Embers Ad Infinitum

Shang Jianyao looked back and saw that there was indeed no one in all the rooms, so he could only sigh and look at the blood-red door directly in front of him again.

"At this point, we can only go in and ask Xiao Chong face to face!" The reckless Shang Jianyao said in a low voice, representing the majority.

Overcoming all kinds of difficulties, he stretched out his hands, pressed them on the door, and began to exert force.

The blood-red door slowly opened, and it was dark inside.

Shang Jianyao made a strong effort and strode through the door.

His surroundings were suddenly shrouded in darkness.

"Xiao Chong! Xiao Chong!" Shang Jianyao shouted loudly.

His voice spread far away, but there was no feeling of echo. This made this place seem not like the inside of a room, but like a vast wasteland.

"Xiao Chong! Xiao Chong!" Shang Jianyao persisted.

Still no one responded to him.

Just when Shang Jianyao tried to manifest a loudspeaker, he heard a whimpering sound.

It was a woman crying quietly not far away.

"Xiao Chong, you actually have a female personality?" Shang Jianyao was shocked and envious at the same time.

The woman cried quietly and ignored him.

Shang Jianyao started to guess on his own:

"Is it a wronged personality caused by being bullied?

"Well, this crying sound sounds so familiar to me. I feel like I've heard it somewhere before..."

"Ah, yes!" Shang Jianyao clenched his right fist and left palm and said, "I heard it in that dusty courtyard!"

That was Lin Sui, a young scientist from the Eighth Research Institute.

Shang Jianyao instantly became very interested:

"Xiao Chong, you have been secretly in love with Lin Sui since you became an adult, so much so that you developed a personality that imitates Lin Sui?"

The sobbing female voice stopped and said faintly:

"I am Lin Sui."

"Ah?" Shang Jian Yao Zhang Er Jingang was confused.

Fortunately, his IQ is not low, he has a calm and rational side, and he has been influenced by Jiang Baimian, so he quickly thought of a possibility:

"The door I opened just now was not a real blood-red door. What I entered was an illusion created by you?

"You really came to stop me!

"Are you the 'Broken Mirror' of November?"

The female voice sighed in an ethereal voice:

"If you keep moving forward, you can get out of here."

"Uh..." Shang Jianyao was stunned again, and then suddenly realized, "Are you secretly leaning towards changing the status quo?"

Lin Sui didn't answer his question and started to sob vaguely.

Shang Jianyao asked kindly:

"Were you forced?"

Lin Sui was still crying not far away, moving left and right, forward and back, with no definite position. As for consciousness, Shang Jianyao could not sense it at all.

"Since you won't tell me, I won't ask." Shang Jianyao was very polite and changed the subject, "Why did you want to maintain the status quo in the first place, and why have you changed your stance now?"

Lin Sui's voice sounded faintly:

"You just keep going."

Obviously, she didn't want to answer Shang Jianyao's question.

Shang Jian Yaoben tried hard to persuade him, but the other party burst into tears again, as if he was hiding a lot of sadness.

"Okay, okay, I'll leave now." On the one hand, Shang Jianyao was polite and civilized, but on the other hand, he was worried that if he continued to entangle, he would anger Lin Sui and be attacked.

He stepped forward and walked a few meters forward like a blind man. A fainter black appeared in his vision, like a washed ink stain.

The black mass stood there, as if it were the door to leave.

At this time, Lin Sui was still sobbing vaguely in the depths of darkness.

Shang Jianyao kindly comforted him and said:

"I don't know what kind of pain you have suffered. I can only advise you to look away."

As he spoke, he opened his hands, raised his body slightly, looked diagonally upward and said:

"Everything is a fantasy, why take it seriously?"

Lin Sui was silent for a few seconds and said:

"I taught them this sentence."

"..." Shang Jianyao was speechless for a moment.

Lin Sui started crying softly again, and within a few seconds, even the crying disappeared.

It was only then that Shang Jianyao walked towards the lighter black.

When he got closer, he found that it was indeed a door, with a faint light shining through the gap.

Shang Jianyao opened the door and walked out.

But he did not return to the corridor, but appeared in a green field.

The sky here is clear, pagodas and bodhi trees stand everywhere, and gold, silver, agate, glass and other things are scattered everywhere.

There is a mountain farther away. On the top of the mountain is a huge Buddha made of gold, sitting cross-legged on a lotus platform.

Around the mountain, monks wearing yellow robes and red cassocks sat there, listening intently to the Buddha's sermons.

Some of them had deep wrinkles, and some had iron-black faces that reflected the Buddha's light. What they had in common was that they were indifferent to Shang Jianyao's approach.

"It turns out that the Buddhist army is here." Shang Jianyao had been wondering before that there were not many monks in the "new world" outside the tower.

He immediately manifested the half-human, half-machine appearance of Zen Master Pudu, put his hands together and saluted the Buddha:

"Namo Anuttarasamyaksambodhi, please ask Bodhi Buddha to enlighten the poor monk and clear up my confusion."

The Buddha, who was sitting on the lotus throne with his back against the giant Bodhi tree, did not respond to him. He said to all the monks in a solemn and grand voice:

“Birth, existence, and destruction, all dharmas are empty…

"The impermanence of all actions is the law of birth and death; birth and death destroy the self, and cessation is happiness...

“The essence is silent and separated from all appearances, so it is called silence…

"All actions are impermanent, and those who live must die; if there is no life, there will be no death. This death is the most blissful..."

Zen Master Pudu scratched his head after hearing this, wishing that he could show up in his true form, make a fuss in this "Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss", and disrupt the Buddha's teachings.

He kept asking, but the Buddha ignored him and only talked about the principle of entering into annihilation and the way of transcendence.

"Hey, just like 'Broken Mirror', he is unwilling to face the fact that he betrayed 'Zhuang Sheng' and secretly changed his position..." The honest Shang Jianyao muttered his speculation.

He had no choice but to go to the golden gate condensed by Buddha's light at one end of this "pure land".

…………

At the entrance of the swirling building, Jiang Baimian relied on a targeted plan to return here in only ten minutes.

——When she was outside the small city, she always looked at the tall tower and walked straight ahead. Anyway, as long as she got close to it, no matter which direction she passed, she would end up in the area where the nuclear power plant was located.

After arriving here, with only two large buildings, Jiang Baimian would not get lost to the nuclear power plant. When she reached the edge of the whirlpool-shaped building, she repeated her old trick and used a detour to return to the door. .

Jiang Baimian carried Shang Jianyao on her back, hugged the crate, and quickly passed through the "front desk area" and "waiting area", and once again came to the area that she could not enter yet.

She tried to go one meter deep, but immediately felt a throbbing pain in her head and had to retreat to her original position.

Without hesitation, Jiang Baimian placed the crate containing the nuclear warhead on one side.

Then, she untied the straps, let Shang Jianyao get off her back, and lay on the sofa nearby.

After doing all this, Jiang Baimian sat down cross-legged, took out his water bag, started eating energy bars, and took a short rest.

She was waiting for Shang Jianyao to enter the depths of "Zhuang Sheng's" spiritual world and open the blood-red door.

By then, she might be able to take the opportunity to enter the area ahead, where the ultimate achievement of the Eighth Research Institute might be hidden.

In order not to miss the most likely short-lived opportunity, Jiang Baimian did not plan to continue searching the "general research area" and other places upstairs. He planned to take a short rest and try to move forward every minute to judge whether he could go deeper.

Anyway, after exploring upstairs, the final harvest should be a bunch of information and the situation of some researchers. Relying on them, Jiang Baimian can form a professional team and spend more than ten or twenty years to restore the ultimate status of the Eighth Research Institute. The result, but now, the ultimate result is most likely in the area in front of her, why should she waste extra time?

Isn't it time to wait?

…………

After leaving the "Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss", Shang Jianyao returned to the aisle.

Not far in front of him, a blood-red door stood quietly.

Everything he encountered just now seemed to be just an illusion. From the moment he saw the door, he seemed to have fallen into an illusion.

Shang Jianyao turned around and found that the doors on both sides of the corridor were all open and there was no one around, just like before.

"Awesome!" Shang Jianyao praised "Broken Mirror".

In contrast, there is a door on the left and right of the blood-red door. One door is painted with Tai Chi Yin and Yang fish, and the other door is painted with a large number of dots and lines, with a gap inlaid with glass.

At this moment, a face with red eyes appeared on the small window of the door on the right.

The face itself was silver-black, shimmering with metallic light.

"Robots! There are also robots in the 'New World'? Memories of 'Zhuang Sheng'?" Shang Jianyao suddenly became excited.

The face belonging to the robot said through the window on the door:

"Don't move forward, don't destroy everything now!"

"Who are you?" Shang Jianyao asked politely.

The robot's face suddenly distorted and turned into an LCD monitor.

It said in a slightly sarcastic tone:

"I'm not Zhi Sui, we've met before."

"I can't guess." Shang Jianyao shook his head calmly.

The LCD monitor laughed and said:

"I am the future."

Shang Jianyao suddenly realized it, and then asked curiously:

"Why didn't you open the door and you were locked up?"