"Old Zhou!"

Mr. Zhou quickly closed the book in his hand. This was the only reading book he brought from his home, and it had been rolled up.

An old lady walked towards him and reached out to him with a pleasant look: "What interesting thing is to look at?"

Wrinkles make people look old, but in fact some wrinkles can also make people look soft and kind. Just as some people grow every piece of fat, every wrinkle of the old lady also grows very local. It takes a long time to think about it before she dares to carefully put a knife on her face. Therefore, each knife is carved carefully, and she looks very pleasing to the eye.

Mr. Zhou hesitated for a moment, felt a little embarrassed, and handed over the book.

The old lady looked at him with anger and joy, held it in her hand and flipped it, and one of the pages automatically jumped out because there were several "big-headed photos" on it, which was equivalent to a thick bookmark.

The photo shows a boy of seven or eight years old, stuffing his head into various strange photo frames, grinning at the camera.

"Is this your grandson?" The old lady sat down opposite him and posed for a long talk.

This is where Mr. Zhou lives. In the hut, everything is white, the ceiling, bed sheets, floors... and the clothes people wear.

There is an inappropriate statue of god painted on the wall, and the posture may have been drawn from a Buddha statue. The robe she wore seemed to be a white robe from an ancient Westerner. She had a fashionable "corn perm" hairstyle, and her style was combined with Chinese and Western style. I don't know what she was doing.

There are three single beds in a room, and very few personal belongings are covered with white cloth, without revealing traces of life. At first glance, it looks almost like a morgue.

"It's okay, everyone who just came here is like this." The old lady said slowly, and naturally pulled Mr. Zhou's hand. "I know that these are things that make people feel beautiful, so they also things that need to be withdrawn. Just like drugs, you know that sucking into your body is not good for you, only harmful, but it feels good, so those people will let themselves indulge in it, but this is not real happiness. If you think about it carefully, can you really integrate into their family by living with them? Are you really happy?"

Mr. Zhou was a little uncomfortable being pulled by her, but he felt that he was so old and "uncomfortable" was a bit pretentious, so he smiled embarrassedly: "After all... after all..."

"After all, it's a relative, but it can also bring harm," said the old lady very understanding, "or you wouldn't come to us for help, right?"

Mr. Zhou lowered his head.

The old lady said earnestly: "The relatives in the world are all illusions. You feel that you live under the same roof with them, but it seems that you have been excluded. There is a glass wall between you, which can be seen and intangible. Why? This is because at this age, the time has come, and the things in the world have begun to realize, but the children are still rolling in the world, and your spirit is gradually getting rid of them. If you are still reluctant to leave and want to seek comfort from them, this is self-deception and chasing the illusion!"

Mr. Zhou whispered: "...I raised this child since I was a child."

"I know," the old lady patted the back of his hand like an angel. "I know how difficult it is to quit these, otherwise you wouldn't have to travel all the way to us, right? Come, let's go, the time for the event is up."

Speaking of this, she pulled Mr. Zhou to stand up, and a regular bell was installed on a corner of the door, like a school class bell. At about two o'clock in the afternoon, a soothing piano music rang out there. The old man like Mr. Zhou came out of his room, all wearing floating white robes. From a distance, he looked like a collective zombie scene.

The people all smiled on their faces, greeted each other, held hands together, and formed a whole lot, and went downstairs in white.

The small building they live in, from the outside, looks like a farmhouse in a remote countryside, behind it is an abandoned fish pond and the front door is a wild area. If there is no bus, it will take about ten kilometers to walk to a small bus stop.

People living on the second floor and above, the first floor is a hall where you can eat three meals here, similar to a collective canteen.

At this moment, the big round tables stood up and stuck to the corner of the wall, and the chairs were arranged in a large circle. Because the green peppers were fried at noon, the strong smell of food was floating in the hall, which made people feel a little disgusting.

The elderly quickly trained to find a chair to sit down. Mr. Zhou suddenly wanted to go to the bathroom - the elderly's bladder was so unreasonable. There was no warning just now, and they could urinate happily in a while.

But at this time, an old man with gray hair and beard walked in in a black robe. Among these peers who seemed to be sophisticated in toilet paper, the black robe looked particularly outstanding.

"Toilet paper spirits" greeted the black robe one after another: "Teacher."

Mr. Zhou was embarrassed to move and tried hard to lift his lower abdomen, intending to hold it in for a while.

After the tutor came in, he first cared about every old man and talked to them one by one, with a very rich expression, as if these old man were his own treasures, and it was worth making a fuss about something small happening on him.

After a big fuss, the tutor sat there and started doing it.

"My brothers and sisters," the instructor spoke, "Of courses, some of us are rich, some are poor, some are children and grandchildren, some are widowed, some are sick, some are healthy, we are so different. But the reason why we can gather here is because we have one thing in common - we are all people who are about to reach the end of time."

"This is a lonely journey. In the early years, there were many friends, parents and brothers, but the more you went, the more lonely you became, and fewer people followed you, and the smoke and dust were left behind. I know that some of you were very confused and could not find their own value. What a heroic person when you were young, and when you were old, you didn't even know where to start to please your children."

"It's okay. Now please... hold the hands of the people around you tightly and look at the eyes of the people around you."

So everyone was in groups of two, following the guidance, staring at the hall filled with green pepper smell.

The time for eye contact is required to be at least one minute. If someone next to him is to pinch the time, his eyes must be sincere and he cannot be distracted.

This action is actually awkward and funny, like a lunatic. If you don’t say it for one minute, you will have to laugh if you can’t hold on for ten seconds.

However, if the partner around you performs it very seriously and is good at looking at people's faces and self-doubt like Mr. Zhou, you will be embarrassed to laugh - not only are you embarrassed to laugh, but you also have to doubt your misbehavior and try hard to imitate the other person.

The one next to Mr. Zhou happened to be that old lady.

The old lady's eye sockets were very deep. Although her eyelids were hanging down, she didn't know how to maintain her eyeballs, and it was not turbid at all. Mr. Zhou was obviously a little uncomfortable at first, but the old lady kept looking at him with great sincerity, and before he knew it, he reminded him of his deceased wife.

Suddenly, the old lady seemed to remember some grievance and sad things. The corners of her mouth sank slightly, and tears began to flash in her eyes.

When people get old, they often become sentimental. Other people's tears are sometimes like sucking iron, and they can easily arouse all the sad things they have to put in their hearts.

Mr. Zhou saw her tears and remembered that when his wife was seriously ill, she looked at him hard on the hospital bed. She could no longer speak, but only her eyes were begging. He understood what she meant. She was saying: I don’t want to be cured, it’s too painful and it can’t be cured. If I continue to cure, even your coffin will be spent. What will you do in the future?

She said more than once in her life that she would not want to be stripped naked in the future and die in the hospital with tubes. But in the end, they still let her endure great pain and swallow her breath in the hospital.

The same is true for relatives. As long as the patient does not die, he will not be willing to give up rescue, as if he does not forcefully torture himself and the patient, it will be a ceremony and he will not be at ease.

But he always felt that his wife blamed him.

Once she left, he had no home. Even in his own house, he often felt like an old dog living under someone else's roof.

Every day, his family will sit with him only when he eats, so he always keeps eating, and his whole body seems to have degenerated into a boring meal bag.

Beibei was always on the phone at the dinner table, and Dongsheng listened to the news all the time. Han Zhou was obsessed with mobile phones. When his parents occasionally saw him, they would take turns to teach him to "put down his phone and have a good meal", but he also ate like a war. Mr. Zhou always couldn't grasp the opportunity to raise the topic well. Sometimes he carefully raised a topic, but it seemed that no one could understand what he was saying. Few people continued to talk. Sometimes when he said stupid things, Beibei would sigh and say, "Dad, you are wrong." Then he made a long speech to correct it, which made him feel ashamed. If he didn't dare to speak out for stupidity in this meal, he would give up.

They didn't want to listen to him, so he had to find a sense of presence for them to pick up food, but picking up food is also annoying.

Han Zhou would yell: "Grandpa, I don't eat that, why did you forget it again!"

Beibei will cover the bowl directly: "Don't eat it yourself!"

This is all trivial, you can't tell others, and it will make people laugh at it if you tell them - what, what era is it, and you still have to enjoy the treatment of "The Supreme Emperor". As soon as you start to speak, the whole family has to put down the dishes and chopsticks and sit upright?

Isn't this unreasonable?

So I had to turn them all into tears.

The seemingly long minute actually flowed over in the blink of an eye. Mr. Zhou woke up and found that he was not the only one with red eyes around him.

Some people hugged his shoulders and some patted his hands, all of which seemed to be in the same way. Since his wife passed away, it was the first time that Mr. Zhou found a sense of belonging in the crowd, and he was a little dazed for a moment.

At this time, a few people came in the hall and brought water to the elderly in disposable paper cups.

People who have just shed tears are often embarrassed and will naturally relieve themselves by lowering their heads and drinking water, so no one refuses.

Because the feeling is not good in the heart and the mouth is not good, the slight odor in the water is ignored by the elderly who have less sensitive taste.

But when Mr. Zhou saw the water, he wanted to go to the bathroom. Although he took the paper cup like everyone else, he lowered his head and sucked it, and looked like he had no mouth.

Seeing that everyone had drunk, the instructor nodded with satisfaction, asked everyone to close their eyes, and began to talk about the "after-death world" in a low voice - the idea was basically grafted from the doctrines of major religions, and it was mysterious and it was a bit correct when you thought about it carefully. Under the packaging of this idea, the content seemed to become credible.

The content of the mentor's speech is roughly: After a person dies, he will enter another world and have relatives again. The relatives in the world are all fake, temporary, and are scheming. Only relatives in another world are real. Many elderly people are still lonely and empty even in their later years, and this is the reason. Relatives in another world can sense themselves under the guidance of the mentor. They gather here to find their own soul habitat.

The tutor training and guidance lasts ten days, and the cost is 40,000 per person - of course, although everyone eats braised vegetables every day and does not even have eggs on the table, this is mainly to "purify the body and mind and return to nature". It is said that the vegetarian dishes on the table are carefully cultivated "organic vegetables", and 40,000 yuan is far from enough. The gap is the tutor who pays out of his own pocket for charity subsidies.

In order to prevent them from being disturbed by external forces, the mobile phone signals are blocked. When the ten days are over, the instructor will send them home. Each person will send a set of Little Red Riding Hood, a small flag and a tourist souvenir, and a set of rhetoric for them to pretend to go out for a trip, blinding those "fake families" and preventing social chaos.

The "family" found in the training class will always contact and accompany them until their lives are over and reunited in another world.

As the instructor was speaking, the old people felt that they were all floating. The instructor's voice seemed to be ringing in his ears, and it was about to be mowed into his eardrums. They felt relaxed and brisk for no reason, as if the soul was really beginning to get rid of the body.

But Mr. Zhou could not get into the state anyway. It might be because of the urination. The mysterious and happy feeling of the past two days did not appear. He was restless. The instructor's words seemed stinky and long. This guy had a heavy accent and was still a duck-speaking voice.

Mr. Zhou endured for five minutes and couldn't help but open his eyes a crack. He saw a very terrifying scene—

The companions around them all had a little dementia smile on their faces. Some of them lost control of their facial muscles, their expressions were very strange, and some of them had saliva flowing from the corners of their mouths, as if they didn't feel it!

Mr. Zhou was so scared that he broke out in cold sweat, and his urge to urinate a little weakened.

He didn't listen to anything the instructor said. Finally, he was over the end of the routine activities every day. Under the command of the staff, these elderly people in white robes stood up one by one, like the "hand-holding" paper man cut by a child when he was doing handcrafts, stood up in a daze and followed them.

The staff who had just delivered water to them were like driving corpses, fiddling with them one by one into the room, letting them "take a nap" and keep their spirits in mind.

Mr. Zhou was terrified and tried his best to do it. Although his posture was stiff, he finally didn't show any signs. He remembered that he was the same two days ago, and he lay down for no reason and fell asleep. When he woke up, it was often an hour later. Although he was asleep, he was not in good spirits. The instructor also said that this was normal and that he was tired of "soul wandering".

"Old Wu! Old Wu!" After pretending to lie down for a while, Mr. Zhou was sure that there was no one around and carefully called his roommate on the bed next to him.

Old Wu's sleep is very light. Mr. Zhou knew that he often had insomnia at night, and others would wake him up when they turned over and move. But on that day, he couldn't even reach out to pat him. Old Wu slept like a corpse.

A thought passed by, and Mr. Zhou shuddered—that glass of water!

There is something wrong with that glass of water!

"The third issue," Yu Yan looked at the flyer collected from the missing old man's house, "That means that there were similar things before, why don't we know?"

A colleague said: "Maybe it happened in a scattered manner, or there were not enough people, and it was not as concentrated as this time?"

Yu Yan frowned, and suddenly, he suddenly raised his head: "Can you apply to investigate the missing persons in the city?"

Most of the missing incidents of the elderly reported by the case are the missing elderly people, and it is particularly eye-catching with a few exceptions.

The previous incidents were indeed scattered in various areas of Yanning, and not as large as this time. Most of these intellectually sound elderly people lived alone, and some of them disappeared for a while, and their families discovered that the case was usually quickly cancelled after reporting the case because it was a false alarm - the lost elderly man came back wearing a tour group's Little Red Riding Hood, and it turned out that he had not said hello and ran out to play by himself.

A policeman said in confusion: "My grandma wants to go out for a trip, but she doesn't accept the tour group. It's either that there is no suitable route or that her family is required to accompany her... At the least, she has to sign a letter from her family. Are there so many projects to receive people over the age of 70?"
Chapter completed!