Day of Imprisonment

Two people who looked almost exactly alike, one wearing glasses, was kneeling on the ground, on the verge of collapse. The other covered the kneeling one's mouth, a look of excitement on his face, gleefully taking in everything around him.

“Shhh, that's right, relax a little, take a deep breath, close your eyes, keep breathing deeply,” Luo Xi said, relying on having twice the strength of a normal person, he could easily suppress them with just one hand.

It was like holding down a first-grader, very easy.

Luo Xi with glasses finally calmed down.

Perhaps also because if he didn't calm down, he would be strangled to death.

“I'm okay now, thank you, thank you!” Luo Xi with glasses said, escaping Luo Xi's control at this moment. He straightened his glasses and looked around, the thought of wanting to get away from Luo Xi disappeared.

This place was too strange and terrifying.

If he acted alone, the possibility of encountering danger was too great.

Although, this 'one of us' beside him seemed very dangerous, at least, he was one of us.

“What is this place?” Luo Xi with glasses asked proactively, unable to wait for Luo Xi to speak.

For different personalities, they seemed to have a common characteristic.

They were all very curious.

“This is a dreamscape!” Luo Xi said at this moment, walking to a wrecked car. Although the car was severely damaged, the rearview mirror inside was preserved.

Luo Xi walked inside and violently tore off the rearview mirror.

In the mirror... no, it should be outside the mirror, was that dim, yellowish-brown world.

It was also a city, but the situation seemed much better than here.

There were no flesh-mold-like spots, no terrifying flesh giants overhead, and there were even people.

However, the outside of the mirror seemed very chaotic, just like experiencing an apocalypse.

Panicked crowds, chaotic and crazy scenes.

Luo Xi adjusted the angle of the mirror and saw more things. The next moment, Luo Xi was stunned.

Outside the mirror, there was also something overhead, but it was a huge spaceship.

“Spaceship?” Luo Xi thought he was seeing things. This was the world of nightmares, not a science fiction world. Whose nightmare would have such a huge spaceship?

Luo Xi couldn't hear the sounds outside the mirror, but he could tell the chaos there from the running and chaotic crowds, and their anxious and fearful faces.

After that, something terrible seemed to happen over there. First, a dazzling light flashed, and then the mirror shattered with a snap.

Immediately after, Luo Xi felt a huge tremor in the world inside the mirror.

After a rumbling sound, the original dim light also disappeared, and the surroundings fell into darkness again.

Fortunately, Luo Xi was still holding the candle.

The light of the candle formed a small illuminated area, blocking the invasion of the surrounding darkness.

At this moment, they were like survivors standing on a lonely reef, surrounded by the dark, endless sea.

Luo Xi with glasses scurried over, completely losing his ability to manage his expression. The sudden change tore at his already fragile nerves again. It could be seen that he was trembling all over, the degree of shaking was at least the level of a two-year cerebral thrombosis.

“Dreams are influencing each other!” Luo Xi grinned. Under the illumination of the candle he was holding, this expression presented a shadow with a strong artistic sense, as if every muscle line on his face was interpreting '狰狞', '恐怖' and an unspeakable '病态'.

Luo Xi with glasses suddenly felt that this 'one of us' seemed even more frightening.

Then, he looked at the candle in Luo Xi's hand.

His expression was strange.

“Are you curious as to why such a big wind here can't blow out this candle, right?” Luo Xi seemed to have mind-reading abilities, directly speaking the other person's thoughts.

Luo Xi with glasses looked astonished and nodded subconsciously.

“The wind can blow out candles, that's something that only happens in the real world, but this is not. This is another false dream constructed in a false world. The candle is something from our dream, it's like a dream's waypoint, in essence, it's just a marker, the form is different, it's just that in your eyes it's a candle, so the wind from another dream can't blow it out.”

Luo Xi explained very seriously at this time.

“…” The expression on Luo Xi with glasses' face could no longer be described as wonderful at this moment, it would not be an exaggeration to say it was dementia.

Luo Xi suddenly laughed: “Aren't you the best at fooling people? Always saying some messy lies, I've been annoyed with you for a long time, I was just teasing you.”

The current situation was that the fusion of dreams did not seem to be complete, just like their current location, neither in the original dream nor in a dream like that yellowish-brown world.

But through the mirror, they had entered an intermediate layer of the two dreams.

The light of the candle could only illuminate a very small area, they could not see things clearly beyond about two meters. Under the dim candlelight, the air was filled with dust and things composed of red, tiny particles. The feeling was worse than heavy smog, and after a long time, the throat and lungs could clearly feel discomfort.

Luo Xi with glasses followed cautiously, neither daring to get too close nor daring to stay too far away. At this moment, he completely lost that wise and calm intellectual appearance, appearing cautious and even a bit wretched.

Walking in the dark, the light of the candle could hardly guide the direction.

The road ahead was unknown, and waiting for them might be unimaginable horrors.

Besides the slight sound of their footsteps, there was the eerie sound of the wind around them, but it was clear that the wind was beginning to weaken, and eventually it fell completely silent, leaving only the sound of their footsteps, and the noises made when they stepped on things, which seemed even louder.

"W-where are we going?" After walking for a while, the bespectacled Luo Xi finally couldn't help but ask.

The Luo Xi in front would occasionally look at the rearview mirror he had taken down, which was pitch black inside.

"The flash of light that erupted outside the mirror earlier was in a building in front, or rather, on the fourteenth floor. We need to go and take a look," Luo Xi answered his question.

In any case, the bespectacled Luo Xi was one of his many personalities. Even if they didn't have much of a relationship, at least he should be useful in this place.

"Building?" The bespectacled Luo Xi looked around. It was pitch black, and there was no way to see any buildings.

Moreover, according to the previous scene, there were many tall buildings here, but now it was all dark. Who could be sure of finding the corresponding building?

Luo Xi could see his doubts, but there was no need to explain it.

There was a building ahead. Luo Xi followed the buildings and houses along the roadside, walked for a while, stopped, and turned to look at an advertisement poster on the wall of a store on the roadside.

The paper was severely damaged, but you could still make out a beautiful woman.

"Cosmetics advertisement!" Luo Xi muttered, and then looked at the date in the upper right corner of the advertisement.

"Launching in March 2049, stay tuned."

Luo Xi thought for a while and looked back at the bespectacled Luo Xi: "Do you remember when you appeared?"

The latter was stunned.

"My, my birth date is December 31, 2024."

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"No!" Luo Xi interrupted him: "I mean you, not 'Luo Xi'."

This correction clearly confused the bespectacled man.

It was as if someone asked him what one plus one equals, but on the premise that you can't say it equals two.

"Aren't I Luo Xi?" After a moment of silence, the bespectacled man asked in a low voice.

"You tell me, are you?" Luo Xi retorted.

There was another brief silence.

"Hurry up, or it won't be good for you when I lose my temper," Luo Xi said expressionlessly.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, I, I actually don't know the exact time, but from the fragments of images seen outside some mirrors, I know the approximate time should be April 2057. I feel like I've always been here, but like you said, I know I'm not him yet, but I want to become him," the bespectacled man was forced to speak his mind.

Luo Xi directly ignored the other party's nonsense. He only extracted the most important content.

"2057. 2049. So, is it that the dream distorted time, or did the person dreaming have a deviation in memory..." Luo Xi muttered to himself.

The bespectacled man next to him didn't dare to say anything, behaving as obediently as a maidservant by his lady's side, keeping his eyes on his nose and his mouth on his heart.

Luo Xi raised his head and held up the candle.

He could vaguely see the nameplate in front of the building, which was mottled and dilapidated, with the words "Whale Swallowing City Friendship Building" written on it.

"Have you ever been to Whale Swallowing City?" Luo Xi asked the bespectacled man.

The latter asked back: "What is Whale Swallowing City?"

Luo Xi was a little helpless and said: "Whale Swallowing City has a long history and is the most economically advanced in the world... Wait a minute, you don't know Whale Swallowing City..."

Suddenly, he was stunned.

Then, a scalp-tingling feeling emerged.

Luo Xi suddenly grabbed the bespectacled man and asked: "What is the name of that city?"

"What city?" The bespectacled man's face turned pale with fright. He didn't know what this Luo Xi was going to do. Both his behavior and the things he did were filled with a kind of weirdness and unpredictability.

"The city in the Day of Imprisonment."

"Piggy City, ah, you... you don't know?"

"I know, but the city of Piggy City doesn't exist," Luo Xi roared with wide eyes.

"Doesn't exist? I don't quite understand what you mean." The bespectacled man could see that he was genuinely confused.

Luo Xi let go of him.

"You don't know Whale Swallowing City because you were born in 2057. So, what year is it now?" Luo Xi discovered that besides the non-existent Piggy City, there was also an extremely strange and unreasonable thing right in front of him, but he had never noticed it.

Time.

He knew the month, day, hour, and minute.

But what about the year?

It was like a missing puzzle piece that had never been noticed, and perhaps, the existence of 'year' had never been noticed at all.

Even if there was, it was some historical information, all about historical figures from decades or hundreds of years ago, or the year a certain work was created.

There was the past.

But the present time seemed to have been deliberately concealed, and Luo Xi actually found that he had never paid attention to it.

After carefully recalling, no matter where he went in Piggy City, whether he took out his phone or somewhere else, the year never appeared.

The time on the phone had the date and time, but the year was missing.

Luo Xi didn't have a phone in the dream, so he couldn't verify it, but he remembered it very clearly.

And this wasn't the most important thing.

"Why didn't I suspect this before, or even feel that there was anything wrong? That's the key issue. Moreover, it's not just me. Everyone in the Day of Imprisonment seems to have not noticed the disappearance of the year..."

He began to quickly recall.

The places he went, the streets, the buildings, the shopping malls, other people's homes in these past few cycles...

All these places didn't have the year.

"This is very abnormal!"