Chapter 390: Just out of the dragon's den and into the tiger's den
Chapter 390: Just out of the dragon's den and into the tiger's den
The little girl suddenly began to hum, but her song always stayed on the same line:
[Brother, you are so mean~ You made fun of my sister for having a dull saw~]
[That tree is really nice~ I will hang my brother separately~]
……
[Brother, you are so mean~ You made fun of my sister for having a dull saw~]
[That tree is really nice~ I will hang my brother separately~]
……
As the little girl hummed, she seemed to get the hang of it and sawed with more and more joy.
The infinite pain turned Lin Yi's running into a jog, and then into staggering a few steps. Such pain seemed like eternal torture, making him restless but helpless. At a certain moment, he even had the idea of cutting off his own arm.
He felt his vision becoming blurry and his spirit began to wither. In order to block out the pain, his brain began to paralyze his consciousness.
He felt that his death was imminent. Neither the night watchman "02" nor Old Mo had anticipated this situation. The old kerosene lamp that had always been invincible was like a firefly facing the bright moonlight in front of "Amon's Music Box".
And his "golden body" that he was so proud of was naturally destroyed by the little girl's saw.
He really couldn't imagine why this little girl, who seemed as light as if she didn't exist, could use such a saw!
“Wait… wait wait wait!”
A flash of inspiration came to his mind.
"'The little girl who doesn't exist'!"
He seemed to have caught a glimmer of inspiration to save himself!
This little girl is the will of the "Master of Magic" who has penetrated the layer, so the saw is definitely not an object in this world!
Since it is not a real object, how can you saw off his arm?
Could it be that the infiltrating pollution is leading to the materialization of supernatural power?
He did remember that when they were in the dome, Xu Shunkang worked together with another second-level sports student and used their extraordinary powers to condense a baseball and knocked Song Renpiao down.
If it is similar to petrification, then this saw... is also something similar to a baseball to some extent?!
And if that's the case...
"boom--"
Lin Yi suddenly understood, as if the clouds had cleared and the sun had appeared. He knew!
"It's the 'Secret Mark'!"
That saw was formed when the secret pattern condensed extraordinary power!
And the secret pattern used to condense the saw was exactly that - the secret pattern that was carved on his arm using the scar when the invisible force touched his arm!
"There is no little girl!"
"From the very beginning, there was only that kind of invisible and unobservable mysterious power - the kind of power that penetrated across the layers of time and space after the 'Mage' was 'exiled from time'!"
"My 'cognition' cannot determine the existence of such power, so I formed the 'cognition' of the 'little girl' based on the sound of the nursery rhyme!"
"With the affirmation of Lao Mo and the Night Watch, my 'cognition' was triple anchored, and the image of the 'little girl' was deeply rooted in my heart!"
But in reality, the power that permeates is like dust in the air, invisible, elusive, incomprehensible, and unobservable...
"Nothingness" is the essence of form, and "little girl" is his self-overwritten cognition!
After his cognition was anchored by himself, he "understood" the behavior of the invisible force on his own!
That force imprinted the secret pattern on his hand. He perceived the process of branding as a little girl licking his wound. As for the cutting process, it actually existed from the very beginning, but at that time he thought it was the secret pattern infiltrating into his flesh and blood!
Actually, it is not. From the very beginning, he did not "recognize" the existence of the hacksaw. The invisible force was anchored according to his "cognition"!
Furthermore, he was led to believe that "his arm would be sawed off," and with this anchor point, his arm would actually be sawed off!
He figured out the logic behind this, and his whole spirit suddenly became different.
"So the root of all this is that secret pattern!"
He looked at his arm and saw a strange secret pattern that seemed to be used to perform some evil forbidden ritual, and handed the old kerosene lamp to this hand.
Then he raised his other hand, and in his palm, the secret pattern of the Night Watchman "02" emerged.
His secret pattern of nothingness and the sky blue aura intertwined and, under the control of his own will, formed a butcher knife.
He took a few deep breaths, as if trying to overcome some contradictory and complex emotions. After some psychological counseling, he gritted his teeth and chopped his arm hard!
With a "ding" sound, the butcher knife directly cut through the flesh and blood and fell on the golden bones, making a sound of clashing swords.
It didn't hurt, because no matter how painful it was, it couldn't be as painful as the pain of having his flesh and blood annihilated. What Lin Yi couldn't get over was the hurdle of cutting himself.
Then, he turned the blade and used the bone-scraping technique to cut off all the flesh on his arm that was branded with the secret pattern!
He looked at his arm bones, feeling a bit like Arnold Muscle Singh in "Endgame 2" peeling off his skin and flesh in front of the doctor to reveal his titanium skeleton, but looking at his own bones made him feel a little nauseous...
However, the pain slowly disappeared.
The little girl silently retreated into the darkness, and the black nursery rhyme slowly faded away, leaving only the beating sounds of the music box notes, still dancing in the corridor.
"It really works!"
He was overjoyed and started running wildly. As he ran, the flesh and blood on his arms regenerated. As the flesh and blood regenerated, the secret pattern on his arm also reappeared!
"this……?!"
The joy in Lin Yi's heart was immediately extinguished by a basin of cold water.
He gritted his teeth and removed the flesh and blood from the bones again. Then, he suppressed the appearance of the sky blue aura through his subjective will, preventing that part of the flesh and blood from regenerating.
"Let's run back to the campus first. The store owner must know more about this stuff than I do. I'll ask him later..."
As he ran, he spotted the little girl again in the darkness not far ahead...
She was standing in that dimly lit corner, holding "Amon's Music Box" in her hands. On the wall beside her hung a painting with a strong dark style. In the painting, there was a depressing sky with blood red and black intertwined, and under the sky was an endless wilderness.
There was a black sun hanging in the black sky, and at the end of the wilderness there was a castle surrounded by tombstones.
The scene in the picture looked like the location of the "quartermaster", but the details seemed a little different. At this moment, the painting seemed to come alive, attracting Lin Yi to approach it.
The mist lingered on the ground, entangled with his legs like silk threads, trying to pull his body into the painting.
He seemed to see his name written on a stone tablet. That was the burial place set up for him, and it seemed that he was going to be buried now.
He quickly withdrew his gaze, stared at the end of the gallery, and charged forward with his head down.
He ran past the little girl and continued running without looking back.
Soon, the little girl and the painting appeared in front of him again...
He was stunned for a moment, but chose to continue running.
He just kept running, but the gallery seemed to have no end, no matter how he ran, he could not reach the end, and he seemed to be trapped in some kind of loop. He looked down at the time.
3: 22.
There is no abnormality in the flow of time.
He looked at his own condition. Without the suppression of "Amon's Music Box", the light of the old kerosene lamp gradually recovered. The glorious field was not very warm, but at least it was not so cold.
The old kerosene lamp was still in his hand, which meant that he was still in reality, but for some reason, there seemed to be some problems in the gallery.
"Could it be that the gallery lost its layers?"
The feeling of this space being infinitely stretched is very similar to when the layers of the campus were falling. But the layers of the art building had already fallen, so how could they continue to fall?
He ran and ran, and there were some "creaking" sounds under his feet. He felt his center of gravity shifting and swaying from side to side. He was sure that there was nothing wrong with him, so what happened in this gallery?
The notes of the music box became much clearer, accompanied by some whistle sounds and siren-like singing. Lin Yi suddenly felt that he must have left reality and was experiencing hallucinations...
He seemed to appear in a cabin corridor, surrounded by portraits of captains from past generations, but none of their faces could be seen clearly. The sound of the rushing wind whistled and echoed in the cabin corridor, occasionally hitting his face.
The wind carried the sound of waves hitting the hull, the sound of waves breaking and falling on the deck, and some happy laughter.
"Music box...cabin..."
"Is it the music box's notes that are affecting my perception of reality? Could this vision... be a voyage of the 'first apostles'?"
Lao Mo said that "Amon's Music Box" had followed the ship to sea many times and recorded countless sounds. Could it be that he was affected by the sound while running?
But what was the impact at that time?
Suddenly, a cold sea breeze rolled up the thin mist and blew it onto Lin Yi's face like smoke blown by a beautiful woman. The whispers in the wind suddenly became much clearer. He heard some kind of call...
【Lin Yi...】
[He is coming...]
[He is back...]
[It’s him…it’s really him…]
[It’s you…it’s you…]
The paintings hanging on both sides of the cabin let out mournful and painful howls, but their voices were firmly trapped in the world of the paintings, and very little of them could be heard...
“Swish, swish—swish—”
There was another sound, like a chain being dragged across the ground, and along with it, there were the sounds of heavy footsteps.
“Boom! Boom! Boom…”
He walked slowly and stomped heavily, as if he was carrying something extremely heavy.
The cabin was shaking, and he was distracted and unable to stand firmly. He stumbled a few steps, and in the blink of an eye he saw a blurry figure slowly emerging from the darkness shrouded in fog in front of him.
It seemed like he was the most dangerous prisoner in the entire prison. Once he appeared, all the noise disappeared.
[Lin Yi ah... Lin Yi...]
The figure slowly approached Lin Yi, and the darkness was like sticky ink, rushing in along with the fog, slowly filling the entire cabin passage.
A boundless feeling of oppression spread out, like the breath of ghosts rising from the abyss of hell, cold, damp, and exuding a smell of death.
The black shadow was looming in the mist, like a phantom in a nightmare. Every step it took seemed to carry an invisible force, making the air around it heavier.
The mist lingered around it, floating silently like its gauze dress, gathering and dispersing, opening and closing, drifting in the air, like a huge cloak woven from darkness and mist.
Lin Yi couldn't see the figure in the fog clearly from beginning to end, but he could feel a familiar feeling... He had seen it several times!
The cabin...
Iron chain...
Figure...
Lin Yi shuddered. Wasn't the figure in front of him the same one he had seen in visions several times before?
Its real body is hidden in a certain layer of the gallery?
“Boom! Boom! Boom…”
As the shadow approached, the feeling of oppression was like a surging tide, hitting its heart wave after wave.
Its outline gradually becomes clear, but becomes blurred again when it is about to be seen clearly, as if you are looking at something through a telescope and there is a person with cerebral palsy next to you who is repeatedly adjusting the magnification.
In that blurry vision, it gave Lin Yi the feeling of being both tall and broad, like a moving dark mountain. Its figure exuded an ancient and evil aura, as if hiding countless unknown horrible secrets.
The black shadow's eyes - if the two points of light in the darkness could be called eyes - flashed with a cold light, like an abyss without a bottom, penetrating straight through the fog and locking onto him.
Under that gaze, it seemed as if all the blood in my body was frozen and my soul was trembling.
The darkness around him seemed to be summoned by it and became thicker, like countless invisible hands reaching out from all directions, trying to drag Lin Yi into the endless dark abyss.
【Lin Yi...】
[It’s him… Lin Yi…]
[It’s really him…]
【You came……】
[How dare you come...]
The murals hanging on the cabin were shaking "clang clang clang" non-stop, with low calls, resentful curses, strange sneers... It was like a black elegy that wanted to drown and bury Lin Yi.
He had seen its vague figure in visions more than once, but he had never been in such close contact with it, nor had he ever thought about having close contact with it.
"There's a problem! A big problem!"
“There’s something wrong with all of this!”
"This is a hallucination and it's not a hallucination. The gallery seems to have lost layers and it doesn't lose layers..."
"It's not possible that there are problems with all the variables. There must be a change in one of them that I'm not aware of!"
"I have to find it out! I have to find out what the problem is before it reaches me!"
The closer the black shadow got to Lin Yi, the stronger the suffocating feeling of oppression became. Lin Yi could feel his heart beating along with it. When it stood still in front of him, his heart would also stop beating!
At this moment, he seemed to be trapped in a death puzzle game, with only the length of a cabin left for him to solve the puzzle and save himself.
(End of this chapter)