The Fire Chaser of the Collapsing World

Hua looked at Mikael's profile suspiciously.

No, it's really just an aimless vacation, right?

Although judging from Mikael's style during this period, it is indeed possible... But Hua knows that this is just an appearance.

Recently, Mikael looks more and more unreliable. If I insist, he should be more and more similar to Ellie, but Huaneng can feel the difference between the two.

Alicia's liveliness is based on optimism, while Mikael's liveliness is based on pessimism and bewilderment.

The more pessimistic and dazed she is, the more she needs to cover up with a lively appearance—Hua doesn't understand why she understands it so thoroughly, but she can see it.

"Okay... don't think so much, just treat it as a vacation..."

Mikael rubbed the thick dog fur hat on the top of Hua's head, and a trace of guilt flashed in his heart for no reason.

He felt that Hua should just stay in the flame-chasing moth.

On the night they left half a year ago, no one expected that the two teams would meet by chance.

But when they meet, they also meet, which is nothing more than a hyperbola and an asymptote, and after being infinitely close, they embark on a trajectory that does not intersect again.

But the mistake was that Mikael looked up at Hua for no reason.

He still didn't understand why Hua ran wildly to follow him in the dark streets and alleys.

He could only guess that this girl needed somewhere to go.

The home is gone, and the coalition government doesn't even plan to rebuild it. Of course, it's useless even if it plans to rebuild it. There will no longer be her father in that empty martial arts gym.

Flamemoth... Yes, there are still Carol, Himiko, and even the newly met Mei and Kevin, but the person who gave her a sense of security in the first place is no longer there.

……

"I shouldn't have looked up in the first place."

"Chi...Hua, I'm not lying. If the itinerary goes well this time, you can indeed treat it as a vacation. Uh, although it's a bit cold here, the scenery is still very good...Ah Choo!"

"So why don't you wear more?"

"I won't be cold...Ahhhhhhh!"

As soon as the sneeze came out, it was blown away by the north wind.

"..."

The village was obviously far away, but walking in the snowy field was already a difficult task. They spent a whole afternoon until the wind and snow subsided, and the slanting sunset glow leaked from the dark clouds, before they reached the gate of the small village. .

In order to show the villagers that he is a normal person, Mikael reluctantly put on a heavy coat after all.

There is a thick wooden wall around the village, but it seems to have little effect. There are gaps damaged by violence in many places, and it seems that the people in the village have no desire to repair it.

"This gap..."

Mikael stood in front of a larger gap, with memories in his eyes.

"It seems that when we came here several years ago, Ellie and I walked into the village through this gap."

"?" Hua said that he couldn't understand, a gap that had existed for n years, and no one came to repair it?

Not to mention the Honkai Beast, even a beast like a grizzly bear in this birch forest, these villagers... might not be able to deal with it, right?

Wait!

Her breathing suddenly became rapid, and she couldn't help sticking to Mikael:

"Such a gap, the average animal..."

Mikael knew what she was going to say and nodded slightly.

"But, it's impossible? If there were Houkai beasts here a few years ago, why didn't the people here move away, or how did they survive until now?"

Hua quickly asked questions, but Mikael did not respond positively.

He just raised his head and looked in the direction of the thickest smoke torch in the village - in his memory, at this point, every family would have to start working on dinner.

Although it is not a delicious thing, Mikael still can't forget the black bread that was frozen hard and stuffed with sawdust and dirt...

It's hell food! I*!

So he ate up all the bread with confidence back then, and didn't leave a piece for Ellie, just because he was afraid that she wouldn't be hungry.

"Let's go, let's go to the village chief's house first."

Walking into the road inside the village, the snow was not so thick, and the two walked faster.Of course, it's not because someone cleared the snow on the road, it's all because people come and go, and when there are more people walking, it becomes...

In fact, there is no road at all, but the newly covered snow is looser and shallower.

Chapter 2 Sculpture

"Are you tourists?"

The village head was sitting in front of the west window, his whole body lying on the wooden rocking chair, a complete bearskin covering from his chest to his ankles, and he casually flipped through a yellow and brittle paper under the brilliance of the setting sun. The old book asked without raising his head.

Mikael took off his gloves, rubbed his hands, took a few breaths, and then replied: "Yes, my sister and I rarely snow in our hometown, so we just want to come to the north to see the snow during the winter vacation, hehe ..."

Hearing this, a sense of familiarity flashed in the village chief's mind. Holding on to the armrest, he sat up from the reclining chair with difficulty, pinched the legs of the reading glasses glued with tape with his fingers, moved down a little, and lowered his head slightly. , flipped his glasses and looked at the teenagers and girls in the room.

Sometimes there is no absolute right or wrong in the world, and there is no absolute profit or loss.

Just like this presbyopia, when looking at the distance, it is very clear and convenient...

"?"

Wait a moment!The pair of "brothers and sisters" in front of them look like brothers and sisters!

The hair color and child color are completely different, not to mention the facial features... He doesn't even know how the boy said the word "brother and sister" in a grand manner!

But when he looked at the second and third eyes again, he was quickly lost again—the two naturally had no similarities in appearance, but from the straight standing posture and the posture of the glasses staring at the tip of the shoe, Then to the slight unnaturalness revealed when he noticed his scrutinizing eyes...

That's what it's like to be a brother and sister.

Adopted perhaps?

"Alright alright!"

He reluctantly closed the book, and became a little puzzled in a blink of an eye:

"How did you find this place? We haven't seen outsiders here for several years, especially in winter. I have lived for so many years, and I haven't seen as many outsiders as there are fingers on my two hands. Last time... the last time I saw you When did the outsider come... four or five years ago?"

The more the village chief talked, the more guilty Mikael felt. He quickly interrupted his thinking before the village chief recalled himself: "Hey, isn't it just for the pursuit of excitement? After three or four days, it must have been more than 200 kilometers. I just ran into a small village like yours... Hey, the snow outside is so thick now, so, the village chief, can you let us live here for a while? ?”

The village chief stared at Mikael silently, his eyes seemed neither sad nor happy, without thoughts or attachments.

"It's been a while... The snow is so thick that it won't start to melt until March or April, right? You have to stay here for at least two months."

"Ah... so long..."

Mikael sighed in disappointment, but skillfully reached into his pocket, pretending to take out a compass, and handed it to the village chief.

The village chief quickly stretched out his dry hand, snatched the compass, and then put his hand back under the bear skin.

"..." Hua was overwhelmed by the speed of the village chief's hand. This speed, let alone an old man, even if she judged it from the perspective of ancient martial arts, it can be called "quiet as a virgin, moving like a rabbit"...

Then she realized in a ignorant way why Mikael gave a compass as a reward, and the actions and eyes of the village chief just now, like a person who has been hungry for three days and smells the smell of rice, is really too much. ...

hunger and thirst.

The permafrost here is covered with thick snow for half of the year, and the land itself is barren, with very little grain production.Therefore, hunting in the birch forest has become one of the main means for people to obtain food.

Looking at it this way, for this small village that has almost no contact with the outside world, the value of a compass is far more than the so-called money.

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"Well, young man, help me put the books in the storage room, and then let my wife take you to the wooden house opposite. It has not been lived there for a long time. You have to go to the backyard to fetch some firewood. Oh yes , it will be a wonderful dinner time soon, my wife should be baking pies by now, you pack up, come and have dinner with us!"

Gently caressing the brand-new compass with his hands hidden under the bear's skin, the old village head felt satisfied for a while, and his attitude towards Mikael and Hua improved a lot in an instant.

Mikael picked up the old book from his lap and quietly exited the bedroom without saying anything.

The house of the village chief’s house is a common wooden house style in Eastern Europe. It is rectangular in shape as a whole. The door is opened in the middle of the long side. There is a bedroom on the left, a kitchen on the right, and a small storage room in the middle. There is room for an attic. Mikael vaguely remembers the attic where the village head's grandson, who was about the same age as him, slept at that time. I don't know why, but I haven't seen it today.

Hua seemed to be a little curious about the old book that the village head was reading, and kept looking at it. Mikael smiled and handed the book to her, only to see a line of Mohu cursive letters printed on the leather cover. , only the next few words can be seen clearly:

***Fables Collection

"..."

Mikael pushed the latch, and the door of the storage room automatically slid inward. He casually placed the books on the wooden shelf, turned around and pushed open the door of the kitchen.

The wife of the village chief has big arms and a round waist. She connected two aprons at the first place and wrapped them around her waist. When Mikael walked into the kitchen, she was picking up a pile of bear meat, fish meat, rat meat... in short, all kinds of strange things The meat mixture is stuffed into an iron pan covered with a layer of bread.

Mikael simply repeated the conversation with the village head, and she just let out a soft oh, and stopped talking.

Mikael was not in a hurry, and watched quietly as she stuffed the meat, then took a few more pancakes, covered the meat filling like a pot cover, and pinched the edges of the pancakes along the side of the pot tightly, Out of patterns.

Then, she picked up the whole iron pot, and Mikael hurriedly stepped aside, watched her walk into the bedroom, and put the iron pot into the fireplace—yes, this so-called kitchen is actually a place for processing ingredients , as for cooking...should be non-existent.

After all this was done, the village chief's wife tore off the apron around her waist, took off a heavy leather jacket from the wall, and wrapped it around her body, numbly and silently beckoning to Mikael, Signaled the two children to follow her.

The moment the wooden door opened, the wind rushed in. Even with the strong wife of the village chief standing in front of her, Hua couldn't help but staggered. Fortunately, even though Mikael held her shoulders, she didn't Standing in front of her with vigor and vigor.

The houses in the village are distributed in a ring shape. If you want to go to the "opposite house", you must naturally pass through an open area surrounded by the middle, which is the so-called square.

Compared to the size of the entire village, this square is surprisingly large.

This was the place Hua was most curious about. She imagined that these semi-primitive people who were far away from normal human civilization would hold sacrifices in the square in the middle of the village like the ancestors in ancient times, and then sing and dance. The square should be full of paintings. All kinds of totems that she can't understand, which are the remnants of the most primitive beliefs of human beings...

But none of these were there, at least she didn't see them.

She only saw a low stone wall buried in ice and snow, which was about as high as her own, and it seemed to be only a half-finished product.There may be totems carved on the walls, but under the cover of ice and snow, there is no trace of them.

As for the one surrounded by the low wall, in the middle of the square...

It is a lifelike sculpture.

The main body of the sculpture is a huge totem pole, and the thick iron chain is like a dead branch wrapped around the trunk, binding a man tightly to the pole.

Fengxue covered the statue with thick silver clothing, and the man's drooping face was covered with icicles, making his facial features unclear, but there is no doubt that he looked completely dying .

Who on earth left such realistic sculptures here?Hua doesn't think that people in this small village can make such things, or in other words, the existence of this sculpture as a work of art creates a huge contrast with the entire isolated and ignorant village.

No, it doesn't seem so out of place, this weird totem pole of the main body of the sculpture, the man who is tightly bound to the pole to endure suffering, and the chain that is so thick that it is difficult to raise the heart of resistance——

This sense of primitiveness, ignorance, violence, despair, and loneliness complements this village perfectly.

"Can I take a closer look at this?"

Hua asked the wife of the village head in a low voice, and repeated the question two or three times. It was not until Mikael repeated her words loudly two or three times that the wife of the village head stopped.

She didn't say anything, but turned around slowly, glanced at Mikael and Hua with her lifeless eyes, then raised her head slightly, signaling them to be free.

Hua and Mikael gradually approached the statue until they reached the bottom of the totem pole and could touch it with their hands.

In the dark, Hua suddenly felt a strange feeling. As her gaze moved up, the hair on the back of her neck stood up almost instantly——

The man who looked like a withered sculpture lightly exhaled white air from his mouth and nose, and then slowly opened his eyes that were almost frozen by ice and snow.

It was a pair of eyes like a raging fire.

Chapter 3 Blood

"Wow!"

Mikael threw a large bundle of firewood on the ground and waved his hand lightly. The firewood was split by an invisible force and sent into the fireplace by an invisible hand...

Well, Mikael doesn't really know how to use a fireplace, but after all, it's just a matter of getting the firewood going, right?

Under Hua's expectant eyes, Mikael snapped his fingers, and the flames jumped quickly on the firewood that had been soaked in oil at some time, and then...

Then the choking smoke would fill the whole room in an instant, Hua kicked open the door in the dark, and the two coughed while holding up the snow, and wiped away the black ash on their faces.

"It seems...it's a mess..."

Mikael touched his nose guilty, and just gave Shanghua a speechless look, which made him a little embarrassed.

Fortunately, there is still a chance to make amends. When he raised his head again, he had already grasped a golden gemstone in his palm, and at the same time he muttered:

"The monsters and monsters leave, the monsters and monsters leave..."

Huanu pursed his lips, but the corners of his mouth finally curled up uncontrollably and silently.

But then her eyes widened, and her upper and lower lips naturally opened into an o-shape.

Following Mikael's thoughts, the black smoke that occupied the entire room and tried to spew out along the door was suddenly gathered together by an invisible force, and slowly shrank back. Not long after, The chimney at the top of the wooden roof began to spew straight green smoke.