Chapter 136: He was the only certain unknown in An Wujiu’s insignificant life.
Shen Ti had always pretended to be someone who could empathize with others.
Laughter, anger, and curses—he had learned them all well, but only he knew that apart from An Wujiu, he could not understand anyone else’s emotions. He was merely making responses that seemed normal based on experience.
But at this moment, facing Wu You, who had already become a pollutant and still didn’t know that Nan Shan was dead, Shen Ti felt it.
Wu You himself hadn’t even felt the pain yet because he didn’t know, but Shen Ti felt it.
“He…” Shen Ti clenched the talisman in his hand. “He went to help Wujiu.”
This was the most difficult lie Shen Ti had told since becoming human.
He saw Wu You using his long tentacles to support his body, probably trying to get out of the car. Shen Ti took the initiative to lift Nan Shan, keeping him as far away from Wu You as possible.
[I feel like he’s still here.]
Wu You’s voice came into Shen Ti’s mind.
“He is indeed nearby.” Shen Ti’s tone was certain, even though he hadn’t yet figured out what to do next after leaving Wu You here.
He couldn’t predict if Wu You, who had already been polluted, would suddenly break off contact with him or go mad and attack others.
Shen Ti only knew that if An Wujiu were here, he would definitely not want to kill Wu You.
“I need to tell you something first.” Shen Ti closed the door on Nan Shan’s side and walked around the front of the car to the other side. The pollutants that had planned to surround them dispersed as Shen Ti moved. They neither intended to leave nor dared to approach easily, an animal instinct from the same kind causing them to stay put and observe Shen Ti’s every move.
Shen Ti opened the door on Wu You’s side, trying to help him out. He honestly told Wu You, “You have been polluted, that’s why you can’t see.”
[Impossible…]
Wu You couldn’t accept this. He tried to recall what happened before he fainted, but his mind was blank.
[But I can still talk to you.]
“That’s why you’re different from them,” Shen Ti said, unfastening his seatbelt. “So remember that.”
Wu You suddenly understood something. Having lost his vision, his other senses had become highly sensitive. Shen Ti’s voice, the breathing and panting of the surrounding pollutants—all were exceptionally clear.
He tried to touch his face, but then realized that the hands he reached out with to touch his cheek were not human hands but many slimy tentacles.
Shen Ti saw his reaction and knew he had scared himself.
“Don’t think about it, you’ll turn back. This is just temporary.”
Shen Ti temporarily soothed Wu You with another lie.
Not far away, he saw An Wujiu approaching, his face bloody and the Zhuyuqing in his hand covered with the monster’s slime.
At the same time, he also saw An Wujiu’s stunned expression when he discovered Wu You.
Shen Ti lowered his gun, not using the last bullet after all. The lonely wilderness wind blew, lifting dust and sand into his face. He saw those pollutants leave in unison, no longer seeing the masked man’s figure, presumably having left under the cover of these pawns.
“Wu You…”
Shen Ti saw An Wujiu’s frown when he discovered Nan Shan, the lingering sadness and regret in his eyes, as if everything in front of him was his fault, his doing.
Zhong Yirou initially didn’t recognize Wu You, only seeing a tall “monster” standing beside Shen Ti. The tentacles made her scalp tingle, so she didn’t notice the monster’s head at first. When she calmed down and looked more closely, she found it was Wu You.
She couldn’t understand. She didn’t understand everything that happened this night, and she couldn’t accept it.
“Wu You’s sanity value is zero, right?”
Shen Ti nodded.
“What about Nan Shan…”
Shen Ti shook his head at her, signaling not to say anything.
An Wujiu lowered his eyes, his eyes dry.
He didn’t understand why things had developed like this. Was his decision wrong this time too?
So what exactly was the right thing to do?
[Wujiu-ge?]
Suddenly hearing Wu You’s voice, An Wujiu looked up in surprise, gazing incredulously at Wu You, who had become a pollutant, and walked towards him.
“Wu You? Can you hear my voice?”
[I can hear it.]
Wu You extended his long tentacle to touch An Wujiu’s shoulder.
[Wujiu-ge, where did Nan Shan go? I can’t find him. What about Yirou-jie? And Erci-jie…]
“Yirou is with us,” An Wujiu said, understanding Shen Ti’s look. “Nan Shan and Erci have split up.”
[Why did they split up? What are they going to do?]
Wu You initially didn’t believe it, but suddenly, he thought of his current appearance and became afraid of being seen by Nan Shan.
He was already a monster, and Nan Shan was a Taoist priest. Wasn’t his duty to eliminate monsters like him?
[When… when will he meet up with us?]
“Tomorrow,” An Wujiu grasped one of his tentacles. “Tomorrow at noon.”
Zhong Yirou then realized that An Wujiu seemed to be conversing with Wu You, who had become a pollutant, while she could only hear An Wujiu’s words. Judging by his reactions, Wu You seemed to be able to communicate with him.
This place had already been discovered by the masked men and couldn’t be considered a safe zone. Although it was unclear why the masked men had fled, they decided to get in the car and leave, not knowing their destination, only to move away from the city to a remote place.
Shen Ti sat in the driver’s seat, glancing at An Wujiu through the rearview mirror as he drove.
An Wujiu’s arm was injured, dripping blood, and his face was pale. Zhong Yirou, with her gun on her back, trembled as she opened the medical kit she had brought from home.
“I’ll give you a painkiller first,” Zhong Yirou said, picking up an ampoule. Just as she was about to break it, An Wujiu said no.
“Don’t waste it,” An Wujiu told her. “Just sew it up. I’m not afraid of pain.”
Shen Ti’s grip on the steering wheel tightened even more.
Zhong Yirou had no choice but to agree, putting the painkiller back and disinfecting and stitching up his wound.
“I’m sorry.”
In the quiet car, An Wujiu spoke softly.
“Why are you apologizing?” Zhong Yirou checked the bandaged wound, unable to shake off Yang Erci’s face from her mind, but still comforted An Wujiu, “This isn’t your fault.”
Shen Ti could faintly sense something. An Wujiu was probably different from them. From the vending machine incident, An Wujiu’s eyes had held an emotion different from before, like that of a pessimistic prophet.
An Wujiu looked out the window, struggling internally, but decided to tell them about his reincarnation.
He composed himself and recounted everything he had experienced.
After hearing this, Zhong Yirou frowned. “So, you were killed by a suddenly appearing monster in your last reincarnation because your time ran out, but you didn’t die; instead, you returned to the past. But why are you the only one with this ability?”
An Wujiu shook his head. “I don’t know.”
[Then… can this ability still be used?]
Wu You asked, An Wujiu’s words igniting a glimmer of hope in his lifeless heart.
He really didn’t want to become a monster.
“I’m not sure,” An Wujiu told them honestly. “But I still have a Time Rewind Card. This might be my last Trump card.”
He had already decided that, even if it cost him his last bit of health, he would use this card. He couldn’t let Nan Shan and Yang Erci just disappear like this.
They passed by a gas station. Shen Ti was driving fast, but he still saw the polluted staff eating other humans. His arm had fused with the fuel hose, violently piercing through a human’s chest.
“Let’s not talk about the card for now,” Shen Ti interrupted An Wujiu’s words, cutting off his risky idea. “I’ve felt something was off since earlier. The things you mentioned, I seem to have some memories of them too, like your arm being corroded, Wu You having his throat slit, and even that factory. I have impressions of all of these.”
He wanted to know if the others felt the same, thinking perhaps they all had some form of rewind, only An Wujiu’s memories being the clearest.
But after discussing it, they found that neither Wu You nor Zhong Yirou had any memories of a “last time,” not even a little bit.
“That’s strange,” Zhong Yirou said after some thought, telling them, “Not only that, but after Wu You was polluted, I couldn’t hear his voice at all, yet you and Wujiu seem to still communicate with him. I guess Wu You can’t hear my voice either.”
After verification, they found this to be true.
These phenomena undoubtedly pointed to one fact—An Wujiu and Shen Ti were special.
They had abilities different from others, and based on the degree of manifestation, An Wujiu was slightly stronger. He had completely rewound, while Shen Ti only retained part of his memories.
From a logical standpoint, this didn’t make much sense. An Wujiu knew what Shen Ti’s identity was and that his abilities were definitely higher than his own.
“It looks like there’s a farm up ahead,” Shen Ti said to everyone. “Should we stop there and take a rest?”
The farm’s lights were off, shrouded in darkness, appearing silent. Shen Ti parked the car by the roadside. “I’ll go check it out first.”
With the car door closing, An Wujiu sat inside, gripping his knife handle.
Shen Ti was gone for about ten minutes. When he returned, he was holding a new gun.
“No one’s inside. Come on, get out, and let’s go into the house.”
Only then did they all get out of the car. Wu You, having struggled to fit into the front passenger seat, found it equally difficult to get out. He felt like a squid stuffed into a can, completely unable to breathe.
With a flashlight in hand, Shen Ti led the way, An Wujiu guarded the rear, and they entered the house, finding a room convenient for escaping to settle down.
“Do you have enough time left?” Shen Ti asked Zhong Yirou.
“I can make it through the night,” Zhong Yirou showed him her wrist, displaying 8 hours remaining. “Wujiu helped me accumulate this much time by using a gun to kill many pollutants.”
But because she had to face those monsters directly in battle, Zhong Yirou’s sanity value had dropped to only half. She was experiencing slight dizziness and hallucinations but didn’t tell them.
An Wujiu glanced at his own wrist, with twelve hours remaining.
[I guess I don’t need time anymore, right?]
“Mm,” Shen Ti even smiled. “You’re like a bug now. Although you still have human consciousness, you don’t have a time limit, and you don’t need to worry about your sanity value dropping.”
“I have four hours left,” Shen Ti said.
His time was obviously not enough.
“What should we do then?” Zhong Yirou asked him. “How about this: we rest for only two hours, then head back to the city.”
“No need.” Shen Ti stood up, checked the bullets in the sniper rifle chamber, and then slung the sniper rifle over his back. “There’s not much gas left in the car either. We passed by a gas station earlier. In any case, I need to go to the city to kill some pollutants to buy some time.”
An Wujiu also stood up, grabbing Shen Ti’s wrist. “I’ll go.”
Shen Ti turned around, raising his hand to touch An Wujiu’s face. “You stay and protect them. I’ll be back soon.”
His voice was gentle, carrying a hint of warm laughter, “Wait for me here, okay?”
An Wujiu could only compromise. For everyone’s survival, he couldn’t be selfish.
“Okay.”
He stood by the window, watching Shen Ti leave the farm alone, driving the dilapidated truck back the way they came.
Wu You’s body had grown much larger than before, so he could only lean against the wall to rest. He was under a lot of strain, very tired, and fell asleep just by leaning there.
An Wujiu let Zhong Yirou sleep on the bed while he leaned against Wu You. In the room, he found a green light insecticide lamp used by farmers to repel pests, so he turned off the flashlight and placed this lamp in front of him as the only light source.
He said he would sleep but had no intention of closing his eyes.
Everything had happened too quickly. In the Altar, he had experienced life and death, but never in reality, and never in a way that left him feeling confused and out of control.
Loss of control meant that behind all this lay a terrifying unknown.
Those were perhaps things he, as an ordinary human, could not comprehend.
Born as humans, they were fed the motivational saying that humans could conquer nature, believing themselves to be the spirits above all things, understanding the workings of the world, and knowing the natural logic summarized by their predecessors. Everything on Earth had a pattern, as Nan Shan said, this was fate.
His father, mother, and the masses were probably all like this.
An Wujiu thought, perhaps they were just like the turkeys mentioned by Russell. They saw the farmer come to feed them every morning at nine, rain or shine, no matter what happened. Thus, the turkeys deduced a “rule”—someone would feed them every day at nine.
They believed this rule would always hold true and continue in the future.
But in the farmer’s eyes, this was merely temporary feeding. One day, these turkeys, who thought they knew the rule, would be caught, their heads chopped off, and they would become a feast on the table.
That day would be when the turkeys’ logical belief collapsed.
What could be more terrifying than shattering everything a person knows?
For example, fish should live in the sky, seabirds are terrestrial creatures, 1 plus 1 does not equal 2, humans feed on soil, live in the earth’s crust, their life cycle goes from old age to infancy, and they are killed by beings from another world when they reach infancy, becoming special dishes for celebrating festivals, along with all other impossible, irrational facts.
What if this were the real world?
The collapse that drove his father mad was probably not the true face of God, but the moment when his firmly believed tower of science completely fell apart.
They had the courage and ability to explore the unknown, but inadvertently touched a world that should have been forbidden, witnessing the absolute gap between humans and the unknown gods, and fell into madness.
No, comparing them to turkeys was even more excessive.
They might just be two-dimensional beings—lines unable to look across dimensions at “God.”
What rules could there be?
An Wujiu stared at the light before him, easily accepting that he was just a speck of dust in the vast unknown.
He grew up in a small, experimental prison, a product of scientific intervention; even his breathing was measured. He wasn’t a normal human, believing in nothing.
So An Wujiu feared nothing.
Except Shen Ti.
He was the only certain unknown in An Wujiu’s insignificant life.
His god.
Zhong Yirou woke up with a start in the middle of the night, seemingly having had a nightmare. An Wujiu looked over with concern, seeing her sit up on the bed, covering her face.
An Wujiu picked up the lamp and brought her a small cup of water he had found in the house.
“Are you okay?”
Zhong Yirou raised her head, her face covered in tears.
“Can you really go back to the past?”
An Wujiu was instantly pained by her words.
Zhong Yirou wiped her tears and smiled. “If there’s a next time, can you tell her for me that… I actually like her a lot.”
She gripped the cup tightly, her fingertips turning white.
“I didn’t even have time to say it…”
Zhong Yirou closed her eyes, seeing only Yang Erci’s blood-covered face, her body growing colder and stiffer in her arms.
No matter how much she used all her life’s knowledge, she couldn’t bring back her heartbeat.
An Wujiu suddenly thought of the way Yang Erci looked standing on the rooftop. Even though she had just learned of her father’s death and needed to smoke to cope, she still remembered that Zhong Yirou hated the smell of cigarettes.
“How can I help with this kind of thing?” He sat by the bed and softly said to Zhong Yirou, “If there’s a next time, you have to say it yourself.”
Zhong Yirou looked up at him, “But… if there really is a next time, I won’t remember.”
“I’ll remind you.” An Wujiu smiled at her. “I’ll supervise you. You have to confess to her yourself.”
As he spoke, he extended his hand, making a pinky promise gesture.
“An Wujiu, I’m not a little girl.” Zhong Yirou sniffed and pushed away his hand, then smiled through her tears.
An Wujiu also smiled, “Alright, big sister, get some more rest.”
“You should sleep too, don’t stay up.” Zhong Yirou pointed to his arm. “Not sleeping won’t help your injuries heal.”
An Wujiu nodded and returned to his previous position.
Even though Zhong Yirou said that, An Wujiu couldn’t fall asleep as long as Shen Ti hadn’t returned.
He stared at the green lamp in front of him, and after a long time, his eyes became a bit blurry, so he had to close them temporarily.
Some images flickered before his eyes.
Suddenly, some hallucinations emerged from his mind, appearing before An Wujiu. He seemed to become a child again, very small, lying in a white room, with the sound of a heart rate monitor’s continuous beep in his ears.
A long beep.
Cries were isolated outside the walls, faint and indistinct, possibly his mother’s.
Soon, a clear voice appeared by An Wujiu’s ear.
[Wujiu.]
An Wujiu wanted to open his eyes and break free, but he couldn’t.
The hallucinations stuttered, turning into disjointed fragments, even the voices in the hallucination were broken.
He could only hear fragmented parts.
[Of course… we definitely will…]
The voice cut off, and as it disappeared, An Wujiu realized it was Shen Ti’s voice.
He opened his eyes, hearing sounds coming from outside the room.
An Wujiu instantly became alert, raising his gun and aiming downward as quickly as possible.
The next second, the door was pushed open, and Shen Ti entered, covered in blood.
