Twenty Seven Years

  Replacing the text tomorrow.

  —

  It was a feeling of familiarity, and Jiang Xuan didn't know how to describe that feeling exactly. Like the tacit understanding of old friends, the silence that does not require words in familiarity. He felt that he had a very important connection with this stone, an inner connection. They can know each other's inner thoughts, the feeling of silence mixed with familiarity.

   Very abstract description.

   Are you stupid, have soul resonance with a stone?

  Jiang Xuan murmured to himself, and then showed an unspeakable smile. He stuffed the pendant into his pocket, and said to Zhang Qiaochu, "Actually, that old man is quite good at deceiving people."

  …

  The taxi-hailing app was really convenient. The two returned to the urban area in the same car. The car stopped at Zhang Qiaochu's community first. After bidding farewell to Zhang Qiaochu, Jiang Xuan continued to drive home.

  It was about ten o'clock, the road was full of traffic, the neon lights on the side of the road were flickering, and the sound of car horns outside and the music played by surrounding shops could be heard through the car window. City people are used to living a life of feasting and feasting, but Jiang Xuan is an exception.

  The driver stopped the car in front of the red light, humming a song that was playing outside the street that was already bad, with his hands on the steering wheel, his body swayed slightly to the rhythm of the music.

  Jiang Xuan sat on the back seat with his arms crossed, staring blankly out of the car window.

  Just now, Zhang Qiaochu was still in the car. This man could speak well, but because he wanted to get the goddess' mobile phone number, he excitedly chatted with the driver all over the place. After leaving, the two of them still had more to say. The car restarted, and the driver took a special look at Jiang Xu'an, and found that he had been silent, so he didn't speak.

  Taxi drivers can generally tell at a glance whether a passenger is a talkative owner or not. If he is chatty, the boring journey will pass. If he doesn’t like talking, just shut up and walk.

  So after Zhang Qiaochu left, the car was very silent, so silent that it was a bit suffocating.

  Jiang Xuan didn't feel any discomfort, he himself liked such quiet moments.

   Green light.

  The car started and arrived at the community where Jiang Xuan was located a few minutes later.

  The community where Jiang Xuan lives is an old-fashioned community. It was bought by his parents when they got married, and it has been about 30 years now. Recently, a lot of things have been built around, and the developer has taken a fancy to this land, and has planned to demolish this area to build a large shopping mall.

   About the demolition, Jiang Xuan accidentally heard what the aunt in the community said. He himself did not pay any active attention to this aspect.

  The main gate of the community is always open, and the two security guards, an old man and a lazy fat man, are basically useless. There are often theft cases of lost electric vehicles in the community, presumably the problem lies with these two people to some extent.

   Walking into the community, Jiang Xu'an felt more comfortable with the cool summer night wind blowing on his face. His pace was fast, and after a while, he arrived home.

  A room of about 80 square meters, with two bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom and one kitchen, plus a small balcony. Jiang Xu'an entered the house, took off his clothes and put them on the hanger, and walked into the study. He is the only one living in the house, one bedroom is used for sleeping, and the other is used as a study.

   There are two rows of bookshelves in the study room, one row is full of classics, which he liked to read since he was a child. Another discharge is professional books, books about spirituality. Jiang Xu'an worked in a large mental hospital as an assistant to a specialist. With a monthly salary of around 3,000, he lived an ordinary life.

  He removed the "Snow Country" on the desk in the study, and put the pendant there. Under the light of the table lamp, the scarlet lines on the black stone became more alluring.

  Jiang Xu'an put on his glasses and looked carefully.

   He put it down after a while, because he couldn't see anything strange.

   "Dididi..." The minimalist-style phone rang, and Jiang Xuan picked up the phone from the table and answered the phone, "What's wrong?"

   "Hahahaha!" There was an ear-splitting laughter from the other end of the phone, and Jiang Xuan could even imagine Zhang Qiaochu with his hands on his hips, smiling up to the sky, "Lao Jiang, do you know? Tingting called me!"

   "Oh, isn't this normal?" Jiang Xuan stood up and walked towards the kitchen.

  Zhang Qiaochu's joy was too strong, "This is our first phone call. She took the initiative to speak, and the first sentence was, hi..."

  Jiang Xuan pressed the hands-free button, put the phone aside, took out a sausage from the refrigerator, took a bag of instant noodles from the side, and started hot water, "Keep working hard."

   "Yes, yes." Zhang Qiaochu said, "By the way, Lao Jiang, I mainly want to ask you, what gift should I give her when we go to class tomorrow?"

   "I just made a little progress, so I'm in a hurry to give you some gift." Jiang Xuan frowned. The only bad thing about this good friend who has been playing for seven or eight years is recklessness.

   "Then what should I do?" Zhang Qiaochu begged Jiang Xu'an for help.

  Jiang Xuan put the noodles and sausages into the hot water, turned on the tap and began to wash his hands, "I've never been in a relationship, so I don't know much about it. You can ask others, or read books and movies about it."

   "It's done, it's done, that's it." Zhang Qiaochu hastily hung up the phone.

  The noodles will be ready soon, Jiang Xu'an finished eating the noodles, it's already half past ten. It was quite late, if he didn't go to listen to the magic stick today, he could go home two hours earlier.

  According to the usual arrangement, Jiang Xuan will read a book or watch a movie at home for these two hours.

   Fortunately, the magic stick just disrupted his daily life rhythm. He thought to himself not to attend such meaningless and absurd lectures, so he changed into pajamas and fell asleep in the bedroom.

at the same time,

  In the study, on the stone on the desk, the scarlet pattern became more and more coquettish and dazzling...

  …

"Snapped!"

  The bitingly cold water splashed on Jiang Xuan's face, making him wake up instantly. He immediately sat up and looked around with sleepy eyes. This was a strange place.

   Realizing that the situation was not good, he looked around by the bright moonlight. He was on a solitary black reef, and beyond the reef was an endless black ocean.

  The sound of "唰唰唰唰" came from far and near, and finally a huge wave came, hitting the reef and setting off waves.

  The waves fell on the reef and turned into pieces of black foam, and the air was filled with thick water vapor.

   "Huh...huh...huh..." Jiang Xu'an, who was drenched by the spray of a huge wave, stood there in a daze.

   In front of him, huge waves came one after another, each wave seemed to swallow up the crumbling rock.

  The pajamas were completely soaked in seawater, and the bone-piercing cold made Jiang Xuan shiver, and he kept exhaling cold air.

  Jiang Xuan staggered, fell to his knees before he could stand still. The reef was uneven, and the densely packed raised stones directly scratched Jiang Xuan's knees. He gritted his teeth and forcibly suppressed the trembling of his body.

   "Woo..."

  Suddenly there was a dull cry from the sky. The cry was not loud. Listening carefully, it seemed to be the cry of an ancient giant beast.

  Jiang Xuan wiped his cheeks with his hand, forcing himself to calm down. This doesn't look like a dream. A dream can't be so real. His senses are all strongly impacted. This is definitely not a dream.

   "Woo..." The melodious sound of mourning resounded between heaven and earth.

  Jiang Xuan glanced at the injury on his knee and struggled to stand up. Suddenly, his body froze and his face became paler. He even stopped breathing, turned around slowly, and looked behind him.

   "Plop."

  Jiang Xuan's legs became weak and he fell on the reef. He became short of breath. From his expression, one could easily see two words, fear.

   Directly in front of him was a wriggling monster that was hard to figure out how huge it was, a bit like a squid or octopus. There are countless thick and long tentacles on this monster, and the tentacles are floating in the air. If you look up at the sky now, you can see densely dancing tentacles in the sky. Only part of its body is above the surface of the sea, and no one knows how huge its body is under the surface of the sea.

   "Woo..." The mourning continued, this time Jiang Xu'an seemed to be able to find the source, the sound came from the sea under the monster.

  Jiang Xu'an's mind went blank. Anyone who saw a monster like a mountain would lose the ability to think.

  If possible, Jiang Xuan is now willing to believe that he is in a dream.

  The body of the tentacle monster is too huge. Fortunately, it has not moved, but the countless tentacles are moving, otherwise it could easily set off a huge wave that can swallow the reef.

   In a daze, Jiang Xuan felt familiar again. He remembered that when he attended the black old man's lecture at night, the monster in the old man's projection screen picture was very similar to what he saw with his own eyes now.

   Monster Line…

monster…

  Lone Island…

  Reverse communication monster line…

Stone…

  Jiang Xu'an is gradually recovering his mind.

  He was shivering from cold, but now from uncontrollable fear. He wanted to get up, but his body was weak and he couldn't use any strength. At this time, he can experience all the descriptions of fear in novels and movies.

  Can't resist, can only wait for death.

   But unexpectedly, the tentacle monster just kept making what he thought was a mournful sound, and the tentacles were still flying, but they didn't cause any harm to him.

"Snapped!"

   There was another huge wave, and the waves hit Jiang Xuan's body. He wiped the sea water off his face with his hands again, and looked at the tentacle monster.

  The body of the monster is flesh red, and most of the places are black and red, which looks very hard at first glance.

  Jiang Xuan didn't see the monster's head, but he had a strong intuition in his heart that he was looking at the monster.

  He just stared blankly at the tentacle monster, but the monster remained motionless. Finally, a tentacle fell from the sky and landed on the rock. The front end of the tentacle was very thin, and the tip reached towards Jiang Xu'an, and finally hung not far from Jiang Xu'an's left waist.

  Jiang Xuan didn't know what this meant, he raised his head and continued to look at the tentacle monster.

  The tentacle monster's tentacles were no longer suspended in the air, and it took the initiative to grab Jiang Xu'an's right hand and pull him up.

   "Woo..."

   The mournful cry sounded again, this time resounding through the sky.

   "Huh!"

  Jiang Xuan sat up suddenly from the bed, sweating profusely, his chest heaving violently.

  He looked around, it was dark outside the window, and he was lying on the bed. The pajamas were soaked with sweat, as if they had been washed by the spray from the huge waves. He didn't turn on the light, and sat on the bed blankly, looking at his sticky right hand. There was something sticky on his right hand, and he remembered being pulled up by that monster he didn't know what to call, and then woke up.

  Is it a dream...

  He shook his head, wiped the sweat from his forehead, went to the bathroom, and rinsed the mucus off his hands.

  If it is a dream, where does the mucus on the hand come from, and how can it feel exactly the same as in reality. It was difficult for Jiang Xu'an to judge for a while. He looked at himself in the mirror. Because of the horror just now, he was a little mentally weak now, and he looked disheveled and decadent.

   But these are not important, he found that he was actually wearing the pendant given to him by the black old man around his neck.

  The pendant...wasn't...placed on the desk in the study...

  Jiang Xu'an stood up straight, picked up a glass bottle containing shower gel from the small table where the items were placed, held the glass bottle in his hand, walked out of the bathroom carefully, and turned on all the lights in the house.

  He suspected that someone had come in at home, and someone was playing tricks while he was asleep. This would explain how the slime got on the hands and how the pendant ended up on the neck.

  Jiang Xuan searched for a few minutes in a tense state, but he didn't find anyone else at home.

   Then all unscientific phenomena are difficult to explain...

  Jiang Xu'an sat on the edge of the bed in a daze for a long time, at this moment, it seemed that the monster's mournful cries were still lingering in his ears.

  He took the pendant off his neck and put it on the bedside table. He checked the time, and it was two o'clock in the morning. After a while, after calming down, he fell asleep again.

  No strange phenomenon happened this time.

  At eight o'clock in the morning, Jiang Xu'an got up, washed up and ate breakfast while recalling the vivid dream last night. He recalled that tentacle monster like squid and octopus was very similar to the monster in the picture projected by the old black man in the auditorium at that time.

coincide?

  Perhaps it is because of the deep influence on the monster in the picture that I subconsciously dreamed of such a thing in my dream.

  Jiang Xuan didn't think about it any further. The hospital adopted a shift system, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, from 4:00 pm to 12:00 pm, and from 12:00 am to 8:00 am. Jiang Xu'an works the morning shift, going to work at 9:00 am and leaving work at 7:00 pm.

  He should pack up and go to work now.

  Get dressed and bring your things, finally pick up the pendant on the bedside table, Jiang Xuan went out. Arrived at the hospital at 8:30 by bus, and after entering, I met Zhang Qiaochu who was preparing for ward rounds.

   "It's quite early." Jiang Xuan said to Zhang Qiaochu.

   "I came at 6:30 to help Tingting buy breakfast. She works until 8:00 in the morning." Zhang Qiaochu approached Jiang Xu'an and said in a low voice.

   It was difficult to conceal the joy in his tone, Jiang Xuan was very pleased, "Not bad."

   "We made an appointment to attend class tonight, are you still going?" Zhang Qiaochu asked.

  Jiang Xuan hesitated for a moment, then shook his head, "I won't go, you are making good progress now, take care of yourself."