Rebirth: Truth Does Not Dig Coal

I just showed up at this place out of thin air.

A pier at dusk.

The reason why I appear out of thin air is firstly, I don’t know where I am; secondly, I don’t know how I got here; finally, I don’t know who I am.

On the shore of a dam, the sea is still with waves.There is a lighthouse next to me.A very tall, strangely lined white lighthouse.On the other side is the sun, a sunset distorted like an impressionist oil painting.The sea water is not blue, mixed with faint yellow, purple, dark green, and so on.The above is not a description. From an intuitive perspective, the world is composed of pigment-like color blocks.

Very unconventional.

And I, with thinking, no memory, appeared here out of thin air, which is even more unconventional.

I walked along the perimeter of the huge lighthouse, trying to find more usable clues to explain why I was here.As I walked halfway around the lighthouse, I saw a man.

a man.

To be precise, he is a male painter.

The painter is half-sitting on a high chair, holding a palette full of oil in one hand, and staring intently at the canvas supported by the drawing board.The painter is very involved in creation, holding a pen and constantly dabbing on the canvas, without paying attention to what happened around him, such as my appearance.

I walked towards the painter, and when I got closer, I noticed a detail: the painter's hands were clean, in stark contrast to the mottled strokes of the paint tray and brush tip.I thought, if the painter is painting and holding a palette of various oils, there is no reason for his fingers to be so clean.

I walked up to the painter and asked him, "Hello, what is this place?"

The painter remained motionless, as if he hadn't heard what I said.He neither turned his head nor answered, but kept dabbing on the canvas with both hands, as if he was in a hurry.I asked again, "Hello, what is this place?"

The painter still has no answer.I began to suspect that the painter was deaf, and that he might need me to use other expressions to communicate.When I repeated this question for the third time and started looking for paper and pens to write and communicate, the painter spoke.

The artist put all his heart and soul into the painting, and didn't look back at me, but the rhythm of pen writing began to appear fidgety.The painter said to me with a bad attitude, "What's the matter with you?"

Q: What is this place? - A: What does it matter to you?

This dialogue not only does not answer the question, but also the logic of thinking is chaotic.Obviously, the painter didn't understand what I was asking, or in other words, he only cared about his own affairs.This harsh "what's none of your business?" may be his unified answer to external problems.

I can't communicate with the artist, so I'm going to look elsewhere.As a newcomer, I am eager to establish a more complete cognitive system for this strange place.I thought, if I can't meet a normal living person after walking a long distance, I can come back to this neurotic painter.

I have an outrageous idea that this world is divorced from reality, as if the existence itself only constitutes a certain formal meaning.But what that means, I have no way of knowing.

It's just that I didn't expect the world to be so small.

I walked forward along the lighthouse dam, but I was blocked by the block before I went far.The front is a chaotic white, very strange, as if there is an air wall in front of me, and it is difficult to move half a step when I reach a certain position.I walked in the opposite direction again, and this time I counted the number of steps, a total of 152 steps.The air wall on this side is very close to the lighthouse. As long as I turn around, I can see the painter who is scribbling on the drawing board.

Perhaps the world revolves around this lighthouse and this painter.

I survey the frame of the whole world, and finally walk towards the painter again.I want information, and he's the only one.

When I walked back to the painter, I found that the painter's painting movements were a little strange.I held up my hands in the painter's pose, and immediately realized the strangeness.

The logically confused painter is left-handed.

Then I looked at the canvas in front of the painter.Stranger things happened.When I passed by the painter just now, I didn't pay attention to this painting. In my peripheral vision, this painting was like a fog of yellow and white patches.But when I looked at the painting with all my attention, I saw a lighthouse, a white lighthouse, the coast, the water mottled with various colors of paint, and the pier, the pier at dusk.A pair of very small people are hugging under the lighthouse.

The fact is that all the details of the world I live in can overlap with the scene of this painting, including the air wall, and the chaotic white is the edge of the canvas.This is a finished painting.

As for the painter, I found another key problem, he is not creating at all, he repeats the action of smearing, as if just to complete a certain setting and task.But the painting was complete, and he couldn't add another paint to it.

No wonder, I thought, his hands were so clean.

Maybe the painting wasn't his after all.

I looked at the painting again, and the overlap between the oil painting and the world was highly consistent, except that there were no two villains embracing under the lighthouse.

Now there are only me and the painter under the lighthouse.

But why us?There are two people in the painting acting intimately, and me and the artist, we don't even know each other.

I began to doubt the meaning of this world.

I said to the painter, "Didn't you realize that this painting looks the same as this world?" I said, pointing to the dam standing under my feet.

The painter still ignores me.I asked him a few more questions about the painting, such as: Are you the author of this painting?Why do you want to draw such a picture?or something, but he ignored it.

I started to feel restless.

"Hello." I couldn't bear to push the painter.

As if awakened suddenly, the painter staggered down from the high chair, the brush in his left hand fell to the ground, and the palette was almost knocked over.The painter's expression was so astonished, even a little dazed.It seemed that he had been sitting here all this time, never being pushed, and he didn't expect that one day he would be pushed like this.

Then he turned to look at me.

His gaze was fixed on me, and he looked at me for a while, but he still didn't answer any of the questions I just asked, but asked an irrelevant question, "Why are you here?"

The painter's words caught my attention immediately.I took a step closer to the painter and asked him, "You know me?"

Following my steps forward, the painter subconsciously took a step back.His expression became unnatural, a little cramped, but was quickly covered up.Then he looked at the messy palette in his hands, as if the mess could calm him down.

Looking at the painter's reaction, I had a strange feeling. I picked up the paintbrush that fell on the ground and walked to the painter.

The painter noticed that I was approaching, and subconsciously wanted to hide, but I didn't give him more time to react.I grabbed his left arm, and his body stiffened instantly.The painter's expression began to become more cramped and anxious, but he could no longer resist.

The idea was confirmed, but it made me even more surprised.The painter was a little afraid of me.Why?

In this painting world, I am an outsider with no purpose and know nothing about my surroundings; the painter is an insider who is in the center of the world and paints with a purpose.He clearly has the edge over me, knows more than I do.It turned out that he had treated me badly, and seemed to be dismissive of everything, so he had no reason to be afraid of me.

But since the artist seemed to recognize me, the situation has been reversed.I put the paintbrush into his left hand and let go of his arm.Then the artist belatedly lowered his left arm, and he regained control of his body.The painter looked at the paintbrush in his hand, as if he had never seen this paintbrush before.

I looked at his left hand half raised in the air.A very attractive hand, with slender fingers and well-defined joints, and a ring on the index finger.It was an iron ring, to be precise, old and rusty, with parts of the outer paint peeling off.It's hard to imagine why the painter would wear such a thing on his hand.

When the painter set up his brush and was about to continue painting, I saw a small series of words engraved on the outside of the iron ring from the direction of the back of his hand.

It's not a text I can read, and it's pretty unremarkable.

With nowhere to go right now, I started trying to chat to the painter, "What's engraved on it?" I asked, pointing to his finger.

In view of the several failed attempts just now, I did not expect to get a normal reply from the other party.I just wish he'd open up and say something, whatever, maybe a new lead.

To my surprise, as soon as I asked the words, the artist stopped moving, as if the reading tape was stuck.

Then, there was a sound of paper being torn.

The paint-mottled sea is suddenly torn apart from the outside, and the impressionistic sunset is scratched into folds. The whole world surges with the storm, and the ink-like sea water pours in along the cracks, instantly submerging the lighthouse.

This world made of paper collapsed with my words, without any sign, without any reason.

The moment I was completely engulfed by the waves, I felt a huge suction coming from above my head, pulling my consciousness out almost savagely.

In the flash of lightning, I had no time to react. With the feeling of dizziness turned upside down, I was ejected to a wall.

After a few seconds, I regained consciousness.I don't know what happened, but just like that, the space in front of me has changed.

The world of oil paintings with deep and intense colors disappeared completely, followed by a more closed place.

I found myself in a dimly lit room where it was difficult to see, and there was a wine bottle in front of me.

To be precise, this is a normal and real wine bottle, which is very different from the Impressionism just now.There was still some wine left in the wine bottle, and it was poured on the table. The dark red liquid was scattered all over the table, and part of the liquid surface had dried up, congealed into a blood-like stain.

Judging from the color, the wine bottle has been poured for a long time, and there are a few brown footprints on the side, which become lighter as the distance goes.Someone had probably walked by here before and didn't care about it.

It's foolish to act rashly until you understand what's going on.I looked around the room I was in calmly, and then I realized a problem.

The place where I was was not so much a room as a ruin.

A common living room in a family room is more than 40 square meters, which is quite spacious.The blackout curtains block the outdoors airtightly. Judging from the fluorescent-like borders on the outer edges of the curtains, it should be daytime outside.The chaos in the house was beyond comprehension. The TV was overturned, the chairs were piled up in random piles, and the bottle that was spilled all over the floor was just the tip of the iceberg of chaos.There were rotten fruits on the table, some of which rolled to the ground, and then there were leftovers, soft and rotten leftovers that had been trampled carelessly, and were dragged several meters away by footprints.There were cigarette butts everywhere, long and short, and the floors and tables were covered with burnt scars from cigarette butts.There are also empty cigarette packs of various brands, deformed beer cans, and instant sandwiches that have long since expired. The garbage pile is higher than the refrigerator, and there is an electronic watch in the garbage basket.

Then I looked at the wine-red footprints that had already solidified on the ground, and began to speculate why I appeared here, and why the world just now was suddenly torn apart?No clue.

Before I figured out how to act, a pile of garbage on the sofa suddenly moved.

A glass wine bottle was knocked over to the ground, and then a hand was slowly stretched out from behind the back of the sofa.

I didn't move.The reason is that I didn't expect that there were people in this room and it was so close to me.

The hand grabbed the back of the sofa chair, and with some effort, he pulled himself up from the low place.It was a man with slightly long, very unkempt hair covering his eyes and a stubble growing under his jaw like weeds.He stood unsteadily, clutching the back of the sofa with his left hand, and holding a mobile phone in his right. His body was shaking, and he had a clear sense of hangover.He struggled just to stand there, and staggered off in the other direction.

He walked past me barefoot, and I didn't make a sound, as if he didn't see me.

The interior is dimly lit, but space is limited.He almost walked past my eyes, how could he not see me?

Is it a blind man?

As I was thinking this, the man stepped on a rotten peach on the ground.His shaking body instantly tilted, and he slipped and fell on a pile of indescribable mixed garbage on the ground, making a loud noise.He lay on the ground without moving for a while, as if he had fallen unconscious, and he got up after a while.He seemed to feel unwell, and issued a vague syllable from his throat, and finally rolled over the debris and walked in the original direction.

The sense of direction is clear, and it should not be blind.

I lifted my hands and couldn't see my hands, looked down and couldn't see my legs.My vision looked through where the body should have been, and I saw a white wall and several objects that should have appeared behind me.

The world in front of me is so close to reality that it is difficult for me to accept it.I tried to make a sound with my vocal cords, but there was no sound. I tried to pick up a half-rotten apple next to me, and realized that I didn’t even have a body. What should I pick up?

It seems that I only retain my vision and thinking, and I cannot interact with this world.A state of passive acceptance.

Having said that, in my feeling, I still retain some inertia and impressions of having a physical body.I'm supposed to really like authenticity, what's tangible and doable, and what I'm after, and what I do with emotional fervor to get there.In general, I like the feeling of being alive.But there is no body touch, and without body touch, it is difficult to experience the myriad of life.I think, if this world is the real world, or is extremely close to the real world, then my current role, perhaps, is a conscious body?

Of course, the conscious body is just a concept.Or maybe I'm a ghost.After all, no one knows what kind of state a ghost is before becoming a ghost, and whether it will retain thoughts and memories during life.

The man had already walked into another room at this time, and he was attracted by an inexplicable force, and my vision followed him uncontrollably.When I tried to stay in place and not follow his movement, I found that this movement was independent of my will, and something about him was binding me like an invisible rope.And this thing that is tied to me can most likely explain why I appear here in this state.

Thinking of this, I compromised and took the initiative to "walk" to the room that the person entered first.

It's the restroom.

It is true that the man is unwell.I stood on the edge of the bathroom door and watched him vomit with his hands on the edge of the toilet. He vomited until his blue veins burst out, and his arms supported by his side spasmed slightly, but he didn't really vomit anything, probably just uncomfortable.For nearly 5 minutes, he stopped retching, panted and slid to the side, his back hit the floor-to-ceiling cabinet under the sink, and the mobile phone placed by the sink slipped.

The toilet was quite high-end. After the man left, it flushed automatically.

Honestly, if I wasn't a consciousness, I'd probably give this guy a 120.Or maybe because I am really a ghost, I can better understand the preciousness of being alive.This one in front of me, I don't know what kind of fatal blow he suffered in life, but judging from the indoor environment, he is indeed ruining life.

This kind of extravagance and wasteful behavior is not desirable in my opinion.And inexplicably, a little too hard to bear.Why?

At this time, the man relieved his physical discomfort and began to rub his pocket.He took out a cigarette case, put it aside, it was empty.

He stood up again shaking his body, and walked towards the ruins in the living room.

He walked for a while, and there were rustling sounds from the living room and beyond.This time I stood where I was and found myself not moving.

Could it be that something tied to me is still in the bathroom?

I looked at the mobile phone that was placed next to the sink in my hand.

I looked around the phone carefully. It was an ordinary Apple phone without a protective case, so there was nothing special about it.But it does vaguely have an indescribable connection with me.Then the man's footsteps sounded.

He went back to the bathroom again, his limbs relaxed, and a lighted cigarette half-bited in his mouth.He leaned against the bathroom door, brought his left hand to his mouth, took a deep drag on the cigarette, and then exhaled the light blue smoke from his nose and mouth.He smoked at a speed that seemed to be in a hurry, and the lung cavity and brain fully exerted the effect of nicotine, which made him fall into a short and habitual daze.After the smoke dispersed throughout the bathroom, he casually snuffed out the cigarette butt and continued walking in.The man seemed indifferent to all perception, like a fruit that could be seen everywhere, and began to crumble from the inside.Crashed, but not vulnerable.I can't put into words the strange feeling.

The man's left hand passed my eyes, picking up the phone on the sink.Leaving the bathroom again.In the process, two clues emerged.

First of all, the moment the man touched the phone, a series of almost transparent numbers suddenly appeared on the top of the phone without warning.

62: 56: 07

The man is oblivious to this, and the numbers begin to shrink like a timer.

62: 56: 06

62: 56: 05

I don't know what's the point of that.

Secondly, this man is left-handed, and there is a circle of text tattooed on the back of his left index finger.

Although the state was completely reversed and the environment was irrelevant, I recognized him belatedly.

painter.