Indescribable cyberpunk

Opening his eyes, in his hazy vision, a monster with a green face and fangs suddenly appeared, roaring and approaching.

Olivia's "tiger body shook", she lifted the quilt on the bed and flew into the crossbar with one move.

What followed was a series of screams.

"Why are you standing in front of me wearing a devil mask?"

After a long time, Olivia sat cross-legged on the bed, looking at Li Qinglian who was lying next to her panting with embarrassment.

"I just want to wake you up. Don't tell Zhu Jue and Wu Tong about this, otherwise they will probably laugh at me for a long time. Anyway, get up quickly. Tomorrow is the celebration parade, and I heard there will be some sacrificial events today. activities, we must hurry up!”

Li Qinglian couldn't say that she was so scared that she almost fainted after being locked. She got up from the bed and went straight to the bathroom to fix her makeup.

"A big parade?"

Olivia, who was only wearing a tactical vest because of the high temperature in the room, sat on the edge of the bed. She glanced across the room and then looked out to the balcony of the hotel. A mechanical creation that looked like a Kongming lantern was parading back and forth in the sky, playing continuously. There is something about the celebration parade.

Her expression was a little stiff, and she took her time getting up and putting on clothes. In fact, Olivia had a somewhat unreal feeling about what had happened so far. She originally thought that the result of being sent to the Weird Studio to perform a task was the result of the whole thing. She spends her days in the studio doing meaningless video editing work. Who would have thought that she would break a conspiracy of the Silver Twilight Secret Order in just a few days, which would be more valuable than her paperwork in the Special Operations Group. Significant.

Not to mention that after just a few days of busy work, he went on a trip with the people from Weird Studio and participated in the spring festival celebration in Rongxia City. When he mentioned this to several of his friends, he received a lot of "criticism" .

Especially Chu Yun, who has been busy with search and rescue operations after the snowstorm recently, and has been thinking about this for a long time.

This mission isn't as bad as you think, is it?

Although the hotel they stayed in was in Rongxia New City, the breakfast location was in the tourist attraction of Rongxia City.

The celebration is approaching, and even in the morning, there are still people coming and going here, and fireworks can be seen everywhere.

Li Qinglian said that she had found a time-honored store and insisted on taking them to see it. Zhu Jue naturally had no objection and followed her up.

Instead of going from the vertical elevator or corridor on the side of the street to the play square on the second floor, Zhu Jue walked along the street, and Zhu Jue's eyes wandered around the surrounding environment.

He noticed the strange emotions on the faces of Wu Tong and the other three people, because the architectural style and surrounding layout on the ground floor of Rongxia City were very different from the environment they lived in before.

Half of the vibrant rays of the morning sun were obscured by the mottled high-rise buildings hundreds of meters around. The remaining rays were also covered by the aerial platform built on the second floor. Only a few remaining rays of light could be reflected on the bottom floor.

Following the sidewalk next to the highway, a group of people were about to pass through a tunnel. There was a simple iron staircase nearby. The rusty surface proved that it had not been repaired for a long time.

"I wish you all the best and good health~"

Familiar congratulations came from the mouth of a palm-sized mechanical Lucky Cat in a trash can on the roadside that kept opening and closing. Behind it was a wall paved with slender white ceramic tiles. Perhaps it was because of its age. These tiles have lost their original whiteness, and there are still many advertisements posted on top of them.

"He spends a lot of money to get a child", "The God of Gamblers has special skills", "Specializes in treating strange and difficult diseases" and so on.

Occasionally there will be some useful ones, such as the store advertisement Chu Yun mentioned before, turn right forty meters ahead.

"Why are there such advertisements posted everywhere? Do the police here don't care?"

In such an era, such a "retro" advertising form appeared, which puzzled Olivia, who had just arrived in this city.

"They won't care, because if you tear it up once, someone will quickly repost it at night. For a few yuan, you can print dozens of them. In the old town of Yecheng, there are also such scenes, but there are not as many here. That’s all.”

The so-called progress of the times refers to those beings on the second level and above. Those at the bottom, in Zhu Jue's opinion, are more regressing.

Even maintaining the status quo is a luxury for them.

Hundreds of years have not brought them a better life, and they are still struggling to survive.

I followed the route on the advertisement to the time-honored store, but what I saw was a storefront with clutter piled up.

"Jiangnan Noodle House. It's here. How could it be?"

Li Qinglian confirmed that their route was not wrong, and the noodle shop in front of them was obviously the truth.

Two variegated stray cats poked their heads out from between the clutter and looked at them. Zhu Jue took a few steps forward and turned his head to look at the door behind the clutter. The lock ring between the doorknobs was It's disconnected, just because it's buckled inwards, so you can't find it unless you look carefully.

"Since it's closed, let's go back and eat on the second floor. It's only eight o'clock in the morning, so we still have time."

He moved his eyes upward and glanced at the second floor of Jiangnan Noodle House. There were beige curtains that blocked the view of the contents inside. He tightened his hands in his pockets, raised his brows slightly, and said softly.

Zhu Jue was about to leave with a group of people, but he acted as if he hadn't seen anything.

Even if there was something, he was here for a trip this time and didn't care about other nonsense.

Behind the curtain, there was a shirtless figure, and the mechanical eyeball behind the goggles was looking at their departing backs. The mechanical blades on the right arm were sliding across each other, and scarlet blood was slowly dripping.

Along the way, Li Qinglian was still thinking about why that shop suddenly closed. It wasn't until she changed to a breakfast shop that she was attracted by the exquisite meals and completely forgot about that noodle shop.

But this time, breakfast was not peaceful either.

roadside

"Slightly, slightly, slightly~"

A child with a red ghost face and a navy blue mandarin jacket rushed from one side of the street, ran to Wu Tong, took a custard bun, and ran away. He ran a few meters away and turned around, pretending to be a real person for Wu Tong. The "grimace".

"What a naughty boy!"

Wu Tong gritted his teeth, and in the end he could only smile helplessly, "It's just a custard bun, just eat it."

Zhu Jue was holding a bowl of mushroom and chicken porridge and watching this scene with a smile on his face. Suddenly he noticed someone behind him. When he turned around, he saw a little girl wearing a camouflage mask and a red cotton jacket reaching out to pull him. At the corner of his clothes, there was a coin in his other free hand.

Why a little girl?

Because she had two braids on the back of her head, and she was also wearing a pair of cloth shoes embroidered with flowers.

"Brother, this is the money for the custard bag. I will pay for it for my brother, but you have to give me another one, because it costs two for one dollar."

"I'll give you another egg waffle, can you tell my brother why you are all wearing these strange masks?"

Zhu Jue noticed that not only the two children, but also many adults nearby were holding masks in their hands, and they were all quite ferocious-looking masks, which made him a little curious.

"Ghosts in the underworld seek the afterlife, eat human flesh and blood, and eat people's hearts and lungs. This is what my mother told me!"

After the girl finished speaking, she took the egg waffle from Zhu Jue's hand, and then ran after her brother.

Zhu Jue raised his head and his eyes unconsciously fell under a hallway in front of him, where a group of children wearing masks were running from there.

Most of these children are petite, but the masks on their faces are much larger than their faces, so the masks begin to shake involuntarily as they run. It should have been a relaxed and childish scene, but now it looks quite weird. .

Zhu Jue, who had always been somewhat sensitive to this aspect of things, stared at them for a long time until he was attracted by Li Qinglian's voice.

"The spring festival in Rongxia City has two meanings. One is to welcome the new year, to worship the gods with a huge and gorgeous procession, and to ask for their blessings. Everyone knows this, but this second level is a bit strange. Same, March 10th is called the "Gate of Hell" here in Rongxia City. This is not the gate of hell between life and death. It means that on this day, what they call the gate of the underworld will be opened, and demons and monsters will come to the world. , just like what the little girl just said, these ghosts must find a suitable body to replace themselves in order to turn around. They also have masks on their faces to make the ghosts regard them as the same kind. And this spring festival is also to push the popularity of Rongxia City to its peak and to resist the negative energy from the underworld. "

Li Qinglian took her mobile phone and checked the content on it. These are traditional customs, so it is not difficult to find them.

"Then do we also have to buy a mask? Otherwise, everyone else is wearing one. If we don't wear one, won't those ghosts have no choice but to come to us?"

Despite receiving many years of atheistic education, when he arrived in Rongxia City, the religious atmosphere here was so pervasive that even Wu Tong began to subconsciously want to cooperate.

But this in itself is not a bad thing. Just do as the locals do. They are here to have fun anyway, so there is no need to force themselves to live with the customs here.

Tomorrow is the Spring Festival Parade, and Zhu Jue doesn't want to be that maverick, so he nods as a sign of approval of Wu Tong's idea.