"Is it my obsession that brought you here?" he murmured to himself, staring at the computer screen.
Ren Yifei's face was pale, his neck was covered in a fine sweat, his hands and feet were stiff and cold, and he was unable to move his body.
His roommate's cold fingers left his shoulder, and the sounds of his breathing and clothes rubbing together faded away. He didn't answer Ren Yifei's question, only saying, "Don't be afraid of me, I won't hurt you."
If someone else were present at that moment, they would see Ren Yifei talking to himself in front of the computer. Behind him was a bare bed and a table and chairs covered in dust. There was no computer or yurt-style tent.
But there was only one Ren Yifei in the dormitory.
Ren Yifei didn't turn around. He just stared at the now-black computer screen, the darkness reflecting his face. His face was expressionless, his eyes revealing a numbness ravaged by life.
He now knows what a roommate is.
When Ren Yifei was young, he attended a special school because of his 'paranoia'.
Although he didn't have delusions, he encountered many people suffering from mental disorders there. Among them were people who had developed schizophrenia due to the loss of someone important to them, which in turn led to delusions. The object of these people's delusions was the person they had lost, and they would forget the part of the memory of 'losing this person'.
There are many types of delusions, and many people's fantasies are entirely fabricated. However, most of the fantasies caused by schizophrenia have real-life prototypes.
The two videos from before show that there was someone in the original owner's life who was very important to him. He lost that person; they may have died. The original owner felt sadness and showed signs of being unable to overcome depression.
Due to a certain opportunity, the original owner participated in the ritual and, due to the sensitivity of his soul, came into contact with a mysterious life form. He was also influenced by the magnetic field around "it," which caused him to experience more despair and sorrow.
However, the human soul has a self-preservation mechanism. When the original owner's sorrow became too heavy, his mental world collapsed and rebuilt. The original owner forgot the past, and a 'roommate' appeared in his world.
The 'roommate' doesn't actually exist; he's just imagining things.
This 'roommate' plays a protective role in the original owner's world. He appears to protect the original owner, so he reminds the original owner to stop when he accidentally misses a step on the stairs, and reminds him to come down when he climbs onto the balcony to get some fresh air.
Even later, when Ren Yifei was trapped in the chaotic underwater world, his roommate would step in to remind him.
Ren Yifei occupied the main spiritual body of the original owner, but a small part of it had split and was out of control, namely the 'roommate'.
The 'roommate' exists to protect the original owner. If this roommate finds out that the original owner has been replaced, what will he do?
Ren Yifei felt a chill run down his spine. It turned out that the Desolate Corner had never forgotten to target him. If his acting was even slightly lacking and he revealed too many flaws, his 'roommate' would take matters into his own hands.
He slowly turned his head, and his 'roommate' had already returned to his seat. When Ren Yifei looked over, he only saw a back that had never changed, as if everything that had happened before was just Ren Yifei's illusion.
Oh, hallucination, that makes sense.
He should have realized sooner that if his roommate was real and the game sounds were real, then his dorm rooms upstairs, downstairs, left, and right would have already come to protest.
The roommate is a delusion of the original owner, an existence that cannot be killed. Unless the original owner returns and cooperates with medication and various treatments, it can be controlled or even cured.
However, Ren Yifei wasn't too worried. The split-off part would only speak up to warn the original owner when he was in danger. And it seemed he could only appear in the dormitory building.
So far, Ren Yifei has only been affected by the attack once yesterday when he entered the dormitory, which triggered the roommate protection mechanism.
He went to the gray channel today intentionally, without any fear in his heart, so he did not trigger the 'roommate's' protection mechanism.
This time, the roommate revealed that it was purely because Ren Yifei had become suspicious first and started to reject him.
If someone is suddenly told that their perception is wrong and the world is not as they see it, how should they react?
Ren Yifei suddenly stood up, reached out and haphazardly swept his keys, charger, and other belongings into his backpack, then grabbed the backpack and rushed out.
The moment the door closed, he seemed to see his roommate slowly turn around, his face silent.
He rushed to the library and sat down in a stone pavilion downstairs.
It was very hot outside, but his arms were still covered in goosebumps, and waves of coldness were emanating from them. Humans have always had a peculiar fear of the unknown, and of humanoid non-humans.
Looking out from this stone pavilion, he could see that his dormitory was separated from his dormitory by a row of teaching buildings.
The 'roommate' couldn't leave the dormitory building. Perhaps because they weren't in the same department or major, in the original owner's mind, she only saw her roommate in the dormitory building, so the 'roommate' she imagined was also confined there.
He took out his phone from his pocket and searched through the photos and contacts, looking for things he had left behind six months ago.
Soon, he found his 'roommate,' who was smiling broadly and holding a basketball.
The 'roommate' in the photos and communication records is very different from the 'roommate' in the fantasy. It seems that the 'roommate' is just borrowed in the shell, but the core is the 'roommate' in the original owner's fantasy.
Ren Yifei mistakenly thought that the original owner liked this roommate, which was due to his impure thoughts. Judging from the records, the roommate was defined by the original owner as an older brother who could protect him and provide him with a strong sense of security.
Perhaps his real-life roommate protected the original owner, which led him to develop this kind of fantasy.
Ren Yifei wiped his face to clear his head, then opened his phone to watch the video Yu Yan had sent. He had a lot going on today, and he had been worried about his roommate, so he hadn't watched the video of the club's sacrificial ceremony yet.
Yu Yan sent several videos, some of the shorter ones showing scenes of preparations for the sacrificial ceremony. At this time, the members of the commune were still quite normal; they were chatting and laughing, pulling at their colorful fabrics, and banging on bronze drums borrowed from somewhere.
In the second preparation video, Ren Yifei saw the original owner sitting in a corner, bound with hemp rope, holding a prop in his hand—his role was a prisoner, a sacrifice.
The original owner was surrounded by an aura of melancholy and low spirits. Not far from him were the other sacrifices and the priests.
The priest, played by the original owner of Saman, was sitting in a small sedan chair with long hair that reached his waist. That long hair was not a wig; the smooth texture of real hair could be seen through the video.
The priest had a gloomy expression, and his eyes were like those of a vulture circling and waiting for its prey to die. His gaze suddenly met the camera.
Ren Yifei sneezed while holding his phone; his eyes were just too cold.
However, the students in the video were completely unaware, still excitedly talking about the simulated sacrificial ceremony and conducting their final dance rehearsal.
The students' rehearsal was very disorganized; they stood in all sorts of places, and their movements were all different. They were just having fun and didn't follow any rules.
Besides the club members making preparations, Ren Yifei also saw a bespectacled teacher directing students to help move props. The props were paper-mache stone pillars, which seemed to have lights installed inside.
There was a car parked not far from the teacher.
Ren Yifei felt the face looked familiar. After thinking about it carefully, he realized, "Oh, this is the advisor teacher of the club, the one who was in a car accident today."
The camera panned to Ren Yifei, who saw other students who had come to watch the commotion. They were all standing on the periphery, craning their necks to see what was happening.
Because the event did not receive the school's 'event permit', they were unable to rent classrooms and studios, so they arranged it in an open-air area of the school, where many curious students came to watch.
The second video ends with the sunset on the horizon.
Ren Yifei opened the third video, which was the actual performance video, the main course.
Ren Yifei was taken aback as soon as the video started playing.
The second video showed a sky full of sunset colors, but in the official video, the sky was completely dark. Some people at the scene whispered, "Why did it suddenly get dark? Is it going to rain?"
Worried about rain, a few people left to collect their laundry from the dormitory. But many more stayed, crowding around the sacrificial site in layers, craning their necks to see what was happening.
In the arena, the long-haired priest sitting in the sedan chair nodded, and a long, drawn-out horn sound rang out.
A tall, muscular man with bare arms was blowing a horn that looked like a curved bull's horn, and the mournful sound echoed throughout the small area.
The long-haired priest uttered a series of incomprehensible chants, mysterious and ancient, which silenced the surrounding area.
The 'actors' who had been laughing and joking around without any proper posture suddenly stood up straight with serious expressions.
Ren Yifei didn't know how to describe the sudden change in atmosphere. It was like during an unsupervised evening self-study session when the dignified homeroom teacher suddenly walked into the classroom with a pile of test papers.
They not only immediately corrected their attitude, but their bodies also reflexively straightened up.
Then the bonfire in the middle was lit, four people lifted the priest's palanquin, and the priest began to chant and turn in circles, while the people participating in the sacrifice began to dance, and at the same time, six bronze drums were beaten.
The dancers' movements and arcs were remarkably synchronized, completely different from their rehearsals. Even their expressions were so serious and solemn that they involuntarily made the onlookers take their own.
He couldn't tell much just by watching the people dancing in the video; at most, he could sense that these members had suddenly become serious, moving from amateur casualness to the level of professional athletes.
But looking at the death row inmate kneeling on the ground, Ren Yifei immediately felt a sense of unease.
There are five offerings on site, including women, men, the elderly, and children (acting out roles).
They all wore expressions of genuine fear and pain, as if this were not a performance, but a real sacrificial ceremony where their lives could be decided.
In the sacrificial scenes of the ancient Dian people, the sacrificed person is a strong, long-haired middle-aged man, likely a prisoner of war. However, in this particular sacrificial ceremony, the offerings included men, women, and children of all ages.
Under what circumstances would someone commit such indiscriminate killing and sacrifice?
"If two tribes are at war, this situation may occur, where a tribe is exterminated by sacrifice. In this case, the sacrifice is usually not for a good harvest in the following year or for the tribe to gain more people. They sacrifice a defeated tribe to repay the gods and let them win."
Not long after Ren Yifei sent the question to Yu Yan's father, the other party gave him a possible option.
At the height of the excitement in the video, the long-haired priest suddenly lashed out with his whip at one of the sacrifices, and a man beside the sacrifice swiftly brought down a prop knife. The knife struck the sacrifice, whose neck twitched, and it collapsed to the ground. Then, a light shone from inside a stone pillar, turning red, as if it had been drenched in blood…
Then the priest continued chanting, and the crowd continued dancing and drumming. After another round, the second sacrifice died. In this way, they killed all the sacrifices, and five of the six stone pillars turned red before the singing and dancing stopped.
Ren Yifei thought it was over, but it wasn't.
The long-haired priest walked towards the bonfire, knelt down, raised his hands high, and muttered something unintelligible.
Then, quite suddenly, he pulled out a prop dagger and slashed his own neck, leaving a deep red mark.
The sixth clean stone pillar instantly turned red, and all the stone pillars emitted a red light.
The already quiet scene was once again filled with the sound of rapid drumbeats, and the dancers stomped their feet and clapped their hands, seemingly celebrating the completion of the ritual.
The next second, the campfire suddenly spewed out flames more than a meter high, and all the performers present fell to their knees with a whoosh, creating a shocking and eerie scene.