[Audience Expectation +20]
The remnants of the snowman melted in the silence, and after the candle was extinguished and the blue smoke dissipated, Chen Yifei's face was as pale as paper.
"I..."
Chen Yifei spoke hesitantly, "I was talking to my brother..."
"Where is your brother?" Wu Youdong looked at the empty seat beside him. "There are only two of us in this room, right?"
Chen Yifei looked at the seat opposite him. He didn't know when it had become empty... In a daze, the lingering smile of a young boy faded from his memory.
Beads of sweat slid down Chen Yifei's forehead, his back was damp with sweat, and his confused and hollow eyes trembled不停, like a sleeper who had just awakened from a nightmare.
"No, it can't be..."
Chen Yifei suddenly stood up, causing the table leg to scrape against the floor with a刺耳 squeak.
"How can there only be two of us here??" Chen Yifei's voice suddenly rose. "My brother was just here... Earlier, he was making a snowman at the door. This morning, he was still here to see me off, and he even mended my cotton coat!"
He forcefully took off his cotton coat and pointed at the perfectly mended spot, "Look! This is what Muyu mended! I don't know how to sew clothes at all!"
"Also, all these wooden boards on the wall, he fixed them all!"
"There's also a doctor from Aurora City staying with us, and he's seen Muyu too. You can ask him if you don't believe me!"
"I... I see." Wu Youdong seemed scared by Chen Yifei. He said helplessly, "I just... asked... Because I saw you talking to yourself in the air just now... It was quite scary."
"I wasn't talking to myself in the air!!"
Chen Yifei pointed at the emptiness opposite him and stared at Wu Youdong with bloodshot eyes.
"My brother was sitting there just now. You should have seen him when you came in, right??"
"I... I really didn't see him."
Wu Youdong felt very upset. He looked at Chen Yifei, who was behaving strangely, and after much deliberation, he tentatively asked, 'Chen Yifei... Have you recently encountered some sort of calamity?'
Chen Yifei froze in place.
[So, have you also merged with a calamity?]
[...I don't know. When I woke up, I was already standing there.]
[Have you also lost a segment of your memory?]
[Yes.]
[But the intersection point of the Gray Realm is at the back mountain, right? You should still be in surgery at that time... Why were you affected?]
[I don't know... I just remember the doctor giving me anesthesia, and when I woke up...]
Familiar dialogue lingered in Chen Yifei's ears. He vaguely seemed to have caught something, and his pupils slightly contracted.
"It's not right..." Chen Yifei muttered, "It's not right... None of it is right..."
"Chen Yifei, are you okay?"
"...Back mountain?!"
Chen Yifei suddenly looked up in a certain direction and rushed out of the house like he was possessed, leaving behind his just-removed cotton coat. He was only wearing a thin shirt and plunged into the goose down snow.
Just as his figure disappeared at the end of the street, Chu Muyun, wearing a woolen coat, walked to the door of his house.
He looked at the direction Chen Yifei had left with surprise. As he was about to enter the house, he saw Wu Youdong standing alone in the living room, and his eyebrows immediately furrowed.
"Who are you?"
"I, I'm Chen Yifei's friend."
Beneath the silver-rimmed glasses, those eyes immediately narrowed, emanating a dangerous aura...
"What did you say to him just now?"
"I didn't say anything... I just, I just saw him talking to himself and thought it was strange, so I asked him who he was talking to... and then..."
Chu Muyun's face changed dramatically!
He glanced again in the direction Chen Yifei had left.
"Do you know... what you've done?" Chu Muyun's voice seemed to come from the depths of the underworld.
"I..."
In the instant their eyes met, Wu Youdong's heart trembled. He had never seen such cold and crazed eyes.
Wu Youdong was terrified. He trembled and stepped back, stumbled over a chair, and fell to the ground with a thud.
Chu Muyun took a deep breath, stepped into the room, and gently closed the door with both hands.
The leaky door blocked the light and snow outside, and the living room was enveloped in darkness. This figure wrapped in a woolen coat slowly approached Wu Youdong.
He pushed up his glasses, and under his genteel appearance, a ruthlessness was blatantly revealed, like a fierce beast imprisoned in a human shell, shedding its disguise and baring its bloody, ferocious fangs.
"Do you know how rare a subject like him is, maintaining a delicate balance between madness and normality?"
"Do you know how much effort I've expended to accompany him in this act, to prevent him from realizing his own abnormality?"
"Do you know... what kind of monster you might have unleashed?"
Wu Youdong was terrified. Already injured and unable to run, he could only slowly drag his body backward...
"I don't know, I really don't know," he said in a nearly pleading tone.
"I've been guarding here for three days, preventing anyone from approaching Chen Yifei and this room... and you, you just had to come barging in."
"...Why???"
Chu Muyun suddenly picked up a corner of the chair and hurled it at Wu Youdong's head with a whistle!
Bang——!!!
A muffled sound echoed in the room, and Wu Youdong collapsed unconscious.
A large gash had opened on his forehead, and bright red blood flowed wildly, quickly pooling into a lake of blood.
Chu Muyun had no intention of stopping. He stared fixedly at Wu Youdong, who lay like a corpse on the ground, and swung the chair, hitting him again and again!
"Why?!"
"Why?!?"
"Why?!!!"
Hot blood splattered over the woolen coat, and a streak of red climbed up the lenses of the silver-rimmed glasses.
Chu Muyun was no longer the genteel figure he once was; he was like an executioner, a thug, vents his fury in the darkness where no one was watching. As the chair hit the muddy body again and again, Wu Youdong's breathing gradually faded.
Bang——
With the final blow, the chair finally broke apart.
Chu Muyun wiped the sweat from his brow, his chest heaving. His bloodstained fingertips lightly pushed up his glasses, and those deep blue eyes gazed at the pool of blood and mud beneath his feet.
After an unknown period of time, the madness in his eyes gradually dissipated, and a sharp surgical knife appeared in his hand...
...
At the same time.
A figure stumbled through the snow, making his way to the back mountain.
His thin clothing was soaked with sweat, and heat and cold intertwined on Chen Yifei's body. He crossed the unmanned yellow warning line and passed through snowdrifts marked with wooden signs, as if searching for something.
This was where everything began... and where the truth was buried.
The potter's field.