The strange story of Huai'an Inn

Great fear fell on Chong Liu's body, his hands and feet seemed to be frozen by ice suddenly, and there were thousands of spiders and ants biting under his scalp.He looked at the smiling face and watched it stretch forward slowly, the neck was getting longer and longer, it was like a snake with blue light in the flesh color.

That face hung in front of him, as if looking into a mirror, but the mirror didn't show the same expression as him.It is smiling, the smile is kind and bright, like the first ray of warm wind blowing from the south in the beginning of spring.This is Chong Liu's best smile, and it can get him more than double the rewards compared to other waiters.

But looking at this smile at this moment, Chong Liu just feels cold, confused and horrified, there is a bad and malicious secret ready to move between the two identical faces.

"What are you?" Chong Liu's voice was squeezed out of his throat, hard.

It says, "You don't know me?"

Chong Liu shook his head and took a few steps back.But the face was pressed against her, and the black hair was scattered around the white skin, making the face seem transparent.

It opened a pair of bright eyes, and looked up and down the heavy six carefully, as if everything was surprised.

"Is that all?" It frowned, confused, "I thought you would be so...perfect."

Chong Liu swallowed his saliva.He didn't know what it was talking about, but in such a deep underground, in a place that had not been visited by humans for thousands of years, there was a mass of tentacles and a face like himself...it must not be a good thing.

"I'm just passing by. If I offend you, I'll apologize to you. I'll go now..." He whispered, turned and ran.But before he ran a few steps, he felt something cold and soft crawling up his legs along the bottom of his trousers.Looking down, a large group of tentacles piled up at his feet, climbed up his calf, and held him in place.More soft tentacles wrapped around his shoulders and underarms silently, wrapping around his body round and round.

Chong Liu struggled hard, but the entanglement of the tentacles became tighter and tighter.The ends of the tentacles that could open and close like petals brushed his neck almost teasingly, making his skin crawl.

His own tentacles were also entangled in a chaotic way. Only then did he realize how similar the tentacles growing from the two were. They were so entangled that even he himself couldn't tell who was who...

The face loomed in front of him again.Chong Liu saw a sinister hatred in those eyes that were very similar to his own.

"Your master hasn't mentioned me to you, has he?" it asked him.

Chong Liu froze, "You know my master?"

"It's more than acquaintance. I'm his work." It said softly and evenly, a translucent tentacle gently caressing his cheek, leaving a piece of wet mucus, "Just as you are also his work. "

The wet and cold touch spread to his heart along Chong Liu's nerves, causing his mind to shiver, "What do you mean? You are also Master's apprentice?"

He knew that Mr. Gou Chen had five apprentices before adopting him, but those five are still in Baixiao Sect, and one of them died of a sudden illness last year.Never heard of a monster hiding underground?

"Apprentice? No, he didn't teach me anything. He left everything to you, because you are the last... finished product." The word "finished product" seems to be full of ironic thorns, containing endless desolation and resentment.

Chong Liu immediately thought of those fans... those playbooks... an incomprehensible force wanted to create a powerful filthy creature, but there was no well-designed direction, so it kept producing defective products, A little bit closer to the final and perfect finished product...

It was as if a life was accidentally born in the sea, and after thousands of years of survival of the fittest, that life finally became the most powerful creature on land.But how many imperfections are given up before becoming this "perfection"?

"Let go of me! I have no grievances with you, and I don't know you!" Chong Liu had a premonition that the smiling face in front of him would tell him something irreparable.He struggled with all his strength until the tentacles wrapped around his neck became tighter and tighter, gradually blocking his breathing.He felt that the blood seemed to be strangled on the top of his head, and his lungs seemed to be on fire, and his limbs gradually began to fail.

"Did you see them? Those singing things. They have been following you, but they dare not approach." Rudu's voice lingered in his ears, "They are also the same as us. It's just that they come out Earlier. Most don't even have self-awareness, just survival instincts. Even I taught them that song... Guess who taught me that song?"

Chong Liu stopped struggling, and felt a few thin tentacles lingering on his scalp in horror.

"You and us are exactly the same thing. But you can wear human skin, go to the outside world, and live like a person... But we can only be buried so deep underground, like sludge in rocks Alive. Tell me, where are you better than me?"

Cursing words, accompanied by a tingling sensation on the scalp.Consciousness has been invaded.

Huge, turbulent, inexplicable memories and perceptions were poured into his mind.

It awoke from the churning, viscous, sea-smelling substance, and was the first to see a cheerful, bright face.It liked his eyes very much, they were beautifully shaped and seemed to hide stars in them.It looked at the face, and gradually its flowing body began to coalesce, and its translucent skin began to take on color.

It instinctively seems to know what shape it should become, but for some reason it always fails to grasp the details.In the end, it managed to have a head and a body.But its body is still soft and fluid.

But he was still very happy and stretched out his hands towards it.It wrapped its soft tentacles around those hands, and he fished them out of the sticky sea.

It is pulled into another medium.Empty everywhere, nowhere connected.It was carefully lowered onto the hard surface, and a pair of gentle hands gently wiped away the peeling mucous membrane from its eyes.

"Are you the last one?" His voice was deep and sweet, but it couldn't understand what it meant.

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

It intuits that it should respond, but doesn't know how to respond.So it opened its mouth and looked at him stupidly.

He chuckled twice, then got up suddenly and left.It was a little scared, its soft tentacles were dancing on the ground, searching uneasily.Until he returned to the cave and brought a basket of fresh sea fish.

It had a full meal, was exhausted, and fell asleep.

After that, he came to see it every day, fed it, washed its body with sea water, and then left.Repeatedly, until one day, it found that it had grown arms and legs.It's just that the hands and feet are buried in the large group of tentacles, so they can't be seen easily.

It uttered its first word that day, "Hungry..."

Later, when he came back, he would not only feed it, but also teach it how to pronounce and speak.Teach it to recognize many things, from dishes, clothes to mirrors.

It also remembers the day when he first put on human clothes and looked in the mirror.Even though the clothes can't hide all the tentacles, it's still very novel.It faces the bronze mirror and looks at its so-called face.

It realized that it had inadvertently condensed into the image of the first face it saw—his image.

He treated it very well at first, took care of it carefully, told it about the outside world, and even sang nursery rhymes to lull him to sleep.He said it would soon be possible to take it out into the cave, as long as it could coagulate more firmly.

It is so excited, its body exudes colorful brilliance.

But the next day, the pool began to emit a mysterious and restless mysterious light, which was too strong, and seemed to have its own life, wriggling non-stop.It felt curious and uneasy, so it moved to the side of the pool.

It saw that the originally calm and slowly flowing sticky water in the pool was now rotating around a center, pulling out a long line of ravines like thick sesame paste being stirred.And within the bloody mass, a bluish mass was rapidly growing.

After he came, he found something in the pool, and his expression suddenly changed.

"What?! It's not the last one?!" He marveled, the blue light reflected in his eyes, as if possessed by a demon.

It didn't understand what was going on, and was even a little scared.As for what it is afraid of, it can't tell.

In the next few days, it gradually understood what it was afraid of, and gradually understood what he meant by "the last one".

A new "it" has grown in the pond.

A sticky mass of blue-blue substance was dragged out of the pool by him, dragging long, sticky tentacles. However, the moment it landed, the mass of things began to change.

The blue soft substance seems to be flowing continuously, gradually settling, becoming solid and steady.Little by little, the blue turned into flesh-colored, the translucent mucous membrane turned into clean skin, and the tentacles intertwined and woven into smooth muscles, forming simple but wonderful limbs.Not a single tentacle was left unused, and not a single piece of mucus was left behind. In less than half an hour, that group of inextricably shaped sticky substances formed a tiny human.

And the person who fished it out of the pool looked at the little figure curled up on the ground with endless astonishment, excitement, and ecstasy of seeing a miracle.His eyes seemed to suddenly flood into the pool of light, shining brightly, squatting down in front of the small figure with great respect.

"So this is the last one." He said in a relieved tone, and his whole body suddenly collapsed on the ground.He started out with a low laugh, but it turned into a cry later on.

During the whole process, it watched quietly.It watched him take off his outer robe to wrap around the newborn child, watched the child wake up, and opened a pair of dark and agile eyes.

At that moment, it knew it was replaced.

Or rather, it never had a chance in the first place.

The handsome human man led the boy that grew out of the pool away, and he didn't come to see it often, so he tried to leave the cave to find him.But no matter how much it tried to climb through the narrow and intricate cave, it would always circle back to the original place.

Gradually, it realized that he intentionally trapped it here and didn't want it to go out.

It began to feel hunger and fear, and also began to vaguely understand that he might never come back.However, one day, it began to hear strange sounds coming from the countless holes in the bloody wall.It looked for the sound and drilled into a cave.

After that, it finally fully understood what it was.

I am not the first to climb out of that blue pool, before it, there are tens of thousands of them, all of them are thrown into the depths of this earth tomb like garbage, eating in the dark Rats, earthworms, ants, bats survive, and sometimes even devour each other, torn apart and reborn.

All of them, all those countless monsters without a body, those defective products with fragmented self-awareness, their existence has no meaning, they are just the creation of the "most perfect work" that humans are waiting for In the process, all accidents and misguided derivations.

It is impossible for them to leave this piece of eternal darkness, and they will never be able to see the blue sky and warm sunshine outside that humans have told it.

I don't know when it started, it started to hate.That hatred took root in the darkness, and grew wantonly in the depths of the vast land.It hated him, and it hated the last child to emerge from the pool.It hates itself even more, because it doesn't know where it is not perfect.

For countless days and nights, it lay and pondered in the eternal darkness, in the flesh of tangled, failed, and imperfect monsters.Why isn't it the last, why can't it be the last?Is it because it's not human enough?Or because it's not powerful enough?Countless guesses cut its mind and tormented its soul.

If it has a soul.

And now, it finally waited until the grown-up child came back.

At first, it was just a hunch.A subtly subtle resonance.Probably the substances that make up their bodies are completely consistent, so when Chong Liu leaves and returns to this land, it can perceive the change of resonance.

But... the most intense and vivid perception happened not long ago.

When Zhongliuzhitu persuaded Di Chi, he inadvertently spread his emotions and memory fluctuations.And that's when it felt.

It saw Chong Liu's fragmented memories, and felt Chong Liu's most vivid emotions when he remembered those memories.

It also saw Zhu Helan, and felt the honey-like long-lasting emotion flowing in his chest when Chong Liu mentioned that name.

It turns out that this is the life it had the opportunity to miss.The vast and endless human world full of possibilities, the golden sunshine and catkins flying all over the sky, the crowded market and hot snacks... and the increasingly deep bond with another human being...

Chongliu has everything, but it doesn't even have a name.

At that moment, the hatred that already existed was magnified more than ten times.It decided to take revenge on Guan Chongliu, the "last work" that ruined its life.

It wants to take back what is its own.