Rhodes felt very embarrassed and glanced at her secretly. The nun's cheeks were red, her head was lowered, and there seemed to be tears in her eyes.
He didn't know what to say, so he could only quickly take off his shirt and lie on the bed.
After a while, I felt a slight chill on my back. The nun put her soft and slightly cold hands on both sides of her shoulder blades and began to gently stroke, with warm water dripping down her back.
A strange feeling of heat rose up in her body, and her movements were as gentle as the clouds in the sky, and as gentle as a distant dream.
The faint incense lingered in his nose. It was only at this moment that Rhodes' spirit completely relaxed. The unknown, fear, and death, and the anxiety, sensitivity, and depression they brought, truly left him.
He felt like he was lying in the gentle water town, and his soul was completely relaxed.
A soft singing voice came to my ears.
"I am thirsty for flowers from rivers and oceans
Brings refreshing rain;
I cover the green leaves with a light shade, and when they shake the dewdrops from my wings, they wake up
Every sweet bud;
as their mothers sway as they dance around the sun
Make them fall asleep in your arms.
I wield the flail of hail, turning the green fields
Beaten as if covered with silver,
Then use rainwater to melt the ice and snow..."
…
In the dreamlike singing, Rhodes felt that his soul was burning, his body became light and airy, as if floating in the endless universe, and his soul soared into the sky, rushing into the empty and boundless darkness.
However, the next moment, my headache suddenly became severe, and I could clearly feel the tearing pain, accompanied by the dull pain of a heavy blow.
Rhodes screamed, knelt on the ground, and held his head. The pain was so clear, just like the anesthesia disappeared when extracting a tooth before. Every detail of the doctor's forceps touching the bad tooth was reflected in the brain, causing the nerves to burst.
.
Rhodes stood up with superhuman perseverance, forced himself to open his eyes, and found that he was no longer on the bed, and the nun sister had also disappeared.
This is a world more like a dream.
He stood in the gray, dim mist, and his feet were light-colored, as if the color had faded from the soil.
There is only such fog and soil all around, extending infinitely, as if there is no boundary.
"What, what's going on?"
Rhodes felt like his head was in a mess, and the intense pain made his thinking blur.
He subconsciously walked forward and soon discovered the only existence in this empty world.
A stone monument.
In a world without any reference, it seems to stand at the center of the world.
It is about three meters high, square in shape, gradually narrowing from bottom to top, like an obelisk.
As I got closer, I saw that the obelisk was covered with cracks, and directly in front of it, there was a human-shaped black shadow hitting it violently.
With each blow, a dull pain in his mind appeared, so synchronized it was as if the obelisk were his nerves.
Before Rhodes could recover, the shadow spotted him, turned around and pounced at him at an alarming speed.
Almost instantly, he was thrown to the ground. The black shadow pinched his neck with one hand and hit his forehead hard with the other.
The instinct of survival made Rhodes struggle desperately, but the power of the black shadow far exceeded him. Every heavy blow brought heavier, soul-breaking pain. It had no facial features, only two points of terrifying red light and
The cracked black cracks gave people a sense of twisted hatred and the urgency to kill him.
With the continuous blows, Rhodes' will began to weaken, death was approaching, his vision began to blur, and the world became dark. He gradually couldn't breathe, as if the weight of reality was pressing on him. But he was still resisting, even though it didn't
What's the use?
Am I done?
In the severe pain, Rhodes only had this thought left in his mind.
At this moment, a golden light cut through the darkness and penetrated from the black shadow's chest.
It was like a star, like the sun, and like the crystallization of hope and dreams. Rhodes subconsciously raised his hand and touched this inch of golden light.
The next moment, as if his instinct was triggered, Rhodes grasped it suddenly, as if he was holding a sharp blade of light.
Without any hesitation, he thrust into the black shadow's chest and pulled out violently, like a slave killing his enslaver, like the oppressed killing his oppressor.
The shadow's chest was torn open, and every part of the body was filled with darkness. Tiny black spots scattered like water dripping into a frying pan.
It has no facial features, but its expression is extremely painful. It has no voice, but its neighing sound seems to be transmitted through its soul.
The next moment, the black shadow split into pieces, and along with a strange whine, it turned into countless black dust and dispersed in the air.
It wasn't until the last trace of black disappeared into the gray mist that Rhodes came back to his senses.
He stood up slowly and was surprised to find that there were no wounds or bleeding on his body.
"How is this going?"
Rhodes was in a trance and still a little shocked.
The shock just now was too great.
He looked down and saw that the golden light on his hand was still there.
"This...am I really not dreaming?"
Rhodes held the golden light in front of his eyes and looked at it carefully. It was somewhere between material and illusion, like solidified jelly and melted gold. It was irregular and long in shape, like a section of intercepted sunlight.
"That's amazing...is this some kind of weapon?"
This gave him a little courage, and he took a few steps forward and came to the obelisk. He was surprised to find that it was restoring itself. The blue-gray stone surface was healing and countless cracks were disappearing.
As the stele recovered, the severe pain in his head also disappeared, and soon there was only a slight lingering pain beating on the nerves, like the ebbing tide of the sea.
"What the hell is this? Where am I?"
Rhodes felt like he had turned into a hundred thousand whys and questions in his head.
"Why does this stone tablet seem to be in sync with my spirit? Am I in the microscopic world and my nerves are so thick? In fact, my intelligence is far superior to Einstein's?"
"Well, this possibility is not impossible..."
Rhodes instinctively stretched out his hand, and the moment his fingertips touched the obelisk, the entire obelisk glowed slightly, and the surface of the obelisk became dark, like the night sky in the endless wilderness, with tiny lights dotting the background, like the wilderness.
Traveler's bonfire.
"what is this?"
Rhodes looked at these light spots curiously. They were very dim and almost extinguished. Only the one in the middle was slightly brighter. It emitted a dark red light, like a pile of embers that had just been extinguished.
When he focused his attention, many small words appeared on the dark red star.
But he didn't know any of them.
wipe.
Rhodes instantly made up his mind that as long as there was a chance, he would sweep the blind.
Since he was illiterate, Rhodes could only reluctantly avert his gaze, ignoring this piece of information that might contain some kind of clue.
But the other light spots didn't respond. They were small and dim, and disappeared if you weren't careful, just like hallucinations.
Rhodes searched for a while but found nothing. Just as he was about to exit, he suddenly noticed a small pale flame on the base of the stone monument out of the corner of his eye.
"Huh? When did this appear? I obviously didn't see it before."
The moment Rhodes moved his gaze to look at it, his soul seemed to be touched, and a line of non-verbal information appeared directly in his mind.
[Flowers on the cold shore, the soul of the northern prince Hegeor]
While Rhodes was still stunned, the flames floated up, flew towards the dark light spot in the middle, and was swallowed up by it in an instant.
The dark red light spot became brighter, and the red light boiled slightly, as if it was burning.
A strange feeling arose in Rhodes, and the whole world seemed different.
The golden light in his hand suddenly dispersed and turned into countless golden dots that sank into the stone tablet.
"……what happened?"
Rhodes was confused, and when he was about to study it carefully, he suddenly felt a weight on his body, as if he was caught by something, and then there was a strong falling feeling, and everything in front of him became blurry.
When he came to his senses, he was back in the dark room, still lying on the bed, and the nun's singing was still surrounding his ears.
"…I laugh silently at my own empty tomb,
Drilling out of the rain cave,
Like a baby leaving its mother's body, like a ghost flying away from the cemetery..."
But her soft, boneless hands were not at ease. She gently slid across his waist and down his back, feeling a tingling sensation like an electric shock.
boom!
The door was knocked open.
An aunt who was three meters wide rushed in and roared:
"Confinement! No. 7! You are confined!"
——
——
——
ps: The poem is excerpted from "Clouds" by British poet Shelley