Courtyard House: My Long and Hard Body Makes Me Play with All the Women in the Courtyard

The control pillar emitted a ghostly blue light, like a river flowing backward, slowly drawing her consciousness away from reality.

The body gradually became transparent, but the soul became clearer than ever before.

Just as she was about to sink into the imaginary space—

"Su Ting."

That voice rang out again, this time, it was right next to them.

She opened her eyes.

It wasn't through communication, and it wasn't a hallucination.

Chapter 1498 Endless Gray Fog

Su Ting stood opposite, his figure blurry, as if pieced together from countless fragmented memories. He stood on a floating piece of desk fragment, on which the words "Su Ting's Story Time" were drawn in a crooked manner.

"You..." Her throat tightened, "How did you get here?"

“I’ve always been here,” he smiled. “It’s just that you can finally…see me now.”

"Where is this?"

“This isn’t the place.” He looked around at the endless gray fog. “It’s a crack in time. Every moment when you dare not speak will leave an echo here. Some people have cried here for ten years, and no one has heard them; some people have said ‘I am here’ a thousand times, but they were scared away by their own voice.”

He reached out and gently touched her cheek with his fingertips; it was warm.

"You want to go in and find someone else, but do you know who the most silent one is?"

Su Ting shook his head.

Su Ting lowered his head, his voice as soft as a sigh.

“It was me. When the system first issued the cleansing order, I clearly heard the children screaming, but I… chose to remain silent. I thought that by enduring it, I could protect you, but instead, I silenced everyone. This guilt has bound me, and it has bound them as well.”

Su Ting was stunned.

"So you're trapped here? Because... you've never forgiven yourself?"

Su Ting nodded, his eyes broken yet tender: "Only when someone truly hears my silence can I leave."

Su Ting suddenly laughed.

She hugged him tightly, as if she wanted to meld him into her own heartbeat.

“Then listen carefully.” She buried her face in his illusory shoulder, her voice trembling but firm. “You’re a cowardly bastard, a stupid teacher, a coward who’s been hiding for ten years without daring to say sorry—but you’re also the one who secretly photographed my doodles and put them into your private database. You’re the one who quietly lowered the monitoring level after I was warned by the system. You’re the one who whispered our names before each cleaning, like in prayer.”

She looked up, tears streaming down her face.

“I heard you, Su Ting. You’ve been speaking in my ear since I was six. Even if you didn’t say it, I knew you wanted to save us. So—I don’t forgive you.”

Su Ting was stunned.

“I don’t need to forgive you,” she shouted. “Because you did nothing wrong! You were just a step too slow, but you caught up! You’re back! You remind me of ice cream, you give me the courage to speak loudly here! So you have no right to stay hidden here! Get out! Go back to the light!”

The gray fog trembled violently.

A crack appeared in the sky, and golden sound waves surged forth like a tide.

Su Ting's figure began to flicker, but he reached out and grasped her hand.

"And what about you? Do you still want to go in?"

Su Ting nodded: "Of course. There are others waiting to be heard."

“Then promise me—” he smiled, his features gradually brightening, “when you feel scared, don’t forget that I’m listening too.”

The light swallowed up his last trace.

Su Ting stood still, his consciousness being pulled into deeper darkness.

Just as she was about to fall, a familiar roar rang in her ears:

"Hey! Kid! Don't think you can do whatever you want just because I sacrificed myself! Remember—six o'clock! Rock and roll! It's lucky the system survives this!"

She couldn't help but laugh out loud, letting the darkness engulf her.

After an unknown amount of time, a faint crackling sound of electricity broke the silence.

Chapter 1499 You can come out now.

Then, a timid child's voice, tinged with tears, came through:

"...Is anyone there? My name is Dora. I...I've been hiding under my bed at kindergarten. I'm afraid to go out because my mom said that children who talk nonsense will be taken away..."

Su Ting's voice rang out softly, like the first breeze of spring:

"Dora, listen to me."

“My name is Su Ting. When I was six years old, I was also told to ‘shut up, little kid.’”

"But now—look, I'm standing on the roof of the world, shouting your name."

"So... you can come out now."

A moment of silence.

Then, a very soft sob.

Then came a trembling response:

"...Thank you... Su Ting."

Another voice drifted from a great distance:

"Hey...girl...you still owe me a rock song."

"Su Ting?" Su Ting suddenly opened his eyes, despite the endless darkness and floating data shadows all around him. "Aren't you going back to fix your scrap metal yet?"

A sneer came through the communication channel, accompanied by crackling static: "I regretted it the moment I pushed you in! The system's underlying mechanisms are starting to backfire, and the silent echo zone is shrinking—if you don't come out soon, we'll both be formatted into blank documents!"

"Then get out of here and blow up a few nodes to buy me some time!" she replied, while simultaneously sensing the gravitational pull deep within her consciousness. "There are still people waiting for me to hear them!"

"You crazy girl!" Su Ting roared, "You think this is a joke? Su Ting was able to show up just now because you triggered the core resonance of the Initial Protocol, but now you're heading straight for the 'Self-Annihilation Zone'! That's not a graveyard, it's a mental meat grinder! A place even the dead dare not dream of!"

"Then let me have a nightmare, that'll do," Su Ting murmured, but her steps didn't stop.

Her body had completely detached from reality, transforming into a series of pulsating frequencies that moved through the gray mist. With each step, a fragmented memory surfaced beneath her feet—

A locked-down classroom, its walls covered with yellowed handmade paintings;

A boy was curled up in a corner, his lips moving but no sound came out;

A group of children formed a circle, calling out to each other, but remained silent as if separated by a glass world...

“It’s not that they can’t speak,” Su Ting said softly. “They’re afraid that even if they do speak, no one will listen.”

Nourishes—

Another soft sound, as if someone had carefully touched the microphone.

"...Can you really...hear me?"

This voice was different from Dora's before; it was deeper, carrying the weight of years of suppressed silence.

Su Ting stopped and looked around: "Who are you?"

"I... I don't know my name. They all call me 'File 07'. I've been locked up in a speech therapy center since I was five, practicing saying 'I'm a good boy, I don't talk nonsense' every day... until I really... forgot how to cry."

Su Ting's heart clenched painfully.

"So what do you want to say now? Even a single word, I'll listen."

There was a long silence.

Then, very slightly—

"pain……"

In that instant, the entire imaginary space seemed to tremble. A crack appeared in the gray mist, revealing a corner of red wall buried deep behind it—it was a children's psychological intervention room. The wallpaper was printed with smiley face balloons, but the floor was splattered with indelible bloodstains and fingerprints.

"They hit you?" Su Ting's voice suddenly turned cold.

"No...it wasn't the beating that hurt," he said slowly, his voice trembling. "It's...a void inside me. If I said something, they'd reward me with a piece of candy; if I told the truth, they'd tie my tongue. Then...I learned to laugh. Every time I laughed, they were happy, saying I was finally normal...but only I knew I wasn't laughing, I was crying for help."

Chapter 1500 The Real Name

Su Ting clenched his fist, his nails digging into his palm again.

“Then you don’t have to laugh anymore,” she said, enunciating each word clearly. “Now you can cry, you can curse, you can scream! You can tell me who you hate! You can shout out your real name!”

There was another long pause.

Then came a barely audible sob.

Immediately afterwards——

"I...I miss my mom..."

The boy's voice suddenly broke down, filled with heart-wrenching sobs, "Her last words to me were 'You have to be good,' then she pushed me through the door and said goodbye... But she didn't know... That day I actually wanted to say 'Don't go'... I just... I just didn't dare to say it!!!"

boom--!