Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 956: Yu Ge (Part )

Red light, red light again. It seems to always be like this. When the first light you encounter when you go out is a red light, it’s hard to escape from the next one.

Luo Binhan was distracted while stepping on the brake. He felt that the red light in front of him had been on for at least twenty seconds, but he still didn't pull the handbrake. It didn't matter. The car was outdated, and Luo Jiayang wouldn't drive carefully for him. A small voice told him to concentrate on driving now, but he didn't take it too seriously. He had encountered so many strange things, and there was a monster waiting in his company, so he would not die on the road anyway. Then he thought again, this is wrong, in fact, people often don't die because of the things they are worried about, but because of the things they forgot to worry about and forget to prepare for.

When the light turned green, he turned the corner and walked back in a big circle. While he was doing this, his phone remained silent until the next red light came on, when the phone rang with a voice request tone. He didn't even reach out to touch it, and the voice was connected by itself.

"This is not the way to your office," said Li Li.

"I've changed my mind," Robinson said. "Let's skip work and go somewhere more interesting. Anyway, that thing is very obedient now, and he is still studying my mess."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Don't ask when you already know the answer. By the way, can you send a message to Lu Jin in my tone? Just say I'm sick, or that I had a car accident on the road."

Li Li said nothing more. She must have known where he was going. When the sewage river appeared on both sides of the road, the shadow of a young man appeared in front of Luo Binhan's eyes. He was thin and a little hunched, but had a face similar to Luo Jiaotian. That was what he imagined Xiaochu to look like.

He closed the car window to block out the strange smell coming from the river. The industrial park outside the car window did not look as hateful as he remembered, perhaps because he rarely came here during the day. And this day was a very mild sunny day, the sun was bright but not violent, and the air was a little moist after the rain. The sky at the end of the road was like a piece of ultramarine crepe, and the smoke from the factory chimneys was particularly clear, as if rolling in slow motion.

In the daytime, this place looked very strange. He tried to make himself even more strange, to forget who he was, and all the stories Nan Mingguang had told him about this place. Now he was a kid who had run away from home, and what would it feel like to come to this place for the first time in his life to look for miracles? The more he allowed himself to think about it, the more irritated he felt. He couldn't tell why, but there was something wrong with the story he heard the night before. If he was really alone at this moment, he would definitely find a place to stop and get some fresh air, but he didn't want to be seen by Li Li. He knew she was there, and had been in voice communication, and maybe even had stolen his camera.

As they crossed the sewage river, the lurker on his phone said, “I don’t think we’ll find anything down there.”

"I know." Robinson replied, but he continued driving.

"So, what is the purpose of our journey?"

“I have to see what that guy left behind,” Robinson said. “I have a right to see this, right? That bastard messed up my life.”

He pretended to be suppressing his anger, but in fact he was not that angry. Li Li had reasons to pour cold water on him, but he still had a vague hope in his heart. He heard Fake say that he had cleaned up the things left by 0206, but it was not necessarily so thorough. Maybe some things were just biodegradable garbage that was not worth taking away from the wild in the eyes of Wuyuan people. He didn't expect to find any secret weapons there, such as a magic weapon that could stab the dwarf to death, or a magic book with a method to summon a wishing machine. He couldn't even explain what he wanted to find. Maybe it was just an atmosphere, a moment, a place where he could feel the presence of 0206. Somehow, he had a hunch that Li Li would not approve of him doing this. She might think that they should focus on the bastard who was still alive and kicking.

But she couldn't control their actions. Fortunately, he was not driving a car with an automatic driving function. He had to slow down to the slowest speed when passing through residential areas to guard against the children who were running around in groups on the road. They all looked like they should be in school, and God knows why they were still fooling around on the road at this time. Luo Binhan drove the car slowly through the intersection, keeping his eyes on these uncertain factors. He saw that one of them was holding a firecracker in his hand, and he couldn't help but cursed vaguely. After the car passed, there was a sudden explosion behind him, and there was noisy laughter. Luo Binhan suppressed his anger and condensed a very inappropriate swear word into two short words: "Kids!"

"Let's blame it on our parents," said Li Li.

"Yeah, you're not the one who suffers every day." Luo Binhan muttered. He finally drove out of the damn residential area and took the shortcut he had originally planned. Unlike Xiaochu or Cai Ji, he was actually very familiar with the roads here, the kind of familiarity that he could still know how to get there after leaving for several years. This was the result of cleaning up Luo Jiayang's ass, and perhaps this was why he had a hard time controlling his temper every time he came here.

He wanted to divert his attention. "What is Zhou Wenxing doing now?" he asked casually, "Working?"

"I know it sounds funny. But, yes sir, he is at work."

"Oh, what part is he doing?"

"He uploaded a list of expenses to your finance department two minutes ago."

"I must be crazy to hear this." Luo Binhan said to himself. Thinking that he might have to discuss with Zhou Wenxing how to adjust the accounts when he returned, he wanted to drive the car into the ditch.

"You've been up all night. That can really be depressing."

Luo Binhan sneered twice. He wanted to express his helplessness, but he could tell that it was just a sneer. "Can I sleep?" he asked, "after hearing something like that?"

"Let's be fair," Li Li responded, "your brother played only a very small role in the whole tragedy, so small that his name doesn't even need to appear."

Of course you said that, Luo Binhan said to himself, this is not your dear cousin who you are going to do something bad to protect. He couldn't control himself from thinking this, but reason held him back, telling him that Li Li was thinking about him after all. "It's not just about him," he said with difficulty, "there are other things. The young woman that the store owner mentioned... is the manager he mentioned. I suspect I know her."

The phone fell silent again, with only the call duration on the screen ticking forward. Luo Binhan's mind was tumbling in this silence. Li Li would not understand, because she was actually also a stranger. No matter how different she looked from Jing Huang or Momo Luo, she was looking at their current mess from the perspective of a stranger. Maybe she was also curious about 0206 (after all, he was her creator, wasn't he?), but she definitely would not feel the same way as he did. He felt like he suddenly realized that he had accidentally put a piece of raw meat in a safe that had been sealed for many years before opening it. For so long, the piece of raw meat had quietly become smelly, rotten, and infested with maggots in a place he had forgotten, and it might even have eaten away at his belongings in the safe. After so many years of neglect, he now had to open the box to confirm how bad the situation was inside. He had to work hard to convince himself not to delay any longer. It was time to open the box and take a look. Maybe the meat was terrible when it first started to rot, and it would make people sick to death, but now it has been so long. Maybe there was no meat in it at all. Maybe the worms had died long ago after eating the meat, and only some dry remains were left inside.

The car drove into a more desolate area. The cement road gradually became narrower, and sometimes it turned directly into mud. He knew that he was not walking on the same road as Cai Ji at the beginning, and it was probably a little bit west. After entering the area of ​​the old industrial park, he was no longer familiar with the road and could only rely on the navigation to move forward. Unexpectedly, the navigation map was very clear, the network was smooth, and the mobile phone signal was full.

"Does this have anything to do with you?" Luo Binhan asked, pointing at the car navigation system.

"Do not."

"Interesting. I thought we'd be lost for a while." He swiped his finger across the map. "I thought we might not get a cell phone signal here, or that we wouldn't be able to find 206 Dongyun Road. But look, it's right here - as long as the road ahead is fine, we'll be there in less than minutes."

"I don't think it's completely out of the city's hands. The land is valuable, it's just not being redeveloped for the time being."

"I always feel that this place should be more special." Luo Binhan said. He observed the scenery on both sides with his peripheral vision. It was indeed very desolate here, with empty factory buildings everywhere, but it was not as weird as Cai Ji described. On the way, he even saw quite new road signs and several trucks carrying steel and trees.

"Remember to help me check the latest development plans for this place." He stepped on the brakes and waited for a truck to pass through the narrow road ahead. The truck driver put his arm on the window and looked at him boredly, but his attitude was not very surprised. It seems that this place is not as deserted as Cai Ji said.

He continued to look for landmarks. On the way, he only saw a small river, the water was green, but there were no lotus leaves. They passed many old factories, but they didn't see any climbing vines on them. Only once did he see a tilted street lamp wrapped with lavender bindweed. He stopped the car to take a look. It was not the blooming season yet, and most of the buds were closed, looking very ordinary. "Do you think this is the kind of plant he said?" he asked Li Li.

"No."

He didn't ask her how she could be so sure, but continued driving. In the last five minutes of the journey, he was still looking for the scenery that matched Cai Ji's description. He wanted to see the creepers that covered the buildings like scales and hair, making the whole street look like a foreign ruin. However, he only saw some wild flowers that were common in this season, such as buttercups, dandelions or butterfly grass. They didn't grow well, and they were all squeezed in the pitiful cement cracks.

Finally he gave up. "We've cleared them all out." He stopped the car at the end of the road. "These must be things that Wuyuan people thought shouldn't be left here."

"Obviously the substances emitted by that plant would cause panic."

"It's quite interesting, isn't it?" Luo Binhan said. He didn't think much when he blurted out the words, but turned his head to look at the shrub-covered slope on the side of the road. About fifty meters behind the slope, there was a green lake. This was where the navigation pointed him. He stood on the top of the slope and looked far away, trying to identify whether its shape was as Cai Ji described - "lizard footprints". But the slope was not high enough, and he didn't see the river or the pier.

If the navigation system wasn't lying, then they were clearly not going in the same direction as Cai Ji. He walked down the ramp, through the thorny bushes (he should have changed his clothes before coming here), and walked to the lake to check the situation.

Cai Ji described this lake as a dreamland—not only was it the place where 0206 appeared, but it had also been there repeatedly in his dreams—but when Luo Binhan looked at it, he felt disappointed. It was too ordinary. People seemed to be able to find similar lakes in any forest park that was in good working order. The lake water was not transparent, and the algae were as thick as green ink, which seemed to have taken away the light from other aquatic plants. Only a few cattails stood sporadically near the shore.

Along the lake, wherever he could see, there was no old shipyard as described by Cai Ji. He did see a few square factory buildings on the other side, all of which were flat-roofed and had shiny white walls, which looked very young. When he squinted his eyes and tried to identify them, he could even see the cobblestone paths and fountains between the buildings. He looked at the navigation map on his phone, but it didn't tell him what those buildings were used for. These buildings were probably newly built not long ago.

He walked slowly along the lakeshore, thinking that he looked like a down-and-out wretch who had gone to the wilderness to walk sadly because of a failed career. He could use this as an excuse to go to the white factory buildings, and the shirt and trousers on his body wouldn't be too strange. Although he was still thinking about this in his mind, the feeling of disappointment became stronger and stronger, as if before he actually took action, he had already felt that there was no point in doing so. Before he really approached there, he had already believed that these brand new white factory buildings had nothing to do with 0206, just because of some kind of atmosphere.

This is no longer the place where the story happened, he thought, this is where the story has ended. There is no more stirring demonic atmosphere and bizarre scenery, just a lonely and desolate wasteland, a cemetery where terrible secrets are buried. Now there is no conspiracy or trickery left here, only a quietness with a sense of desolation. In the distance, at the corner closest to the lake and the sky, the blue and green colors are mixed together, like a stroke that a painter intends to blur. The wind is also blowing from that direction. He guessed that the estuary is further over there.

His toes kicked against a protruding stone. Luo Binhan looked down and found that it had a particularly neat edge, much like a cement product. He leaned over to pick it up and weighed it, then turned around to search the nearby lakeshore and soon found more traces: stones with traces of human activity, pits with sparse weeds, and steel structures left in the shallow water.

"Here it is," he murmured.

He felt a little tired, so he sat down in a patch of relatively clean clover. Less than ten meters from his feet was the remains of the trestle bridge in Cai Ji's story. Although there was nothing special about the building in the story, it was obviously removed like the creepers in the end. He stretched out his hand and gestured to the lake, imagining that a few years ago, a Wuyuan man had stood there alone, watching the lake ripple under the moonlight. What was that person thinking? Was he thinking of his hometown?

  It's over. He closed his eyes and thought, this is over, revenge has been taken, though not by him. There is nothing left to do about that man, now, in this place, all that remains is mourning. If death is the end of the journey, then all that remains is mourning... but is that really the case?

"I've thought about heaven," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's called heaven. Anyway, it's a place where people go after death without worries or torture. To be honest, I can accept this answer. At least it's better than reincarnation and hell, especially reincarnation, which I hate."

"What's your reason?"

"You might as well call this an indefinite work system," said Luo Binhan. "You work until you collapse, then go to hell to rest for two days, and then you're thrown into another position to start over. Retirement? Forget it. This is not what I want. I want a one-time death, resignation, get out, blow out the candle, not a suspension of work and then transfer to another position."

"So you seek the eternal destiny of your soul."

"It's hard to say. Actually, I find it a bit annoying. If the dead live in such a nice place, I wonder what the point of living is. You know? If we can have everything we want after we die, it makes us look like jokes when we are alive."

"Religions usually believe that we live to hone our skills for happiness after death."

"Why not do it all in one go?"

"If you do a little research you'll notice a commonality: religions that teach about an eternal afterlife tend to have teachings against suicide."

"No one should think about having less suffering in life," said Robinson. "There's still a funeral. I don't know if I should feel sad for the dead. Those dead people may have lived a better life than I did."

"They say 'Death is the last parting', sir. If a friend of yours had gone--let's say, into space, in search of his lost relatives, and never came back again, even if you knew he was still alive, it wouldn't prevent you from being sad."

Luo Binhan thought she must have done this on purpose. "You're right," he said, "Let's go back and give him an early funeral."

"What on earth is the matter with you?"

"Have you investigated me?" Luo Binhan asked without thinking, "How much do you know about my past?"

There was no sound on the phone. Luo Binhan was not surprised at all. In fact, if he had Li Li's ability, he would probably do the same. Not only would he read every message sent by Jing Huang's social networking account ten times since its creation, but he would also carefully read his elementary school report cards and the comments his teachers made about him in private. Anything that could be traced online would not escape his clutches.

"You have certainly checked me out," he concluded, "and you know what happened before I was taken on board that ship."

“Only part of it.”

"Did you know I once looked for a missing woman?"

"Yes."

"I think she is Cai Ji's boss."

(End of this chapter)