未命名故事

<div id="tw-story"></div> <script> var fullText = "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. — H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)"; var container = document.getElementById("tw-story"); var i = 0; var speed = 60; function typeWriter() { if (i < fullText.length) { var ch = fullText.charAt(i); if (ch === "\n") { container.innerHTML += "<br>"; } else { container.innerHTML += ch; } i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } typeWriter(); </script> (text-colour:#a30000)[[Continue]] <audio src="https://file.garden/ad-68fVIV3ilAEJq/2020-10-26_-_Ghost_Stories_-_www.FesliyanStudios.com_Steve_Oxen.mp3" autoplay loop></audio>

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/84/bd/ef/84bdefdc4aec514c71420aec95e5983f.jpg" alt="封面"> (text-colour:#a30000)[[Start Game]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f6/e2/01/f6e20166b24668442128ab6a60929c25.jpg" alt="封面"> Your name is Jack. You’re standing at the door of your ramshackle home, clutching a rope in your hand. At the other end of the rope is your family’s last remaining asset—that old dairy cow. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Next]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3c/a9/64/3ca964fb24ac7a9ea8ebf4f6e9cfb0bd.jpg" alt="封面"> The morning fog was thick. You led your cow along the muddy path toward the market. It was unnaturally quiet all around; not even the birds were singing. (text-colour:#a30000)[[next]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/cf/bc/50/cfbc500ac6ebb5daa9c2ce211d56e60b.jpg" alt="封面"> <div id="tw-story"></div> Your mother hasn’t eaten in three days. She sits inside, scraping the floorboards with her fingernails, making a sound like a mouse gnawing on wood. You must go to the market. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go to the Town]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b6/e1/71/b6e1717dc8de6c69ee691e6907a3b5a3.jpg" alt="封面"> Halfway there, a stranger stopped you. He was wearing a long coat out of season, his face hidden in the shadows. He looked at your cow, then smiled. “I can trade this for your cow." He held out his hand, it was a handful of ordinary-looking beans, yet they glowed faintly. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Trade the cow for beans]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Turn him down and head to the market]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/45/4f/45454f0e5ead77d15dc225f47c2367e0.jpg" alt="封面"> You handed him the rope. The stranger placed the beans in your hand; they were warm. “Plant them tonight.” With that, he vanished into the fog. You looked back, and there was no one left on the road but you and the few beans in your hand. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go home]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6f/1e/12/6f1e122ccf6b102fb2e334092d7f3b2b.jpg" alt="封面"> You shook your head. “I won’t trade.” The man didn’t get angry. He just sighed softly. “Then go live the life that belongs to you.” With a gust of wind, he vanished. You led the ox and continued on toward the market. The market is bustling; vendors are hawking their wares, children are laughing, and the air is filled with the scent of bread and fruit. Everything in town is thriving. What are you going to do now? (text-colour:#a30000)[[Looking for buyers]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Find a job]]

You stumbled back home. When your mother saw the beans, she let out a wail that didn’t sound human. She knocked the beans out of your hands and hurled them with all her might toward the parched, barren ground outside the window. You couldn’t sleep that night. Your mother’s fingernails scraped against the bedframe all night long. But beneath that sound, you heard something else—coming from outside the window, a faint, damp sound of something stretching and sucking in the soil. By dawn, the window was completely blocked by a thick, sickly green mass. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Pushed open the door]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ce/2b/aa/ce2baa83cdf0364cb69a7616e11995cf.jpg" alt="封面"> You stood in the market for a while. After a short time, a farmer walked over and took a look at your cow. “It’s getting on in years,” he said, “but I can give you some money for it.” You thought about it for a moment, then nodded and handed the cow over to him. In exchange, you received a small bag of money. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go back to home]]

The street was bustling. You stood by the roadside, feeling a bit at a loss, and then you sold the cow to a farmer. After that, you started looking for work. You asked at a bakery. The owner shook his head. You asked at a blacksmith’s shop. The forge was hot, but they didn’t need any more help. Just as you were about to give up, a cook called out to you. “Can you clean?” You nodded. “Then come give it a try.” (text-colour:#a30000)[[Hard working]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c5/d1/df/c5d1dfa94f82f8b11f72339ca57cb701.jpg" alt="封面"> When you got home, you handed the money to your mother. She looked at you in surprise for a moment, then gently hugged you. “You’ve worked so hard.” That night, you finally had a meal that was somewhat filling. The days that followed were much the same as before, except that you had some food now, which might allow you to survive a little longer. (text-colour:#a30000)[Normal Ending 1: Everything remains the same] <div id="tw-story"></div> <script> var fullText = "Is this really how it’s going to end for you? "; var container = document.getElementById("tw-story"); var i = 0; var speed = 60; function typeWriter() { if (i < fullText.length) { var ch = fullText.charAt(i); if (ch === "\n") { container.innerHTML += "<br>"; } else { container.innerHTML += ch; } i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } typeWriter(); </script> (text-colour:#a30000)[[???]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/56/07/79/5607796b5284096fbaa32b78fedb05bc.jpg" alt="封面"> You started helping out at a restaurant. Sweeping the floor, moving things around, running errands. The work was exhausting. But at the end of each day, you’d earn a little money. Not much. But enough to buy bread. You brought the money home, and your mother smiled a little more than before. Life didn’t suddenly get better. You still lived in that small house. But little by little, you began to fear the winter less. (text-colour:#a30000) [Normal Ending 2: A Future Built Step by Step] <div id="tw-story"></div> <script> var fullText = "Is this really how it’s going to end for you? "; var container = document.getElementById("tw-story"); var i = 0; var speed = 60; function typeWriter() { if (i < fullText.length) { var ch = fullText.charAt(i); if (ch === "\n") { container.innerHTML += "<br>"; } else { container.innerHTML += ch; } i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } typeWriter(); </script> (text-colour:#a30000)[[???]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/61/3e/35613ef1cc1a727fef62e9e1db29be82.jpg" alt="封面"> (text-colour:#a30000)[It’s watching you.]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a9/ce/be/a9cebe353e19cb1a14d258872d2e517a.jpg" alt="封面"> You saw it. It could hardly be called a “bean stalk.” It was a colossal pillar several meters in diameter, twisted and knotted from countless greenish-black tendrils and suction cups, jutting up into the clouds. Its surface was covered by a damp, iridescent film, dotted with quivering holes—the edges of those holes were lined with fine, needle-like serrations that opened and closed like countless hungry mouths. The air was thick with a mixture of the sweet scent of decay and ozone. You looked up, and above the clouds, there was no sky—only a surging, blood-stained, purplish-black dome, within which lightning, defying all geometry, convulsed silently. [[continue]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fa/fc/b5/fafcb579d19b3fc5146f71d8c7079996.jpg" alt="封面"> There’s a trail on the ground stretching from the doorway to the base of the bean stalk. The trail is mixed with dirt and a fluorescent, translucent slime that’s slowly bubbling. All you have is a rusty hatchet. Do you want to climb up? (text-colour:#a30000)[[Yes]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[No]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/fe/4e/40fe4ea6aa3e331ff9cd1a8d95311c52.jpg" alt="封面"> You begin to climb. With every step, your feet press against the warm, muscle-like surface of the vines. They spasm and contract beneath your weight, trying to wrap themselves around your feet. The air around you is illuminated by the eerie phosphorescence emitted by the bean stalks themselves, and you can hear a muffled, slow, liquid-echoing... heartbeat coming from the clouds above. Climbing takes time. How do you cope with it all during that time? (text-colour:#a30000)[[Focus on the goal and suppress your fear]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Examining the details of a bean stalk]]

You stand before the rotten pillar that reaches to the heavens, a rusty hatchet clenched in your hand, your knuckles white. You look up at the quivering mouths, the pulsing tendons, and the blood-stained, churning dome above the clouds. You hear that muffled heartbeat, echoing with the sound of liquid. Then you take a step back. You toss the hatchet to the ground. The metal strikes the parched earth with a dull thud. You turn, walk back inside, and shut the door. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go back]]

You grit your teeth and fix your gaze firmly on the ceiling. You refuse to look down at your feet, at those gaping mouths, or to listen to that pounding heartbeat. You repeat your mother’s name over and over in your mind, or a prayer, or say nothing at all—just counting each grip. One, two, three, four. You climb quickly. Very efficiently. But a voice begins to echo in your head. It’s faint, like the wind rustling through a crack, but that voice is calling your name. In your mother’s tone. You pretend not to hear it. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Keep climbing]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8f/79/68/8f796887cad75b5a2377594e18a1f5dd.jpg" alt="封面"> You couldn’t help yourself. You started looking. Inside those quivering “mouths” were tiny, translucent, tooth-like structures arranged in a spiral, resembling the throat of some deep-sea creature. The pulsating patterns on the surface weren’t random—they were flowing, moving according to some pattern. You stared at it for a long time. Too long. The pattern of those rippling lines suddenly became clear in your mind: they were simulating the movement of the stars. Not any constellation you knew, but a completely unfamiliar, ancient star chart that shouldn’t exist in this sector of the sky. You suddenly understood. This bean stalk was not a separate living being. It was an umbilical cord. It connected to some immense, living entity above, just as an infant is connected to its mother. This realization pierced your skull like an ice pick. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Keep climbing]]

You broke through the clouds. “Broke through” is the right word—the clouds didn’t feel like water vapor, but more like passing through a warm, moist, elastic membrane. Your entire body was coated in a transparent, sticky substance with a sweet, fishy odor. Then you saw the world above. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/11/88/4e/11884e1e939e0018f2414b503d6fd0c7.jpg" alt="封面"> There was no sunlight. The light came from the far end of the horizon—where a massive, inward-collapsing nebula-like vortex emitted a dark purple, pulsating glow, like a half-closed, dreaming eye. The ground beneath your feet is grayish-white, crunching softly with each step. You look down: it is not gravel, but ground-up bone. Tiny, powdery fragments of bone, among which you can occasionally make out a whole finger bone or half a tooth. There is a building in the distance. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Towards Architecture]]

On the first day, you sat on the edge of your mother’s bed. The bed slats were covered with grooves scratched by fingernails, and dark red, dried blood was embedded in the splinters. You covered the window—blocked shut by thick, green mold—with a tattered quilt, but light still seeped through—a sickly, pulsating glow somewhere between green and purple, causing the shadows in the room to writhe unnaturally. You tried not to listen to the sounds outside. That heartbeat never stopped. (text-colour:#a30000)[[The Next Day]]

On the second day, you began to feel hungry. There was no food in the kitchen, so you drank a few mouthfuls of murky water from the bottom of the jar; it had a sweet, metallic, rusty taste. You spat the water out. In the evening, you heard a sound outside. Not a heartbeat, not the sucking of vines. It was a woman’s voice. Singing. It was Mother. You rushed to the door and peered through the crack. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9a/01/16/9a011680b45451db642d2bf90f66c0af.jpg" alt="封面"> Mother was standing at the base of the bean stalk. Her posture was wrong—her neck was tilted back at an impossible angle, her face turned completely toward the sky. Her mouth was wide open, so wide that her jaw seemed dislocated, so wide that the skin at the corners of her mouth was tearing. She was singing. But the melody wasn’t her own. It was a song you’d never heard before, composed of muffled, underwater syllables. After listening to a few lines, your molars began to ache, and a metallic taste of blood surged into your nostrils. She was singing to the bean stalk. (text-colour:#a30000)[[You didn't open the door]]

Early on the third morning, you were awakened by pain. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fe/6a/9b/fe6a9be6ea6c38066610147591b5633e.jpg" alt="封面"> The soles of your feet were itchy. Then came a stinging sensation. Then excruciating, tearing pain. You pulled back the covers and saw something growing outward from the soles of your feet. Tiny, pale, sprout-like roots were pushing their way out from beneath your skin, dripping with blood and that fluorescent, translucent mucus. They were reaching toward the floor, trying to burrow into the dirt. You screamed as you yanked one out. Pain. Excruciating pain. But three more immediately sprouted from the spot where you’d pulled it out—thinner, longer, and more desperate. You rush toward the door, desperate to escape, but your legs no longer obey you. Those roots have burrowed into the floor, anchoring you to the spot. Through the window—the one covered with a torn quilt—you glimpse the scene outside. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d7/f9/da/d7f9da48dafdabcd8c8f46d48acbec05.jpg" alt="封面"> The bean stalk has grown. It’s at least twice as thick as it was three days ago. More tendrils, more suction cups, more quivering mouths. Its base is spreading a dense network of grayish-white tendrils in every direction, already covering all the ground around your house. Those tendrils are crawling toward your house, squeezing through the door cracks, the window frames, and the fissures at the base of the walls. Your mother is still standing at the base of the bean stalk. Or, to be more precise—she is merging with the bean stalk. Her legs have been completely enveloped by the grayish-white tendrils, which have burrowed into her skin and intertwined with her blood vessels and muscles. Her upper body is still exposed, her arms still raised high, her ten fingers having completely transformed into a dozen or so dancing bean vines, now entwining and connecting with the main stem of the bean stalk. (text-colour:#a30000)[[the next day]]

Those roots wrap around your ankles, calves, waist, and arms. They yank you off the floor and drag you toward the doorway. Your body smashes through the door, is dragged across the cracked earth, toward the base of the bean stalk, toward your mother, who has already become one with it. The last image you see is your mother’s outstretched arms and the two pitch-black eyeballs in her eye sockets—eyeballs that do not belong to her. You are pressed against the surface of the bean stalk. Those quivering mouths find you. They press against your skin, their fine, serrated edges beginning to gnaw and burrow in. You feel no pain—or rather, the pain has exceeded the limits of what your nervous system can process, transforming into a numb, warm, and accepting calm. Your consciousness began to flow upward along the bean stalk’s conduit. Through tendons and suction cups, through clouds and that purplish-black dome, through inverted palaces, through the giant’s chest cavity. Into that icy blue nebula. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Bad Ending]]

From the moment you took those five beans, the outcome was already sealed. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/61/3e/35613ef1cc1a727fef62e9e1db29be82.jpg" alt="封面"> (text-colour:#a30000)[Bad Ending: An inescapable fate]

It is a palace built of massive, smooth, dark-green stone. But it does not stand on the ground—it hangs upside down in the sky. The spires point down at you, their tips just a few meters above the ground; the entire palace looks as if some colossal prank had uprooted it from the earth and then planted it upside down in the sky. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c4/2c/86/c42c866b884042d88f96f2aca89d1d72.jpg" alt="封面"> The “path” leading to the palace’s entrance consists of countless geometric stone slabs suspended in midair. Their sides vary in length; some are equilateral triangles, some are hexagons, and some are shapes you cannot recognize. Beneath the slabs lies an abyss—a mist-shrouded abyss churning with countless pale arms and faces screaming in silence. You step onto the slabs. They sink slightly beneath your feet, then steady. The palace entrance resembles the throat of a colossal beast. The dark-green rock surface is unnaturally smooth, like polished jade, but upon closer inspection, the patterns are countless tiny, frozen reliefs—depicting some ritual scene that defies geometry and eludes your understanding. What are you going to do? (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go straight in]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Look for another entrance]]

You walked right in. The interior of the palace is eerily empty. The air is cold, and your breath condenses into white mist. The scent is a strange mixture—the odor of a massive, warm-blooded creature, mingled with a pungent, cloyingly sweet smell reminiscent of temple incense. Your footsteps echo through the hall, and when the echoes return, they’re accompanied by… a rustling sound. It’s as if countless things are whispering to one another in a high-frequency range you can’t hear. A humanoid creature at least four meters tall stands with its back to you. Its skin is a bluish-gray, like that of a corpse that has been floating in the water for days, covered with sparse, coarse bristles. It has no hair, and on the back of its head are three eyes—of varying sizes, without eyelids. The surface of the pitch-black eyeballs is moist, and each is rotating erratically on its own. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/92/98/02/92980289c1b5eb7676e2e8fcc55cc6c3.jpg" alt="封面"> It hasn’t noticed you. It is humming a song over and over in a low, muffled voice, as if speaking from beneath the water. The melody makes your molars ache and brings tears to your eyes for no apparent reason. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Creep up quietly]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c8/4e/91/c84e910c3886c26383311763736cd54f.jpg" alt="封面"> You walked around the castle and found a hole you could crawl through. It’s safe to go in here. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Creep up quietly]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2f/e7/bc/2fe7bc4f693f4a57b97efbf7d9ba4200.jpg" alt="封面"> There are two pedestals nearby. On the first pedestal lies a crimson velvet cushion. Resting on the cushion is an “egg” about the size of a goose egg. Its shell is a translucent milky white, and inside, countless tiny golden specks move erratically, like imprisoned fireflies. Through the shell, you can faintly make out a curled-up embryo—neither bird nor insect—trembling ever so slightly, as if breathing. The egg radiates a warm, golden glow. In this cold, foul-smelling, mad world, it is the only thing that reminds you of the “sun.” You stare at it, feeling a dangerous urge to reach out and touch it. On the second pedestal stands an “instrument.” It is bound together from pale, irregularly shaped bones and glossy black tendons. It has no strings. Yet as you look at it, the air around it begins to vibrate of its own accord, producing a melody—one that is at once poignant, lonely, and blasphemous, making you want to weep and laugh hysterically at the same time. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Creep up quietly, trying to steal the golden egg]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Examine the skeletal harp]]

You choose to walk toward the egg. Toward that warm, golden, sun-like thing. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/62/52/7b/62527bc19e3c0e618e838e1d708412fa.jpg" alt="封面"> With every step, you tread as lightly as possible. The pounding of your heart sounds as loud as a drum in your own ears; you’re certain the giant must be able to hear it. But it doesn’t turn around. The three eyes on the back of its head continue to rotate independently; one of them seems to glance briefly in your direction—then looks away. You reached the pedestal. The egg lay right before you, within arm’s reach. A golden glow bathed your face, and you felt a warmth that nearly brought tears to your eyes. In this mad, icy world, it felt like a promise—a promise of “normality.” You reached out and cradled it in your hands. It was heavier than it looked. The shell felt warm and smooth, and you could feel the embryo inside slowly wriggling. For a moment, you saw the outline of the embryo—curled up, tiny, with a vague, beak-like structure and a faint, infant-like curled hand. Then it stopped wriggling and grew still. As if it had recognized you. You tucked the golden egg into your bosom. It pressed against your chest, like a flame that wouldn’t burn you. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Leave immediately]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Go get the harp]]

You are swept away by the melody. It is not music, but an invisible chain, dragging your consciousness forward. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b2/00/51/b2005183ec57420ff01e35cf86e3d0c0.jpg" alt="封面"> You stand before a harp made of bones. Those bones—you can make out some of them—include human finger bones and ribs, but others are longer, thinner, and have joints that are completely out of place; they do not belong to any creature you recognize. The black tendons are bound in twisted, non-Euclidean knots. As your gaze tries to follow the path of a single tendon, you realize it seems to have tied itself in a knot within three-dimensional space, its beginning and end meeting at the same point. That hauntingly beautiful yet blasphemous melody is growing louder. You realize one thing: it has no strings, yet it is waiting for you to play it. Your hand reaches out of its own accord. Your fingers pass through the air where strings should be. Then you touch something. An invisible, icy, razor-sharp “string.” Your fingertip is cut open. Drops of blood seep out, sliding down the invisible string. But you feel no pain. Because your mind is being filled with something else. (text-colour:#a30000)[[next page]]

The giant stopped humming. An absolute, complete, vacuum-like silence descended upon this inverted hall. Your ears rang from the sudden quiet. Then it turned around. The way its body turned was wrong. It wasn’t a twist at the waist—it was as if the space between its upper and lower body twisted on its own, “flipping” its front to face you. You saw its face. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a6/3d/7b/a63d7baca367a572ddedb602018f3e99.jpg" alt="封面"> It wasn’t a face. It was a structure formed by the convergence of countless smaller, more distorted human faces. Every face was moving—mouths screaming silently, eyes oozing black liquid, noses wrinkling, eyebrows twitching. There were men’s faces, women’s faces, old people’s faces, children’s faces. You saw market vendors; you saw neighbors you vaguely remembered. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Run!]]

You turned and ran. It spoke. “Fee… Fi… Fo… Fum…” The sound didn’t come from the mouths of those faces. It was poured directly into your brain, like a bucket of ice water dumped over your head, each syllable shaking you so violently that your eyes stung and your nose bled. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Run!!!!]]

You ran out of the palace and stepped onto the floating stone slabs. Just as you leaped off, several slabs plummeted into the abyss below, and you heard the sound of chewing coming from the mist below. You grabbed hold of the bean stalk. You began to slide down. Going down is more terrifying than going up. Those tendrils and suction cups writhe and spasm frantically, trying to wrap themselves around your limbs and body. As you slide, you hack at the vines clinging to you with your hatchet; with every swing, a jet of fluorescent, foul-smelling sap spurts out, and the vines let out a shriek like a rat being crushed. Above you, the giant’s weight has already crushed the top of the bean stalk. The entire rotten pillar reaching to the sky begins to emit a sound you’ve never heard before—like the agonized screams of ten million people being squeezed from the depths of their throats all at once. The bean stalk begins to collapse. Starting from the top, those tendrils and suckers peel off in large chunks, rot, and turn into grayish-white pus, crashing down all around you. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Run?]]

You see the ground. You see your ramshackle hut. You see— Your mother standing in the doorway. Her eyes are two black holes, their edges scorched. From the depths of those black holes sprout two slender, quivering bean-like shoots, their tips bearing rice-grain-sized, fleshy purple “buds” that open and close. She is smiling. It is the kind of smile a mother wears when she sees her child come home—a smile of utter bliss and serenity. She spreads her arms upward, as if to embrace you. You are still a dozen meters from the ground. Five meters. Three meters. Now you have to make your final decision. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Swing the knife and cut the bean stalk]] (text-colour:#a30000)[[Don't cut the bean stalk; hold your mother's hand]]

You swung your blade. <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/16/d0/2516d0e03e311cddbb2156d0fcb23dd0.jpg" alt="封面"> The cleaver sliced into the main stem of the bean stalk. The sensation was like cutting into a warm, dense mass of flesh. The blade severed a pulsating tendon, and a foul-smelling, fluorescent liquid sprayed across your face. Then came the sound. A sound coming from above. Not the voice of a giant, but the voice of the bean stalk itself—a wail spanning the entire musical spectrum, emitted simultaneously by millions of quivering mouths. It pierced your eardrums, penetrated your skull, and exploded directly inside your brain. You clenched the knife tightly and kept hacking. The second blow, the third. Juice gushed forth, the vines convulsed, and the entire rotten pillar reaching to the heavens began to tear apart and collapse from the wound at a speed visible to the naked eye. You fell to the ground. Your back slammed hard against the parched earth, forcing all the air out of your lungs. When you could see again, you saw: The bean stalk is vanishing. No, not vanishing—contracting. The entire colossal pillar, along with the palace at its summit, the blind and foolish giant, and the purplish-black dome, is rapidly contracting and collapsing toward the vortex at the center of the sky. Faster and faster, until finally— There is nothing left. The sky regained its color. But it was no longer blue; it was a faded, grayish-white, like an old shirt that had been washed too many times. The vortex vanished, the palace vanished, the giant vanished. The fragments of the bean stalk left around you were rapidly decaying, turning into grayish-white pus within seconds, seeping into the soil as if they had never been there. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Next Page]]

You didn’t swing the axe. Maybe you were afraid. Maybe you were too tired. Maybe the sight of your mother smiling with her arms outstretched reminded you of when you were very, very young, when she was the only thing that made you feel safe. Maybe you just wanted to go home. You loosened your grip on the axe. You spread your arms and fell toward your mother’s hands, toward that smiling woman with sprouts growing from her eye sockets. You grabbed her hand. Her hand was warm. The familiar calluses, the familiar knuckles. Exactly as you remembered. Then the ground caught you. But it wasn’t solid ground. Your feet sank in, as if you’d stepped into a giant, warm, writhing sponge. You looked down. The ground was no longer cracked earth. The root system of the bean stalk—the parts you’d never seen, the parts that had always grown underground—had long since taken over the entire plot. Grayish-white, densely packed roots spread like nerve endings across every inch of soil, slowly writhing, contracting, and breathing. Your ankles are already entangled in the roots. You don’t struggle. You look up at your mother; she is still smiling. Within her dark, hollow eye sockets, tender bean sprouts are dancing joyfully, and purple, fleshy flower buds open and close, open and close. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Next page]]

<div id="tw-story"></div> <script> var fullText = "Your consciousness begins to fade, but it is not the end. You feel yourself being broken down—not your body, but something more fundamental. Your memories, your fears, your name, every sky you’ve ever seen, every drop of water you’ve ever drunk, every dream you’ve ever had—are being scattered into tiny, flowing particles, then carried upward along those grayish-white roots."; var container = document.getElementById("tw-story"); var i = 0; var speed = 60; function typeWriter() { if (i < fullText.length) { var ch = fullText.charAt(i); if (ch === "\n") { container.innerHTML += "<br>"; } else { container.innerHTML += ch; } i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } typeWriter(); </script> (text-colour:#a30000)[[True Ending 2: Return to the Great Dream]]

Your mother lay collapsed at the doorway. The sprouts in her eye sockets had withered, turned black, and fallen out, leaving two hollow eye sockets. She was still breathing, but she never woke up again. You look down at the golden egg in your arms. It is still warm, still radiating a soft golden glow. The embryo inside wriggles slightly; you see the tiny, curled-up form unfurl a little, then curl back up again. It is growing. Or perhaps you gaze at the fragment of a bone harp in your hand. The tendons on its surface still tremble faintly, and if you hold it close to your ear, you can hear it still playing—extremely faintly, like the final dirge of a long-dead civilization, echoing from tens of thousands of light-years away. You survived. (text-colour:#a30000)[[True Ending 1: The One Who Cuts the Umbilical Cord]]

Your feet landed on the dark green stone slabs without making a sound. Or rather, the sound was swallowed up by the giant’s muffled humming. Step by step, you retreated from the palace’s main hall and entered the “path” formed by suspended geometric stone slabs. The palace entrance lay behind you, like a mouth closing—but you dared not look back. You begin to walk. Not run, because beneath the stone slabs beneath your feet lies a misty abyss churning with pale arms and faces screaming in silence. One false step, and you will become one of them. The giant’s humming grows fainter and fainter behind you, but it does not stop. It has not spotted you. You reach the edge of the bean stalk. You begin to slide down. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Back to home]]

You slid to the ground. Your feet touched the cracked earth. You were gasping for breath, your body coated in the slimy, iridescent film that covered the bean stalk’s surface, but you were alive, your mind intact, and you held a warm golden egg in your arms. You glanced back at the bean stalk. It still stood there, twisting as it pierced the clouds; those quivering mouths were still opening and closing, and the sound of its heartbeat still echoed dully above the clouds. But it did not come after you. You had succeeded. You had stolen a treasure from the cracks of the world, and its owner didn’t even know you had been there. You turned and looked toward the ramshackle house— Mother was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were normal. Cloudy, weary, and filled with the anxiety and confusion you knew so well. You hid the golden egg deep inside your clothes so she wouldn’t see it. That night, Mother slept soundly, making no noise as she turned in her sleep. You lay on the mat beside her, listening to the wind outside the window—the ordinary sound of wind sweeping across the parched earth—and the faint, rhythmic wriggling coming from inside the golden egg in your arms. (text-colour:#a30000)[[Sleep]]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/54/df/06/54df0616bdf8a32bc3de95dee0d20317.jpg" alt="封面"> (text-colour:#a30000)[The golden egg or the fragments of the lyre have forged an unbreakable bond with you. You have begun to dream—dreams of the inverted palace, of the giant whose chest contains a microcosm, and of the last lucid gaze in your mother’s eyes before sprouts began to grow from her eye sockets. You have not been assimilated. But you are no longer entirely “human” either.]

<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/44/11/06/44110638191db809786153f47582d052.jpg" alt="封面"> (text-colour:#a30000)[From then on, a swamp perpetually shrouded in mist appeared in the Ashen Wastes. Travelers who approach it can hear voices drifting from the mist—a conversation between a young man and an old woman, the words always indistinct and repetitive, like a record stuck on a scratch. At times, it sounds like a muffled ballad humming from beneath the water. Any seed sown in this marsh will sprout a strange bean sprout: smooth on the surface, with a texture like cartilage, and a faint, dark purple glow pulsing within. Occasionally, another young person with nowhere else to turn will pass by, drawn by the bean sprout’s glow. Occasionally, a bean will be placed into their hands. And everything will begin anew.]

The next day, you took the golden egg to the market. You didn’t know what effect it would have on the whole market, but you sold it anyway. It brought you a fair amount of money. But who knows what impact it will have on people? Happy ending? things didn’t spiral out of control. (text-colour:#a30000)[[???]]

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