indescribable cyberpunk.

Chapter 186 Mask
Opening his eyes, in the hazy field of vision, a monster with blue face and fangs suddenly appeared, growling and approaching.

Olivia "shocked her tiger's body", she lifted the quilt on the bed and made a flying cross.

What followed was a series of screams.
"Why are you standing in front of me wearing a ghost mask?"

After a long time, Olivia sat cross-legged on the bed, looking at Li Qinglian who was lying beside her and panting heavily with embarrassment.

"I just want to wake you up. Don't tell Zhu Jue and Wu Tong about this, or they will probably laugh at me for a long time. In short, get up quickly. Tomorrow is the celebration parade. I heard that there will be some sacrificial things today." activities, we must hurry up!"

Li Qinglian couldn't utter such words as being too scary and almost being knocked unconscious. She got up from the bed and went straight to the bathroom to get her makeup done.

"Is there a big parade?"

Due to the high temperature in the room, Olivia, who only wore a tactical vest, sat on the edge of the bed, glanced across the room, and then looked out of the balcony of the hotel. Mechanical creations that looked like Kongming lanterns were cruising back and forth in the air, constantly playing There is content about the celebration parade.

Her expression was a bit stiff, and she got up and put on her clothes slowly. In fact, Olivia felt a little unreal about what had happened so far. She thought that the result of being sent to the weird studio to perform tasks Spending days in the studio, doing pointless video editing work, who would have thought that breaking a conspiracy of the Silver Twilight Order in a few days was more important than her paperwork in the special operations team. Significant.

Not to mention that after a few days of being busy, he went out to travel with the people from Weird Studio, and he also participated in the Spring Festival in Rongxia City. When he mentioned this to his friends, he received a lot of "attacks" .

Especially Chu Yun, she has been busy with the search and rescue operation after the snowstorm recently, and she has been talking about it for a long time.

This task is not as bad as imagined, is it?

Although the hotel they stayed in was in Rongxia New City, the place for breakfast was in the tourist attraction of Rongxia City.

The celebration is approaching, even in the morning, there are still people coming and going, and fireworks can be seen everywhere.

Li Qinglian said that she had found a time-honored brand and insisted on taking them to have a look, Zhu Jue naturally had no objection and walked up to follow.

Instead of going to the play square on the second floor from the vertical elevator or corridor on the side of the street, but walking along the street, Zhu Jue's eyes wandered in the surrounding environment.

He noticed the strange emotions on the faces of Wu Tong and the other three, because the architectural style of the ground floor of Rongxia City and the surrounding layout were quite different from the environment they lived in before.

Half of the vibrant sun rays are covered by the mottled high-rise buildings hundreds of meters around, and the rest are also taken over by the sky platform built on the second floor, leaving only a little residual light to shine on the ground floor.

Along the sidewalk beside the road, a group of people were about to pass through a tunnel. There was a simple iron staircase nearby. The rusted surface proved that it had not been repaired for a long time.

"I wish you all the best and good health~"

Familiar congratulatory words came from the mouth of a palm-sized mechanical lucky cat that kept opening and closing in the trash can by the side of the road. Behind it was a wall paved with slender white tiles, perhaps due to its age. These tiles have lost their original whiteness, and there are still many advertisements posted on them.
"A lot of money to seek a child", "a gambler's stunt", "specializing in the treatment of rare and difficult diseases" and so on.

Occasionally, it will be useful, such as the shop advertisement that Chu Yun mentioned before, turn right 40 meters ahead.

"Why is there such an advertisement posted everywhere? Does the police here ignore it?"

In such an era, such a "retro" form of advertising appeared, which puzzled Olivia who had just arrived in this city.

"They won't care, because you tear it up once, and someone will post it again in the evening, and dozens of copies can be printed for a few yuan. In the old city of Yecheng, there are also such scenes, but not as many as here. That's all."

The so-called progress of the times refers to the existence of those above the second floor, and these bottom-level people, in Zhu Jue's view, are more regressive.
Even maintaining the status quo is a luxury for them.

Hundreds of years have not brought them a better life, and they still look like they are lingering.

Follow the route on the advertisement to the time-honored store, but what you see is the facade of a store full of sundries.

"Jiangnan noodle restaurant. It's here, how could it be?"

Li Qinglian confirmed that their route was not wrong, and the noodle shop in front of them was obviously the truth.

Two variegated stray cats poked their heads out from the gaps in the sundries and looked at them. Zhu Jue took a few steps forward and turned his head to look at the door behind the sundries. The lock ring between the doorknobs was It is disconnected, just because it is buckled inward, and it is impossible to find it without looking carefully.

"Since it's closed, let's go back and eat on the second floor. It's only eight o'clock in the morning, and we still have time."

Moving his gaze upwards, he glanced at the second floor of the Jiangnan noodle restaurant. The beige curtains obscured the content inside, his hands in his pockets were tightly clenched, his brows were slightly raised, and he said softly.

Zhu Jue was about to leave with a group of people, but he acted like he didn't see anything.

Even if there was something, he was here to travel this time, and he didn't care about other shit.

Behind the curtain, there is a shirtless upper body, the mechanical eyeball behind the goggles is watching their leaving back, the mechanical blade on the right arm slides staggeredly, and scarlet blood slowly drips.

Along the way, Li Qinglian was still thinking about why the shop suddenly closed, until she changed to another breakfast shop before she was attracted by those exquisite meals and completely forgot about the noodle shop.

It's just that the breakfast this time was not peaceful.

roadside
"A little bit~"

A child with a red ghost face and a navy blue mandarin jacket rushed from the side of the street, ran to Wu Tong, took a custard bag, and ran away. After running a few meters away, he turned around and pretended to be a real boy for Wu Tong. "Ghostface".

"This bear boy!"

Wu Tong gritted his teeth, and in the end he could only smile helplessly and said, "It's just a custard bun, so you can eat it if you eat it."

Zhu Jue was holding a bowl of chicken porridge with mushrooms and watching this scene with a smile on his face, when he suddenly noticed someone behind him, and when he turned around, he saw a little girl wearing a camouflage mask and a red padded jacket reaching out to grab him The corner of his clothes, and a coin in his other free hand.

Why a little girl?
Because she has two croiss braids tied behind her head, and she also wears a pair of cloth shoes embroidered with flowers.

"Big brother, this is the money from the custard bag. I will pay for it for my brother, but you have to give me another one, because there are two for one yuan."

"I'll give you another egg waffle, can you tell my brother why you all wear these strange masks?"

Zhu Jue noticed that not only the two children, but also many adults nearby were holding masks, and they were all hideous-looking masks, which made him a little curious.

"Ghosts in the underworld, looking for rebirth, cannibalizing human flesh, devouring human heart and lungs, this is what my mother told me!"

After the girl finished speaking, she took the egg waffle from Zhu Jue's hand, and then trotted to chase her brother.

Zhu Jue raised his head, and his gaze unconsciously fell to the bottom of a corridor in front of him, where a group of masked children were running.

Most of these children are petite, but the masks on their faces are a circle bigger than their faces, so the masks start to shake involuntarily while running. This should be a relaxed and childish picture, but now it looks quite weird .

Zhu Jue, who has always been a little sensitive about this aspect, stared at them for a long time, until he was attracted by Li Qinglian's voice.

"The spring festival in Rongxia City has two meanings. One is to welcome the new year, offering sacrifices to the gods with a huge and gorgeous parade, and asking for their blessings. Everyone knows this, but the second level is somewhat different. Same, on March 3th, in Rongxia City, it is called "Ghost Gate". , as the little girl said just now, in order to turn around, these ghosts must find a suitable body to replace themselves. They also have masks on their faces in order to make those ghosts treat them as the same kind, And this spring festival is also to push the popularity in Rongxia City to its peak and resist the Yin Qi from the underworld."

Li Qinglian checked the content on the phone with her mobile phone. These are traditional customs, so it is not difficult to find them.

"Then do we have to buy a mask? Otherwise, everyone else will wear it. If we don't wear it, wouldn't those ghosts only come to us?"

Although he has received many years of atheism education, when he arrived in Rongxia City, the religious atmosphere here was so pervasive that even Wu Tong began to subconsciously want to cooperate.

But this is not a bad thing in itself, they do as the Romans do, anyway, they are here to play, there is no need to forcibly make life difficult for the customs here.

Tomorrow is the spring festival parade, and Zhu Jue doesn't want to be that maverick, so nodding his head is a recognition of Wu Tong's idea.

(End of this chapter)