Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 953 Binding Bad Karma (Part )

Several days or weeks had passed, he couldn't tell, and it didn't matter anyway. He just lay in his room. The nurse came to see him from time to time, but the director no longer appeared. When she sent him back to the ward, she only said: "Just tell the nurse if you want to see me."

He still had many things he wanted to ask her, but he was also afraid of seeing her. As soon as he lay down on the bed, he felt that his body was as stiff as wood, and he didn't even have the strength to bend his joints. He kept his eyes open and saw the ceiling slowly being illuminated by sunlight, then gradually getting darker, becoming too dark to see, and then getting brighter again. During this period, he did not remember closing his eyes, nor did he eat, drink or wash himself. Normally speaking, no one could bear to lie down like this, but he just didn't feel anything. This is probably what people would look like if they starved to death with sesame seed cakes hanging around their necks.

Sometimes he wanted to scream, to blast the pressure out of his lungs like he did in the deserted valley. But that makes no sense and can only appear childish and ridiculous. So he thought, but it was all aimless and fragmented thinking. For example, who is the nurse with the weird fingers? Is it the legendary aberration? Or a yaksha in human skin? He also thought about the identity of the dean and speculated whether she was Yama in the story. He imagined she was dead (which was quite possible), but why? There must be a very special reason to become Yama after death, right?

It is easy to get answers to these meaningless thoughts. As long as he rings the bell for the nurse and expresses that he wants to talk to the dean, he will probably get the answer. But he didn't want to do that. He would rather lie on the bed like a corpse and let his thoughts drift to any corner. Sometimes he also thought about himself and what happened, but more often he realized that all this was actually meaningless, so he just dreamed with his eyes open: dreaming that he was lying in a rocking cradle, with his long-forgotten mother beside him. Looking down from the edge of the cradle; dreaming of the blurry son of the mountain wish standing on the hill, and the green mist appearing and disappearing between the mountains; dreaming of the radiating glow swaying in the sky, and the gravel road extending from the distance to the foot - he I always think of the dean's words at this time, and then escape from the world of dreams. It seemed that if he resisted, the blackbird's dream would be swept away by the wind like a thin page of paper.

Of course it was nice, it made him feel safe, but other than that he had no other feelings. Life has returned to the state it was in before meeting the dean, but this time he gave up on his own initiative. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing was worth caring about. All the desires that I had fantasized about, hoped for, and even regarded as a lifelong goal were now swept away like fallen leaves on my shoulders. In fact, he himself was just a fragile fallen leaf. He had neither branches to climb up nor roots to grip the ground. He was thrown into the gutter by the huge twists and turns of fate.

On rare occasions, he thinks about what the world is like. The world in Uncle Grandpa's eyes, the world he has experienced in the past ten years, the world described in books, the world of Shan Yuan's son described by the dean, and the place where he is now. He pieced them together awkwardly like a bunch of disjointed jigsaw puzzles, trying to make sense of them. Isn’t that what the so-called system is all about? Some worlds are real, some are false, and some exist dependent on others. Just as the existence of heaven is equivalent to the existence of God, the existence of the underworld also proves the existence of ghosts and gods. But can both exist at the same time? If both sides claim to have created the world, can the world be created twice? There must be only one fact that objectively exists, and only one naturally existing truth and system that can fit in all the puzzle pieces that appear and put all the worlds in order. This is true, that is false, this is correct, that is wrong - is this really the case? The more he thought about it, the more confused he became, and in the end he couldn't even figure out what he was thinking about.

He had to make up simpler stories to comfort himself. Sometimes he thinks that ghosts and gods really exist, so the dean and this city also exist, so the land where he used to live should be regarded as the mortal world - Son of Shanyuan belongs to another higher place, for example, It is a story that takes place in the world of gods, or it may be in the real ancient times (there were gods in the past, and archaeologists may have got it all wrong). However, sometimes common sense stubbornly takes over his mind, making him feel that everything is very suspicious. Was this entire universe really created for something as small and incompetent as him? Those gods who can separate light and darkness, raise and lower heaven and earth, and give birth to all things, ultimately create just such a smoky world, so what great things are they? So he began to suspect that everything was fake and some kind of brain-in-a-vat experiment. There is no underworld or monster at all. The dean is just a researcher sent to guide him into being deceived.

He stopped eating and drinking, and sometimes even tried to stop breathing, but he felt no pain, just weak from lack of oxygen. There is no way for a person to suffocate himself without the help of external force, but he can try something more radical, such as jumping from a corridor or slitting his own throat with broken glass to see what happens. What does it matter? He asked himself repeatedly, if this was really the underworld, where else could he end up?

Finally one night, he walked out of the ward and climbed onto the windowsill with bare feet. The thought of slitting his throat with a piece of glass to expose the trachea and flesh inside his body still frightens and disgusts him. Let's leave everything to gravity - how can there be gravity in the underworld?

The corridor windows were still not repaired, but all the broken glass had been removed. It seemed that since he came out that day, the dean had no intention of re-sealing the corridor. He hugged the bare window frame and looked down. The scene in the courtyard was still the same, except that there was no one under the bamboo shed.

Not finding the person who had disappeared for a long time, he didn't know whether he was lucky or disappointed. Standing on the window sill and looking down, the ground seemed to be much higher than usual, and the wind was blowing, gently pulling him out of the window.

Do you really want to jump? He thought hesitantly. Or do you want to go back? But there is no point in going back. It's like being stuck in a game. If you don't do anything, you'll be stuck there forever. Even if there is no hunger or pain, what's the point in the end? If you don't verify it yourself, you can only listen to the dean's words over and over again, or lie on the bed like a corpse.

"...Are you going to jump?"

Cai Ji hugged the window frame tightly and slowly turned his head to look at the corridor. The dean stood in front of his open door to the ward, folding his hands on his chest and looking at him with a frown. Her dress was very different from the past. Her hair was tied into a low ponytail on the back of her head, and even the fragments of hair on her forehead were pinned to her temples. She was wearing a pea green sweatshirt that she had never seen before, and a strip of Black fitness pants that are six to seven minutes long - as if they just came back from a night run.

She stared at Cai Ji wordlessly, and Cai Ji stared at her with his mouth wide open.

"Do you want to dance again?"

"……what?"

"You've been standing at the window for ten minutes, right? You didn't even know I was coming up. Or are you just climbing up to blow the wind?"

"No."

"Then you want to jump, right?"

After saying this, the dean pursed his lips and leaned against the door. He neither dissuaded nor provoked him, as if he was waiting for him to jump off the building. Cai Ji stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to do.

"...won't you stop me?" he asked hoarsely.

"Since you've been standing there for so long, you should have thought it through. Then there's nothing wrong with giving it a try. Just to test your pain tolerance."

"Endurance, strength?"

"What do you think? Falling from this height to the concrete floor is a relatively rare injury in this hospital. It might as well be used as a practice for the intern nurses. From your point of view, you probably think it is just a It's a nightmare. If you jump down, you'll wake up. There's nothing I can do to convince you. Just jump down and try. Don't worry, this method won't kill you. If you're really scared, use this method. Hold your head with both hands and try to lean on your side or put your feet on the ground first, it should be of some use. "

Cai Ji's body has moved from the outer edge of the window sill back to the corridor. He hugged the window frame tightly and saw that the dean had moved a chair from the ward and sat down with a habitual expression on his face - Are you kidding me? Are you going to jump in front of such a guy?

"Aren't you going to jump yet?"

"...I don't want to jump."

"You can jump if you really want to. You're not the first one anyway. The nurses have almost learned how to clean up. I thought I could only use a gentle approach to you, but I didn't expect you to be aggressive sometimes. That's fine, instead of me It’s really easier to explain the situation in words than to jump.”

Cai Ji bent his knees and jumped down - landing firmly on the brick floor of the corridor. He walked around the dean without saying a word, got into the ward and lay down. The dean turned to look at him, with a trace of doubt on his face, as if the words just now were not meant to ridicule him. Maybe this was just an act, and it was this unpredictable guy who was using his words to manipulate him.

"Do you still want to sleep?" the dean asked sitting by the door.

"Not sleeping."

"So, do you have any questions for me? I shouldn't be here for the next few days."

Cai Ji originally wanted to ignore her, but after hearing the next half of the sentence, he could only sit up from the bed. "What are you going to do?" "Clean someone else's house."

"what?"

"It's a rather special place. Because the owner has been away for a long time, I have to take the time to clean it up - it has been abandoned for too long. When I went there today, it was covered in dust, so I had to borrow someone else's clothes to wear. Unfortunately, they didn't fit. , I still have to come back and get a few sets of my own.”

The dean said as he looked down at the sweatshirt he was wearing. After hearing her explanation, Cai Ji also realized that her very different dress was not a change of style, but borrowed from someone shorter than her. The majestic underworld god Yama not only had to clean other people's houses, but also had to borrow other people's clothes to wear. Could it be that he was cleaning the meditation room for Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva?

"What's wrong?" the dean asked, "is there anything strange?"

“…Who are you cleaning the house for?”

"He is a friend of a friend. If you stay here, you will get to know him in the future."

Cai Ji looked at her and thought of the ghost stories spread in his hometown. Ghosts in the skin of beautiful women will deceive mortals and try to eat the entrails and souls of the deceived, often not all at once, but always slowly. He felt that the victims in such stories were stupid and lustful, and would actually believe a strange woman of unknown origin, and still kill them slowly and little by little. Now he realizes that this has nothing to do with beauty, but is just grasping at straws in his imagination. Obviously he had also thought that the dean was unreliable, and even plucked up the courage to take risks, but was dismissed by the other party in just a few words. In fact, who knows whether what she said is true or false? Does the "future" she talks about actually exist?

"Is there anything else you want to ask?"

Seeing that he didn't speak any more, the dean stood up to leave again. So Cai Ji finally plucked up the courage to ask: "Am...am I dead?"

The dean stopped turning off the light. "You started asking this question too."

"Has anyone else asked?"

"Most people who come in ask this question. To be honest, you already ask it very late. Some people with particularly sensitive intuitions ask me this question on the first day after waking up."

"But...why?"

"Why don't dead people know they are dead? Or why are there hospitals in a world of dead people?"

The dean turned around, leaned his back against the wall, folded his hands on his chest again and sighed. She looked bored as if she was about to pull out a cigarette - but fortunately, she didn't seem to have anything like that.

"You remember the last person you saw before entering here, right?"

"...from the old shipyard?"

"That's that person. To put it simply, you were sent here by him. As I told you last time, this city is a dream created by monsters. Although it is a place to house the dead, not all dead people are here. All the people who have fallen away from the world are selected. Among all the people who have fallen away from the world, the monster will only choose the individuals that it is interested in. Other than that, there are only a few ways to enter, such as sacrificing someone through a specific ritual, or being killed by others. The monster was sent in."

"So, is that person also a monster?"

"You can understand it this way, but..."

The dean lowered his head and was silent for a while, then said: "He is a seeker."

Cai Ji looked at her unclearly. The dean still lowered his head slightly. “Do you believe the elixir of life exists?”

"...Maybe? Anyway, this place already exists."

“So, what about the medicine that makes all life—people, plants, insects, even life with the simplest structure—immortal?”

"……what?"

"Is it hard to imagine? But it's nothing. This concept has almost no feasibility in our world, and there is no vocabulary that can correspond to it. However, for the person you met in the old shipyard, there is still In the place where he grew up, the pursuit of this concept is as natural as our desire to overcome cancer. The death of individual lives and the decline of the overall order are laws that we take for granted, but people in that place are. Seeing it as the result of something hugely wrong, in other words, a disease of the world itself, requires first understanding the cause.”

The dean stretched out a finger, and the ceiling light in the room flickered for a moment, and then slowly dimmed, leaving only a slightly yellowish round outline, as if the full moon was hidden behind rain clouds. The roar of thunder came from the very distant sky. He turned his head blankly and looked out the window, seeing the night as bright as a snow-white screen. There were no desolate roads or rows of buildings in the distance that he was used to seeing. On the screen, only the rugged and towering black tower came into view, like a mark painted with smoky ink.

"——A research method that can perfectly explain the cause of the disease theoretically and then create targeted treatments is of course the most ideal, but in reality many diseases do not find countermeasures in this order. On the contrary, find the precursor first This is a common situation in the development of medicine. If the disease of 'death' cannot be explained systematically, it is also a strategy to find conceptual samples first. "

The dean's ethereal voice lingered in the dark room, making Cai Ji feel like he was being pulled into the air by the voice. The scenery outside the window already seemed like another world. He remembered it all at once. On the lakeside shaped like lizard footprints. Deep in the old shipyard. Among the countless jumping and extending mirrors, his naked hands and feet slowly melted into flowing shadows, seeping into the same deep and lightless river water.

"...Those who are looking for the elixir believe that the monster who created this dream is, if not the 'prototype of medicine', at least the 'prototype of disease'. Its source is in the wrong place in the world, and its eyes and ears can touch the concept. The essence - this shortcut to the elixir cannot be abandoned outside the world, and we must try to bring it back to the world."

Under the sky that was so bright that it turned pale, the spiers of countless black towers were like spear points, sharply piercing the white curtain, revealing the huge shadows rolling and dancing behind them. It has no color, no form, and no organ that can be described, but Cai Ji knows that it is there. The deafening thunder is the accidental bump of its body as it coils. The outline of the tower is like gravel in the storm it stirs up. collapse. This is a scene that only mortals will encounter in their deepest nightmares, and those who encounter it will never wake up.

(End of this chapter)