magician in town

Chapter 9 Girls & Girls

Behind the door is a corridor leading to a living room, four bedrooms, a kitchen, and two bathrooms.The layout of the house is an authentic human room, with complete electrical facilities, which is disappointingly bland.Luo Qi guessed that the house was the place where the housewife had the final say, and the Guan family's grandma made it comfortable and tidy.The only uncomfortable thing is that the window sills are full of dead flowers, but that's only because no one has lived here for a long time.

Du Zhengyi quickly disappeared into the corridor of the house. Roach didn't even see where he went. He walked slowly into the dim living room and turned on the light.The furnishing style in the room is Chinese style, and the rosewood-colored furniture warms up this lifeless old house by a few degrees.

When Luo Qi entered the room, the first thing he saw was the piano table in front of the south window, on which stood a guqin with its case half covered.The two rose chairs under the window are slightly askew, as if someone just got up and left.He strolled over and put the piano cover back on as if he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.Looking back, I saw a narrow case against the north wall, with some decorations on the case, and a pair of words hanging on the wall.

There is a small table and two armchairs in front of the desk, which is a very honest old style.A pipa was leaning on one of the chairs, as if someone had just played it and put it down casually.But when Luo Qi approached and looked carefully, he found that the pipa was covered with a layer of dust, and a string was broken.There is a jade ruyi on the small table, as if it is often held and played by people, the jade has been rubbed and polished very moist.But how ridiculous, this family failed after all.

He was a little surprised, and unknowingly slowed down his steps.There is a weird feeling everywhere here, as if the owner of the house has been living an elegant and soothing life, until something happened, they were caught off guard and left in a hurry.Life seems to be playing a song "Qing Ping Le", and the string is suddenly broken here.This made him feel uncomfortable like a thief, as if he had inadvertently broken into other people's lives and peeked at their privacy.

He collected himself and looked up at the calligraphy on the wall. The calligraphy seemed to be good, but he couldn't make out what was written, so he quickly lost interest.On the table below was an antique porcelain vase with a bouquet of dead flowers in it.Next to the vase is a photo frame with a family portrait embedded in it.When he first glanced at it, Roach didn't feel anything wrong.He was attracted by the photos because all the people in the photos were dressed in a very old-fashioned way. The men wore long robes and mandarin jackets, and the women wore old cheongsams.But it wasn't a surprise, Roach knew it was a popular way to take family portraits these days, and his human friends had mentioned it.

He glanced at the Republic of China style set in the photo, trying to identify the huge phonograph and the bulky telephone, and studied the clothes of humans 100 years ago with great interest, and glanced at the people in the photo.Their faces are very soft, no different from a group photo of an ordinary family. Judging from the number of people, this should be a very complete family portrait. Thinking that half of the people in this photo are dead now, Roach felt it for the first time real sadness.

With a sense of mourning, he carefully looked at all the faces in the photo, the old couple, their children, son-in-law and... Luo Qi was suddenly stunned, and silently counted the number of people in the photo again, shocked Shouted, "Du Zhengyi!".

After yelling, he grabbed the photo frame, turned around and ran, but suddenly there was a figure in front of him.He broke out in a cold sweat from the fright, and hurriedly stood still. After calming down a little, he immediately realized that the only person he could bump into was Du Zhengyi in this spooky and deserted place.

But that guy appeared in front of him silently, he definitely didn't walk in, his ability to travel through space was as natural as he said.Luo Qi reluctantly swallowed the swear words in his throat, ignoring his jealousy of Du Zhengyi's ability, and stuffed the family photo frame into Du Zhengyi's hands. He didn't know how to describe his discovery, and roared in a highly generalized way, "You Look!"

Du Zheng grasped the point with just one glance, and said with a bit of annoyance, "There are two girls in this family?"

Luo Qi echoed Du Zhengyi's sentiments, and said angrily, "That girl told everything about her family, even the love history of her grandparents, but why didn't she mention a single word about her? About the sister? Is this girl dead or alive now? The most important thing is about Guan Xinyue's personal information—no matter whether it was obtained by us or I checked it on the Internet, there is nowhere to show it. There is a girl."

Du Zhengyi was much calmer than Roach, he just stared at the family photo thinking, Roach couldn't figure out why, so he just stared at that photo.The photo was taken at least three years ago. Guan Xinyue is much smaller than now, but her appearance hasn't changed much. She was still pretty at that time, with her doll hair combed to the bangs, and she was kneeling in the first row of the photo.Her head was intimately attached to the head of another girl who sat in perfect symmetry with her, but only in the same way.The girl is a few years older than Guan Xinyue. She has a strange face and a high ponytail. At first glance, she can...

"...There is no blood relationship at first sight." Du Zhengyi murmured, which was exactly in line with Roach's guess.

In fact, the nameless girl looks more like the young woman in the photo. Luo Qi guessed that she might be Aunt Guan Xinyue's daughter.

"If she is a girl from a mage's family, she may go to school in our world since she was a child. Unless necessary, she can completely have no human identity. The information we take is all from human society, and her existence is not recorded. It's normal." Du Zhengyi said after thinking, and put down the photo frame.

Luo Qi thought what Du Zhengyi said made sense, but what was strange was that Guan Xinyue had no reason not to mention her "step-sister". He could tell from Du Zhengyi's expression that he must also be annoyed.

"Did you find anything there?" Luo Qi couldn't think of an answer, so he decided to put the question on hold first, and asked Du Zhengyi if he had found anything.

Du Zheng glanced at him, did not answer, but motioned him to follow him.They walked out of the living room and down the hallway until they reached the kitchen at the end of the hallway, which had a small door leading to the back yard.

This door is directly opposite the front door, connected by a corridor, and the two doors are almost the same size.Du Zhengyi had already pushed the door open, and Roach could always see the low earth wall in the backyard and the mountains beyond the earth wall.He walked to the door and took a closer look. There were clear ditches on the ground in the backyard, and he knew it was a vegetable garden at a glance. There was a well in the middle of the vegetable field. Compared with the front yard, it looked more like the yard of an ordinary farmer's house.Across the low earthen wall, he could see the forest behind him. Although he knew that the Guan family lived in the northernmost part of the village, he didn't expect it to be so close to the forest.Although the mountain behind the village is not a high mountain, there are many dark trees in the mountain, and the forest in the middle of the mountain is faintly foggy, and it looks like a deep mountain and old forest.

"Here..." Du Zhengyi looked at the scene in front of him and whispered thoughtfully.

"Maybe there will be wild boars here." Roach said.

Du Zhengyi ignored him, "There are a few things wrong here."

Roach raised his eyebrows and silently asked him what was wrong.

"Do you remember Guan Xinyue said at the time that their father and daughter passed the well in the yard after entering the gate?" Du Zhengyi said.

Luo Qi nodded, and Guan Xinyue said that she heard heavy panting at the mouth of the well, just like her grandfather's panting when he had an attack of emphysema, he still remembered this.

Du Zhengyi continued, "Never mind anything else, she said that the well water is used to irrigate the vegetable garden, which is true, and there is indeed a vegetable field in the backyard. But the question is how did she pass the well in the backyard when she came in through the front door? We looked at the courtyard, and there is no well. Unless she came in through the backyard door, but there is a path up the mountain outside the backyard door, and there is no way to drive."

"It's also possible that they got out of the car by the front door, realized they didn't have the yard key, and decided to jump over the back wall, which is much lower than the front wall," Roach said.But he just dealt with Du Zhengyi casually, and he didn't care much about this explanation.Yesterday he still felt a little afraid of the well with emphysema, but now that there are so many strange things, curiosity has overwhelmed fear, and he can't wait to go to see it.

His restless temper broke out, and he took the first step, stepping on the threshold of the old house and jumped out.At that moment, he heard Du Zhengyi "tsk" behind him. Almost at the same time, there was a slight tingle on his face, and several loud crackling sounds from his hair in the dry northern air. He suspected that His own hair stood up.

Du Zhengyi's "tsk" turned into a curse word, with anxiety in his voice, "With a hairball like you, I really give up my mind."

Roach stopped in surprise with a "Yeah", as if he was in a very subtle electrostatic field, and his senses were stimulated very keenly.However, after a slight and sharp stimulation, his senses went to another extreme, and everything became blurred. He could see and feel the world, but he was inseparable from everything around him. There was a gap, like being swallowed by a huge and invisible blister.

He stopped, but the ground under his feet was moving vigorously.He hasn't panicked yet, mainly because the accident happened too fast, and before he had time to believe that something happened to him, he was already sucked into a turbulent current.

His eardrums swelled uncomfortably, his tinnitus began to buzz, his intestines seemed to stir, and his head began to feel dizzy.The ground sped up and rotated, or he started to rotate himself, and his feeling became more and more vague.His vision has also become extremely unreliable, he can't see the mountains and forests he was facing at all, and there are a few unattractive light bands erratic in front of his eyes.

At this critical moment, he still instinctively thought of several life-saving skills for mages, but he didn't know if he was strong enough to use the skills, and he was also not sure which one to use.The opportunity was very short and fleeting. During this moment of hesitation, he suddenly felt that his consciousness began to dissipate, as if the thing that had been condensed into thinking began to disperse.

The first time fear crossed his heart, his heart must have been beating wildly, bringing him back some senses.If his body were human, it would be the heightened adrenaline level, and he wanted to seize the opportunity, desperately resisting the melting consciousness.Countless lights and shadows and tiny noisy sounds suddenly appeared in his consciousness, and then suddenly left, he was panting like drowning in his imagination.

He struggled, gathering the last bit of thinking power, and before he could do anything, he bumped into a rock in the turbulence, the force was so great that he almost vomited out.He was hit so painfully that he opened his eyes suddenly, the feeling of drowning came and went quickly, and when the dizziness disappeared completely, he was surprised to find that he was no longer in the courtyard.He was on all fours on the marble floor of the hallway, and then his body was like a puddle of mud on the ground, as if he had just experienced weightlessness, his mind was very clear, but he lost the ability to mobilize his muscles.

He struggled to raise his neck, and he still had time to take a last look at Du Zhengyi.The latter was standing in the courtyard. With the last ray of skylight, Luo Qi saw a look of surprise on his face. That surprise turned into an epiphany at the last second, and then Du Zhengyi disappeared without a trace.

"Don't..." Roach shouted in a hoarse voice, don't be him, the unlucky one should be himself.

The sky darkened.

Luo Qi looked like a corpse with an indecent appearance, staring at the place where Du Zhengyi disappeared, staring at the place where Du Zhengyi disappeared. Shock and shame burned him, and then turned into anger.

There was nothing he could do about the sequelae of weightlessness, and he could only lie motionless on his stomach.But the symptoms disappeared quickly, and Roach quickly recovered his ability to use his body, and he got up from the ground in a panic.He took two steps forward with uncoordinated limbs, stepped on the threshold with one foot, and the wind blowing head-on pierced his face—it was not wind, but particles with energy, which he should have discovered long ago.

He stopped, feeling the force field in front of him in a daze, and the frustration came down from his head and face.He knew he had to figure out what happened, why Du Zhengyi disappeared.He tried to recall the methods he had learned in several classes. Many formulas ran through his mind, but unfortunately most of them were incomplete. After the exam, he returned all the knowledge to the teacher.And most importantly, he didn't know which one to use.

In fact, even if these things can be remembered, what is the use?In the final analysis, he does not have the strength and sensitivity that a mage should have. He is like a computer without much computing power, and no matter how much data is stored, it will not help.He stood here, not much stronger than a human being, and he started to get angry with himself, and he was so angry that he was half dead.

He raised his head, and sheets of cloud and mist spread layer upon layer above his head, skipped over the eaves of nearby farmhouses, and suddenly became dark and gloomy at the halfway up the back hill.The top of the mountain was no longer visible, and the evening sky gradually became blurred, as if a Chinese painting had been dissolved in thick ink, leaving only this lonely village in the world.

This place is like the boundary between the worlds of humans and mages, he thought vaguely, and suddenly remembered the story of Guan Xinyue again.

The ancient well, the dense fog, everything is specious with the scene in the story.He turned his head suddenly, as if this strange world had sensed his consciousness, the knock on the door that sounded in the story suddenly sounded behind him.

The key words of the story are almost complete.

With a shudder he recovered himself and walked as quickly and as silently as he could through the dimly lit corridor to the front door, holding his breath.

There was no knock on the door again, and he subconsciously glanced at the window in extreme tension. There was only thick fog outside the window.The door was unlocked, and after a moment of silence, someone slowly pulled the door open bit by bit from the outside.

Fear turned into a sticky ball in his stomach, and Roach swallowed secretly, forcing himself to stare at the widening gap in the door.

At first, there was only thick smoke in the crack of the door, and the throat-choking smoke spread inward from the crack of the door, like gray vines pulling on the door panel.Roach looked suspiciously into the distance, the smoke was as thick as a solid block, and the lights in the living room could barely penetrate the thick fog in the yard.He suddenly realized that whatever it was knocking on the door, it was behind the door.He almost had no time to think and decided to yank the door panel, but at this moment, the thing seemed to sense his thoughts again, and just as he was about to move, a white hand stretched out and gently grabbed the door. edge of the door.

Roach's hairs were about to stand on end, he withdrew the strength he wanted to pull the door, and instinctively took a step back, the stress reaction condensed a weak magic power in his hand.He didn't dare to breathe, his heart was pounding, and he strengthened the magic in his hand with doubts, not knowing whether his little power would be effective.

He watched the door panel being slowly pulled wider until a pale face appeared at the door, and he was stunned.Putting down his raised hand, he looked at the person in astonishment.

In the dense fog, the obscure moonlight fell on the person. She still looked pale and fragile, with deep blue eyes.It's just that she no longer has the cuteness of yesterday, her expression is empty like a ghost.

She raised her head and stared straight into his eyes, fear was like a god of death wrapped in black rags, still following her like a shadow, but although the fear existed, it couldn't manipulate her, instead it put heavy gloom on her face like a mask Her face seemed to be one of the strengths supporting her.She smiled under the mask, a smile that was mixed with childish complacency and grown-up viciousness.

"Did you catch the ghost?" Guan Xinyue asked him.She let out a nervous laugh, mocking him sharply, "Ghost catcher master group!"

Roach gaped.

She smiled with satisfaction, sarcasm and sarcasm on her face.

"You..." Luo Qi looked at Guan Xinyue in astonishment, he really couldn't figure out the situation.Under the hazy moonlight and the pale light from the living room, Guan Xinyue really didn't look like a living person, and he himself was not much better, he might have gone crazy.

He stood blankly, but Guan Xinyue strode into the house with vigor like a master, and walked around Luo Qi triumphantly, not only looking at Luo Qi, but also inspecting her ancestral property.But her vivaciousness overwhelmed her spirits, and once again Roach felt like a wrecked car burning oil at the end of its path.It's like being possessed by an evil spirit, this girl seems to have died long ago, but her body is running on the burning spirit, and when her spirit burns out, she will be wiped out.

But Roach couldn't tell.When he survived the shock for a while and was able to close his gaping mouth, he said, "You are not a mage."

"Oh," Guan Xinyue stopped at the door of the living room, turned around and asked him with a smile, "How can you see that?"

She looked like she was teasing a kitten.Luo Qi gave himself a point in his heart. Guan Xinyue's mental age seemed to be older than him, and his performance made a 16-year-old girl look down on him.But his pause was keenly sensed by Guan Xinyue again, she immediately understood that she had the upper hand, looked at him and smiled teasingly.Roach's face was a little red, half because of holding his breath.

He twisted his neck and said, "Mages almost never tell lies. If they do, they won't lie like you did yesterday. Mages never let their imaginations run wild, so they can't tell lies like yours. You write haunted lies online , to lure the mage to appear, and the lies you told yesterday were also to lure us into your bureau."

Guan Xinyue looked at him sarcastically, her eyes almost sparkled, and sparks flew back, "Don't be shameless, great magician, you were so handy when you lied yesterday, what God, if you can't get along with juggling, you can go to the Himalayas to record ghost stories."

Roach was choked, and various emotions were chaotically jammed into his heart. He didn't know which emotion prevailed, and he blurted out, "I'm not a mage."

After saying these words, he and Guan Xinyue were stunned at the same time.He flinched, as if someone else had yelled that sentence just now.But there was no one else here, and it was himself who spoke out his deepest fears.

He himself told the secret of the king's donkey ears, and admitted his fatal flaw that could not be concealed long ago.

But suddenly, miraculously, he felt relaxed.It seems that the heavy burden that has been carried on the back for a long time has finally been unloaded.He has always vaguely known that he is not a mage at all, and he doesn't know what happened to his genes, whether it has mutated or degenerated, anyway, he has no ability at all.He should have admitted this a long time ago, and he shouldn't cover it up any longer, adding to his mental burden and implicating Du Zhengyi again.

He let out a heavy breath, turned around and suddenly saw Guan Xinyue's face was very ugly, as if frightened by him.Things did go a bit off-line, and probably didn't go according to her plan at all.

He blew another breath from the depths of his lungs, turning his attention from his troubles to his present troubles, and his whole body relaxed.Guan Xinyue stood in the door of the living room, so he simply bypassed her, walked into the only living room with lights on, sat down on the armchair in front of him, and stretched out his hand to scratch the pipa next to his paw.

The unbroken strings made a crisp sound. Under such circumstances, the timbre of the pipa still made him feel very pleasant. He turned his head and looked at the pipa carelessly, and was attracted by the sequins inlaid on the pipa. Yes, I just picked it up.

Guan Xinyue let out an angry scream, which made him let go of his hand in fright.Turning her head, she saw that Guan Xinyue's face was flushed with anger, but a lot of blood had recovered.

"You stupid..." The forced words were ready to come out, but they were still swallowed in Guan Xinyue's throat. Luo Qi guessed that she must have some tutoring.

She looked at Roach angrily, "That's an antique lute! Are you going to pick out the mother-of-pearl? Idiot!"

Roach shrugged, "The incomplete quality affects the selling price?"

Guan Xinyue's face turned even redder, and her brows, which were already pale, looked even more colorless on her furious face.

He added with a sneer, "Is this your grandma's? You don't seem to have such a good relationship with your family. You didn't care about them when you talked about them yesterday. The only thing you were worried about was your own safety."

Guan Xinyue didn't answer his words, and asked him angrily, "You're not a mage? Then why are you with a mage? I know he's a mage, otherwise he wouldn't be able to see what I'm thinking." Her His eyes drifted outward unconsciously, and he added with a little hesitation, "Why is it not you who are unlucky?"

"Because I..." Roach paused, his face darkened, and said mechanically, "Because my luck value is high."

Guan Xinyue scoffed at his nonsense, and looked down on him even more, she nodded with her chin in the direction where he was sitting, "Only the elders can sit in this seat in our house, you really have no tutor."

Luo Qi snorted, "Your family is quite traditional. Your family is so traditional. When you call your step-grandpa, doesn't your grandma slap your mouth?"

Guan Xinyue gave him a sneer.

Roach looked at her, trying to read more from the face of a 16-year-old girl. She stood here looking at him alive but eerie, with undisguised disgust in her eyes.The disgust was too deep, not like the level that a poor-tongued boy could provoke from a girl. That kind of hatred seemed to be deeply rooted in his life.If a comparison can be made, the hatred of killing one's father and taking one's wife is about the same.Luo Qi suddenly felt as if he had grasped something, but he couldn't explain clearly for a while.

He secretly glanced at the watch on his wrist with some irritability. Du Zhengyi had been missing for 10 minutes. "I know you're a smart guy, you played us like two idiots yesterday, so let's stop talking nonsense. You're setting a trap by posting all those supernatural events all over the Internet, and we did come, and you Come to collect the net. Then tell me now, what do you want?"

Guan Xinyue looked at him calculatingly, and gave him a beaming smile that was so fake and ugly. "I want all of you neurotics to die."

"I don't know who is crazy." Roach said, "A 16-year-old girl should go to see tfboy. I am much more normal than you. My idol is Nogizaka46."

"Anyway, I defeated the magician." Guan Xinyue was good at dealing with him, rolling her eyes and making him angry. "If you want to live to see your friends, you have to listen to me."

Luo Qi couldn't help laughing, biting his lower lip at first, and then couldn't help laughing so loud that the empty house echoed. He himself felt a bit like the big villain in a brain-dead drama, and felt a little shame, Only then did he restrain his laughter.Guan Xinyue's expression became very abnormal again, but what never changed was blind anger towards him.

Luo Qi said seriously, "Don't you feel ashamed to say such old lines at such a young age?"

"As long as it's useful." Guan Xinyue carefully cherished words like gold.

Luo Qi became impatient, and stood up from the chair as if he couldn't stand it anymore, "Stop talking, so all the mages in your family died at the hands of you, a little witch? How did you curse and kill?" Theirs? By dancing masters?"

Guan Xinyue didn't answer him, but stood there and looked at him with complicated expressions.

He couldn't do anything with girls, and now this ghostly girl was even more difficult. He walked back and forth in the spacious living room, thinking about how a human girl could make a mage disappear out of thin air. of.

Suddenly, a thought flashed by.

He turned his head and stared at Guan Xinyue, "The Pendragon orbital system!"

(End of this chapter)