Embers Ad Infinitum

"help me!"

The figure in the darkness reached out to Shang Jianyao, like a drowning man trying to grasp the last straw.

But Shang Jianyao was cold all over, as if he was slowly sinking in the winter water.

As the hand got closer and closer to him, the shimmering darkness in front of his eyes began to shake violently.

Finally, the darkness shattered silently, and streaks of sunlight shone in, allowing the black coffin and the "mummy" in linen clothes to shine into Shang Jianyao's eyes again.

His consciousness returned to the real world.

At the same time, his body still retained obvious paralysis, and many nerve endings were beating gently.

"What's wrong?" Jiang Baimian took back his left hand, which still had some electric light, and asked with concern, "I saw that your expression was distorted, so I tried to wake you up."

Speaking of this, she sighed happily:

"It's a good thing you took off your mask!"

"How long has it been?" Shang Jianyao asked without answering.

"About three minutes." Jiang Baimian could tell the answer without turning his wrist to look at his watch.

She had been paying close attention to Shang Jianyao's situation and the specific time. After all, they couldn't stay in the temple for too long.

Shang Jianyao thought about it and said:

"I feel like only ten seconds passed."

He immediately described the dark environment he had just "seen", the windows in the dim light, the fuzzy tower in the distance, and the crawling figure under the window.

"That figure is shouting 'help me'?" Jiang Baimian asked in shock.

Shang Jianyao answered the wrong question:

"He spoke in a gray dialect."

Jiang Baimian looked around at the layout of the temple, looked down at the "mummy"'s black hair and rough linen clothes, and nodded lightly:

"It's normal."

She immediately started talking to herself with great interest:

"He was actually shouting 'help me'...Does this mean that his current state is not natural?

"Something went wrong while he was exploring the depths of the 'soul corridor', and he was trapped inside, unable to return his consciousness to his body?

"Before, his aura was integrated into the fish-man awakening, and he wanted to breed it. Was he trying to open up the channel between the spiritual world and the real world?"

Every time Shang Jianyao entered the "Sea of ​​Origins", she would have similar worries, and it was natural for her to make speculations at this time.

"It may also be that he wanted to try something and trapped his conscious mind in his subconscious mind." Shang Jianyao gave another possibility.

At this moment, he was doing academic analysis seriously.

Jiang Baimian said "hmm":

“But that doesn’t explain why his body has survived to this day.

"Could it be that when in such a predicament, the body of a human being or an awakened person will naturally enter a state that is suspected of being deep frozen?"

She couldn't get an answer to her question for a while, so she could only say:

“I don’t know what that window and the tower outside mean.

"If this is what you guessed, it should be some kind of psychological mapping. If I guess right, it might be a scene deep in the 'soul corridor'..."

Having said this, Jiang Baimian turned his wrist and looked at his watch:

"We don't have much time. Let's search for any other clues. We can't come up with anything through air-to-air discussions here."

Shang Jianyao deeply agreed, put on the mask again, and took off the flashlight from the armed belt.

The yellowish light beam quickly shone into the black coffin, causing the shadows everywhere to recede, revealing more details.

Jiang Baimian held the gun with one hand, leaned down, and examined the sleeping "god" named Yan Hu from top to bottom by the light of the flashlight.

As her eyes moved downward inch by inch, she suddenly discovered that several nails on the mummy's right hand were broken and dyed dark red.

"Injured?" Jiang Baimian's heart moved, and he signaled Shang Jianyao to focus the flashlight on the inner panel of the coffin next to the "mummy"'s right hand.

As the light dominated the area, Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao saw scratches one after another at the same time.

Some of these scratches are normal, some are intermittent, and some are stained with dark red marks.

"Did he make it with his fingers after he fell asleep? He could still move his fingers occasionally, in the early days?" Jiang Baimian couldn't decipher what those scratches meant for the moment, because they might have been made several times. Not fully coming together.

She no longer held the gun and let it hang on her body. Then she took out a pen and paper from her pocket, and moved the scratches one by one to the paper according to the layout on the inner board of the coffin, and actively shortened the gaps between them. distance.

After the engraving was completed, Jiang Baimian finally recognized what these scratches were.

They are four characters in gray vernacular:

"new world"

"A new world?" Jiang Baimian did not expect that the reminder left by "God" Yan Hu with all his strength after falling asleep was such a phrase.

Shang Jian Yao suddenly realized:

"He's trapped in a new world!"

"Isn't this too simple? Moreover, what does the new world represent and where is it?" Jiang Baimian did not blindly deny Shang Jianyao's guess, but just raised more questions.

"I don't know." Shang Jianyao was quite honest.

Jiang Baimian turned his wrist and looked at his watch again:

"Let's discuss it when we go back, continue."

She and Shang Jianyao quickly checked the situation inside the coffin and found no more clues.

They seized the last moment and quickly passed through the left and right corridors of the temple. As a result, there was almost no dust here.

"It's almost time to exit." After returning to the place where the coffin was parked, Jiang Baimian made a rational decision.

Shang Jianyao seemed a little reluctant to give up, but still chose to follow the team leader's order.

Jiang Baimian took one last look at Yan Hu, who was sleeping in the coffin. His eyes swept over his closed eyes, skinny face, and slightly yellowed white linen clothes, and landed on the branch bracelet on his right wrist.

Jiang Baimian guessed that this should also be an item that could produce wonderful effects, but the final mutation of the fish-man awakener made her dare not try it rashly.

Who knows if the things Yan Hu left behind all have similar backdoors or "viruses"!

"Huh..." She breathed out, suppressed the greed in her heart, turned around, and walked outside the temple without looking back.

It is better to leave such high-risk matters to the vigilance sect personnel who may come later or the company's team that specializes in handling similar matters.

Shang Jianyao was not in a hurry to follow her. He put away the flashlight, took a step diagonally, raised the coffin board with his hands wearing rubber gloves, and covered it.

After doing this, he stood in front of the coffin where the sleeping "god" could no longer be seen, and bowed solemnly three times.

Jiang Baimian, who had decided not to look back, stood in the courtyard and watched this scene speechlessly.

"He's not dead yet..." Jiang Baimian sighed.

"It's warmer this way and you won't be harassed by bugs." Shang Jianyao gave his reason, and then he lowered the white curtain at the entrance of the hall.

Jiang Baimian said "ha":

"Then you bowed like a ghost?"

"Polite." Shang Jianyao answered truthfully.

After the two of them walked out of the temple at an angle to each other, Shang Jianyao turned around again and gently closed the dark door.

"So polite." Jiang Baimian commented with unclear meaning.

She continued:

"While there is still time, let's search other houses to see what clues we can find."

It was better to be nearby. They opened the door and entered the house directly in the alley outside the temple to conduct a simple investigation.

Unfortunately, this place seems to have been sifted by the murlocs, leaving nothing related to writing.

The only thing that could be seen was that there were traces of fighting in many places, with blood stains that had turned black.

"It seems that they were really attacked by 'unintentional people', and no one survived in the end..." Jiang Baimian made a judgment based on the intelligence provided by the fish-man prisoners.

When the "Heartless" broke out in the town, the remaining humans became the prey of the "Heartless".

Due to time constraints, Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian did not stay too long. They left the house in the alley and rushed to the place where the bicycles were parked.

When he was approaching the entrance of the alley, Jiang Baimian looked back at the doors that he had deliberately left open, and said thoughtfully:

"Then who closed the door for them?"

The "unintentional person" who hunts at home should not have any remaining instinct to close the door.

"Fully automatic." Shang Jianyao replied seriously.

As soon as he finished speaking, he pointed outside the alley and said happily:

"The bike is still there."

"Do you really think they will be stolen?" Jiang Baimian's voice gradually lowered, and he looked sideways at the mountain in the middle of the island in the middle of the lake.

There may still be some "unintentional people" surviving there, and they might actually be able to ride bicycles.

Without further delay, Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao got on their bicycles and left the market town along the same route.

At this time, the winter evening has quietly arrived, and the sky has become much darker.

After riding for a certain distance, Jiang Baimian couldn't help but look back at the market town where the temple was located.

This town, full of ancient charm from the old world, was silent and lifeless in the gradually darkening environment.

For some reason, Jiang Baimian suddenly thought of the evening in Shuiwei Town:

A large number of townspeople returned from the farmland and wild woods behind them. In the square with many "illegal buildings", they lit stoves and cooked food one after another. After school, some children ran around, chasing each other, and some looking forward to it. Looking at my stew pot...

…………

I don’t know how long it took, but I returned to the quiet town again, in the alley where the temple was located.

The roaring wind roared past, and the open doors clanged shut one after another.