Neverland

Xu Muzhou stared blankly at Yan Cen, his brain froze for a second, and he could only digest Yan Cen's words instinctively.

"I know that it's hard to change your character after being stereotyped. After all, your subconscious has formed a complete life rule. This rule may not even be clear to you, but it does exist." Yan Cen tightened his arms Arm, sighed softly next to his ear, and said firmly in a soft tone that was almost a whisper: "Just believe in yourself, Xu Muzhou—you are worthy of trust."

When Xu Muzhou revealed the inside story of the "Crystal Ball", Yan Cen actually understood the key points.

Yan Cen has been wandering in different world lines for so long, he has seen eight hundred "bridges" if not one thousand, and he is already very familiar with the operation rules of these things. As long as Xu Muzhou makes a start, he will be able to follow the vines. From Xu Muzhou's emotions, he deduces his state of mind.

After all, what he does is dealing with "people".

Language can be as thin as a weightless piece of white paper, or it can be as heavy as Mount Tai—it depends on who speaks it from.

If someone else said this, Xu Muzhou would have laughed it off at most, but if he said it in Yan Cen's mouth, Xu Muzhou felt as if a weak electric current had flowed through his whole body, and the apex of his heart* *Pinched lightly by him, it was sore and painful, and it was extremely bitter for a moment.

But he didn't feel so uncomfortable - he didn't reject this feeling.

Even his always sensitive mind slowed down at this moment, his mind was empty and he wasn't thinking about anything.

In that extremely relaxing air, Xu Muzhou actually felt a very secret, subtle emotion rising from the depths of his heart.

It was difficult for him to define which category that emotion belonged to. He felt aggrieved and happy at the same time. He felt restless and could only subconsciously lower his head and hold Yan Cen's hand around him.

"I—" Xu Muzhou opened his mouth, only to realize that he didn't know what he wanted to say, he just wanted to respond to Yan Cen and listen to what the other party had to say.

This kind of meaningless and logical dialogue rarely happens to Xu Muzhou, so he just opened his mouth, and it was not surprising that he got stuck.

Yan Cen smiled sullenly, accepted this little mistake tolerantly and magnanimously, and replied in a low voice: "Yes."

When he responded like this, Xu Muzhou didn't want to talk anymore. He lowered his head and fiddled with Yan Cen's fingers with his thumb once in a while.

The atmosphere of silence spread, but it seemed that the harmony was just right. Xu Muzhou took three rounds of deep breaths in Yan Cen's arms before he managed to suppress his emotions so as not to do anything out of the ordinary during the "work" process. thing.

"I—cough." Xu Muzhou coughed quickly and said in a low voice, "I see."

Yan Cen knows very well what it means to have a long future, and also understands that many things cannot be resolved overnight. If everyone's knots can be persuaded with one sentence, his workload in this life can be cut by two-thirds for nothing.

In the final analysis, this kind of "door" is locked in everyone's heart. Even if Yan Cen knows the crux, he can only hand Xu Muzhou the key and encourage him to open that door, instead of doing anything for him .

So Yan Cen accepted it as soon as he saw it, and hugged Xu Muzhou again, tacitly let go of the topic with him, then straightened up, fished the crystal ball from the bed, and seemed to want to talk about business.

When Xu Muzhou saw that he was serious, he quickly wiped away the remaining emotional tail in his heart, forcing himself to focus on Yan Cen's hands.

The crystal ball is probably on the skill CD. At this time, it is lying listlessly in Yan Cen's hand. It doesn't emit any light, and it doesn't play PPT anymore. The lampshade, which hadn't been cleaned for a year, was covered in a layer of dust.

Yan Cen looked at the ball over and over in his hand for a while before saying, "Joseph should have seen this too."

Xu Muzhou nodded.

He had guessed this since he tried the crystal ball. No matter what Toya said, Xu Muzhou still felt that the chances of that unlucky Joseph not being alive now were a little higher.

And judging from his actual experience, Xu Muzhou is more inclined to Joseph. In fact, maybe like him, he also saw the "future" in the crystal ball by accident.

As for what exactly he saw, Xu Muzhou doesn't know, but from the perspective of the sharpest fear deep in his heart, a sailor who has just suffered a brutal shipwreck probably fears within this range Turn around.

So if Joseph saw in the crystal ball that he "experienced the shipwreck again and died in the shipwreck", would he follow the ship that delivered the supplies obediently?

——Xu Muzhou used his knees to figure out the answer.

So Joseph may have stayed because of this. As for how long he stayed, Xu Muzhou didn't know, but it probably wouldn't be the end of his life.

"According to Toya, Joseph has been saved." Xu Muzhou said: "But in fact, it may be the opposite of what he said."

Yan Cen nodded and agreed, "Yes."

"But there is an obvious question." Xu Muzhou said: "Did Toya lie—or in other words, did he know about it?"

"Toya has always given me a very strange feeling. He looks like a cardboard man with only one side of character. Even when he was just confirmed to be lying, the lie was very lame. In short, he knew it was bad at a glance. This way." Xu Muzhou frowned slightly, and said in confusion, "But it wasn't like this when he mentioned Joseph to me... His attitude was very calm, and he didn't look like he was lying."

Even more than that, even when Toya invited Xu Muzhou to see the "future", she also looked happy and enthusiastic, as if she had no idea what kind of "future" most people would see from it.

Thinking of this, Xu Muzhou suddenly remembered a detail that he had neglected before.

"By the way, Brother Yan." Xu Muzhou said: "When I activated the crystal ball in Toya's room, I could clearly see the scene inside, but after I came out, Toya said that my future is white A fog."

"It's normal." Yan Cen said: "Because that's the way it is, for 'Bridge', everyone's future is not completely certain. It is difficult to define the nature of the future, because it may be true or false. It is true because it is indeed one of the 'futures', and false is that the 'bridge' will not tell people that there is only one future."

"Schrödinger's 'future'." Xu Muzhou complained: "Until the real fate node, no one will know whether what they see is true or not."

"You can say that." Yan Cen said.

"But there is a problem in itself." Xu Muzhou still had lingering fears about the crystal ball, and he didn't dare to hold it in his hands like Yan Cen and fiddled with it, so he pulled up the quilt, wrapped the ball carefully and hugged it Touching it in his hand, he continued: "Then this process of testing the future becomes a scam."

Yan Cen did not deny it.

Regardless of whether the "future" in the crystal ball is real or not, this thing itself gives the viewer a hint of narrow information. Xu Muzhou is not wronged at all when he says it is a hoax.

"But the problem now is actually something else." Xu Muzhou sighed in embarrassment, reached out and fiddled with the hydrangea pendant hanging on Yan Cen's wrist, and said, "How did this thing make progress?"

Since this period of time, the hydrangea has not moved any more. Except for a small drop last time for unknown reasons, this thing is like a machine stuck, and has been maintaining this appearance and refusing to move.

Xu Muzhou used to worry about not having progress, but he didn't expect that sometimes making progress is also a worrying thing.

Yan Cen also looked sideways at the pendant, and said, "There really is no specific trigger...even without a trigger, it progresses automatically."

"So it's a pure coincidence?" Xu Muzhou didn't quite believe it: "Did Toya also happen to do something during that time...? That's too coincidental, the probability is not too high."

Yan Cen shook his head, obviously not accepting this statement.

Yan Cen was silent for a moment, then suddenly looked at Xu Muzhou, and asked, "The last time Toya showed you the 'future', how did you operate it?"

"Not much operation." Xu Muzhou blinked, pointed to the dusty ball in his arms, and said, "This thing seems to have a built-in touch navigation function, and it will be activated as soon as you touch it with your hand. Toya It just dragged me over and did nothing else at all."

After Xu Muzhou finished speaking, he asked: "Why, you didn't know before?"

He originally looked at Yan Cen's proficiency in using the crystal ball, thinking that the other party should have a deep understanding of things, but Yan Cen shook his head and said, "I don't know, I just planned to try to catalyze it."

——If the crystal ball itself is a 'bridge', then Yan Cen, as the other end of the 'bridge', has his own means of using these things, Xu Muzhou is not surprised.

It's just that he didn't understand why Yan Cen singled out this question and asked him for a moment.

Probably because the expression on his face was too undisguised, Yan Cen rubbed his fingertips and explained: "Neverland is in charge of the timeline and has the ability to travel through the timeline, so naturally it has the ability to use the 'bridge' ...similar to the universal lock of the staff. But for ordinary people, the use of the 'bridge' is universal, that is to say, if you touch it, it will be activated, and if Joseph touches it, it will also be activated. Correspondingly, Toya Touch it, and he should be activated as well."

When Yan Cen said this, Xu Muzhou suddenly realized what the point of his words was.

"So..." Xu Muzhou faintly felt a little chill on his back: "Tuoya has been holding this thing in his hand all the time, but why hasn't he activated it once?"