After a busy day, falling asleep is not difficult. Even lying on the floor does not prevent the brain from quickly adapting to a restful state and going into sleep.
The final stage of this process is generally difficult to detect by subjective consciousness. When you are drifting in a vague sense of falling, you have actually missed the best time to escape.
It was a feeling of losing control. If you think about it carefully, your back is still pressed against a solid surface, and the motion receptors in the semicircular canals continue to send messages that your body is moving.
To put it bluntly, it is an abnormal sense of confusion, a mismatch in the positioning of the senses, a spacewalk-like movement forward visually, but actually retreating.
Kraft opened his eyes, and the light of the candlestick had been extinguished, replaced by pure darkness.
A slight but continuous sound came from outside, one after another, beating against the exterior wall of the building in a rhythmic manner. The humidity in the air increased, and the water vapor penetrated into the room through the unsealed gaps in accordance with the rhythm of the tide.
It's as if the building was dragged directly to the waterfront.
A long, flat square was stuffed into his hand at some point, and a hazy sense of relief urged him to fall asleep again.
The prepared consciousness quickly compared the last memory, and the next moment his body quietly moved out from under the bed, and his hand reached for his pocket, where there was a flint prepared in advance.
However, what was taken out together with the sharp-edged block was a thin and tough card, with what seemed to be some familiar font embossed on it.
The rehearsed process was not disrupted by the unexpected appearance of debris. Kraft walked to the brazier in his memory and struck the flint. The cracked stone chips and flickering sparks spattered, and after jumping a few inches, they expanded rapidly and turned into
A blazing fire.
The cloth soaked in fish oil burned fiercely in the brazier. The flames flickered and licked the firewood put into the basin. The light grew and drove out the darkness from the floor to the beams.
At this time, Kraft finally had time to observe the two objects in his hand that should not be there.
On one side is a flat box with a black mirror and a small blue-green card, on which the outline of a portrait can be barely discerned.
The face of the bust on the white background melted and flowed, like baked glue, dripping on the yellow shirt buttoned at the collar, solidifying into small waxy pieces.
At first glance, it seems that the picture is faded, but if you look closely, you will find that it is like this. The facial features are erased by the molten skin color blocks, losing the human shape, and the strands of adhesion hang like curtains.
There are several block-shaped block letters printed at the bottom, but the strokes and arrangement are disrupted and crooked. From a distance, it seems like that, but if you pay a little attention, you will notice the specious anomaly.
As for the flat box, Kraft felt that this was not the first time he had seen it. It was also specious and there was no further reaction after pressing the button.
Putting them next to the pillow on the bed, he picked up the torch and lit it in the brazier. He inspected the room and lit the candlesticks. Except for the inexplicable appearance of inconsistent items, he found no discrepancies with his memory.
Special attention was paid to the position of the bear traps, and they all stayed where they should be. This made Craft feel relieved. He didn't want to step into an unauthorized move of the trap when he acted from memory later, and the two sides of his calf were injured.
One bone becomes four.
Opening the door, he lowered his head to bypass the chain and walked into the hallway. Looking down, the firelight reflected not the stairs, but the dark water engulfing the road leading to the third floor. Under the floating rippling water, familiar figures appeared.
The recorded area returns to unknown.
Fortunately, the location was set up in the attic, otherwise he would be snorkeling in the dark waters downstairs now. The confused time when he first woke up would cause water to pour into the unprepared alveoli, irritate the trachea and cause severe coughing, and then pour further
More water, and finally suffocated in darkness.
The limited diving experience was not enough to support him in identifying the direction below. Oxygen could not support the operation of the brain. The more panicked, the greater the consumption. Going into the water was a dead end. The escape route of the stairs was cut off, and now the only thing connected to the outside was the attic.
Windows on both sides.
This water level also explains why there is a sound of water outside. The oscillating tide should be less than two meters below the window sill. The water waves hit the rough wall made of earth and stone, smashing the scum and bubbles with a gurgling sound, like a cocci in the trachea.
The sound of phlegm rolls endlessly.
Probably humans will never adapt to this body of water. Everything here is like a faded door card or a fake electronic device with a white screen that always turns on, with an innate sense of morbidity. It always remains roughly the same, but at the same time,
Subtle details reveal differences intentionally or unintentionally.
The water depth can reach three floors on the street, meeting the needs of all marine life activities and allowing sharks to swim freely, not to mention those things.
Kraft returned to the room, extinguished the torch, covered the fire with the ashes from the brazier, and controlled the burning a little. He suddenly discovered that this was a semi-confined space with poor air circulation, and the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning was obvious, and he
There is no way to open the windows for ventilation.
After the environmental observation is over, he retreats to the bottom of the bed holding his sword. There is only one thing to do next, wait quietly.
The room returned to silence, except for the small explosion of scattered debris from the burning carbon fire, and the tireless sound of water lapping in the background.
People always have erratic thoughts when they are quiet. Kraft thought of the few times he went hunting with his grandfather.
The hunting of the Wood family is certainly different, and many times it is not done for food at all, but for necessity. In the mountains behind them live a large number of beasts that have not yet learned to respect these two-legged creatures. When one of them hunts too frequently,
When you come to visit, you must clean it up.
Usually these tasks are taken care of by young men trained in the castle, but young people who are clumsy will inevitably make mistakes. A simple brain may not be as smart as a bear that has lived for a long time. The momentum can be used to scare away small beasts, but it is not suitable for experienced predators.
For those who don't, the effect is about nothing.
At this time, it was Old Wood's turn to take action. He took this opportunity to stretch his muscles and lead the team on foot into the mountain forest that ordinary hunters would never go deep into.
They walked on the deep layer of rotting leaf litter, the clammy tree trunks were covered with moss, and ferns and miasma spread out from the gaps.
Searching in the general direction in such a forest often requires patience. Just like confrontation training, precious time and energy are consumed in silence, waiting for the other party to reveal the flaws that are bound to appear.
It could be a piece of moss that has been torn apart from the bark of a tree, a trail made by fallen fern stems and leaves, or it could be the sound of moisture clinging to the tide that breaks the monotonous cycle.
Old Wood showed them how to open the jagged animal trap, place it on the road it likes to pass by, fix the iron chain into the strong trunk, cover it with thin soil, camouflage it with dead leaves, and lurk nearby.
Next, if nothing unexpected happens, you will clearly feel the approach of a creature that is far larger than you.
At first I thought it was just the background sound I was used to hearing, but the ripples came one after another as usual, and the liquid that was photographed high fell back to the surface, which was no different from what I heard while waiting.
Then there was a beat that failed to follow, the resonance split, the vortex rotated, the undertide surged up, breaking through the water layer above, and the separated sea water streaked across the smooth surface, as if avoiding something that did not exist.
The auditory manifestation is that part of the water sound disappears for no reason, a mysterious void appears under the window sill, and the sound disappears.
The dense, mumble-like beats were replaced by rising musical tones, with high and low voices playing in unison, each echoed by cascading echoes, gentle and urgent. Countless vocal cords sang in chorus, and slender channels provided resonance modification, forming a
Waves of sound.
Kraft held his breath, crawled out from under the bed, and picked up a can of fish oil. He might suffer from concert PTSD for a long time after he goes back. Fortunately, there is only a church choir in Wendeng Port. The worst he can do is not go to St. Simon's Square to feed the seagulls in the future.
.
The song rises and the light shines.
The constant and soft white light flickers on and off in a breathing manner, gradually intensifies, and gradually adjusts and stabilizes. It changes from a thick, rich color to a natural light that is close to light and bright, and is extremely bright.
A few rays of white light leaked through the cracks in the wood and stuck to the wall, overwhelming the warm tones of the brazier lighting, signaling its arrival.
The music increased again and became more penetrating, covering up the sharp sound of the teeth on the fleshy tentacles grabbing the cracks in the stone. The wet and heavy limbs stretched out alternately, the built-in joints bent and twisted, the muscles contracted, the main body rose from the water, and the water film was like
The waterfall slid down from above, and the sound of dense water drops sounded like a shower.
Finally, all the sounds stopped outside the window, and the attractive white light that tended to stabilize shone into the room along the gap in the window. At first sight, there was a desire to open it.
Separated by a window panel, it is waiting for its unknown prey to open the window to greet it.
It feels like an anglerfish. The trick of lighting up is simple but surprisingly effective. Few people can refuse such a reassuring and wonderful light source when they wake up in the middle of the night. But unfortunately, there is one here.
Weighing the oil can in his hand, Kraft took two steps away to avoid the direct white light. More than once, he felt that this light was infinitely close to the most perfect moonlight he could imagine, so bright and clear that
An uncontrollable good impression arises involuntarily.
This must not be as simple as pure light. It is mixed with a special attraction mechanism that can be effective on humans. It is the same as the anglerfish using the phototaxis of deep-sea creatures.
From a certain point of view, this can be good news. Creatures that like to hunt in this way have more or less defects in movement, either not fast enough, not flexible enough, or unable to move at all.
After all, the human movement system is human. It has not considered how many times the body weight load can be normally endured. No matter how optimized it is, there are limits. Thinking about it in reverse, maybe it is not that it originally lives in the water, but that it has adopted this movement system.
You can only spend most of your time in the water to reduce stress?
His guess was probably right. The angle of the white light was slightly skewed. The thing outside could not even stay on the wall stably for a long time, and its posture had to be adjusted. This gave him a lot of confidence.
However, the first thing to change was not the side of the silent confrontation. With keen hearing, he noticed that the sound of the tide outside the window on the other side behind him suddenly stopped, and the moist and sticky sound that he had just tasted could be heard.
[I’m afraid its scientific name must have a plural form]
