After the paper crane's recording was played, everyone and the cat fell silent.
The flesh-colored thin pillars at the rear grew taller and taller, and within a short time, the truck that had just overturned disappeared between the pillars. There was almost nothing left of the body, and almost all of it turned into these pillars.
The nutrients of the forest can only be seen from some faint outlines wrapped in clothes, and occasionally you can see where the head is and where the hands and feet are. The clear night sky is mostly covered, and when you look up, there are only clusters of round black trees.
Shadows swayed densely under the sky.
"The variety grown this time... is very rare..." Lao Da raised his face and said to Zhu Lin who was dying - but no one paid attention to him for a while.
"Xiaojiu...is she surrounded by what this thing calls 'servants'?" Doctor Cat asked thoughtfully.
"I am human……"
"Although you must have your own considerations when you say this," Bohemia frowned, "but...she is obviously more than a hundred kilometers away from these flesh-colored pillars, and there is no way to harm them, so why is she surrounded by their servants?
?”
"Well," Doctor Cat waved his front paws generously: "What I said may be wrong. What she just said was 'us'. Is there anyone else besides her?"
"You're so perceptive!" Bohemia clapped her hands. In her solitary clapping, the night wind made the forest of flesh-colored pillars sway slightly. "...There is also a puppet master with her, but he is injured now.
Comatose."
The cat's eyes suddenly lit up in the dim night, as if the word "puppet master" had a fishy smell to it.
"Oh, I can't believe...she's very capable of what she does. I've also taken the Hippocratic Oath," it said with high spirits and its tail raised high: "We can't leave the sick and wounded alone! We
We need to find her—but we still have to think of a way to ensure safety."
"What you say makes sense! She is very lucky, and she will definitely be able to survive until we can figure out a way."
One person and one cat thought for a while, and after a few seconds, the two pairs of eyes slowly turned to Lao Da.
He swallowed hard - he probably didn't even have a structure like a throat, but it looked like that.
"I, I can't enter the city," he stammered. "As soon as I go in like this, I will expose the fact that I am a human being... He, they will not let me go, but the most important thing is
, our plan to save humanity will also be affected..."
"You are overthinking," Bohemia waved her hand. "People who see you like this and think you are human should not exist - eh? What do you mean by that?"
Ignoring that Lao Da looked weird and disgusting, she leaned closer and asked, "Do you mean to say that the people in this country are different from you? Not a flesh-skinned bag like you?"
"Of course... it's different. I am a human being, they are not..." Lao Da breathed heavily, blowing half of his head, "Our goal is to eliminate the fake people and save mankind...
"
...I'm afraid there is no one in the world who is more unfit to say this than him.
"Don't squeeze out the toothpaste," Dr. Cat said impatiently, tapping the tip of his tail back and forth on the ground. "Just think that we are born on the first day and don't know anything. You finish the introduction in one breath, and we won't take it with you."
If you go to the city, if you talk well, I can even sew up the wound for you."
The temptation seemed great - Lao Da changed his lifeless expression, suddenly opened his eyes, looked at the clusters of thin flesh-colored pillars around him that were almost three stories tall, and finally spoke slowly after careful consideration.
"Don't you know what these things are?" He was weak and his voice was weak. "...Then I first suggest you not to get too close. Although you don't look like the fake people in this country, I don't either.
I know where you come from, but I can feel that you have not been modified, and your structure is different from mine... If you get too close, once it is eroded, you will not be able to 'squeeze out' the intruder like our body.
Already."
"Squeeze it out?"
Lao Da had to take a few breaths before continuing to speak.
"In our bodies... only the head has been transformed into a meat bag-like structure. From the neck down, the structure of my body gradually returned to normal... except for body fluids, it is not the same as the human beings you know.
There is no difference." As he said, he put his scalp back together, and his pupils seemed to have shrunk a lot. "Because... if you don't want to be transformed into a pseudo-person by the invader... you have to hide your brain.
.”
His next words were almost incomprehensible to one person and one cat: "Through surgery, we changed the position and shape of the brain and hid it elsewhere in the body. Where the skull and brain were originally, there were only some disguises.
...So even if our heads are opened, we will not die... All this is to prevent intruders from transforming our consciousness... and turning us into servants of these things."
Bohemia raised her head blankly. The tall shadows of the thin flesh-colored pillars had completely enveloped several people; before they knew it, this area was filled with tall and large "flesh-colored flesh-colored pillars".
Bean sprouts".
"But the people in this country... I'm afraid most of them are infected by the invasive thing and are hopeless. In order to defeat this kind of thing, our country will send us to steal some samples... Our purpose is to protect the motherland.
Save humanity."
Just now, every word Lao Da said sounded as if he was about to disappear - judging from the injuries he suffered, it was incredible that he was still alive - but as he spoke, the look in his eyes
His face gradually glowed with light, his face flushed, and he seemed to have regained some strength.
...it's hard not to think of the four words "returning to the light".
"You and your companions... don't seem to have turned into pseudo-human beings, and you also have abilities that we can't imagine." He raised a hand and gently pulled Bohemia's sleeve, as if pleading:
"I can feel that I don't have much time left. Please, please, can you help us and save the fate of mankind? Remember, they are spread through the air, don't breathe-"
At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away, Lin Sanjiu stood in the darkness, and the only sound in her ears was the faint breathing of the puppeteer next to her.
Other than that, this building and this night were as silent as a dead city - the only loud sound came from her heart that was beating wildly in her chest.
Although I couldn't hear it, I could feel it through "pure touch" that there were people standing outside the building.
Solid black figures stood silently in the pit, motionless below the umbrella-like second floor, surrounding the building. They neither came in nor made a sound, they were already standing outside.
It had been five or six minutes... Even when the paper crane flew out, these figures remained motionless, like a circle of dead bodies standing up.
No, if it's a dead body, there's nothing to be afraid of.
What really made Lin Sanjiu tensed up was the strong warning "Run!" that kept twitching and beating in her head. Compared with now, the warning she felt at the old lady's house was as gentle as if she were in the house.
She was teasing the child. She had walked aimlessly around the hall several times, but every direction seemed more frightening than the other directions.
The only purpose of these figures is to trap her inside...
In other words, the most dangerous place is inside this hall.