Chapter 186: Twelve Zodiac Guardian Deities

Qin Zheng slapped Su Huaishan on the shoulder. He screamed in pain, and the two fought from the back of the car to the front.

Su Mian, however, discovered something. She walked up, leaned into the trunk, and flipped out a small picture book. Judging from the cardboard cover and handwriting, it was her handmade work from when she was a child.

Twelve Zodiac Guardian Deities

Written by Su Mian

"The twelve zodiacs help each other and never separate."

Her pupils constricted. She opened this small manual made of cardboard. Every time she flipped a page, her heart jumped abruptly for a moment.

Zi Shi.

On the left half of the spread was a "Battle Rat" with a hunched back and fierce eyes, and on the right was an introduction about it.

"The eldest among the guardian deities, tall and mighty, is everyone's role model. He is Zi Rat, the rat."

Su Huaishan was a rat. Her father was a rat. When the young Su Mian drew this picture book, she drew the rat as tall, mighty, and independent.

It was just hoping her father could be stronger. The father in her memory was always beaten and scolded by her mother, a weak and incompetent appearance.

She never had the concept of "fearing the wife" since she was a child, so she naturally thought her father was weak.

So she hoped her father would be like that, and drew the rat that way.

She flipped another page, Choushi.

A blue-black ox, lowering its head and eyebrows, with a small silver ring hanging on its horns. The eyes were just poked with a few strokes, as if the pen suddenly broke when drawing here.

The small characters next to it wrote:

"Uncle Chou Ox is the most serious and earnest. He helps me check my homework. He can see the wrong questions at a glance, but he never tells on me."

"Sister Mao Rabbit doesn't like to talk, likes to be in a daze."

Su Mian flipped the book faster and faster, her breathing also faster and faster. Everything, everything, coincided with the Arbiters she had seen. Although the settings were too immature, they were also very consistent.

Why didn't she have an impression? Because it was something from when she was a child, and Su Mian didn't have many moments of whimsy, basically having a "dead person" look.

Everything she made was forced by the kindergarten, and she threw it away as soon as she turned around. This one was kept, probably secretly taken by her parents.

When she flipped to Si Shi, she stopped.

The picture was a snake coiled into a ball. The scales were drawn very densely, grid by grid, dark brown. Under the pen of the young her, this snake had a triangular head, a blood-red tongue, and eerie eyes.

The part where she wrote was very heavy, the pencil marks sinking into the paper, almost piercing through.

"The—most—scary—guardian—deity!!!"

"Si Snake is—long—long—long—long, hiding in the grass, hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss it's very fierce, very fierce, no one dares to provoke it!"

Su Mian stared at that snake.

She remembered that summer evening, in the vegetable garden at her grandfather's house, under the tomato rack, a red-tailed boa slowly crawled past.

It was actually very small, finger-thick, half a meter long, its head oval, crawling very slowly, very slowly.

But she screamed in fright.

Her father ran over, picked her up, let her ride on his neck, and took her to watch the snake slowly swim into the drainage ditch.

That was the first time Su Mian saw a snake, and it scared her half to death, so much so that in her nightmares, a black snake would often appear to pounce and bite her.

As for whether being bitten was real or a nightmare, Su Mian couldn't remember clearly anymore.

"Mian Mian, get in the car, why are you dazed in the back?"

Su Mian closed the picture book abruptly and walked into the car in a daze.

The car started, and evergreen trees flew past from behind. Those fragmented memories surged like a tide.

She couldn't tell whether it was fate or coincidence. Those things from the so-called other world were near and far from her.

The truth seemed to be reachable by reaching out, but why was it still a little bit short, disappearing into the fog.

"The player's memory is the framework that constitutes the Infinite Flow world."

"All instances, all games, including game rules, are the dark sides of human hearts, or accidentally appearing nightmares."

It turned out that everything the bookstore owner said was true.

You were originally closely related to that world. Humans are part of creating another world, a spiritual world, a spiritual world that is constantly forgotten and constantly rewritten.

Created by humans, it should have benefited humans. Why would it filter and eliminate those who provide nightmares?

They should have been forgotten in the first place.

A voice told Su Mian, but she had already thought too far, unable to extricate herself, falling into some kind of nihilism, falling into a winding vortex.

Is the Creator God also human?

If the Twelve Time Slots Arbitration Group was imagined, why call themselves high-dimensional beings?

If the number of humans drops sharply, can the Infinite Flow world still be maintained?

The Inner World, can she enter it again?

Her points were running out.

The end of the world didn't have the sound of arrival, perhaps it was just lurking, hiding, until people discovered it when there was no way out.

The wind blew, making her eyes sore. Su Mian rolled up the car window, and the scene outside the window became blurred.

Someone else fell straight down, without warning, eventually disappearing from view.

––

In the world of Infinite Flow, there is a place known as the player's forbidden zone, which is outside the fog.

Every instance has a place outside the fog. Some instances are smaller, and you can see it after walking a few steps. Some instances are larger, and players may not be able to walk out of the boundary and never see it.

In the void world outside the fog, without the protection of props, one might be burned all over by unknown objects, eventually turning into ashes.

If resisting with a physical body, that is even more unthinkable.

Outside the fog of a certain instance, large amounts of blood dripped, and the air was filled with a thick smell of blood and burning.

"You brat! Mortal body breaking the fog is something only you can do, come back with me quickly!"

Zi Shi stood in the fog, leaning on his cane and gritting his teeth. He had just fed a lot of human flesh to manifest the human form of this stubborn donkey, but he couldn't stop him, as he rushed into this fog every day.

But what is the consequence of a mortal body entering the fog? Zi Shi looked at the red-haired man's whole body being burned. That could no longer be called a "body."

The skin and flesh were licked away inch by inch by invisible fire, first blistering, then bursting. Blood and charred grease mixed together and dripped down. The bones made explosive sounds in the fog, repeatedly roasted by high temperatures.

There was no fire outside the fog, but it was more like torture than fire roasting, mixed with some kind of electric current, making people's spirits tortured from the inside out, muscles atrophying.

The man didn't scream.

His throat had been burned when he rushed out for the first time, and later when it grew back, he learned to keep it tight.

He just gritted his teeth, his teeth white, but his eyes were filled with incomprehensible stormy waves, like a beast that was repeatedly executed but refused to die completely.

How many times had this been? ===== CHAPTER 187 =====