Chapter 361 Stairs on the Left

Chapter 361 Stairs on the Left

Chapter 361 Stairs on the Left

"call--"

The sound of rushing wind accompanied by some water vapor impatiently squeezed out from the crack of the door and kept hitting Lin Yi's face. There was a faint, indescribable fishy smell in the wind, which made people subconsciously think of a sea full of deep-sea fish that had just died.

The corridor behind the door was filled with the howling of the wind, as if countless ghosts were crying. Lao Mo exerted a lot of strength to push the iron door open just enough for one person, and then he could not push it open any further.

"You first!" Lao Mo growled. The muscles in his arms bulged like old tree trunks twisted together. He looked full of explosive power, but even so, he couldn't seem to open the iron door.

Lin Yi didn't hesitate and went in decisively.

When he passed through the door, he could clearly feel that the iron door was vibrating at some horrible frequency, as if he was being stabbed by a high-frequency knife. Even though he was several centimeters away, he felt as if his skin was about to be cut.

It is hard to imagine what kind of monstrous body Lao Mo had, as he was able to push open the iron door with his bare hands.

When Lin Yi passed through, Lao Mo roared, forced the door open a little more, and then passed through like a nimble swordfish.

Despite this, as soon as he released his hand that was against the iron door, the door closed with a terrifying potential energy, as if a pair of invisible hands appeared behind the door, pushing the door leaves hard, trying to crush him.

Seeing that he was about to be beheaded by the iron gate, Lao Mo snorted coldly, and everything around him slowed down instantly. The scale of space began to undergo some strange and distorted changes, and he passed through the gap in the iron gate like a rubber man.

Layer Transition.

When he landed again, he already appeared beside Lin Yi.

The strange thing is that what happened at this level would appear to be a different scene if observed with the naked eye, but Lin Yi actually saw it all.

Seeing this scene, Lin Yi couldn't help but point at the iron gate and opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

Lao Mo patted Lin Yi on the shoulder and said, "Why, a little trick has shocked you for ten thousand years?"

"That's not the case..." Lin Yi smacked his lips, "I just thought of one thing..."

"whats the matter?"

"The 'return the way you came' thing..."

"Hmm? What's the problem?"

Lin Yi said dimly, “Let’s not talk about how to get to the clock tower later. As for ‘returning the original route’, I mean, you mean… coming down from the clock tower again, and then someone uses violence to open this door like you did and return to that corridor…”

"Even if I can forcefully open the door and leave the corridor, once I open the door I will still have to break through the wall of nocturnal creatures, and then crawl back to the gallery..."

“Even if I manage to get back to the gallery, I have to pretend that I can’t hear the sound of ‘Amon’s Music Box’ and leave the gallery…”

"Even if I do leave the gallery..."

Lin Yi's voice became weaker and weaker until it disappeared.

Lao Mo was silent for a while: "What you said... seems to be a bit difficult..."

"Lao Mo... ahem!" Lin Yi said awkwardly, "I feel like this is just as difficult as a pirate rowing a small wooden boat and carrying a revolver to rob an aircraft carrier..."

Lao Mo pursed his lips and said, "There is a difference... Pirates need to know how to drive an aircraft carrier to rob it, but you don't need to know how to do it, you just need to follow the instructions..."

"That's not my point, Lao Mo..."

"Then what do you want to say?"

"What I mean is..." Lin Yi's eyes slowly fell on Lao Mo's somewhat withered face, and his tone changed from complaining to a more serious tone, "Can you not be so fearless and let's go back together alive?"

"I'm just a backup hidden energy source. Things like killing people to death are destined to have nothing to do with me..." There was a look of dejection on his face, and he spread his hands helplessly.

Lao Mo was stunned for a moment. He thought Lin Yi was worried about the retreat, but he didn't expect that he was actually concerned about him.

He smiled bitterly: "I'll try my best."

Lin Yi sighed quietly in his heart. Lao Mo's reply had already given him the answer.

He turned his head and looked at the entrance to the corridor.

After passing through the iron gate, the wind in the corridor was not as strong, but the cold and damp air became stronger.

The corridors of a bell tower are often spiral upward, narrow and long, but the passage in front of Lin Yi actually spirals downward.

The walls of the corridor are made of thick stones covered with traces of erosion over the years. Moss grows in the corners. On stormy nights like today, some rain flows down the outer wall of the bell tower and seeps into the cracks in the corridor, making the wall look wet, as if it is flowing with blood.

The corridor was dimly lit, with only a few candlesticks providing a faint glow.

On stormy nights, the sea breeze mixed with pollution seemed to squeeze in through the cracks in the wall, causing the candlelight to flicker.

When lightning flashed across the night sky, the entire corridor would rumble and the walls would tremble slightly, as if they would fall apart at any time.

But what puzzled Lin Yi was the stairs in front of him.

"Why is this staircase going down?"

He had seen the outline of a clock tower from afar outside the Art Building. That thing should be at the highest point of the Art Building, so why didn't this staircase go up?
"Is there another way?"

Lao Mo walked to the entrance of the corridor and said, "All the rules on campus tell you to go up and down the stairs on the right hand side, and you will soon know why."

Lin Yi thought of many things at once, but did not answer quickly. In fact, he was not completely ignorant of the matter of "going up the stairs on the left hand side", because as early as on May 5, when he was sleeping, he had followed Maozi up the stairs of the teaching building through his dream, and at that time, Maozi went up the stairs on the left hand side!
The route that was supposed to be a "return along the original route" ended up in a completely different stairwell because Maozi went up the stairs on the left, and eventually passed through those somewhat strange areas and reached the dormitory building.

"Will each building in turn break into other layer paths?"

Lao Mo extended his hand towards Lin Yi.

"There will be a section of the road that is of the nature of "layer jump" next. You may feel very uncomfortable. Hold my hand. No matter what happens, I will pull you to the side of the bell tower."

Lin Yi then held Lao Mo's hand.

Lao Mo's palm was like that of a somewhat stiff humanoid, cold and without any warmth. "Following up."

Lao Mo said something softly, then stepped onto the stairs at the entrance of the corridor and walked towards the left.

One step, two steps...

The stairs of the bell tower are made of the same material as the yellow-brown stones on the walls, like some kind of limestone. The surface is generally smooth, but there are still some bumps on it. Stepping on it gives a solid feedback feeling.

When Lin Yi first followed Lao Mo and took two steps, he felt relatively normal. Apart from some indescribable weird feelings, he had almost no other feelings.

However, when he took the third step, Lin Yi suddenly felt that the ground beneath his feet became uneven, and even his center of gravity began to shift...

He wanted to observe the changes around him, but he couldn't.

It is very difficult to maintain this focus and move forward.

If you get distracted, you might fall.

This sense of fluctuation is indeed similar to "layer transition", and Lin Yi has received guidance from Lao Mo. Although he can't say that he has adapted to it very well, he is somewhat familiar with it.

Of course, to achieve this, you need to concentrate. Looking around will definitely not work.

But soon, he stopped observing the environment, and the environment came to him.

His perspective began to twist and stretch uncontrollably in a strange way. There was no logic to this shift, just like a novice pastry chef kneading dough. There was no sense of strength in his hands, and each kneading could be described as "random strength".

This random and illogical sense of spatial fluctuation began to impact his vision and spatial perception, causing him to feel nauseous, similar to motion sickness.

They shuttled back and forth in these layers for a while, and when the feeling of a pastry chef kneading dough almost disappeared, Lin Yi suddenly realized that they had gone from going downstairs to going upstairs...

"this……?!"

Lin Yi now had time to observe his surroundings. He looked at the surrounding environment and was shocked.

The stairs were still the same stairs, and the candles on the wall were still there, but the steps that were supposed to spiral downward had turned into a spiral upward!

Lao Mo explained: "Remember the concept of 'precision instrument' I mentioned earlier? Now imagine two meshing screws, or the gears of a grinder. When the first screw rotates, the other meshing screw will be driven and begin to produce a mirrored motion with it."

"But in this case, the other way around, we should also be mirroring downwards, right?" Lin Yi majored in architectural design, so this kind of question was not difficult for him at all.

Lao Mo glanced at him and said, "What if... one of the screws is fixed?"

"Fixed? Wait... you mean...?! Lin Yi calculated in his mind, "Once a single point is fixed, then the other side moving in the opposite direction will be lifted or lowered in the opposite direction by the other screw at twice the speed!"

"But Lao Mo...how do you make sure the other screw rod remains fixed?"

Lao Mo pointed to his head and said, "Use your absolute will to anchor a layer as a reference... and then climb up."

Absolute Will

Lin Yi secretly took a breath, he almost forgot that Lao Mo was a ruthless guy who relied on his willpower to lock himself in the last drop of blood and survived, and then held on until the convenience store owner came back to kill him!

It is indeed an absolute will.

"So that's how it is... No wonder the students are not allowed to go up and down the stairs on the left side." Lin Yi suddenly realized.

Lao Mo nodded and said, "They don't have such willpower. If they walk around randomly, they will only be sucked into the rifts of unknown layers, and eventually get lost in the endless stairwells, and die with fear and mental collapse..."

“Once they die, they will ‘drift’ to a dead corner like red-numbered lampposts and become one of the dead sculptures…”

"'Dead body sculptures'?" Lin Yi was startled, and instantly thought of the stalactite cave that Maozi saw at the end of the stairs. The cave was full of hideous sculptures. Could those be dead body sculptures?

"What does dead body sculpture mean?"

"They are completely dead sculptures." Lao Mo said, "There are many pseudo-humans hidden in the green belt of the campus. During the day, the extraordinary powers in their bodies will be dissipated, and they will become a substance that looks like a sculpture but is not actually a sculpture... Those are essentially pseudo-humans, but they are named 'sculptures' to distinguish whether they can move."

Lin Yi suddenly realized that after all, when those fake people were not moving, they were basically no different from sculptures.

The reason why the rules mention sculpture is essentially to prevent the participants from knowing the concept of "pseudo-human".

Because the pseudo-human sculpture is more like a nocturnal species in terms of life form.

The dead body sculptures looked like something that could not be deader. There was absolutely no possibility of transformation into nocturnal creatures or pseudo-humans.

Lin Yi pondered and said, "So... the dead body sculpture is the real death?"

"You can make that general assumption for now, but there are always exceptions... Don't think they are not threatening just because they are dead sculptures. Don't take them lightly at any time," Lao Mo warned.

Lin Yi nodded, keeping Lao Mo's teachings in mind.

Perhaps, Mu Daxian also quickly acquired a lot of "theoretical knowledge" in this way?

Lin Yi looked up at the stairs above. The stairs spiraled upwards, like the Fibonacci sequence with no end. Looking at it for a few more seconds would make people feel slightly dazed.

He withdrew his gaze in time and continued walking upwards.

The higher he walked, the more he felt that the stone steps under his feet were somewhat unstable. From time to time, there were some "rolling" sounds, just like the stone bridges over the rivers in old villages. When many people walked on them, they always made some strange noises.

And above the dark Fibonacci sequence steps above head, some "dong dong dong" sounds began to fall, like the sound of raindrops hitting some steady and heavy metal.

Lao Mo suddenly reminded in a deep voice: "Be careful with your feet, don't slip. It will become very difficult after entering the fog. Don't be attracted by the Smile Angel."

"Fog area...Laughing Angel? Isn't there a territory of the Night Watchmen here?" Lin Yi asked puzzledly.

"The Night Watchman used all his strength to fight against the coming of the "Angel", but his back was still empty, and the angel sculpture would attack him at this time." Lao Mo said, "Mosquitoes can't kill humans, but in the face of such a top-level game, any slight impact may cause a butterfly effect, thus causing a complete collapse of the battle situation."

(End of this chapter)