Forces of Temptation

When the two returned to the swamp together, Inger was trying to smooth out the down on his wings with his beak, trying to make himself look less bald.

"It's better for you players to come less."

Seeing the two of them, it made a small voice, and complained dissatisfiedly: "Every time I have to shed a piece of hair, this time I lost it twice. How many hairs can I shed?"

Nan Zhou gave it an idea: "Can't we use leaves or something else instead?"

Inger skillfully explained: "No. 'The player must use the feather that fell into the swamp to open the third timeline', this is the rule."

Nan Zhou thought about it for himself.

If he lost a handful of hair every time a player came to Yongzhou Town, he would be very sad.

But Nanzhou did not.

When he recalled the past, he found that, apart from being restricted in the place of activity and the speed at which the full moon appeared, he himself was hardly forced to do certain things by the game system.

What the game can limit is the environment, not himself.

——The freedom given to Nanzhou in "Gravity" seems to be a bit too much.

It can even be said that "Gravity" does not seem to have "created" the character "Nan Zhou".

...On the contrary, it is more like "invading" the paper world that originally belonged to Nanzhou.

Nanzhou stopped thinking further in time.

Right now, they have more important things to do.

After finishing this dungeon, he needed to have a good talk with Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang.

Talk about their origins, their relationship, and the future.

They boarded the birdwing flying carpet again, and broke into the vortex of the timeline as before.

Only this time, what they saw was very different from before.

When entering the third from the fourth timeline, Nanzhou and the others suddenly rushed out of the swamp.

It's getting late.

Because the swamp is not very far from the candy house, the smell of meat that makes people salivate constantly is chichi coming out from the direction of the candy house.

Inger carried them, gliding all the way, deep into the forest.

Nan Zhou looked back curiously, and was ruaed twice by Jiang Fang, reminding him to avoid the oncoming branches.

They came all the way to the time-space teleportation point in the forest and returned to the second timeline.

Li Yinhang took a deep breath when he broke into the dividing point of the timeline.

She was ready to see hell again.

However, none of the bloody smell, pieces of meat, dead bodies she had expected, and the scene of two people who might have woken up and gnawed on the remains of her father with their mouths full of blood like little vultures, did not appear.

The picture scroll of hell has been slowly put away.

The hut presented before their eyes was more spacious, warmer and cleaner than any period they had seen before.

The unfinished food is protected by a sarong on the table.

Next to Beep Bobo's fireplace, where a charcoal fire was burning, was a round cashmere rug.

The two children embraced each other and took a nap on the carpet.

Covering them waist-high is a gray duck down blanket.

On the small coffee table next to the carpet, there is a small plate of baked cookies.

The biscuits were not as delicate and beautiful as those produced in the candy house. The edges of the cookies were still burnt, and many of them were a little burnt brown.

But the taste should not be bad.

Because the corner of my sister's mouth still has a little bit of cookie crumbs.

At this moment, the brothers and sisters are not wearing the luxurious and high-end velvet that they wore when they were wealthy.

Nor is it the dainty finery of a petty aristocrat who became the new slave of a candy house.

It's just one red and one blue, two simple and pure colors, and enough warm and comfortable home clothes.

And the man who just had a broken stomach and died with regret was feeding chickens outside the window in front of the house.

The finely minced chicken food sifted through the dustpan in his hand, making a comfortable and reassuring sound.

The little yellow dog surrounded by the man's trousers around the window seemed to smell a stranger, and barked at the window.

The man was startled, picked up the puppy, and coaxed it twice, so as not to wake up the pair of children who had just fallen asleep in the room.

For this kind of person who is as weak as dough and can be rounded and flattened by anyone, if there is no external force to push and control, he will still perform his duties in his clumsy and slow way.

Sad, but helpless.

At this time, a newborn chick got out from the corner of the chicken coop with loose wire, and quickly ran to the back of the house with its short legs.

Father hurried to catch up.

He had just walked around to the back of the house, suddenly, a gust of wind pushed the door open from the inside.

Hokage in the fireplace was startled by the intruding chill, and shivered.

The moment the cold wind hit, the elder brother woke up suddenly, and when he looked up, a small blanket had already wrapped the shoulders of the sleeping sister skillfully.

He fixedly looked out of the wide open door.

It was empty outside the door.

But he firmly believed that just now, he saw the afterimage of a small bird.

He goes to the door.

The moonlight is like crumbs of blue salt, and the particles are clearly sprinkled on his shoulders, reflecting the path leading to the depths of the forest white.

He murmured: "...is that you?"

Is it the little bird that guides them when they get lost?

……

While riding on Inger's wings, Nan Zhou lowered his head and asked while walking through the dense forest, "If we don't get the bread in the last world line soon, what will happen to us?"

"Then you may not be able to come out."

Inger said in a very calm tone: "Every timeline is advancing simultaneously. When they wake up, they will cry a lot for their father's death, but they will still be very hungry."

"At that point, they'll eat their father's stomach."

This sentence can be described as refreshing.

Li Yinhang, who was still immersed in the warm home atmosphere just now, sobered up in seconds.

Doorknobs grow on men's stomachs.

Once the stomach is destroyed, the player is forever trapped in the past timeline.

Unless, like Nanzhou, try to correct the tragedy of "Candy House" from the source, to change the world line.

"There are indeed players who do this."

Inger saw through Li Yinhang's mind.

"However, by the time those players find out that their back path has been cut off, it's already too late. There won't be many choices left for them."

Nan Zhou nodded: "In the third timeline, the brother and sister who escaped from the candy house have already been cursed by the candy house's cannibalism."

Ingle said: "Yes. So some players will put all their eggs in one basket and kill the siblings to prevent the fate of the father being killed."

Nan Zhou: "Did it succeed?"

Ingle said, "No."

Nanzhou thinks the same way.

If the time when Nan Zhou and the others stepped into the candy house is regarded as "normal time", then "killing the father", "escape from the candy house", "abandoned by the father", and "the past of the sweet family", these four overlap each other, The progressive timeline is the past of the two brothers and sisters, their fantasy garden.

The pillars that make up the "fantasy" are the existence of the two brothers and sisters.

It is a pillar of self-destruction to obliterate siblings in fantasy.

Players who kill a sibling will be permanently trapped in the Fragment of Time, with no possibility of escape.

When he was about to return to the original timeline, Jiang Fang looked back again and looked at the cabin by the forest that was no longer visible.

When Nan Zhou and Inger were talking about the world line issue, he made another discovery.

The stepmother of the siblings is not around.The grave is not there either.

Only, it's an irrelevant thing.

When he saw Nan Zhou put down the gold for his brother and sister under the tree, he could guess the inevitable ending of a greedy person.

Carrying them, Inger broke through the time limit and opened the last door.

The brother and sister who should have been hung in the candy house have disappeared.

The decoration in the candy house is very similar to what Nan Zhou and the others saw in the second timeline.

Here, it still belongs to the witch.

But most of it has melted and rotted.

Spoiled cream, bits of rotting fruit, cakes that have soaked up their moisture and softened, giving off a wonderful stench of this awful substance.

In the still intact corner of the candy house, curled up a withered corpse.

But as long as you look closely, you will be horrified to find that the chest of this corpse is still rising and falling slightly.

... Probably it's been a long time since I've deceived a new customer, and this witch has turned into a skinny skeleton from starvation.

Beside her hand were scattered some skeletons that had been sucked to the point of translucency.

Among them was a relatively fresh hand bone that belonged to an adult female.

Probably because she smelled the smell of a stranger, she suddenly opened her thickly clouded eyes, salivating, and issued an invitation in a hoarse voice like a rag: "Guest, do you want to have a bite of my candy——"

Inger flew past her side at high speed, slapped her face hard with its huge wings, and then let out a shriek with a little pride, flew past the witch, and flew straight into the sky.

The two brothers and sisters who have grown up are doing daily picking work in the forest.

It was getting late, and they were already planning to go back.

Father has repeatedly warned them not to go too deep and not to go back too late.

After all, that's how their stepmother disappeared.

My brother found a nice matsutake in the fungus pit and leaned over to pick it.

The younger sister was holding the basket, but she saw from a distance, among the green forest shadows a hundred meters away, a flowing shadow glowing with white light came and passed away.

She opened her mouth slightly, and after a long time, she carefully pulled the corner of her brother's clothes.

"Brother, I seem to see that little bird with a lantern again."

My sister read it right.

When she looked at Nan Zhou, Nan Zhou was also turning on the light of his mobile phone, looking back at the two small figures standing in the forest.

The soft silver moonlight shrouded him, together with the fragrance of vegetation and the misty night mist, weaving a thin net softly, capturing the world and them together in the net.

None of them are free.

But people in the same network can also light a lamp for each other.

Nanzhou and the others crossed the Daze and soon reached the end of the journey.

It was a door standing in the black and green deep swamp, too far away from the shore.

The doorknob and the door are all familiar to them.

Without Ingel's help, it is almost impossible for players to come here on their own.

When it was time to part, Li Yinhang endured the hunger that had almost reached its limit, and said: "We are afraid that there will be changes on the road, so we left a loaf of bread. I will give it to you."

Out of caution, until the end, they still didn't eat a single bite of food in the copy.

"I only do equivalent transactions." Inger refused, "I have experience: if you get paid beyond what you deserve, God will always ask you to pay it back."

Seeing it persist like this, Li Yinhang silently took back the bread.

Nan Zhou: "I have another question."

Inger: "Gee?"

"You talk a lot." Nan Zhou said, "It's not like in fairy tales."

Inger: "..."

On this question, Inger thought about it carefully and replied, "Because I like you very much."

Inger's silence stems from the indelible pride in her bones when she was a human being.

She disdains talking to people she doesn't like.

However, what Nan Zhou did made her very fond of it.

The vast majority of players she has seen can only go to the warehouse of the fifth world line to take out the bread and make a deal with her at most.

No one cares about the fate of the two children who tried to eat them in the original world.

Therefore, in the long solitude, Inger was willing to talk more with this passer-by.

Nanzhou seriously replied: "Thank you."

And Jiang Fang gently embraced Nan Zhou's shoulder, and said the same: "Thank you."

Nanzhou: "?"

After saying goodbye to Inger, they pushed open the door.

The slightly wriggling corridor of the brain came into their eyes again.

They spent a solid ten hours in the double story of "Candy House" and "Inger."

The sound of chewing mixed with saliva still echoed in the hallway, but it didn't bother them anymore.

Li Yinhang sat down on the spot, took out the little food left in the warehouse, and feasted on it.

They finally regained their ability to be full.

Nan Zhou was still thinking about what Jiang Fang said when he said goodbye to Inger.

He asked curiously: "She said she likes me, why do you want to thank her?"

Jiang Fang didn't answer directly.

He took out an apple and waved it in front of Nanzhou.

Nan Zhou took it and obediently bit it down.

Jiang Fang asked him, "Are you very hungry?"

Nan Zhou didn't say how hungry he was, but said: "If possible, after the dungeon is released this time, I want to go to the casino of 'Paper Gold'."

There is an all-you-can-eat buffet for 200 points.

Jiang Fang raised his eyebrows; "If you want to, why not?"

Although he made Boss Qu lose face in public, the casino is for business.

Since it is a business, they can naturally patronize at any time.

Jiang Fang has spent many years in a place where dragons and snakes are mixed, and he has already perfected a smiling face.

...he doesn't hold grudges.

As long as Boss Qu doesn't find fault, he will treat him properly and politely, leave after eating the 200-point buffet, and won't cause trouble for him.

Nan Zhou gave his reasons: "That Boss Qu has sexual impulses towards you."

The mouthful of bread that Li Yinhang put into his mouth was almost sent directly into the trachea.

Seeing his reaction like this, Jiang Fang couldn't help but chuckled and asked, "You don't like it?"

Nan Zhou: "Why don't I like it?"

Nan Zhou: "I have them too."

Li Yinhang managed to swallow it, and the second mouthful was impartially stuffed into the trachea.

Jiang Fang: "..."

Nan Zhou argued without changing his face: "This is normal. Everyone has some reasonable fantasies about beautiful things. For example, I thought that you would look good without clothes."

In fact, Nanzhou thought that Jiang Fang's proportions were very suitable for nude models.

If he used his slender and flexible thighs as a reference, the proportions of that part might be very harmonious and beautiful.

It's just that he thought about it, it's not suitable to say this in front of a lady.

He turned to Li Yinhang: "Yinhang, you have thought of this before, haven't you?"

Li Yinhang was frightened.

If we talk about appreciation for beautiful things and the opposite sex, she more or less had a little bit of appreciation for Nanzhou.

But to be honest, she still wanted to live.

If she didn't force the numbers and let the relationship develop, and finally the conversation with the boss collapsed, and was kicked by the boss who thought it was troublesome, then she would be a slut.

Feelings will only delay her from living well, and they are the Taihang Wangwushan on her life journey.

With tears in her eyes, she tried her best to stuff food into her mouth, making herself look addicted to food and unable to extricate herself.With no distractions, eat and cry while alive.

But when Nan Zhou lowered his head and focused his eyes on the apple in his palm, he ruminated carefully.

He felt as if he really didn't like Qu Jinsha's thoughts on Jiang Fang.

As long as he thinks about it, he feels a subtle and sour weirdness in his heart.

……why?

Don't we all appreciate beauty?

Why would I not want others to appreciate me?

This is another new topic worthy of Nanzhou's research.

Thinking of this, he took another bite of the apple lightly.

Tiny granules of sweet and sour apples cracked between his teeth.