Chapter 21 Maomao Chapter 21 The End Is a New Beginning

Mao Mao wasted time because of identifying the handwriting on the warning sign.When she then slipped through the little door, the last Mr. Gray was gone. She found a huge pit in front of her, about twenty or thirty meters deep.Surrounded by backhoes and other construction machinery. Several trucks were parked on a slope leading to the bottom of the pit.There were construction workers everywhere, all motionless in some pose. Where did he go?Fluffy didn't find any population that Mister Gray might exploit.She looked at Cassiopeia as if it didn't know either, its carapace didn't show any writing.

Mao Mao crawled down to the bottom of the pit and looked around.Suddenly, she saw a familiar face again.That was Nicola the plasterer.He once built her a small stove in her small stone house and painted a picture on the wall.Now, of course, he was immobile like everyone else, but his expression was strange.He stood there with one hand next to his mouth, as if calling to someone.The other hand pointed to the mouth of a huge pipe, which was next to him, protruding from the bottom of the pit.That gesture was exactly like asking Maomao to look at something. Maomao thought for a moment, she took this as a signal, so she climbed into the pipe without hesitation.As soon as she climbed into the pipe, she slid down involuntarily.The pipeline was steep, but it was winding. She rushed down like a slide, left and right.Because of the speed, she couldn't hear anything and couldn't see anything clearly.She became clearer and deeper, and sometimes rolled and crawled, and her head rang when it was touched.However, she neither lost the turtle nor the time flower.She felt colder as she went down.For a moment, she thought, how can I get up later?Before I had time to think about it, I had already cleared to the end of the pipeline.It turned out that the following is a tunnel.

It wasn't too dark here, and there was a crisp light that seemed to come from inside the walls. Mao Mao stood up and continued to run forward.Because she was barefoot, there was no sound of footsteps.Suddenly, she seemed to hear Mr. Gray talking in front of her.She walked towards the direction where the voice came from. This tunnel stretches out many forks in all directions, it is simply a network of tunnels under the entire new urban area. Then she heard another commotion.So she went there again.She turned the corner cautiously. Suddenly, a large hall appeared in front of her, with a very long conference table in the center of the hall.At the table sat two rows of Mr. Gray—or rather, a small remnant of the innumerable Mr. Gray.Look how miserable and pitiful these last time thieves are!Their coats had been torn, their bald heads had a pimple on the left and a gash on the right, and their faces were distorted with fear.

Only the cigars in their mouths were still burning. Mao Mao saw a huge door on the wall behind the hall, which was ajar.A bitter cold wind reverberated in the hall. Momo knelt down and wrapped her baggy coat over her bare feet, even though she knew it wouldn't help. "We have to," Momo heard a Mr. Gray say at the end of the table, behind him was the door, "we have to save our reserves, we don't know how long they will last, so we have to save." "There are only a few of us left," said another, "and these reserves will last us for several years!"

"The sooner we save," said the first Mr. Friends flatly, "the longer we can last. You know what I mean by saving. If only a few of us were left, these reserves might be enough." They survived this disaster. We must face up to reality!That said, there are as many of us here as there are, gentlemen!We have to streamline dramatically.This is a wise suggestion.May I ask you, gentlemen, to start streamlining now? " The gray gentlemen began to count.Then the chairman took a coin out of his pocket.He announced: "I will now toss a coin. The number side represents the even number. If it is a number, then the gentlemen who counted the even number stay. The head side represents the odd number. If it is a head, then the gentlemen who counted the odd number stay."

He tossed the coin into the air and caught it. "Numbers!" he yelled. "The even-numbered gentlemen stay here, and the odd-numbered gentlemen, please resolve it immediately!" There was a silent groan from the odd number of Mr. Gray, but no one moved. Those even-numbered Mr. Gray took the cigars from the mouths of the odd-numbered Mr. Gray without any explanation, and those Mr. Friends who were sentenced to death immediately disappeared. "And now," continued the Chairman in the silence, "if I may ask, let us do it again in the same way!" The same terrible process was carried out a second time, a third time, and even a fourth time.In the end, there were only six Mr. Gray left.They sat at the two ends of the long table, three at each end, with cold eyebrows.

Mao Mao watched all this tremblingly, and felt that every time the number of Mr. Gray decreased, the degree of the frightening cold weakened a bit.She felt almost tolerable now than before. "Six," said one of the remaining six, "is a pity." "Now, that's enough." said the Mr. Gray opposite him, "There are only a few of us left, and there is no point in streamlining it. If six of us can't get through this disaster, three can't either. " "You shouldn't say that," another Mr. Gray said, "If necessary, we can discuss it again. I'm talking about the future." After he finished speaking, no one said a word for a long time.

Then another Mister Gray said, "Lucky! The door to the vault was open when the disaster happened. If it had been closed at that critical moment, then no power in the world would be able to open it now, and we would really be doomed! " "Unfortunately, what you said is not quite right, my dear friend." The other Mr. Gray replied, "Now, the door of the storage room is open, the air-conditioning is constantly escaping, and the time will slowly thaw. You know, We can no longer prevent them from going back to where they came from." "You think," asked the third Mr. Gray, 'that our air-conditioning isn't cool enough to keep the storage cool now, is it? "

"It's a pity we only have six of them," said the second Mr. Gray, "you can figure out how many degrees we can reach. I think the ruthless downsizing just started too hastily.We didn't get any benefit from it. " "One of the two possibilities," said the first Mr. Gray, "and we've done that." There was another silence among them. "Should we just sit like this for years, doing nothing but spying on each other?" said one Mr. Gray. "I have to say, it's a hopeless idea." Maomao thought to himself: It must be meaningless to just wait here.If there is no more Mr. Gray, then the time flower will unfreeze by itself.However, Mr. Gray is still here.If she doesn't act, they're just going to sit there.

what can we do about it?Could it be that because the door of the time vault is open, they can constantly get supplies from it? Cassiopeia moved again, and Mao Mao hurriedly looked down. Sure enough, a line of words appeared on the tortoise shell: "Go and close the door!" "No!" Mao Mao whispered, "I can't do it." "Take your time to touch it." This is the answer of the tortoise. "Can I turn 11 off with a touch of my time?" "Yes." It was displayed on the tortoise shell. Cassiopeia's prophecy must be right.Fluffy put it on the ground gently, and then hid the time flower under the coat.

At this time, she found that the time flower was quite withered, and there were not as many petals as before. None of the six gray men noticed that Maomao had successfully crawled under the long table, and she climbed all the way to the other end of the long table using hands and feet.Now, she was sitting between the feet of the six time thieves.Her heart was so tense that it was about to jump out. She gently, gently took out the time flower, bit it with her teeth, and crawled between the chairs.The gentlemen in gray still hadn't noticed her. She crawled to the door of the open time vault, and while spending time touching the door, she pushed it with her hands.Sure enough, the door really moved without any sound, and then, with a loud bang, the door of the time vault closed.The sound caused many echoes in the hall, and gradually disappeared into countless underground passages. Mao Mao jumped up suddenly.The gray gentlemen never thought that there were other people besides them in this place, and she was able to come in so quietly, it was almost unnoticed, so they were all stunned I can only stare at the little girl dumbfounded and intently. Without thinking, Mao Mao ran past them and ran towards the exit of the hall.At this time, the gray gentlemen also regained their senses, and then stood up and chased after Mao Mao. "What a scary little girl!" She heard a Mr. Gray say behind her, "She's Momo." "That's impossible!" cried another. "How could she push the door of the Time Vault?" "She has a time flower!" bellowed the third Mr. Gray. "Would it take her time to close the gate?" asked the fourth Mr. Gray. The fifth Mr. Gray beat his head furiously and said, "Then we could have closed the door too! We have enough time to spend!" "Originally, originally!" the sixth Mr. Gray hissed, "but now the door has been closed! Now we push one way: we must get the little girl's time flower, otherwise it will be all over." While they were talking like this, Mao Mao had already disappeared into the ever-forking tunnel.However, of course, the gentlemen are more familiar with the situation here than she is.Fluffy ran left and right, and sometimes almost ran into the gray gentlemen, but she always managed to get rid of them. Cassiopeia also participated in their battle.Although it crawled very slowly, but because it could predict where the gray gentlemen were about to pass, it crawled to the place where they were going to pass by on time, and lay down in the middle of the passage. The ground rolls far away like a ball, and the latter will fall on the former.In this way, the tortoise rescued the little girl out of danger time and time again at the critical moment when she was almost caught.Of course, it is often kicked out by Mr. Gray and hit the wall.However, this does not prevent it from continuing to climb forward, it has long known that it will encounter that situation. During the chase, several Mister Grays, driven out of their minds by longing for the Time Blossom, disappeared one by one because of their lost cigars.In the end only two remained. Mao Mao ran back to the hall where the long table was placed, and the two time thieves circled around the table, trying desperately to catch Mao Mao, but they couldn't.Then, they split up and attacked from both sides. Now, Mao Mao finally had nowhere to escape.She leaned against a corner of the hall, watching the two pursuers timidly. She pressed the time spent tightly to her chest, for fear of being snatched away by them.Now, there are only three petals left of that flower. A time thief was about to reach out to grab the flower in Mao Mao's hand, but was blocked by another time thief. "No," he yelled, "that flower is mine! It's mine!" he said as he reached out and knocked the cigarette out of the other Mr. Gray's mouth.Mr. Gray who lost his cigar turned around on the spot, screamed, became completely transparent, and then disappeared.Now, the last remaining Mr. Gray threw himself on Momo desperately, because there was only a little bit of cigarette butt left in the corner of his mouth. "Give me time!" He commanded out of breath, but when he opened his mouth, the cigarette butt fell off and rolled aside.He fell to the ground quickly, trying to lift it, but couldn't reach it.He turned his gray face to Maomao, propped up half of his body, and raised his hands tremblingly. "Please," he whispered, "please, dear boy, give me the flowers!" Mao Mao stood in the corner, still not moving.She held the flower tightly and shook her head.She didn't even have the energy to say a word. At this last moment the burglar finally hangs his head and says resignedly, "Okay, ok—now—all—over—" and then vanishes into nothingness. Mao Mao stared at the place where he lay in panic.At this time, Cassiopeia just crawled to that place, and saw written on its carapace: "Go and open the door!" Mao Mao hurried to the door of the storage room, touched the door with a flower, and the door of the time library opened again. At this time, the flower in her hand had only the last petal left. With the last Mr. Gray gone, it's not so cold here either. Maomao opened his eyes wide in surprise, and looked into the huge time vault.She saw countless time flowers neatly placed on endless shelves like goblets, each flower was brighter than the other, and none of them was the same as the other—this meant tens of thousands, millions Hours of life!She felt like she was in a greenhouse, and it was getting warmer and warmer here. When the last petal of the time flower fell from Maomao's hand, there was a sudden gust of wind in the time library.The flowers of time turned into colorful clouds and swirled around her, making her feel like a warm and strong spring breeze, a cheerful whirlwind of all liberated time. Mao Mao felt as if in a dream, she looked around and saw Cassiopeia right in front of her.A line of words flashed on its carapace: "Fly home! Little Mao Mao, fly home!" This was the last time Mao Mao saw Cassiopeia.This time the whirlwind of time spent became more violent.The whirlwind was so powerful that it was simply indescribable.The whirlwind even lifted Maomao into the air, as if she had also become a time flower.The whirlwind of flowers carried her out of the dark tunnel, up to the ground, and over the city.Maomao sat on the colorful cloud of time spent, flying over rooftops and church bell towers.The colorful clouds seem to be dancing indulgently according to the melody of the gorgeous movement, flying up and down, fluttering and spinning. Then, the colorful clouds of time flowers slowly descended, and the flowers fell like snowflakes on the rigid world, quietly melting and disappearing.They are back where they came from: in people's hearts. At this moment, time began to move again.Everything that had stopped for a while and was still moved again: the car drove away again, the whistle of the traffic police blew again, the pigeon flew into the sky again, and the puppy urinated on the electric pole again. The whole world just stopped for an hour without people noticing it.Because in fact, between the pause and the start, one does not lose a single bit of time.To them, this hour is like the blink of an eye. The only difference is that suddenly everyone has endless time.Everyone was very happy, but no one knew that the time they had saved was returned to them in a strange way.moving. After Mao Mao regained consciousness, she found herself standing in a small street.It was the same street where she had discovered old Beppo earlier. Really, he's still standing there!At this moment, his back is facing Mao Mao, leaning on his own broom, looking forward thoughtfully.Suddenly, he felt that he didn't need to rush as much as before.He himself could not explain why he felt so relieved now, so full of hope. "Maybe," he thought, "maybe now I've saved enough of a hundred thousand hours to redeem Maomao." As soon as he thought of this, he felt someone pulling his clothes from behind.He turned around and saw that Mao Mao was standing in front of him. Perhaps there is no language in the world that can describe the happiness and joy of their reunion at this moment.They were crying, laughing, talking nonsense, of course, like people talking incoherently when they're very happy and drunk.They hugged again and again, and the pedestrians who passed by stopped, just like them, crying and laughing with joy, because they all had enough time now. Old Beppo finally put away his broom because he took it for granted that he should not think about work today.Hand in hand, they walked across town toward the old amphitheatre.Each of them had a lot to tell the other. In the big cities, people saw what they hadn't seen for a long time: children were playing in the middle of the street again, and the car drivers who had no time to wait smiled and watched the children play, and some drivers even got out of the car to play with the children.Everywhere people were chatting cordially, asking detailed questions about each other's health.People who go to work also have leisure to stand in front of the window to enjoy the flowers and feed the birds.Doctors now have time to inquire about each patient's condition in detail, and workers can work with peace of mind and excellence, because now it is not important to complete as much work as possible in the shortest possible time.Everyone can use time according to actual needs, and from now on, people have more than enough time again. Many, however, will never know who is to blame for this, or what actually happened during what was but a split second to them.Most people won't even believe that's true.The only people who believe and know all this are Mao Mao's friends.When Fluffy and Old Beppo returned to the Old Amphitheatre, her friends were already there waiting for them.Among them are tour guides Gigi and Paul.Massimo, Franco, the little girl Maria holding the little sister Dede, Claudio and other children, the boss Nino and his fat wife Liliana and their children, as well as the bricklayer Ni Technology And the people who lived nearby who used to come here often, Maomao once listened carefully to their thoughts.Then they celebrated with great joy, and sang and danced so merrily that only they knew what a show it was, and the festivities went on a long time till the sky was full of stars. When they cheered and hugged, shook hands and laughed, shouted and shouted and stopped, they sat down on the stone steps overgrown with weeds and formed a circle.All of a sudden it became silent. Mao Mao stood up and walked to the open space between them.She thought of the voices of the stars and the flowers of time. Then she sang with a crisp voice. At this moment, Master Fengla also sat up in Wuxilou, and when he came back, he was awakened from his first and only sleep.Beside the delicate table, he sat on a chair and looked at Maomao and her friends through the all-seeing mirror.He was still pale and weak, as if recovering from a serious illness, but his eyes were shining brightly. At this time, he felt something touching his feet.He took off his glasses, bent down and looked, and it turned out that his turtle had returned. "Casiopeia," he called affectionately, burning its neck with his fingers, "you two did a great job. You must tell me the whole story, because I couldn't see you then." "In the future." The answer flashed on its carapace.Then it sneezed. "Are you sick?" "It's okay!" Cassiopeia replied. "The air-conditioning from Mr. Gray must have froze you," Master Hula said. "It is conceivable that you are also extremely tired, and you must want to take a complete rest now. Okay, then go back and have a good sleep !" "Thank you!" Two words appeared on the tortoise shell. Then, Cassiopeia crawled away crookedly, and found a quiet and dark corner for itself, retracting its head and four legs into the carapace.Then, slowly, words appeared on the turtle's carapace, not for anyone else but for anyone who had read the story. A brief note from the Mao Mao author There may be some of my readers who have a lot of questions on their minds right now.But I'm afraid I can't help them either.That said, I must confess that I wrote this whole story from memory, as I heard it. I don't know Little Maomao personally, nor do I know any of her friends.Of course, I don't know what happened to them afterwards, and I also don't know anything about their situation today.Regarding the situation in that big city, I am only writing based on guesswork. However, the only thing I want to make here is the following: At that time, I was sitting in a train on a long journey (I still travel today).One night I sat in a single room with a conspicuous traveler.The most striking thing about him is that I'm totally unsure of his age.At first I thought that the person sitting opposite me was an old man, but soon I had to be puzzled, for he seemed suddenly very young to me.After a while, however, I felt that this impression was wrong. Anyway, he was the one who told me the story that long night. When his story ended, we both fell silent for a moment. Then the mysterious traveler added a sentence, which I cannot fail to convey to the reader, when he said: "I told you the story," he said, "as if it had already happened, allow me to Suffice it to say, it may only happen in the future. Still, it doesn't make much difference to me." Probably he got out of the car not long after, because after a while I found that I was alone in the cell.Unfortunately, I have never met the storyteller since then. Yes, if I happen to meet him again, I'm sure to ask him lots and lots of questions.