Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 946 The Unbounded Cage (Part )

While working in a car repair shop, Xiao Chu once asked a question. Probably because he was afraid of making him angry, the good student was trembling when asking questions, like a hungry wild animal sneaking into a human courtyard. Although he was obviously afraid of danger, he couldn't help but want to explore forward. Seeing how nervous he was, Cai Ji thought that this idiot would really ask some particularly sensitive questions, such as the whereabouts of his biological mother or his relationship with his stepmother and children.

As a result, the other party asked in a voice as thin as a gnat: "What does a madman look like?"

There was a lunatic imprisoned in his family, which was known to everyone in the village. For the naked figures occasionally wandering in the farmland late at night, for the strange shouts coming from through the thick stone slabs of the cellar, and for the hesitant expressions shown by their entire family when mentioning this matter, countless negative emotions have already been derived. There are rumors and stories about ghosts and shadows. Some people say that this is because someone in their family ancestors once dug ancient tombs, thus losing their virtue; others say that this is because their uncle bumped into the shadow of a dead person in the middle of the night and spat on the shadow, and was eventually disrespected. The retribution of ghosts and gods. Any story he heard was almost certainly false. However, these rumors have made the entire family feel ashamed, and they never mentioned the old man who lived in the cellar all year round.

Thinking about it now, this attitude probably fueled people's interest in creating rumors, but as a child, he didn't understand this mentality. Nor did he clearly realize that the old man living in the cellar was different from the rest of the family. When he stood on tiptoes and couldn't see the pot on the stove, the grandfather in his memory had gray hair, but the man locked in the cellar was nearly bald, with only a few sparse white hairs hanging around the top of his head. These two people were actually brothers who were two years apart. He would not be able to understand this until he was ten years old.

The old man was always in the cellar, and the cellar door was bolted with steel bars and wrapped with chains as thick as a thumb. Every evening, his family would bring him food through the vent. Every one or two months, seemingly on an auspicious day on the almanac, the adults would unlock the cellar at night and take him outside for cleaning and inspection. He once took this opportunity to walk to the cellar and quietly look into the dark space. The air inside was damp and cold, filled with the smell of sourness and decay. What can people locked up in this place do on a daily basis? Why should he be locked up in a place like this?

Although he had never been taught to do so, he experienced the feeling of compassion very early in life. Whenever the adults went out to work, he would quietly approach the vent and talk to the exposed eyes. The voice was old and hoarse, and would miss his questions from time to time, but most of the time he could answer them well. It was this madman locked in the cellar who told him many past events in his family, what "uncle" meant, and the origin of his mother. Before the death of the madman in the cellar, he had always been the person in the whole family who was most willing to talk to him. For this reason, he was unwilling to speak ill of the old man. He only said that madmen are also sick people. Xiaochu asked him why he didn't send the patient to the hospital. He explained that it was a difficult disease to treat and it would cost a lot of money.

He thought it might be difficult for children like Xiaochu, whose parents made money and moved to the city early, to understand this. But Xiao Chu was not surprised at all by this answer, but nodded in understanding.

"Then, why lock him up?"

Faced with this question, he opened and closed his mouth. The answer he finally gave was exactly the same as the one he hated most in his family.

"That's for his own good."

"Why? It's pitiful to be locked up in a cellar. Why do you do this to a patient?"

Faced with Xiao Chu's innocent and ignorant questions, the memories that he had hidden came back to his mind in an instant. Yes, most of the time old people are normal. Ask him the date like an ordinary elder, ask him what words he has learned, what he has eaten, and lament the cruelty of his family to him like an old lady living alone in the village. It was during such an ordinary conversation that one day, the old man said to him mysteriously:

"I am immortal."

He was already in elementary school and understood what death was like. He was stunned by this sentence for a moment. The old man's two eyes took turns to appear in the vent, observing his reaction with a smug expression.

Not knowing whether to believe the teacher in school or the old man in the cellar who never blamed him, he hesitated and said: "Everyone is mortal."

"I'm different," the old man announced in the cellar. The voice was no different from usual. It was as calm and natural as telling him the origin of the sapodilla tree outside his house. "When I was young, I was an apprentice to Duke Wu Shao. He taught me the art of immortality. As long as I If I don’t commit suicide, no one can kill me, and no ghost can take me away.”

At that time, he didn't know what the old man meant by "Wu Shao Gong", but because he had listened to storytelling on the radio, he also knew many stories about immortals teaching magic. Do old people also have such amazing experiences? But if he was such an amazing person, how could he be locked up in a cellar? He told the other party honestly what he was thinking, and was rewarded with a hacking laugh.

"This is my 'tribulation'." The old man said, "I will live forever and enjoy more than others. God will not be satisfied and will let others harm me. Now I am hiding in this place, better than outside. Safety."

If the old man says these words with a weird laugh, a sinister tone, or stares at him with scary eyes, he will definitely know that he is suffering from an illness. It is precisely because these words are said so naturally and generously that people cannot help but believe them. Is the person in front of me really a lunatic? Or just know the truth that others don't know?

"You... stayed here voluntarily?"

"Yeah. It's not safe to go out."

"Why is it unsafe?"

"Someone will hurt me."

The old man said calmly and confidently: "The people outside have been replaced. Some of them have been watching me, looking for opportunities to harm me. I have seen several of them. They are not living people, they are all I have been replaced a long time ago. Although they can't kill me, they always want to bury me alive and force me to kill myself. When I hide here, they think I am trapped. I can't die." If Any adult present would definitely judge this incident as pure delusion of persecution. But in his eyes at that time, the correctness of the truth was determined by his identity and attitude. Although the old man was locked up in the cellar, he was an undeniable elder. His unquestionable sense of authority when he spoke was not inferior to that of a school teacher. The mysterious atmosphere revealed in the words made him even more willing to believe the old man's words - wouldn't it be great if immortality really existed? However, if what the old man said is true, then the terrible fact is that there are extraordinary villains hiding in the village. Not only are they not real villagers, they may not even be human.

"Who are they?" he asked the other person in a low voice, "Who wants to arrest you?"

"Anyone will arrest me. They can pretend to be anyone. You never know when they will change."

At this time, the eyes exposed in the cellar stared at him steadily, as if they had never blinked since he spoke. He looked back in confusion, and suddenly through those eyes, he saw the crazy thoughts lurking behind: the old man was doubting him, thinking that he had been replaced by something else.

At that time, he just felt aggrieved, but he had no idea how much risk he had experienced. Later the old man in the cellar died. It is said that he tripped over a fragment of an old vegetable jar, fell from the ladder and died accidentally. This method of death gave rise to new rumors that the family had quietly solved a problem. He finally realized in shock that the old man's story about immortality was just crazy talk after all. This is real madness. It does not require acting funny like an actor on the stage, nor does it necessarily cry, laugh and make noise like a child. The so-called madman is one who regards madness as truth.

When the old man bit off the fingers of the village children because of his madness, when he was naked and crawling like a snake in the mud on a rainy night, his mood might be as calm as when he was hiding in the cellar. Because of his immortal self-confidence, he can easily accept the loneliness and pain that ordinary people cannot bear; he can also easily carry out cruel atrocities that ordinary people cannot imagine. When others screamed in fear, what exactly did the old man see in his eyes? Did the "Wushao Gong" who granted him immortality in his fantasy also whisper to him while others' blood was flowing, sending all kinds of paranoid thoughts into his ears?

If all this was not due to the extreme fear of death in that deranged mind, but was bewitched by real spirits, then it would be nothing less than a spiritual pardon for myself. Therefore, whenever the fear of blood inheritance and future fate comes to his mind, he always wants to believe in the existence of "Wu Shao Gong", but he has to deny it because of guilt. Even if there really was a talking animal that deceived my uncle, it was the old man who chose to believe it, and it was the old man who bit off other people's fingers for this reason, so this responsibility cannot be shied away.

——So, it would be great if what Blackbird said was true.

He thought as he walked down the street. After the funeral, the disappointment and even disgust I once had towards the old man in the cellar has finally been dispelled. That's because he finally understood what kind of world the old man had seen and heard. He finally understood that reason is just a driver trapped in a broken-down car. No matter how skilled he is or how strong his will, he is ultimately powerless in the face of malfunctioning brakes and blackened windows. The initial madness does not come from thinking to behavior, but from the five senses to thinking.

The world in front of me couldn't tell what kind of chaotic tones it was. All the shapes trembled violently with every slightest sound; each sound also had a linear shape, winding like hot red nickel wire. Attached to the surface of the object, sometimes it turns black and shrinks due to the brief silence, sometimes it shines with deafening noise, splitting into layers of nets. In this chaotic and disorderly world, as if it were daubed randomly with a wire ball dipped in paint, all the common sense that can be used as a reference in the past is meaningless. Even if we are in the gathering place of human civilization, we are still on a spiritual island.

This is a curse. He remembered Blackbird saying this. Then the eyes of the old man in the cellar will appear. I am immortal, and all of them want to harm me.

But the old man died. He fell to death by himself. Due to paranoia, he bit off a child's finger. What did the old man see in his eyes at that time? As he fell in the darkness and died, did he still believe in his immortality?

Since seeing the dying blackbird in his dream, he has lost his sense of time and space. I don’t know where I am, and I can’t tell the difference between hunger, thirst, cold, and heat. The only thing that can make him convinced of his own existence is to constantly think: Have he walked out of home? Where are you running to now? Could he have been caught in the hospital? How much longer would it take for him to fall into coma due to his physical weakness? By then, the chaotic world around us will have changed, right?

The imagined turning point never came. Sometimes, from the endless trembling lines and color blocks, he could vaguely see that something was screaming towards him, or that he was approaching a building surrounded by crazy lines and composed of relatively uniform color blocks. completed building. He tried to reach out and touch the restless lines. The touch felt like tiny electric currents flowing in the palm of his hand, but he couldn't tell what kind of texture they were. The reactions of the lines are also different, some are very slow, and some are quite intense, and even disappear suddenly after bursting into brilliant light. What do these mean? He imagined what others saw: a madman dancing in the mud, chasing cars with a silly smile, or trying to stick his hand in the mouth of a passerby.

In this never-ending chaos, he had a strong impulse more than once, wanting to pull off those seemingly slender and fragile lines, tear them into pieces, and see what changes would happen. But every time before doing this, the old man in the cellar would look at him in front of him with his terrifyingly focused eyes that never blinked. I've gone crazy. said the voice in my heart that was most like my own. My sanity was trapped in a crazy body, like a driver trapped in a windowless car. If you step on the accelerator now, there will be no other result than catastrophe.

There was no other choice. All he could do now was turn off the engine, sit quietly in the car and wait. Whether he was saved by outsiders or consumed to death, in short, he should never take any action that he thought was right. Only by giving up yourself in this way can he and others get the best results.

At first, it was easy to hold on to such a resolution, and there was even a tragic sense of self-sacrifice. However, the more he wandered in this chaos, the more he felt that this persistence was meaningless. How long has it been? Maybe it was only a few hours, maybe it was years. In the endless noise that is indistinguishable from day and night to cold and heat, the dignity and morality that I once valued have become so unfamiliar that I can hardly remember their exact meaning. He didn't know how many times he thought of the story he had read before, which said that there was a room in the world that was absolutely silent and devoid of even the slightest sound. A person in such a room would feel so frightened that even the strongest soldier would not be able to endure it for more than half a day.

No information is available. No action can be taken. Now he finally understood that this was the most cruel punishment in the world, a capital punishment that was better than any physical torture, and a despair deeper than death. He wanted to escape, to fall into a deep sleep, but he couldn't fall asleep again. When will you starve to death, die of thirst, or be hit by a car? Maybe there won't be any at all. Maybe he had been locked up in a mental hospital a long time ago, and was currently tied to the bed and slowly failing. It will take many years for this body to die, but the consciousness has to be trapped in this boundless but airtight cage.

What else is needed to persist? In this one-way secret room with nowhere to escape, he was the only one suffering, enduring endless torture in order not to harm others. But what will others think? They would just watch his pain freely outside the chamber, treating him as a comical and well-deserved madman. Why sacrifice yourself for these people? There's no point in living anyway, so why not take action to your heart's content? As long as I can escape from this secret room with no information, even pain and death will be better than this moment!

Such thoughts filled my chest again and again, and I almost couldn't help shouting out. In despair and resentment, the memory of the Blackbird's Dream became the last comfort. He would rather believe that there are gods in this world. He would rather believe that the pain he encountered was due to the malicious design of some existence, and it must not be an accidental error in the evolution of life. All this torture must not be a meaningless waste!

He screamed hysterically, feeling like he was crying with all his heart, but he was destined to never get a response. God! As long as he can regain his freedom, he will do whatever it takes!

——Then he did hear a sound.

In this secret room where there was always only noise, he suddenly heard a voice. The voice sounded calm, healthy, and painless, as if it was spinning from the sky and falling into his cage:

"To be honest, classmate Zhou, I have never encountered anything strange."

(End of this chapter)