Chapter 67: The twisted and stretched road
Chapter 67: The twisted and stretched road (1100 words more!)
Lin Yi's hair stood on end. The feeling the dormitory building gave him was unprecedented. There was no emotional fluctuation, no kindness, nor malice, only a pure, indifferent, and looked down upon feeling.
No, not even a look down.
He was suddenly stunned...
“No…wait!”
"Why did my subconscious mind anthropomorphize the dormitory building?"
"Why do I think the dorm is looking down on me?"
"Is it just because of my first impression that it looked like a giant standing there? That's why..."
The cool evening breeze blew across his back, making him, who was already sweating, feel a frost invading him instantly.
He shuddered, and instantly came back to his senses.
He focused his vision in front of him with a series of blinks, then glanced at the time.
20: 35.
"20:35..." He said seriously, "So I was just distracted just now?"
Wei Liang beside him asked, "What's the matter?"
Lin Yi shook his head: "I'm fine."
"Oh." Wei Liang responded, and the two continued walking towards the dormitory.
As they walked, they saw more and more classmates on the road. Lin Yi guessed that they should have met up with people from other classes.
Theoretically speaking, Tian Bufan, Wei Shan and Kuai Hongji should also be among these people, but Lin Yi had no intention of looking for them.
The real reunion should be done after reaching the dormitory, rather than reorganizing the team halfway.
The image of the teaching building in the hallucination floated in Lin Yi's mind. What was incredible to him was that when he thought about the appearance of the dormitory building, he did not feel too much fear and terror. Instead, he only felt an extreme shock and awe.
As they walked, the fog on the road gradually became thicker, and the dark white fog rose to their calves like a rising tide.
If he could not still feel the uneven touch of the pebbles under his feet, he would really wonder if he was walking on some kind of black stage covered with dry ice.
The cold evening wind made the fog float continuously, and in the darkness outside the street lights, the rustling sound of wind blowing through the forest leaves could be heard.
But a chill came over him, causing Lin Yi's steps to suddenly stop.
His keen hearing captured a "rustling" sound that was different from the rustling sound of leaves swaying in the forest. This strange yet familiar sound awakened his damn memories and instantly reminded him of the image of a stone rubbing against a cobblestone ground.
But that is not the nature of the sound.
Lin Yi clearly remembered that when the lights in the classroom went out, those abnormal students made such noises while walking!
The strange guys in the cafeteria would also make such noises as they moved along.
So in other words…
"Outside the streetlights, there are an unknown number of... strange students?!"
"Wait... shouldn't they be in the classroom at this time?"
"Or... are those in the classroom just the tip of the iceberg?"
He bathed in the light of the street lamp, looking at the darkness somewhere.
Outside the area formed by the lights, thick fog can be seen overlapping like mountains, floating in the evening breeze, like smoke waves on the river and snow wind on the glacier, covering up mysterious and strange figures.
An intense and unfathomable sense of crisis came over him along with the water-like darkness, as if the mouth of an abyss was about to swallow Lin Yi.
But under the orange-yellow light, these terrifying atmospheres could not invade at all.
Lin Yi withdrew his gaze and quickly walked forward.
“Swish…”
“Swish…”
In the surging mist, there seemed to be strange figures, following Lin Yi's back and moving slowly...
……
X023年5月7日，20:40。
The white fog became thicker and thicker, and Lin Yi's field of vision was compressed to less than a hundred meters. Outside the light, there was nothing but darkness, and the "rustling" sound became clearer and clearer.
"The fog...is starting to get thicker." Wei Liang's voice trembled a little.
"Liangzi, does this fall into the category of 'abnormal weather'?" Lin Yi asked.
Wei Liang replied: "It's hard to define this, but it's not abnormal enough now... The real 'abnormal' is the kind of situation where you can clearly see that something is wrong."
"For example, a lamp post without a light suddenly appears, or lamp posts that should have been on both sides of the road..."
"Is there only one side left?" This was said by Lin Yi.
Wei Liang was slightly startled.
Then, as if he had a premonition of something, a look of panic suddenly appeared on his face.
He looked ahead.
I saw orange-yellow lights covering the cobblestone road, but the source of the light was... a single lamppost.
"This...this, this, this..." Wei Liang rushed to the nearest lamppost and stretched out his hands to grab it.
Lin Yi's pupils shrank slightly, and his heart skipped a beat: "When... did it become like this?!"
"I don't know." Wei Liang said in a low voice, "It would be better if I knew... No, no, no, no, no, it might be worse if I knew."
There was a look of fear in his eyes, as if he had thought of something, but he tried hard to restrain himself from thinking too much.
"Liangzi, don't be nervous." Lin Yi held his shoulder, "Today's situation is different from yesterday!"
"Different?" Wei Liang asked nervously.
His train of thought had already experienced some twists and turns. I didn't know what he was thinking, but I could only hear him mumbling, "Yes... you're right, it's different! We're almost at the dormitory building, it should be right in front!"
As he spoke, he showed a tendency to sprint forward quickly, but Lin Yi caught him and suppressed his behavior.
Lin Yi said in a deep voice: "No, Liangzi...it's not like that! Don't be impatient!"
Lin Yi discovered that Wei Liang, who was originally laughing, began to panic when the fog became thicker... It seemed that he had been lost in the fog and came back, and it seemed that he had experienced some horrible and indescribable things in the fog.
"I should know how to go, just follow me!" Lin Yi said in a low voice.
"You...know?" Wei Liang showed a look of surprise and confusion, "Isn't this your first time here?"
"Don't think too much. I have my own way." Lin Yi interrupted Wei Liang's thoughts, "This time it's my turn to lead you. Just put your hands on my shoulders and follow me."
"Well, okay, then it's up to you..." Wei Liang put his hand on Lin Yi's shoulder with a trembling voice.
Lin Yi frowned slightly, subconsciously turned half his head, and lowered his gaze to the hand that Wei Liang had placed on his shoulder...
"Ryoko's hands...seem a little cold."
"and……"
I don’t know if it’s because of the lighting, but there seems to be some small problem with the skin color of Wei Liang’s hands.
His hands became whiter, and his skin took on an unnatural bluish-gray color, and his hands seemed to be filled with an extremely thin, faint white mist.
Lin Yi secretly thought that something was wrong and his heart seemed to have skipped a beat.
"Liangzi." He suddenly said.
"Hmm?" Wei Liang's voice came from behind.
"Do you like more stockings or more bare legs?"
"Of course it's Baisi. Why do you ask this suddenly?"
Lin Yi secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
"Nothing..." "It seems that Ryoko is fine..."
"But why are his hands so cold?"
"And his skin color...?"
"Lao Lin..." Wei Liang said with a trembling voice, "I... feel a little cold. I thought of something bad. We have to hurry to the dormitory building."
Lin Yi looked at Wei Liang's hand, kept a cautious eye on it, and then looked away.
"it is good."
He took a deep breath and looked at the number on the lamppost next to him.
Dormitory building-094.
He looked at the surrounding lampposts again.
The fog is already very thick, but it is still far from the situation of yesterday where visibility was less than ten meters. Looking around, you can still see many lamp posts.
But now these street lights are no longer scattered on both sides of the cobblestone road, but are scattered on the road ahead in an irregular manner like scattered stars.
Moreover, as the fog fluctuates, these lamp posts are like buoys on the sea, giving people the illusion that they are drifting and moving.
But soon, Lin Yi discovered that this was not an illusion, those lamp posts... were really moving!
"What the hell! These things... can move?"
But he reacted immediately.
"No, it's not the lamppost that's moving, it's... the ground is stretching!"
A rule emerged in Lin Yi's mind like a conditioned reflex:
[If you find that the ground is twisting, stretching, or changing in any way that doesn't make sense, hold your student ID and map tightly in your hands and repeat your name and student number in your mind. Remember that you are a student [this sentence is bold and underlined].]
"So the distance between lampposts...is getting longer!"
"The road leading to the dormitory is undergoing an irrational change!"
"Ryoko should be affected by this change! He may be sinking like me, walking on a non-existent path, or... deviating from some predetermined route!"
"Student ID!" His eyes lit up and he perked up.
"Liangzi, take out your student ID and hold it in your hand! Remind yourself that you are a student!" He said in an imperative tone, while also taking out his own student ID and holding it tightly.
He was not sure whether Wei Liang could respond to his words, but he could only try calling him first.
Unexpectedly, Wei Liang responded to his call.
"……,good."
Wei Liang also took out his student ID and held it tightly in his hand.
Just as Lin Yi held the student ID in his hand, he clearly sensed a strong sense of crisis. The fog outside the light kept rolling, and sneaky figures kept appearing with the sound of "rustling" friction.
Some indescribable force seeped out from the fog, constantly oppressing the field formed by the lights.
Lin Yi noticed that the street lights around him were becoming blurred at an extremely slow speed. This was a phenomenon caused by the ground constantly stretching and the fog constantly eroding the boundaries of the lights.
Once the distance between street lamps stretches to a certain extent, a dim area will appear in the area where the lights are laid. Once the fog blocks this area, they will usher in abnormal weather exactly like yesterday.
He glanced at his watch.
20: 43.
"Xu Shunkang said they will leave the classroom at 20:30 and go to the dormitory building."
"That means if I stand still, they'll catch up with me, and it'll be like 'walking with the athletes'."
You can travel with sports students...
The sign in front of the gymnasium clearly states that it is forbidden to walk with athletes.
Xu Shunkang also made it clear that the effective time left for the experience students to leave the classroom is only 15 minutes.
In other words...
Once the athletes set out on the road to the dormitory building, the whole road will be full of unknown dangers!
Or……
The twists and turns of the road are caused by the sports students taking to the road? !
It is now 20:43. It is possible that the athletes have already embarked on this road and they have been affected!
At this time, if you were a little reckless, you would run desperately towards the street light ahead, or stay under the street light and wait for rescue.
But Wei Liang's body had obviously undergone some incomprehensible strange changes. For an ordinary person, the loss of body temperature alone was enough to pose a fatal threat.
So he had to find a way to take Wei Liang away from here.
With this thought in mind, Lin Yi did not act rashly, but took out the teaching building rules from his trouser pocket, and then directly opened the campus map attached at the end of the rules.
This is a normal campus map, but the street lamp numbers on the map are messed up, and the ground is undergoing some supernatural changes, so theoretically this map is not of any reference value at all.
But he clearly remembered one thing: the student code clearly stated: [The location coordinates of each building on the map are absolutely accurate.]
And absolute accuracy means that patterns exist - this is exactly what his head teacher reminded him.
Therefore, even if there are huge problems with the numbering of street lights, there must be some established rules amidst the chaos.
This was the guess he made when he first observed the map. In order to verify this guess, he paid close attention to the numbers of the street lights along the way from the teaching building to the cafeteria and from the cafeteria to the gymnasium.
And he did discover that, for every building on campus, the lamppost closest to it was the one with the highest number!
The one for the teaching building is "Teaching Building-108", the one for the gymnasium is "Gymnasium-099", and the one for the cafeteria is "Cafeteria-098"...
He is now confirming the street light numbers in front of other buildings on the map.
The result was just as he expected. The street light in front of the library was numbered "Library-102", and the one in front of the dormitory building was...
Dormitory building-096!
"'Dormitory Building-096'?!"
The street lamp in front of Lin Yi is "Street Lamp Pole-094". He looked around, his sharp eyes sweeping over the street lamp poles in front of him one by one, searching for the location of "Dormitory Building-095".
Although there are many lamp posts in front of him and there is no trace of the dormitory building, there are so many illogical things. Once the campus begins to appear, the best thing to do is not to subconsciously discover and think about problems like he did when he first entered the campus, but to tell himself first - this is how it should be, and then follow this logic to grasp the current situation, and wait until it is safe enough to review the problem!
This is the lesson he learned from one night's experience, and it is also the change he has made!
Finally, he found the one marked "Dormitory Building-095" among the many lamp posts!
"Liangzi, I'm ready to leave!" he reminded Wei Liang.
"Okay..." A slightly weak voice came from Wei Liang behind him, "I will definitely follow closely..."
Lin Yi patted Wei Liang's hand on his shoulder with some concern, comforted him, then gritted his teeth and led him towards the "Dormitory Building-095" lamppost.
An incredible scene began to appear as he left the "Dormitory Building-094" lamppost.
As he took further steps, the entire field of vision in front of his eyes began to undergo a terrifying and earth-shaking change!
The "Dormitory Building-095" lamppost was getting closer and closer to him, but the other lampposts began to move away from him at a speed that could be observed by the naked eye.
It was as if there was a switch under his feet, and when he moved, the world moved with him.
This strange sense of space constantly impacted his perception from a visual level, causing his entire world to begin to distort, as if someone was stirring the black and white Alpine syrup with a stick, causing crisscrossing, collapse, chaos... countless negative emotions began to impact Lin Yi's heart.
"Liangzi, watch my back! Don't care about anything else!!!" Lin Yi's eyes were fixed on "Dormitory Building-095", and a blue vein popped out on his forehead.
This voice reminded Wei Liang and also reminded him to stay focused!
He walked step by step towards "Dormitory Building-095", and the flowing world seemed to distort his figure.
He felt the darkness encroaching on him, he seemed to hear a rustling sound hovering around his body, he seemed to hear a distant song...
He suddenly grabbed the "Dormitory Building-095" lamppost.
The bright yellow light shattered everything, and the warm atmosphere enveloped them again.
Lin Yi gasped violently. In the blink of an eye, the world that had been falling apart was put together again intact in front of him. The lamp posts that had moved away from him seemed to have returned, but their positions... were all wrong.
Lin Yi was panting and slowing down his pace. He could feel that Wei Liang's condition was getting worse and worse. He was a little anxious, but he told himself not to be anxious.
His eyes kept moving among these "returning" lamp posts, and finally, he found the one that had not appeared in the last observation.
"Dormitory Building-096".
That lamppost symbolizes the last arrival at the dormitory building.
"Liangzi, follow me!!"
Lin Yi took a deep breath, with a look of determination in his eyes. He gathered all his strength and led Wei Liang towards the last stop!
I will give you another 555 words for Street Light No. 1000! Currently, there are only 100 words left for Miaoer!
(End of this chapter)