From the end of the world

Chapter 494: Strange Reappearance 1
"I suggest you tell me your name first," I said. "Introducing yourself is basic courtesy in interpersonal communication. Do you agree with this?"

The cartographer looked at the young man with an increasingly dangerous gaze. The young man seemed to vaguely realize that he was in a bad situation, so he answered hesitantly: "My name is... My name is Sandalwood. Yes, Sandalwood."

"Sandalwood?" The cartographer looked at the young man with a pressured look, "Are you sure this is your name?"

"This is my online nickname... uh..."

Tan Xiang realized that she had let the words slip after she blurted them out, and quickly covered her mouth.

This can't be blamed on him for not keeping his mouth shut, the cartographer obviously has a stronger soul than him. Facing the pressure of a stronger soul, ordinary people can easily lose their way.

This gap does not only appear between ordinary people and demon hunters, but also mortals with extremely strong wills can have this effect on others. People who don't understand the reason will vaguely summarize it as "the temperament of a great man."

People who hold high positions in the secular world can often have this kind of influence on ordinary people, but in most cases it is not because people with high social status have stronger souls, but because people in a weak position will unconsciously belittle their own souls first. If you don't know that the other person has a higher social status, you can take it easy.

In a sense, it is similar to the Great Impermanence's Law of Heaven and Earth. However, due to its overly primitive and simple nature, it can be used in the disordered doomsday land. I can use it now, but because it is just a simple and rough way to put mental pressure on the opponent, just like the "pressure of the strong" in the battle comics, I can't expect to do anything fancy.

"Network nickname..."

The cartographer pronounced the word unfamiliarly, then relaxed his fingers around the steel pipe.

The other party gave such a fake name, probably because the cartographer gave people the first impression that he was too much of a gangster. Normal people would definitely not be willing to reveal their real information in front of such a person.

"Does this mean he's passed?" I asked.

The cartographer said in an experienced tone, "I passed. If you are corrupted by madness to the point where you forget your name, your mind will be so confused that you can't even come up with a nickname for yourself."

"Um...what exactly is the 'doomsday' you just mentioned..." Tan Xiang raised her hand weakly.

The cartographer gave a brief explanation, and Tan Xiang was stunned. He shouted in disbelief: "The country...even human civilization has been destroyed? And it has been destroyed for a long time!? Are you kidding me? It's only been a few hours!?"

"So where were you and what were you doing a few hours ago?" I was curious.

"A few hours ago... I was at home, lying on my bed, playing with my phone..."

Tan Xiang showed an expression of trying hard to recall. His expression was as if he had accidentally fallen into a horrible nightmare and wanted to use his memories of living in the real world to prove the unreasonableness of his current situation.

"I had just finished dinner and it was dark outside. When I was playing with my phone, I saw a message on the shopping app saying that my package had been delivered and it was placed in a nearby post office. It was a mouse, and the old one didn't work, so I got a new one. Then I wanted to get the package out before the post office closed, so I went downstairs...

"I was still looking down at my phone while walking on the street, and when I looked up I realized that it had become very dark around me, and the neighborhood was also dark, which was very different from usual.

"I was wondering if there was a power outage in the neighborhood, so I turned on the flashlight on my phone to illuminate the surroundings. Suddenly, I saw a... no, should I say a bug? The bug looked like a large dog. It seemed to be stimulated by the light from my side, so it jumped up and bit my shoulder...

"I was terrified. After getting rid of the bug, I kept running. The scene around me became more and more dilapidated and weird. I seemed to pass an abandoned amusement park on the way... I also saw a few monsters with particularly scary looks on the way. I tried my best to hide from them. Later, I didn't even dare to take out my mobile phone because I was afraid that the light would expose me.

“But I later threw away that phone because when I tried to call the police, I found that the photo of my crush that I had set as my desktop suddenly became very scary. The face in the photo was covered in blood like a ghost, and the blood kept flowing out of the screen... Who would dare to keep holding it?

"Then I came to this place and encountered the ink-like monster. I thought I could hide in the corner without making any noise, but God knows how it found me.

"I had no choice but to run away, and then I met you..."

It sounds like his memories are quite coherent, not like someone who has lost his memory.

The cartographer also fell into deep thought, and then spoke to Tan Xiang again, proposing several key words such as "blessing", "karma demon", and "madness", asking him if he had any impression of these words. Tan Xiang looked confused and shook his head.

"That's strange. Even if I've lost a lot of my memories, I should still have a faint impression of these words," said the cartographer.

Madness can wash away a person's memory of events, but it is difficult to wash away knowledge memory. If the two are entangled, the latter may also be washed away, but it will not be to the point of leaving no impression at all. I said before that I didn't remember anything, but later I showed some understanding of the apocalypse. The cartographer's reaction to this was not surprising, probably because of this.

"I understand! It seems that you were at the time when the apocalypse just came..." The cartographer seemed to have figured it out. "When I was struggling for survival with my friends, we passed by some very special places. They were places in the future long after the apocalypse, and the degree of chaos in time and space was so high that even the most basic laws of physics could not be maintained. "Since there are such 'future places a long time later', there should be places very close to the apocalypse. Although it is rare, I heard that people who came out of there thought that the apocalypse had just come, and they didn't even realize that the apocalypse had come... You should be that type, right?"

"Ah?" Tan Xiang couldn't accept it.

I have heard similar statements from Ma Zao in the past. In other words, Sandalwood is "someone who has just entered the end of the world."

But is it really as the cartographer says?
"Tan Xiang, what year is it now in your memory?" I asked.

Tan Xiang hesitated and said, "Twenty to five years...right?"

Twenty-five years, which is the same year as the one I was in before I traveled to the apocalyptic era.

It was just an answer about a year, so there was no need to be so hesitant. However, it seemed that the series of strange experiences made him have strong doubts about the reality he was exposed to.

Tan Xiang looked at the cartographer, and the cartographer seemed to understand his gaze and said, "Don't ask me when the end of the world will come. No one knows such things."

In the era I lived in, the doomsday was "within the next ten years." Although it is not clear which year in the next ten years, twenty-five years should be a long way from the doomsday. Since it is not within the radiation range of the doomsday era, the cartographer's definition of sandalwood is contradictory.

However, the Doomsday era itself is full of all kinds of strange forces that transcend the logic of time narrative. Maybe even the seemingly out-of-range period of 25 years is actually within the radiation range of the Doomsday era. You know, even I have the power to tamper with history. It would be incredible if the Doomsday that destroys the world cannot do this.

Perhaps the ambiguity of doomsday prophecies about the time of the arrival of the doomsday era is also due to the fact that the doomsday era may have the characteristic of swallowing up the upstream of the long river of time.

At the same time, I thought about amnesia.

In the past, Ma Zao and I have suspected more than once that the souls of patients with amnesia may have traveled through time and space to the doomsday era, and Tan Xiang's experience seems to partially meet the definition of time travel.

Could it be that Tan Xiang simply thought he traveled through time while going downstairs to pick up a package, but in fact he unknowingly entered a state of amnesia while lying in bed playing with his mobile phone, and his soul was captured by the doomsday era?

Can the strange phenomenon of "loss of souls" occurring in the modern world be regarded as an invasion of the upper reaches of the long river of time by the doomsday era?
If this is true, how can we explain the connection between the afterlife and the apocalypse? Mingzhuo once said that the apocalyptic dream that Ma Zao had was exactly the same as the afterlife. Even the building of the Gospel Hall looked like Luoshan, which was located in the afterlife more than a hundred years ago...

While I was thinking, the cartographer turned to Tan Xiang and asked, "Can we see the soles of your shoes?"

Although the latter didn't understand what it meant, he still raised his foot. He was wearing sneakers, and the pattern on the soles was exactly the same as the shoe prints we had tracked before. There was no mistake, Tan Xiang was the owner of that shoe print.

After confirming, the cartographer nodded, went forward to check Tan Xiang's wound, then took out disinfectant and bandages from his backpack and helped Tan Xiang to treat and bandage the wound. Although Tan Xiang said that his wound was caused by a giant bug bite, fortunately, the bug did not seem to have any toxic ability, otherwise he would not have survived to see us.

"I would like to invite Tan Xiang to join us, Zhuang Cheng, what do you think?" the cartographer said indifferently.

Although Sandalwood lacks fighting ability and does not seem to be a brave character, in the doomsday era, just having one more person is of great significance.

The cartographer's team was just a passing point for me, and I had no problem with that. It was better to say that the cartographer didn't need to consult my opinion. So I nodded, and the cartographer turned to Tan Xiang and formally invited him: "Then, you follow us next."

Tan Xiang didn't seem to want to fall into the hopeless situation of being alone and helpless again, so he quickly agreed to the cartographer: "Okay...Okay! Thank you!"

Sandalwood joined our team.

"Then let's go back," the cartographer said. "I hope we can get back to the safe house soon."

I also hope to meet the partner the cartographer mentioned soon and ask for clues about Xiaowan.

We started moving again, and not long after we left the school area, I heard a familiar voice coming from the distance.

It was an extremely nervous sound, like walking on muddy ground.

(End of this chapter)