Gorges Qutang Gorge in Fengjie County...the gate to the Three Gorges." The man said, "I traveled here with my girlfriend five years ago...until we stood at the Kuimen Langyan Fort. When I saw the corpse of the 'dragon' floating underwater at the scenic spot, it was too late... His body blocked the wide river area, and the cruise ship hit his broken right wing and was stabbed by cracked bones... Then He came back to life and climbed towards the mountain. He stood at the highest point of the Three Gorges and flapped his wings and roared. The peaks of the canyon collapsed, causing water roars and mudslides. My girlfriend and I fainted, and when we woke up we found ourselves We were already in the Nibelungs, and we later found this place and hid with other survivors.”
"Then your girlfriend..." Just when Su Xiaoqiang opened her mouth, she saw the man's pleading eyes. She seemed unwilling to mention this question, and she was in a dull mood and did not continue to ask.
"This house was... originally overcrowded." The man only said one sentence, and finally he leaned against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, not knowing what he was thinking.
Su Xiaoqiang was silent for a long time in the dead silence, and then asked, "Are you sure that the corpse you saw climbing up from the Yangtze River is the 'Dragon'? Or is it one of the four great monarchs... the 'Dragon King'?"
"I don't know what can be more terrifying than that terrifying corpse... That is definitely the corpse of the Dragon King. He was resurrected for some reason... All such terrifying corpses in the world have been resurrected. , first in Tokyo, Japan, then in Shanghai and California, and then the Dragon King awakened in the interior... They brought countless monsters and natural disasters... It was a scene of the end of the world, We didn't see it with our own eyes but heard everything broadcast on the radio in the house. Terrible battles broke out all over the world. Both hybrids and humans were at a disadvantage. Every day was darker than the previous day, and the bad news kept coming..."
"Later, when everyone in the room was afraid of turning on the radio, but had to turn it on to understand the intelligence released by the hybrids, the Nibelungs were completely formed, and we could no longer receive signals from the outside..." The man glanced at some radio fragments on the ground in the center of the living room and hissed, "Many people are playing the last recorded broadcast on a loop... But it seems that people outside probably think that this place is just an ordinary place." Bronze Forest... They can't find the Nibelungs... No one can save us..."
She is getting more and more negative, and the despair in the man is about to overflow again. Su Xiaoqiang doesn't know what to say to comfort him... Her current thinking is not on how to relieve the man's despair, because when she heard the Three Gorges, Qutang Gorge and When I heard these words "Dragon King", my mind suddenly connected some things.
Lin Nian said that the goal of the Secret Party is to find the four great monarchs and the more ancient and powerful dragons. The Bronze and King of Or is one of the four monarchs. Naturally, he is the sworn enemy that the Secret Party will kill for the rest of his life. , these mortal enemies cannot be killed. Every death will be hidden in the hidden corner of the world, waiting for resurrection... According to the man, Qutang Gorge is the burial place of the King of Bronze and Fire?
Her spirit slowly became tense, because even as a new member of the Secret Party, she understood the significance and value of this news... If this was true, if everything in this dream was true, she would be If this news is conveyed to Lin Nian, wouldn't it be possible to find the dragon corpse one step ahead of time and deal with this terrifying enemy?
this...
Can this still be called spiritual vision?
Su Xiaoqiang's mind became more active, but the accumulated panic and worry became more and more intense. Is he really dreaming? But if this information is true, doesn't it mean that he... foresees the future?
She shook her head to throw the weird and horrifying thoughts out of her mind, and when she wanted to continue asking about the news about Cassel College and Lin Nian, a scream suddenly interrupted what she was planning... What happened? Such a cry, full of purity like a baby's cry, vibrating and resonating in the skull, creating an ethereal feeling, and finally extending to the back is a terrifying fear crawling inch by inch to the back of the head and the top of the head... to hissing It’s called biological instinctive fear!
The neighing sounds were not one, but one after another, surrounding and seeping into the living room. In an instant, several survivors in the whole room fell to the ground and hugged their heads as if they were struck by lightning... Su Xiaoqiang originally thought that they were sick. As soon as I stood up from the sofa, I heard the thin voice like murmuring.
"So early...why so early..."
"They...are coming...again..."
"They want flesh and blood...my flesh and blood..."
"Don't die...I don't want to die...I've lived for so long...I don't want to die..."
Beside the sofa, the man's face was also pale, and his throat couldn't help but make swallowing movements, but there was actually no saliva for him to swallow in the dry mouth like tissue paper. This was a sign of fear.
"It shouldn't be so early... It shouldn't be so early." Even Su Xiaoqiang, who was the most normal person in the room, was now in panic, and he suddenly turned his head and looked at the people surrounded by him as if he remembered something. The man who had crushed the radio and went crazy was pressed in the corner. The man's face was covered with blood beads from scratches, which dripped onto the floor and seeped into the floor.
Su Xiaoqiang seemed to be aware of it and looked at the window that was sealed with wooden bars. In this situation where despair overwhelmed everyone, on the contrary, she had the courage to cross the sofa and approach the window. It was not difficult. She found a weak gap in the place where the wooden strips were joined together (perhaps these people stayed here specially to observe). After squinting outside, the cold air spread from her back to her whole body in an instant.
It was a black and twisted forest. Under the night, every giant bronze tree was like a standing giant. The traces of vines on the trees soared to form different "words", and between the "words" there were faint traces. The shapes of human faces were pieced together. Those faces had their eyes closed, as if they were sleeping and guarding this land of the dead.
In the dark sea of bronze trees, figures walked out one after another. Su Xiaoqiang knew that those were not real "people" because their faces were pale, their exposed claws were slender and long, and they were covered with black cloaks. Above their heads, the glimmer of light illuminating the dead white cheeks in the shadows comes from the cold golden eyes like fireflies.
Deadpool, a follower of pure-blooded dragons, a walking dead who longs for flesh and power.
"It's you, your blood attracted them! It's you!" A woman in the crowd pointed frantically at the man whose hands and feet were trapped, and roared hysterically. Her twisted face was the most expressive expression Su Xiaoqiang had ever seen from a human being. The most tense form of resentment.
"Throw him out! If he attracts them, let him satisfy them!" The woman repeatedly pointed at the Indian man and growled, but before anyone else could acknowledge her, the man next to Su Xiaoqiang suddenly stood up. , rushed over and slapped the woman on the cheek, dragging her skinny body up by her clothes. Their bodies are all equally shriveled. One person pulls up the other like a reed blown by the wind and overwhelms another reed. They are so light and fluttery, but at the moment they are filled with emotions as much as mountains of anger and panic.
The man stared at the crazy woman like an angry beast. His attitude and behavior did not cause panic and stop the people around him, but instead calmed everyone down. But fear lingered... The man lightly The anger faded away, leaving only the trembling and frightened woman, who turned around and walked towards the sofa.
Su Xiaoqiang, who was standing by the window, didn't know what the man was going to do for a moment, but she immediately turned around and faced him as a conditioned reflex and raised her arms slightly to prevent herself. The well-proportioned muscles under her fair skin were taut with some results. If the man was offended. The first time she made a move, she would use the powerful Bajiquan to knock down this weak guy - maybe she, a normal person with full flesh and blood and plenty of energy, was the strongest unit in this room.
But the man didn't pay attention to Su Xiaoqiang. He was now filled with negative emotions, and his fingers and legs were trembling... He was already familiar with such a habitual fear. He had been doing it for five years, but he was still there. In the face of fear, he can't stop hunching his back like a poor person drinking muddy water, drowning in fear, and struggling in drowning.
He ignored Su Xiaoqiang, who was filled with hostility and vigilance, and bent down to stand in front of the sofa where the girl had slept. He lifted up the surface of the sofa and found a small space inside the sofa... Su Xiaoqiang saw what was inside. At that moment, my heart suddenly tightened, and the other party took it out before taking any action.
The three revolvers have different styles, colors, and details, but there is no doubt that they are three real guns. There are scattered yellow bullets around them.
"Are you going to fight back? How can I help?" After Su Xiaoqiang saw that the man did not point the gun at anyone, and that the people in the room were not shocked by the firearms, he naturally knew that these revolvers were not used to kill each other. .
She was originally just an ordinary girl. After experiencing some unavoidable things, her first reaction when encountering the current situation was to help the enemy.
But when the man held out three guns, everyone in the room stood up. There was no anger, only fear and trembling. However, under the agreed "rules", they did not run away or fight with each other. , instead moved closer to the center of the living room...and sat down with a peaceful trembling.
When the man picked up the revolver and loaded only one bullet into it, Su Xiaoqiang by the window opened her eyes wide and breathed heavily... because she never imagined that in a desperate situation and surrounded by monsters, these people The muzzle of the gun was actually... pointed at themselves.
The man looked at Su Xiaoqiang, and everyone else looked at Su Xiaoqiang, including the Indian man who went crazy at the beginning, as if waiting for her to come with him.
