After the Little Crybaby Enters the Nightmare Cycle

In the desolate ruined city, the green moonlight stretched the two figures, and the footprints on the snow walked deeper into the city.

"In addition to the method of breaking the game given by the collapse system, we can also try to find a safe passage between the base city and the main system." You Yu said.

Chi Nan: "Safe passage?"

You Yu nodded and looked down at the toe of his shoe wet with snow: "The main system, the major base cities, and each copy have a safe passage."

He seemed to smile helplessly, "But the location of the specific safe passage is not disclosed to the dreamer."

Chi Nan: "So we can't find it now, right?"

You Yu turned around and took a deep look at him: "I can't find him by myself, maybe you can."

Chi Nan has no clue: "Why?"

"Brother Nan..." You Yu paused, and his lips collapsed into a straight line, "I'm just guessing."

"Perhaps, we are heading to that safe passage." You Yu said again.

"...?" Chi Nan looked at You Yu puzzledly. He felt that today's You Yu was not quite right. "Isn't it 206, Building 57, North Third District?"

You Yu nodded.

Chi Nan: "But you asked me just now, I just casually said that I want to go there."

You Yu: "That's enough."

Why? Seeing You Yu's silent profile, Chi Nan knew that the other party didn't want to explain at this moment, so he quietly swallowed the question back.

He just felt that the city was very desolate and quiet. This sense of death made him unpleasant. He wanted to return to the dormitory area he was familiar with.

"I don't know if the mint you bought is dead now."

I bought ten pots of peppermint from Smile Town last time, and after leaving the copy, You Yu directly sent them to 206 through system permissions.

"I want to go back and water the flowers, if they are still alive." Chi Nan said, with a rare stubborn mood in his voice.

You Yu didn't seem to expect that Chi Nan remembered this, and suddenly smiled: "It's okay, you can buy it if you die, you won't raise me for you."

Chi Nan raised his eyes to look at You Yu.

For some reason, he felt that Yuyu's voice today sounded very far away, as if it came from a distant wilderness. He was always worried that if the wind was stronger, Yuyu's voice would be blown away.

"What's wrong?" You Yu met Chi Nan's gaze.

Chi Nan shook his head and did not speak.

After a long while, Chi Nan looked at the ruined Zicheng, and the strange emotion that made his heart choked with sadness came back again.

"Why did the Dream Maker build this world?" he asked You Yu.

You Yu shook his head: "No one knows except the Dream Maker."

Chi Nan seemed a little regretful: "That's it..."

You Yu looked at him steadily and said, "Perhaps, the Dream Maker himself doesn't know."

The expression on Chi Nan's face seemed to be empty for a moment. He said, "I really want to see this dream maker."

He found that in his subconscious, he has feelings for this nightmare world that can give people the realization of their wishes.

Seeing that it was badly damaged, tears would flow against his will without warning.

Especially at night when the fine snow falls and the moonlight is stained with different colors.

"No one has seen it," You Yu said, "but you might be able to."

...

The entire Beisan District has been turned into ruins, sinking in the early snowy night of the Zicheng.

From a distance, the green moonlight illuminates the night, like an aurora dancing over the ruined city.

The falling snow, the aurora, and the broken city give people a sense of contradictory but magnificent barrenness.

Along the way, Chi Nan and You Yu did not encounter monsters and evil spirits, nor were they chased by hunting teams. The crisis-ridden doomsday world was unusually quiet.

Chi Nan was familiar with the road from North Third District to Building 57. Even if all the building numbers were covered by mildew moss, he would be able to find the apartment building where he had lived.

You Yu kept walking behind him without speaking, penetrating the heavier and heavier snow curtain, quietly watching Chi Nan's back.

In the end, he seemed to be unable to suppress a certain kind of anxiety, and strode forward, holding Chi Nan with his gloved hand.

Suddenly held back, Chi Nan stiffened subconsciously: "What's the matter?"

You Yu curled her lips slightly as usual, "I'm afraid you will be lost and you will not be found."

"No, I'm very familiar with it." For some reason, he suddenly heard a bit of loneliness and anxiety in You Yu's tone.

He can't comfort people, nor is he good at giving people psychological counseling, so he only quietly shook You Yu's hand, the kind of fingers interlocking.

They quickly found Building 57, which had once ‘lived together’ in the ruined apartment building.

The light in the stairwell had been broken long ago, but from a distance, the two saw a room on the second floor that showed unconventional light.

"It's 206." Chi Nan said affirmatively.

You Yu looked at the warm yellow light from the 206 window from downstairs, with slightly complicated emotions passing through his eyes.

On the one hand, it is the joy that all mysteries and doubts will be settled, and on the other hand, it is the anxiety and fear of the unknown.

It's ironic to say that he has always been keen to play with human fear and anxiety. He didn't expect that one day he would get caught up in it and be influenced by it.

Chi Nan pulled him, confidently and calmly through the dark corridor, and walked towards the only lighted 206 in the city.

More than a dozen pots of mint were neatly arranged in the corridor, falling snow wet the green leaves, You Yu picked a mint leaf in his mouth, fresh and cool.

"It seems we have found the right thing." You Yu swallowed the chewed mint leaves, cooling from throat to stomach. "As a safe passage between the base city and the main system, even if the system is damaged by a serious bug, the location of the connection port is still Part of the energy that can maintain the normal operation of the base is left."

The light from apartment 206 and the normal mint leaves growing on the balcony illustrate this point.

Although it was his own room, Chi Nan knocked on the door politely as usual: "Is anyone there?"

The door was locked and no one in the room answered.

So Chi Nan took out the key and unlocked the door just like when he came back from the customs clearance dungeon.

With a ‘click’, the door opened, and a ray of light shone on Chi Nan’s face through the crack of the door.

But when they saw the scene in the room clearly, their expressions froze for a moment.

The interior of the house is not the 206 layout they are familiar with, but the appearance of Xiaoyouyu's bedroom.

The front curtain of the spacious floor-to-ceiling windows was half-hidden, and it was dark and damp outside the window at midnight when it was rainy and rainy.

The corner of the bed quilt in the center of the room was lifted, and the folds of the sheets seemed to have been asleep not long ago.

There was no one in the room, only lifeless and quiet.

The picture frame on the west wall attracted Chi Nan's attention. The picture frame sank in the shadow of the light, which was indistinguishable from his position.

Chi Nan's shoulders trembled slightly, and his body approached the frame before reason.

"Brother Nan." You Yu's anxiety grew stronger, and he stepped forward and took Chi Nan's hand tighter.

At almost the same time, the half-open door behind them closed, and the two moved at the same time, and the clock stopped on the wall suddenly began to turn.

"11:20," Chi Nan took out the pocket watch in his pocket, and the originally still dial also moved again. "The time of the pocket watch is the same as that on the wall."

The bedroom in the old mansion and the time full of death metaphors easily reminded him of the night of eleven years.

You Yu died on the night of the fire at 12:20.

You Yu said with a sullen face: "It seems that we have an hour to find a way to enter the safe passage before 12:20."

The re-turning of the pocket watch as a "death birthmark" can be explained as a system breakdown caused by a bug, but at this moment too many coincidences collided, and You Yu had to suspect that this was the countdown given to them by the breakdown system.

After all, it is not a good thing for a person who has long been dead that time starts to flow again.

And 12:20 as the end of his life may imply some kind of end.

Chi Nan found that the white carpet was left with the residue from Xiao Youyu's deliberately overturning the medicine. The painting "The Crying Boy" on the wall was nothing but a damp rainy night that could not be seen, and the "self" in the painting disappeared without a trace.

Only the complete picture frame and incomplete paintings remain.

Why is the connection point between the system and the base city hidden in the bedroom where he wrote his apartment house number and when You Yu was a child? Why does this painting that have long been deleted from human memory appear here again?

What is the relationship between this apartment and this bedroom and the main system of Dream World?

What about myself and the dream maker? What's the connection?

He inexplicably thought of what You Yu just now--

Perhaps, the dream maker himself does not know why he created this world.

Chi Nan suppressed all doubts and doubts, and He Youyu quickly searched the bedroom, but they did not find a mechanism that could be used as a way to leave.

The glass on the window was sealed, and You Yu didn’t hesitate to pull up the stool and slam it against the window glass, but no matter how hard he tried and changed various props, the thin layer of glass was as indifferent as steel, without even a trace of cracks. Appear.

Outside the window, like "The Crying Boy", there is endless night and rain.

For an instant, he had the illusion of being trapped in the painting.

On the other side, Chi Nan opened the door that closed automatically. With the sound of the iron lock twisting, the door opened, much easier than he expected.

Outside the door was the same as when they came, the spotlessly painted balcony was filled with fresh and emerald green mint, but the originally rustling snow turned into continuous cold rain, and the moon disappeared.

But when the two returned to the corridor again, they found that the door number 206 was hung on the doors of all the rooms on the second floor. The doors that were painted cold and white were like the works of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, neatly arranged in the long night. There is no difference.

Chi Nan tried to insert the key into the keyhole of the next room, with a ‘click’, and the door with the number 206 opened again.

The inside of the door was the same as the door they opened for the first time. It looked like a bedroom when Yuyu was a child.

Even the angle at which the curtains are opened, the ‘boy’ disappeared from the frame, the clock that keeps turning on the wall, and the time displayed on the clock are exactly the same.

As Chi Nan successively opened the five doors with ‘206’ written on them, You Yu’s face grew darker and darker.

"Go and take a look at the top of the stairs." Chi Nan quickly climbed the stairs to the upper floor of the apartment, but no matter if he went up or down, all floors were repeating the crashing Room 206.

"how so?"

"This is the safe passage between the main system and the base city, but the entrance was blocked by a bug and replaced with an endless loop mode."

In order to maintain the collapsed state of the sub-city to the maximum, the bug automatically enters the self-defense resistance system to modify, and the safe passage entrance is set to an infinite loop mode.

The endless loop also means that they stay in place forever, unable to get out of the safe passage.

The pocket watch in his hand kept walking around ‘tick tick’, and the time pointed to 11:50.

Chi Nan opened his pocket watch and suddenly saw many lumpy wounds on his fingers, just like dehydrated, scorched, slightly scorched skin burned by a fire.

You Yu keenly noticed the changes in Chi Nan's body, and his expression was unprecedentedly grim: "We have to hurry up."

He had a hunch that if he failed to leave the 206 cycle before 12:20, Chi Nan would probably be burned to death by an invisible fire.

The static time suddenly began to flow, and the consequence of the countdown should be that the fire reappeared that year and completely destroyed the body of You Yu.

Looking at the burn marks that quickly covered his arm, Chi Nan was stunned, and said to You Yu very sorry, "I'm sorry."

He thinks that he didn't take care of this body, which made You Yu look so worried and sad. After all, this body belonged to You Yu.

I don't know if they can recover from their burns after they go out, Chi Nan is thinking about it very seriously, if they can go out successfully.

"Does it hurt?"

"No pain at all." Chi Nan said truthfully, the pain nerve was cut off, as if this body no longer belongs to him.

You Yu twisted his eyebrows and tried to connect to the main system again, but the only answer was silence.

Just when his breathing was trembling in a hurry, Chi Nan's system suddenly made a sound of bad contact.