Courriels mortels - Chapitre 7
His eyelashes fluttered.
This also made Xiaozhi's lips tremble. She blinked as if in a dream, but no sound came out of her mouth.
Because Ye Xiao's eyelids were also slowly trembling, until he opened his tired eyes.
He woke up.
The eyes revealed a white, hazy world, veiled by a thin gauze, behind which lay another pair of beautiful eyes.
Although it was still so blurry that he couldn't recognize whose face it was, his heart was deeply pierced by those eyes. The feeling was so intense that he cried out in pain.
"Ah, where does it hurt?" The mysterious eyes before him seemed to be filled with worry for him. She whispered, her face almost touching his, "You've finally woken up!"
His throat burned, and he managed to squeeze out a few words: "Who...are you?"
"What did you say? Don't you recognize me?"
He shook his head blankly, looked around the white emergency room, and found himself lying on a stretcher on the floor, shirtless. A huge wolfhound was crouching next to him, its tongue lolling out as it tried to lick his face.
"How did I get here? What kind of place is this? What happened to me?"
"My God! Have you forgotten everything?" Her expression grew even more pained, and she whispered with infinite sorrow, "You—you've even forgotten me?"
"you?"
Ye Xiao opened his eyes wide, his vision becoming clearer than before. He knew there was indeed a face in his heart, and seeing her always caused him pain, as if that face were a needle piercing deep within his soul.
“I am Xiaozhi! Not Ouyang Xiaozhi from the deserted village, but Ouyang Xiaozhi from Nanming City.”
Her emphasis made Ye Xiao nod, but his eyes still looked confused. He frowned and asked—
"You are Xiaozhi... then... then who am I?"
"What?"
"who I am?"
Ye Xiao slowly uttered these three words, even he himself felt that the question was too stupid.
"Have you really forgotten?" Xiaozhi was truly desperate now. She clutched her hair tightly and knelt on the emergency room floor. "I'm sorry! It's all my fault! My fault! Ye Xiao—"
"Wait a minute!" He immediately interrupted Xiaozhi, struggling to lift his head. "What did you just say? Ye Xiao?"
"Yes, that's your name, Ye Xiao!"
"Ye Xiao—"
He closed his eyes and thought for a long time. Suddenly, his mind went back to normal, and he almost jumped off the stretcher, saying, "That's right! That's my name, I am Ye Xiao! I remember I am Chinese... My profession is a police officer... I came to Thailand from Shanghai for tourism... We got lost after leaving Chiang Mai... We walked into a tunnel in a heavy rain... The Sleeping City... The World of Heavenly Secrets..."
Ye Xiao erupted like a volcano, pouring out all the memories in his mind. Xiao Zhi was startled at first, then asked in surprise and delight, "You remember? You remember everything?"
“Memory?” His gaze was no longer blank and confused, but radiated a clear and resolute light. He glanced at the wolfhound beside him. “That’s right, I am Ye Xiao, you are Xiao Zhi, and this wolfhound is called ‘God.’ We were in the stadium just now. You ran to the top of the stands, and I chased after you without thinking, which resulted in an accident and I fell down!”
“Yes, you remember everything! Luckily, you grabbed a rope, so you weren’t seriously injured, just temporarily unconscious. 'God' and I took you to the hospital.” Xiaozhi excitedly helped him up. “Yes, this is the emergency room of Nanming Hospital. I just re-bandaged and treated you.”
"Yes, this is a hospital, a damn hospital, but there isn't a single doctor or patient. Because everyone in this city mysteriously disappeared a year ago."
At this moment, his mind was completely clear, and his strength began to recover, allowing him to prop himself up with her support.
"Yes, what else do you remember?"
Ye Xiao felt a little embarrassed about his bare upper body, but he could only lean against her, frowning as he racked his brains. Everything seemed clear now; no shadows shrouded his memories, and all the points in time were connected, like a flowing river—
"Everything! I remember everything! Oh my god! Including the memory I had lost!"
At the same time, in the same space.
It's still Nanming Hospital.
As Ye Xiao and Xiao Zhi sat in the emergency room, less than thirty meters away, the injured Tong Jianguo lay in the morgue, surrounded by many corpses.
Sinking...sinking...sinking...
Tong Jianguo felt himself gradually sinking into the ground, into the ancient underground palace, where the soil completely sealed him off, and the world fell into absolute darkness.
Suddenly, a faint flame flickered up from nowhere, burning amidst the graves. He saw many black shadows slowly dancing above his head, emitting sharp whistles like those from the deep sea. Were they the lingering ghosts of the morgue, or the black angels of death coming to greet him?
No, he was unwilling to leave like this, unwilling to reach the end in the morgue, and even less willing to be swallowed up by the fate of this sleeping city.
If fate can be predicted, then let fate go to hell!
"Death's black angels, go to hell first!" He suddenly opened his eyes, all the illusions vanished in an instant, the coldness of the ground made him jump up, and his wounds reminded him again with excruciating pain: I am still alive!
Yes, how can one die so easily while still alive?
Tong Jianguo took a few big steps forward, regained some strength in his legs, and slammed his right hand heavily on the metal cabinet, producing a crisp and loud echo.
"I'm still alive."
He took a few more deep breaths and paced back and forth in the morgue, trying to ward off the chill that was creeping in from all sides, and most importantly, to keep his body warm.
Surely we can't just wait here to die, can we? Even if we die, we should die from exhaustion, not from freezing! Tong Jianguo suddenly pulled open the drawer next to him, and immediately an elderly male corpse was revealed.
Despite having seen countless dead bodies on the battlefield, he still felt a nauseous instinctively, but this actually helped him regain his senses.
He whispered to the deceased lying in the drawer, "I'm sorry to have disturbed you."
Then, he shoved the drawer back into the cupboard and opened the second drawer. There lay the body of a young woman, badly decomposed. By this time, he was mentally prepared and felt no fear. He opened the remaining drawers one after another, checking each resident of the morgue like a census, almost taking photos of everyone for record-keeping.
In fact, he was just trying to move his body to stay conscious in the deathly low temperatures.
Until the last drawer is pulled open.
Henry Pepin!
Instantly, Tong Jianguo's face turned as ugly as the corpse in the drawer.
He wasn't afraid of the corpse, but rather admired the man who had crawled into the morgue after his death.
"finally found you!"
He gave a soft, bitter laugh, looking at Henry's unseeing eyes, his face covered in black blood, which couldn't hide his broken nose.
A little over an hour earlier, Tong Jianguo found him in the hospital building and shot him in the leg during the chase. The Frenchman fell from the roof, landing headfirst and dying instantly. However, after finding the life-saving fish venom antivenom in the building's medical laboratory, Tong discovered that Henri's body, which had been lying downstairs, was missing.
Although he never believed in ghosts, he was still terrified, to the point that he wondered if he had gone insane, or even developed a delusion of wanting to kill.
He ran back to the hospital building, opening each room one by one, searching for Henry's body, or perhaps a third person hiding there. He searched for a long time, checking almost every floor. When he returned to the ground floor, he suddenly heard a muffled explosion at the end of an unchecked corridor.
He quickly and cautiously crept forward, holding his breath as he silently entered the corridor. In the dim light of the corridor lamps, he could vaguely see a dark figure and hear a woman calling out. He hid behind a corner and discovered that the woman was none other than Elena, who had gone missing that morning! The man dressed entirely in black was a complete stranger he had never seen before!
Tong Jianguo pulled a pistol from his trouser leg, and just as the mysterious man in black was leading Elena away, he decisively raised his gun and shouted, "Let her go!"
As everyone knows, Elena unfortunately became a shield, and Tong Jianguo was shot in the arm and fell to the ground, becoming a prisoner of Man X in black.
At this moment, Tong Jianguo also arrived at the morgue and unexpectedly met the deceased Henry again. It was truly a case of "searching high and low without finding it, only to have it come to you effortlessly!"
Perhaps in a few hours, he too would become a corpse like Henry? Tong Jianguo mocked himself helplessly, then shoved Henry back into the metal cabinet, never wanting to see that unfortunate face again.
However, another face appeared before him, a face that was both strange and familiar—the mysterious man in black, X. Although he had never seen this person before, those sharp, murderous eyes were so familiar to Tong Jianguo.
He concluded that this X must have killed people, and definitely more than one person.
Since entering the world of Tianji, apart from Henry whom they encountered by chance on the road, the tour group had only seen Xiaozhi, one other living person. It was said that an old man had also appeared, but he only existed in Dingding's description and could be basically ignored. This X was the second living person they had seen. Was X a resident of the Sleeping City? Tong Jianguo was quite skeptical about this. As for X's pistol, it wasn't hard to explain; since the police station and armory were unguarded, they could use anything from a small revolver to an AK47.
Why is X here? And why did he kidnap Elena? He could have shot Tong Jianguo dead, but instead he locked him in the morgue. Was it just to make his death more painful?
Everything is a question mark.
Tong Jianguo paced back and forth in the morgue like a wild beast trapped in a snare. The gunshot wound in his left arm still throbbed; if the bullet wasn't removed, the arm would be useless sooner or later.
At this moment, his mind seemed to wander along with his footsteps, and many memories flooded back. Once again, he silently uttered "Damn it!" He had come so close to the secret, yet he was imprisoned in this tomb, waiting to die.
Yes, that secret, the secret of Nanming City.
During his years wandering the Golden Triangle, in his blood-soaked mercenary life, and in the nightmares of being killed by the enemy time and time again, the words "Southern Ming" would faintly echo in his ears.
He once dreamed of infiltrating the legendary Nanming City, to escape the abyss of killing and being killed. But Nanming was like the moon's reflection in water; once you tried to grasp it, it vanished without a trace. After numerous failed attempts, Tong Jianguo finally gave up on this option, bidding a sorrowful farewell to the Golden Triangle that had consumed most of his life.
Of course, there is another name that I will never forget.
That was Ma Qianlong from Nanming City.
The Secret of Heaven Season 4 Complete Version Chapter 4 Memory Patch
"Where has Tong Jianguo gone?!"
Lin Junru put down her grandson Chu's burning hand, anxiously glanced at her watch, and saw that the hour hand had already reached 4:45 in the afternoon.
In the lonely base camp, in the entire large house, there were three women and half a man—Sun Zichu, who was deeply poisoned by fish, was left with only half a life.
Dingding was still sitting by the window in a daze. Yuling walked to the bedside and comforted Lin Junru, saying, "Perhaps Tong Jianguo is still looking for that bottle of antidote for fish poison."
Unaware that the serum had been found, they carefully tucked it into Tong Jianguo's arms, imprisoned with him in the cold morgue, wandering desperately with each step he took.
"Is he going to die soon?" Lin Junru hugged Sun Zichu's head again, her eyes already red from crying. "Will he die as soon as the venom reaches his heart?"
No, I don't know.
Although Yu Ling shook her head desperately, she had heard the villagers say this since she was a child. A little girl from the same village was bitten to death by a poisonous snake in this way.
"Wait a minute! Be quiet!" Dingding squinted nervously and stuck his head out the window. "Someone's knocking on the door downstairs!"
"It must be Tong Jianguo! He's back with the life-saving serum!"
Lin Junru ran quickly out of the second-floor room, rushed into the courtyard, and opened the iron gate without any precautions.
Of course, it couldn't be Tong Jianguo.
Outside the door stood another familiar face—Elena.
The American girl rushed into the room in a panic, her face bruised and battered, her hair disheveled like a madwoman, her clothes and pants covered in stains.
Lin Junru was startled – had she been bullied by some bad man? She quickly hugged Elena tightly, and Elena, as if she had met a relative, buried her face in Lin Junru's shoulder and burst into tears.
"Which beast did this?"
She thought to herself that Qian Mozheng was already dead, and the man still wandering outside was either Ye Xiao or Tong Jianguo, but neither of them seemed like a pervert.
Elena could only cry and couldn't speak, so Lin Junru could only help her into the house and they went back to the bedroom on the second floor together.
Yu Ling and Ding Ding were both frightened by her and quickly went to serve her tea and water. They also found a clean set of clothes for Elena to change into from the mistress's wardrobe. As for Sun Zichu, who was lying on the bed, he was already being treated as a living dead.
"What happened?"
The three women anxiously surrounded Elena, having not seen her since morning, wondering what terrible misfortune had befallen her.
After a tiring ordeal, Elena finally calmed down, wiping the grime off her face. Thankfully, she wasn't seriously injured. She didn't notice her grandson, Chu, lying on the bed, only muttering, "TV! TV! Help me!"