Chapter 2 : Shadow (2)

Hearing Yu Hong's questions, the girl was completely unable to react and she didn't know which question to answer first.

She stood there blankly, the medicine box in her hand shaking so violently that it seemed like the medicine would fall out at any moment.

Click.

The door was pushed open again, from the outside.

A middle-aged woman in a dirty white coat walked in. She had yellow skin, black hair, and a pair of black-framed glasses. She was a woman who looked like a doctor.

"Let me answer your question. Don't embarrass Yi Yi. She was sick before, and she also had a shock. Her speech and brain aren't working properly."

The woman walked to the bed and placed a light grey kettle in her hand on the wooden bedside table.

"We don't know how you got here. Last night, YiYi went out to look for firewood and accidentally found you in a dirt pit, and then she dragged you here. When we found you, you were unconscious. It seemed that you had no external injuries, but you were unconscious and had a fever. Yiyi fed you a lot of filtered water and waited for a whole night before you woke up."

At this point, the woman took a deep breath.

"Then let's talk about this place. This is Baiqiu Village. It is surrounded by deep mountains. The only connection with the outside world is an old road in the west."

She paused for him to digest and continued.

"I'm a village doctor, my last name is Xu. Her name is Lin Yiyi, she's an orphan, and she lives here alone. There's no other important information. Okay, I've said what I need to say, now it's your turn. Tell me, who are you, how did you get here, and why are you here?"

"Can I call you Doctor Xu?" Yu Hong sorted out the situation, endured the pain in his throat, and said in a low voice.

Seeing the other party nod, he continued.

"My name is Yu Hong. I was just sleeping at home, and then..." He recounted his previous feelings in detail.

"I don't know how I got here. I..." He raised his hand with difficulty and covered his forehead.

"How old are you?" Dr. Xu suddenly asked.

"Twenty. Twenty-seven." Yu Hong spoke subconsciously.

"That's enough. You can't go back anyway. In today's world, no matter where you come from or how you got here, if you don't have a car, you will die if you go out. I guess you have to stay here for a long time." Doctor Xu said lightly.

"Car??  Can I borrow someone's car to take me to the nearest station? I'll pay for it!" Yu Hong was a little confused.

"Station?" This time it was Doctor Xu's turn to be confused. "What the hell are you talking about? Where is the station? Who lent you a car these days? There are all kinds of monsters out there. If you go out alone, you're courting death."

"Monster?!" Yu Hong was stunned.

"What monster?" He suspected that the other party was acting or had mental problems. But when he saw Dr. Xu looked at him as if he was a fool, Yu Hong felt something was wrong.

He felt a little nervous. He is just an ordinary office worker. No one would be willing to spend a lot of money to hire an actor of this level to prank them, right? ? ?

"It's over. He is indeed a fool." Doctor Xu raised his head with a helpless expression.

"A fool matches a fool. You two are amazing."

She glanced out the window.

"It's still early. You'll know when it gets dark. I'm leaving first. YiYi, please keep an eye on him and don't let him open the door at night."

"Okay," the little stutterer nodded quickly.

Seeing Dr. Xu open the door and leave, the little stutterer called out quickly.

"Yaoyao! Sister!" she called anxiously.

Doctor Xu heard the voice, turned around and looked at Yu Hong, then understood.

She took out a mercury thermometer from her pocket and put it into Yu Hong's mouth.

"Let me see your temperature."

After waiting for a while, she pulled out the thermometer and looked at it.

"38.5, he will not die."

"It's my fault." The little stutterer quickly handed the medicine box in his hand to the other party for her to see.

The mould stains on the medicine also made Dr. Xu frown.

"YiYi, I don't have much medicine left. The post office only goes to the city once a month."

After hearing this, the little stutterer suddenly became anxious. She looked left and right, and soon found something like a sweet potato from the cabinet in the corner and handed it to the other party.

"Is this enough for medicine?!" 

Dr. Xu shook her head and said it was not enough.

Then the little stutterer went to look for something. The two women and girl bargained with each other, and the sound reached Yu Hong's ears. But he felt weakness and dizziness overcame him, and soon fell asleep again.

The pain in his throat, the dizziness in his head, and the weakness all over his body made it impossible for him to get up.

The body's instinctive self-healing mechanism enables him to quickly recover his strength through sleep.

Time flies,

He doesn't know how much time has passed. Maybe one hour, maybe three hours. Time has no measure for a drowsy person.

Yu Hong slowly woke up from his coma.

He felt sore, weak and powerless all over his body, and his throat seemed to be blocked by something, as if there was a large obstruction stuck in it, making it impossible for him to make a sound.

Opening his eyes, he struggled to stand up from the bed and looked around.

The room was silent.

This small square bedroom has walls and ceiling made of light yellow wood. The ground was flat and dry. There was even a green grass growing in some corners.

Yu Hong slowly turned sideways, put his legs on the edge of the bed, and then lowered them little by little until they touched the ground.

The solid feeling of being grounded made him feel inexplicably relieved.

He looked down at himself. He was wearing an white short-sleeved T-shirt with a cartoon tiger head tattooed on the chest and some yellow stains. His pants were cream-coloured casual pants, but they looked very wrinkled at this moment.

The big toes on both sides of the grey socks were torn, and two big toes covered with black mud protruded out.

"What is this?" He looked at the back of his hand and saw a black mark on the back of his right hand.

The mark looked like an ancient seal. On the square seal was a lump of muddy stuff. 

There were no patterns or words on it. At first glance, it looked like a birthmark.

But Yu Hong clearly remembered that he did not have such a big birthmark on his body, let alone on the conspicuous back of his right hand.

He rubbed the mark with his hand, but it didn't hurt or itch. He tried to wipe it off, but found that it couldn't be wiped off, so he gave up temporarily.

After checking his body again to make sure there were no external injuries, Yu Hong touched the stubble on his chin and tilted his head to look toward the window.

The window was on the right side of the bed, in a square shape, and was nailed shut with horizontal wooden boards inside and outside, very tightly. It was like a defence against mental illness, and there was a sense of uneasiness in the mess.

There was a dim light outside the window, slanting in and leaving a dull yellow patch beside the bed.

Yu Hong took a breath And felt that the air was strange, with an indescribable burnt smell.

He walked a few steps and came to the door. He saw a thick stack of old newspapers at the foot of the wooden door.

After a pause, he bent down, picked up the stack of newspapers with difficulty, and looked at the headline of the news at the top.

{Highest alert: Major black level disasters have hit various parts of the country in recent days}

The huge headline took up almost half of the newspaper. Here are the details.

'.The frequent occurrence of black level disasters and the weakness of the response departments have brought great threats to the lives and safety of the people. Faced with the severe situation, the National Disaster Prevention Committee urgently established the Emergency Management Department to launch a rapid response to the areas severely affected by black level disasters and fully organise rescue work.'

Yu Hong frowned and turned newspaper page to the back.

A photo of the bustling scene of rescue work in the disaster area appeared before him.

In the photo, there is the ruins of a building. People wearing heavy protective clothing are carrying stretchers and carrying out charred bodies from it.

"Black Level disaster?" He had never heard of this term.

Then he turned to the newspaper below. Then he started reading newspaper titles one by one.

"A major insect plague is coming. How should we respond?"

"Food is scarce, water is difficult to drink, and the national rescue team is doing its best to rescue tens of thousands of people from their plight"

"Suspected biochemical leak, Yiguan City urgently blocked and built a car wall"

"Experts have something to say about dealing with black level disaster"

' The first Hope City is officially completed, with 10,000 people moving in ? '

Amid the rustling sound of flipping pages, Yu Hong's expression became more and more solemn the more he looked. 

In addition to the strange and abnormal titles, the more crucial point is that he suddenly discovered that these newspapers were not in any of the languages ​​he had learned before, not Chinese, not English, not French, Spanish, Russian, etc.

Rather, it was a completely unfamiliar, other language.

"What the hell!"

Yu Hong put down the newspaper and looked at the date.

'January 3, 2020'.

He felt a little uncomfortable because he could recognize a language and characters he had never seen before.

Putting the newspaper back to its place, Yu Hong glanced at the door in front of him.

The door was gray-black with two square patterns, one large and one small. The door handle was white with some paint peeling off, revealing the black metal underneath.

He reached out and grasped the handle. The cool, hard touch gave him a thrill, and then he twisted it gently.

Click.

The door opened.

There are three gray stone steps outside the door. 

Outside, there is a dilapidated gravel road. Across the road was a small, dark bungalow with its door open. Gray and white walls and black rotten tiles.

The bungalow was only three metres high, with red slogans painted on the outer wall, but the content was so blurry that no one could tell what was written there.

There were stones and yellow dead leaves remaining on the tilted tiles, which rolled and made a slight noise when the wind blew.

When Yu Hong walked out the door, he realised that he was not wearing any shoes, only tattered grey socks.

It also feels uncomfortable and hurts his feet when he steps on the gravel ground. So he just stood there and didn't move.

He Looked around and he found out,

There is a gravel road outside the door, with stone-walled and tiled houses lined up on both sides.

These tiled houses are very old, with mildew and stains all over the walls. Some of them have slogans written in red, such as

"Happy life, happiness and peace",

"One person's insurance, the whole family's safety",  "Fireproof, insect-proof and moisture-proof".

The gravel road is a bit dark, and the sunlight is blocked by the houses, with only a little bit slanting in through the doors and windows.

This is because these houses are relatively short.

He looked around again to find out, The tiled houses were lined up like people, of similar heights, dilapidated, with leaky doors and windows. Most of the black wooden doors were open, and there was no one inside, with only the whistling sound of the wind.

He raised his head and turned around, looking towards the house where he was.

Sure enough, although the place where he lives is also a tiled house, it is different from the others.

Thick black and yellow wooden strips were nailed outside the doors and windows, the gaps were stuffed with thick cloth, and the threshold of the door was higher than that of other houses.

"This place" Yu Hong felt an inexplicable sense of foreboding in his heart.

Click.

Suddenly, a faint sound was heard from the far right. It feels like someone's shoes are stepping on gravel.

He hurriedly looked in the direction of the sound.

He saw a house on the right side of the road. Through the open door, there was a blurry person in white standing in the shadows, looking at him.

From a distance, he seemed to see the other person laughing and smiling at him.

" What the hell, is this guy crazy ?! " Yu Hong frowned and ignored the other party.

Although he wanted to find someone to ask about the situation, the other person looked a little crazy and abnormal, which made him feel uncomfortable. So he decided to find someone else.

Turning his head, he no longer looked over there, but scanned the rest of the tiled houses one by one, trying to find anyone in the other houses.

Unfortunately, after looking around, he didn't see any other people. So he could only turn around and look in the direction of the man in white.

When he looked in that direction, his heart sink, The man in white was no longer in the room he had just been in. instead, he appeared in another room which was much closer to him. He was standing in the shadow inside the door, smiling at him.

In just a dozen seconds, he was at least dozens of metres closer.

The strangest thing was that even though the distance was so much closer, he still couldn't see the other person's face. He could only barely see that the other person was smiling, had very white skin, and was a man.

' I didn't hear any sound of the other person running, so how did he manage to cross such a long distance in such a short time? '

Yu Hong began to feel uneasy. 

He took a breath, turned his head, looked in other directions, and then looked back at the man in white.

It only took a second. But it's this second.

The man in white was no longer in the room he had just been in. Instead, he disappeared again and appeared in the room diagonally opposite, less than ten metres away from him.

The other person was still in the shadow inside the door, still standing still, smiling at him.

"Fuck!" Yu Hong was horrified and slowly backed away.

What made him even more strange was that even at such a close distance, he couldn't see the other person's facial features clearly even though he was not nearsighted!

Thinking back to what had just happened, he didn't dare blink at all, but just slowly backed away. Then, he retreated into the door and slowly closed it while staring at the other person.

slowly,

The door was only wide enough for an arm.

Yu Hong tried hard not to blink, but his eyes became more and more sore and uncomfortable, and tears began to accumulate in the corners of his eyes, more and more. He can't hold on any longer.