Doomsday Wonderland

His hands were wet and thick with blood, so slippery that it seemed that with just one movement, his fingers would fall off and be submerged in the dark sea in front of him.

Are you in a dream? Lin Sanjiu thought in a daze.

She dreamed that she was sitting under the moonlit night, on the rising tide. The invisible sea of ​​blood rose up little by little, submerging her feet, her legs, her hands... On this wet and sticky black sea, she could only see a face as pale as the moon, standing on the ground. Swaying in the swaying blood-black sea waves.

Lin Sanjiu desperately wanted to gather up the wave of blood, press it back, and stuff it back into the body under the face; she wanted to find the gap where the tide poured into the world, wanted to close it again, and stop this rising tide.

The endless blood lost its temperature rapidly under the moonlit night, and she even felt that her body temperature was about to melt in the sea like ice and snow.

At some point, she finally gave up fighting in vain, and sat in the tide of blood, staring at the face floating on the sea.

"You have done so many things...the purpose is to die at my hands, right?" Lin Sanjiu asked angrily.

Why?

But Gong Daoyi had no way to answer her.

Maybe she will never know the answer to this question in her whole life.

She raised her head, and there was half a white moon faintly floating in the dark night; when she lowered her head, what she saw was still the same scene.

It was not like a human face, but more like a sliced ​​thin moon, never bloody, only outlines and undulations, whiteness and shadows.

So many plans, so much effort, it's like the tide is unwilling to be pushed and attracted by the moon, and wants to fight for the control of destiny from the world.

She really wanted to convince herself that this was another method of Gong Daoyi, but she was very clear that it was not.

Gong Daoyi died, and was killed by her.

She lowered her head, as if she was gradually waking up from a dream.

Previously, she was insane, met a fake gift bag, reunited with Martha... and other experiences, and other emotions. At this time, it was like a layer of hot sweat covering her body, which was poured on by the cool night and washed away from her body.

Lin Sanjiu, who had been washed blank, shuddered slightly.

The blood spread in the night, flowing on the stone pavement, like a pool of black water, with nowhere to go. Lin Sanjiu sat in the blood, waiting for the trial in a daze, unable to leave.

Maybe the first person to come will be the gift bag, a voice said from a distance, maybe the gift bag will have a way to reverse this period of time...

After sitting for an unknown amount of time, she vaguely realized that the silhouette of a figure was vaguely reflected on the pitch-black water in front of her.

The shadow stood straight in the blood, with a faint moonlight on the back; she didn't hear any movement, as if the shadow was already here when the world was born.

When Lin Sanjiu raised his head, he wasn't surprised at all.

It was as if she had known in the dark for a long time that there would be no one else besides this person in front of her who should have come here at this moment.

"... Puppeteer," she called out hoarsely, looking up at the black figure in front of her.

The puppeteer was wrapped in a leather jacket, with his head bowed, his black hair covering his face, it was almost impossible to tell where the night ended and where he began. The cold and thick aroma stained with blood is like a piece of snow falling one by one, slowly soaking the sky and the earth.

After a while, he let out a low voice from his throat: "En."

Lin Sanjiu wanted to raise her hand and show him the face in the sea of ​​blood, but she moved a few times, as if someone cut off the nerve in her arm, it still fell heavily in front of her body.

Could it be that if you don’t point it out to him, he won’t be able to see it?

The puppeteer's dark and dry eyes were falling motionlessly on Lin Sanjiu's face, as if he couldn't see the scene around her at all. There is a silent power that cuts off the wind, the smell of blood, and Lin Sanjiu's own sobbing; he is still standing a few steps away, but she has never been so close to the puppeteer, because the world They all backed away.

"I..." Lin Sanjiu felt deeply that her words were pale, but she still said with difficulty: "I'm not... I didn't think I would really..."

Even if she had the energy to imagine the puppeteer's reaction just now, she would never have thought that the puppeteer just said "hmm" again and said quietly: "I know."

...Lin Sanjiu didn't dare to continue.

The matter has come to this point, and there is no room for change, so she would rather time stagnate at this moment, stagnant at the puppeteer's soft words, and don't go any further.

She looked at the puppeteer without blinking, watching him take one step, and then another step, before coming to her.

In the smell of leather and incense powder, Lin Sanjiu raised his head and waited in a daze. The puppeteer first bent down, and then slowly, almost indifferently, lowered one knee; the subtle sound of the leather "creaking" seemed to belong to a person who only traveled far in the night. Boat.

The eyes of the two were on the same level - not quite, because the puppeteer was taller than her after all.

"I'm sorry," Lin Sanjiu tried his best to stop this moment with silence, but still let these three words slip out of his mouth. "I'm sorry…"

"It's not your fault." The puppeteer said slowly.

His eyes are still as deep and dark as a dry well, dry and dull; only at the end of his eyes, there are faintly transparent, dim tiny bright lights, like distant stars that cannot be touched in the universe.

"No, I—"

Just as Lin Sanjiu was about to speak, he stopped him with a slight shake of his head.

"...It's my fault." The puppeteer said almost flatly, almost gently.

He has always been gentle and polite when he is murderous and extremely angry; but tonight, it seems to be different.

It's as if... as if he really hoped that Lin Sanjiu could feel the traces of Ayun who no longer existed; as if a person trembling in the cold sea, if he put his feet into the sand, he would also be scattered in the sand Before, I felt a little hallucinatory, fleeting warmth.

"Do you think I haven't thought about it?" His voice was gloomy and low, as if he was talking about a very distant event many years ago. "My years, the roads I have traveled... these days and nights. I thought, there is always a price waiting for me. From the moment I was touched by the power of Karma, I imagined this At this moment... I just didn't expect it to be you."

Lin Sanjiu wanted to open his mouth and say something, but he didn't know what to say.

"I have felt like a puff of smoke since a long time ago." The puppeteer smiled slightly, only half. "Different from smoke, there is something that can fall heavily on me like a weight. Revenge is the only meaning I can think of, the only thing that prevents me from drifting away from this world."

When he said this, he took a breath from his lips and looked at the sky. He still didn't turn his head to look at Gong Daoyi's body next to him.

"I'm afraid that this kind of me has created countless similar me in the world." The puppeteer said slowly, "But I don't know why, you didn't die in my hands, you didn't escape from my side ...I don't know what to think of you."

Tears rolled down Lin Sanjiu's cheeks that were hot.

"Sometimes, it seems that you can be saved by being close to you." The puppeteer twitched his lips silently as if mocking himself. "There are not many times like this, and more often, I just want to kill you."

After a pause, he lowered his head and sighed softly. The wet black hair that fell down fluttered slightly.

"More often than that, what I feel... probably is a kind of freedom." He seemed to be raving, his voice became softer and weaker. "It seems that I can temporarily escape from the shackles of 'Puppeteer', follow you to do some stupid things, and listen to you say some stupid things. You have been reaching out to me, as if... It seems that if you catch it, you can leave the past Can."

Lin Sanjiu forgot his **** hands and wiped his face, and at some point he was sobbing so much that even his voice became intermittent.

"However...if you listen carefully, you may also be able to hear the mocking laughter in the depths of human destiny."

The puppeteer approached An Ning and said, "He never put me in the range of thinking, just like he never put human beings in his eyes. But he just wants to die by your hands, doesn't he? Make me think Things that may end the prison sentence also attracted him... This exile has no end."

Lin Sanjiu suddenly began to shake her head, her body realized what was happening one step faster than her consciousness.

The puppeteer had already raised his hand at this time, and his palm slowly stroked her head and slid down from her hair; his right hand finally rested on her occipital bone, holding her with neither light nor heavy force, There was just a faint trembling in his mouth.

In the next second, he grabbed the hair at the back of Lin Sanjiu's head and pulled it back.

She raised her head involuntarily, and her lips parted a line.

Lin Sanjiu could hardly see anything clearly, and tears filled the night. But she had a vague sense of what was about to happen.

"The essence of Karma is a kind of irony."

The puppeteer leaned over and lowered his head, the falling black hair could almost touch the tip of Lin Sanjiu's nose. His voice resounded in a low voice just at the distance where the breath became hot with each other.

"You met Karma too, didn't you?"

His left hand—a hand that was cold and bony—had somehow grasped that hard, smooth candy.

Lin Sanjiu wants to resist, wants to escape, she knows what it is, she will not eat it no matter what.

The puppeteer let out a low "hush" like coaxing a child.

"I can't help it," he said, pressing her lips so that she couldn't close them any longer. His strength was steady, and his fingers coolly inserted between her warm lips, pushing the sugar all the way deep into her mouth.

"Even if I kill him, I won't be free, I still can't...can't just stay here."

The saliva-stained fingers pulled out from his lips, slid down, and pressed against her chin. It was moist and warm, and soon became cold again.

Lin Sanjiu wanted to hold the candy in her mouth, but refused to swallow it; at this moment, the puppeteer's thumb pressed against her jaw, and she suddenly exerted force—she heard a clear swallow in her throat.

For a few seconds after that, her memory was a flickering fragment.

She kept her head up, she forgot whether she was forced to, or she forgot to lower her head; the cool tears, skin, and wet hair swayed from her memory, accompanied by a deep cold fragrant.

When Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes again, she found that she was sitting in a pool of blood, and Gong Daoyi was gradually melting in the blood, as if she was about to usher in a dream from which she would wake up in the early morning.

She turned her head and saw a stranger in black standing between the stone tower and the stone road in the distance.

The eyes of the two met; after two seconds, the stranger turned and left.