In the past twenty years of his life, Yu Sheng has always believed that he is just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things. In the foreseeable future,
This ordinaryness is destined to continue - until the day when life ends in an ordinary way.
Yes, he'd always thought so - but those days seemed so long ago.
The sky is dark, and the gloomy clouds are gradually spreading from the northeast like thick cotton wool, covering the entire city. The air is soaked with a moist atmosphere, and a rain is brewing in this atmosphere. Maybe in ten minutes
It will fall.
Carrying the vegetables and spices he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng mingled among the pedestrians, hurriedly crossing the street and walking towards his residence in the increasingly dim light.
When passing a store, he subconsciously stopped and looked at the sign at the entrance of the store. He stared there for several seconds before looking away and continued walking forward in a hurry.
The number of pedestrians on the road gradually became less and less, and the huge city seemed to be becoming quiet in the atmosphere of imminent rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes and looked at the commercial street in front of him that was illuminated by the lights of the merchants. Although it was already a familiar scene, there was something difficult to see.
The strange feeling of metaphor still arises from the bottom of my heart.
Yes, a sense of strangeness - he has lived in this city for more than twenty years, but now, this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless "boundary city" is a very strange place to him.
place.
Because this city is not what he remembers as "real". Although some places are very similar, more places are specious - the boundary city where he grew up is not so huge. He remembers that the building in the city center should be called
Boyuan Building, not the current "Director Tower". He remembered that the shop at the intersection of Siyuan Street was originally a wall, and his original home was not the huge, dilapidated and crumbling old house deep in the old city.
.
And more importantly, there are not so many... "not quite right" things in the city in his memory, including but not limited to those that appear randomly at certain intersections and are painted like old-fashioned phone booths from the last century.
The steam locomotive passing by the roof of the building late at night, the empty classroom where the sound of reading is constantly heard, and...
In the evening when it was about to rain, standing under the street lamp, there was a dark shadow as thin and tall as a telephone pole.
Yu Sheng raised his head and stared at the streetlight not far away. A human-shaped silhouette that looked like a hemp pole was standing there dullly. The top of the body, which was three to four meters high, was covered with a dark picture that made it impossible to see the facial features.
The face and the shadow seemed to have noticed this side, but it just stood blankly, facing Yu Sheng's eyes from a distance.
Passersby in a hurry passed under the tall and thin shadow, and no one seemed to notice the strange thing standing next to the street lamp. Some people even walked directly through the shadow without being affected in any way.
Only Yu Sheng himself could see that thing.
So after a few seconds of meaningless staring, he withdrew his gaze, suppressed his pounding heart, took another path and hurried away.
Yu Sheng has never been sure whether it was the sudden change in the city or the change in himself, but he clearly remembered that the ordinary and normal life in his memory left him one morning two months ago.
Far away——
He remembered that on that sunny morning, he opened the door of his home and went to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy some oranges.
That was the last time he opened "the door of his own home". After that, he never saw the home in his memory again.
He had also analyzed that maybe this was some kind of "time travel". He opened the door of his home and stepped into another parallel world that was seemingly different from his hometown. He could never find the door that could return to the original world.
Because the channel of time and space collapsed the moment he stepped through the door.
Another possibility is that a "change" occurred in me. When I stepped out, or at some point after that, I became "different from ordinary people" due to some unknown influence.
So his eyes began to be able to see certain "things" hidden under the surface. He was still living in the place he was familiar with, but he could no longer see those familiar things...
But these analyzes are meaningless.
In any case, he can no longer go back to the "ordinary and normal world" in his memory. This strange and huge city is like a boundless forest, imprisoning a confused drifter in its gloomy, intertwined...
Between the branches and vines, just two months were not enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest".
In fact, he has just roughly adapted to the familiar yet unfamiliar "new home" and has barely resumed his "daily life" here.
Fortunately, he is still "born" in this border city that is incompatible with his memory. He has a normal identity certificate, a legal and valid address, some moderate savings and a job that doesn't look like much.
How to make a reliable living - if this is really some kind of "time travel", then at least he does not have to face the three major problems of "who am I, where am I, and where should I get an ID card" like most time travellers?
.
Considering that this is a well-ordered modern metropolis, the above-mentioned problems are particularly important. After all, modern society has a perfect population management system, and it is not easy for a time traveler to get rid of his status as a black household in such a city.
Of course, if you think about it from another perspective, traveling to an old society with chaotic order or a different world with barbaric laws may also cause other minor troubles - such as being cut up as an enemy country's masterpiece, being cut up as an alien invasion, or being cut up as someone emerging from the ground.
The evil creatures were cut into pieces and used as temporary food rations by the goblins in the cave to be stewed...
With these random associations that suddenly appeared out of nowhere in Yu Sheng's mind, he walked through the old path next to the commercial street and walked in the direction of "home" from another road.
The sky is getting gloomier, and it seems that precisely because of this gloomier sky, there are more and more things that are "not quite right".
At the edge of Yu Sheng's field of vision, some rickety figures were reflected on the mottled and old exterior walls of the buildings beside the road. An agile cat jumped out of the shadow on the wall and climbed lightly onto a bunch of flowers that came from nowhere.
The light shining everywhere meowed twice in the direction of Yu Sheng, then melted and scattered along with the raindrops, falling to the ground and splashing water.
It started to rain earlier than expected.
The wind became a little cold, and the air-conditioning swirled like something substantial, getting into the gaps in the clothes.
Yu Sheng clicked his tongue and could only put the shopping bag in his hand on his head and speed up his steps.
If it weren't for avoiding the dark shadow under the streetlight, he could have walked on the avenue and returned home faster - although that house was somewhat strange and strange, at least it was a sheltered place.
Thinking of the dark shadow under the streetlight, Yu Sheng felt somewhat upset.
Based on experience, he knew that the strange things he saw were basically harmless. At least if he did not take the initiative to provoke them, those things would ignore him just like ordinary people ignored them, but even if he knew in his heart
, he usually still instinctively avoids things that seem too evil - but now it seems that taking a detour today is not a good idea.
It's getting colder and colder.
For a rain, it was a bit ridiculously cold.
Yu Sheng found that his breath was slowly turning into condensed ice mist, and the raindrops falling from the sky were like sharp nails, hard and cold, and painful.
And the ground is gradually turning into a smooth mirror in this freezing rain.
The huge uneasiness made Yu Sheng instantly alert. He realized that something was wrong, something very wrong. Even in this weird city, this was the first time he had seen this situation.
Unlike the "shadows" he usually saw that were a bit unsightly at best, this time he felt...malice.
This rain is malicious.
He suddenly raised his head, only to see that the small road where there were two or three people before had become empty at some point, and he was the only one left in the narrow alley.
No one could be seen, and the lights in the distance became hazy and illusory. The intersection at the end of the field of vision seemed to be blocked by something. Apart from the cold and closed buildings, there was only rain, cold rain.
He felt as if the whole world was raining on him alone.
Yu Sheng took in a sharp breath and ran quickly to the nearest house. An old iron door stood there. It looked like it should be the back door of a low-end store - no matter what it was, he had to hurry up.
Find someone to help you.
Because the water droplets in the rain have begun to have the sharp texture of knives, and the surrounding temperature has dropped to the point where every breath brings a needle-like pain in the lungs.
In just a few steps, Yu Sheng ran to the door, stretched out his hand and patted it hard: "There is someone..."
His eyes widened and his voice stopped suddenly.
He slapped his hand on the wall, where the door was painted.
The nearby windows are also painted on the walls.
A rustling sound came from nearby.
Yu Sheng slowly turned his head and looked at the direction from which the sound came.
In the freezing rain that fell like a knife blade, a strange-looking thing was slowly rising from the mirror-like water. It gained entity from the dark shadow and stared at Yu Sheng indifferently.
It was a frog, nearly one meter tall, with a head densely covered with eyes, and its body reflected the freezing rain in the sky.
The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight towards the prey's heart.
"F*ck you damn..."
Yu Sheng's words were elegant and his reactions were quick. Before the modal particles came out of his mouth, his body had already reacted one step ahead - he suddenly stepped aside and took out his usual self-defense stick with one hand from his pocket.
Step forward, twist your waist and lean forward...
The frog's tongue turned at a sharp angle in mid-air and penetrated Yu Sheng's heart from the back.
Yu Sheng: "...?"
He blinked and watched the frog's tongue stick out from its chest, a heart beating rapidly at the tip.
"...X's bastard, this thing belongs to me..."
He thought for a while and cursed in his mind.
Chapter completed!