Doomsday Paradise

Chapter 1575 The Third Way
When this memory is over, the tea in my hand is already cold.

Until now, Wu Yiliu seemed to have really seen this room for the first time.His eyes slowly turned from the living room: the bookshelf with photos, the faded and white Persian carpet under his feet, the half-opened window by the dining table...

They seemed to be covered with an unreal long dream of 36 years, and now when he looked again, he seemed to be able to see the day when they fell into deep sleep and stagnation.

Wu Yiliu was invited to the house by Professor Qiao, but at this moment, he suddenly had the illusion of breaking into the dusty temple by mistake, and quickly put down the teacup in his hand—he was afraid that this teacup was used by Yingshui'an, his own Fingerprints will obscure his traces.

The old lady was still sitting upright in the sacrificial temple that belonged to her alone, with her hands folded together, the ring revealed a little silver light between her loose and piled skin.

"The instructions for use say that changing what happened in that minute does not mean that the subsequent history will change as the user wants. Fortunately, we succeeded." Professor Qiao smiled slightly and said: "I Later, I changed jobs and changed schools, but I have always lived in this house, living a normal life until now.”

"Because it used to be here..."

She seemed to see Wu Yiliu's mood and shook her head. "After changing history, he never set foot in this house. I realized that the door he pushed open, the window he opened, the dining table he sat at, the bathtub he leaned in... He didn't I touched it with my own hands."

"After the world returned to its original state, my deformation also disappeared." Professor Qiao slowly leaned back on the sofa, looking at the window of the living room - a wooden bird food box was placed on the window sill. "I thought at first that since my transformation disappeared, my memory would also disappear...but for some reason, my memory remained, and I don't know if this is good or bad."

If she could choose, would she choose to forget?
This question floated up in Wu Yiliu's mind, but he didn't ask it out.Professor Qiao on the sofa looked thin and dry, as if she had been eroded by time and wind and sand for a long time, and lost her former richness, softness and toughness; any assumptions and questions about the past, he felt was a kind of torture to her.

"Looking at it now, I can't say that I changed history. We just postponed the transformation world for 36 years..." Professor Qiao said suddenly, "Perhaps this world is doomed to come to an end, no matter how we struggle."

She sighed hoarsely.She is old, and after saying so many words, her voice seems to be dry with smoke: "I'm just happy that I didn't let this doomed world take his life."

"Professor," Wu Yiliu swallowed, pointed to the ring on her hand and asked, "That...that is Yingshui'an..."

The old lady didn't even blink her eyelashes, and replied: "Yes. The clothes I was wearing and the things I held in my hands at that time are all preserved with my memory. Perhaps in his opinion, there is something One day, I suddenly realized that I somehow lost a ring, right?"

At the end, she suddenly smiled—as if 36 years had been erased in an instant, and she became a young girl who had just played a trick on Sakura Shui An.

"Then, what he left in it..." Whoever it is, I'm afraid I can't help being excited now, Wu Yiliu's whole body is hot, and he asked in a trembling voice: "Professor, you said that [Time Regression] can be used once every 24 years." , It’s over now! Although we are not evolutionaries and don’t have that much ability, but if we spend time looking for the ‘patient zero’ this time, then—”

"It can't be done." Professor Qiao seemed to know what he said, and interrupted him in a flat tone. "These things are special items that only exist in the doomsday world. After the world was restored to its original state, they all lost their effectiveness one after another... Now I can't even open the ring."

Wu Yiliu opened his mouth and stared at her blankly—maybe he really refused to believe it. It took a long time for Professor Qiao's voice to enter the eardrum before it finally slowly became what he could understand.

"That, that," he couldn't accept it for a while, and asked, "Now that the world is over again, give them a little more time, maybe this ring can..."

"Maybe." Professor Qiao's expression still looked calm—as if after telling the past experience, another part of herself stayed in the old days and would not come out again. "Probably not. It is a simple matter of logic that the disappearance of A leads to the disappearance of B, but it cannot be deduced from this that the presence of A must also cause the appearance of B."

The only possibility of rescue was also extinguished.

Wu Yiliu really didn't know how Professor Qiao kept so calm; when he thought of the decaying, regressing, and deteriorating world outside, he wished he had never been born so that he wouldn't have to face it—he was At the age of 21, let alone spend the rest of his life in a shapeshifter, it is unknown whether he will be able to survive this month safely.

No wonder the male office worker in that park would choose to betray other normal people... As long as there is any way to relieve this kind of pressure and despair, I am afraid that some people will do it regardless of the consequences.

"professor,"

Wu Yiliu now somewhat understands Jin Yan's mentality back then—Professor Qiao is the only real and stable thing in this absurd world. He is like a crawling baby in front of the old lady. legs to lean on. "Then tell me, what shall we do next?"

The old lady didn't speak for a while, but slowly turned the ring on her hand.

"I, I can't even pretend to be transformed like you did back then."

The more Wu Yiliu thought about it, the more he felt that he was falling into the abyss little by little and could not climb up: "Libes already knew that I have not transformed, I... I have nowhere to hide, they Everyone must be hunting me now. My family is out of shape, and I don't even have anywhere else to go... I have a lot of plans, and I want to live well. Professor, please, even if it's Bai No matter how hard you work, come with me to find patient zero this time—”

Professor Qiao tilted his head slightly, and a lock of gray curly hair slid down his ear.A fleeting expression crossed her face, causing Wu Yiliu to shut her mouth abruptly.

"If you want to return to your normal life, you can." The old lady said calmly, "I can assure you that the life after transformation can still meet the basic requirements of a person."

Wu Yiliu looked at her blankly.

"You want to study, work, start a family, you don't have a problem. Every bit of decline in the world, you don't notice it, and you adapt to it right away - after all, it's only a little bit. The world It’s too big, even if a small piece is eaten away every day, it’s enough to last your whole life. Of course, your next generation won’t be so lucky.”

In ignorance, slowly deteriorating and declining along with a deteriorating and declining world... Wu Yiliu fought a battle.It was hard for him to imagine that one day he would be logically confused, grammatically incomprehensible, and his thinking fragmented-he was not afraid, but he felt a little disgusted.

"I don't criticize this choice." Professor Qiao looked at his ring and said, "In this world, 'normal people' are them, deformed people, and we are the abnormal minority. An abnormal person standing outside the gate is a very painful thing, and avoiding pain is a biological instinct. It may not be a kind of luck to be able to live in a daze."

Wu Yiliu had never considered "becoming a shapeshifter" as an option, and he even wondered if Professor Qiao was trying to test him.After all, if he decides to become a shapeshifter, then Professor Qiao himself will be exposed——

"As for me, I've lived enough years." Professor Qiao seemed to understand the thoughts in the young student's mind clearly, and said with a smile: "The last chapter of my life is over long ago. The time after that , I borrowed it every day, and now it seems that the time I borrowed is about to end. So you don't have to think about me, if you decide, just do it."

"No," Wu Yiliu said the word without thinking. "If I get caught, if I get infected, then there's nothing I can do. But as long as I can struggle for a day, I don't want to be like that."

Professor Qiao didn't seem surprised by this answer, but just nodded.

Could it be... It is impossible for a person who will voluntarily submit to smoothness to persist in not deforming?This is a problem that Wu Yiliu can't verify.

"You don't want to be one of them, and you can't live in hiding for the rest of your life." Professor Qiao concluded, "But that doesn't mean you don't have a third way to go."

Wu Yiliu suddenly raised his head.The expression that flashed away from the old lady's face just now slowly floated up again like a mist.

"You can find a way to become an evolutionary and leave this world from then on."

　The first matryoshka was installed back, why do I feel that the days when all the dolls are fully installed are far away...I have recently become a very superficial person, and I only care about things like eating, drinking, beauty, skin care, and star chasing (Lee Dong Wook)... …Sometimes I am surprised by my own superficiality.

But there are so many ugly places in this world, I can no longer recognize that this is the same world as it was half a year ago.Except for these shallow, pleasant, and beautiful things, I don't think there is any place for my eyes to rest... "It is a biological instinct to avoid pain", this sentence is from the bottom of my heart.

　
(End of this chapter)