Rules-related weird stories: 4016

The teaching building's rules included a map with a direct path from the cafeteria area to the gymnasium.

“I suggest you head straight there, while the sun is still shining,” Tian Bufan said, then asked, “You don’t have anything else to say, do you?”

Lin Yi pouted: “That’s about it…”

“Then let’s leave it at that. I’ll go try your decryption method,” Tian Bufan said. “We’ll have a chance to chat again during PE class.”

“Okay.” Lin Yi nodded.

Seeing Wei Shan wanting to follow Lin Yi, Tian Bufan stopped him: “Wei Shan, let’s go back to the classroom first.”

Wei Shan hesitated visibly, but seeing Tian Bufan's expression, he didn't say anything further.

Wei Liang chuckled: “I’m not going back to the classroom. I’m going to see Boss at the gymnasium and have him arrange some cute female athletes for me, to teach me ‘bong dong bong dong’ hand-in-hand~”

He struck a breaststroke pose, but for some reason, he looked like a perverted Turtle Hermit.

“Alright, then we’ll head straight to the gymnasium.” Lin Yi wasn’t ambiguous either, bidding farewell to Tian Bufan decisively. Then, near the "Cafeteria-001" lamppost, at a certain road corner, he found the "Gymnasium-001" lamppost…

Strangely enough, the "Gymnasium-001" lamppost wasn't easy to find. At least, its position was directly facing Teaching Building A, but once you arrived at the "Gymnasium-001" lamppost, you could only see the teaching building area. You couldn't see the cafeteria building at all; you could only find the "Cafeteria-001" lamppost within a limited area to determine the location of the cafeteria area.

Watching the backs of Lin Yi and Wei Liang as they completely left the cafeteria area, passed the "Gymnasium-001" lamppost, and entered the gymnasium area, Wei Shan looked at Tian Bufan, puzzled: “Young Master Tian, why didn’t you let me go with them?”

“You think I don’t know?” Tian Bufan lowered his voice. “Come with me towards the teaching building first, don’t show anything unusual.”

Wei Shan was a bit simple and straightforward, but not stupid. Seeing this, he nodded and followed Tian Bufan into the teaching building area, heading towards the building.

After only a few steps, Tian Bufan said: “I know, Old Lin is being followed by a Pseudo-human art student.”

“It’s that bandage-wrapped guy.” Wei Shan narrowed his eyes, a murderous aura flickering between his eyelids. “He followed us as soon as we left the student passage… He’s hiding in the green belt, but that malice is like the stench of foot odor wafting through the fragrance of grass and trees, impossible to ignore!”

“If I follow Old Lin, I can counter-gank him. As soon as he comes over, I can just take him down. Maybe I can even extract some information about the Pseudo-humans.”

Tian Bufan shook his head slightly, not denying Wei Shan's combat ability, but analyzing from another perspective: “First of all, even if we could really get information, it wouldn’t necessarily be trustworthy… Secondly, you don’t need to do anything. Let Old Lin adapt to the Pseudo-human art student's attack patterns a little bit.”

“Sooner or later… we’ll have to deal with them anyway.”

…

May 9, X023, 11:56, near the "Gymnasium-001" lamppost.

As soon as Lin Yi entered the gymnasium area, he felt a strange sensation in his heart. It was an indescribable, faint discomfort that enveloped him as he entered this area, yet he couldn't immediately pinpoint the problem.

This silent change was like someone turning down the air conditioning by one degree.

Wei Liang was also surprisingly quiet, not urging Lin Yi to hurry up, but instead imitating Lin Yi's actions, stealthily observing the surrounding environment.

“Something’s not right…” Lin Yi muttered softly.

“It does feel a bit off, but I can’t put my finger on it…” Wei Liang said, puzzled.

“It seems… the temperature is a little lower?”

Wei Liang pondered for a moment: “The gymnasium is on slightly lower ground, and this mountain path is downhill, a bit shaded, so the temperature is a bit lower… Seems normal, right?”

“You saying that makes sense.” Lin Yi glanced at the sky. He didn't know if it was just his imagination, but he felt that the sky, which was still quite clear, gave him a sense of oppression, as if it were covered with a layer of plastic wrap.

“Wait for me.” Lin Yi said, and followed the original path back to the teaching building area, and then returned to the gymnasium area from the teaching building area.

When passing through the boundary, he carefully felt it. It was indeed from a sunlit place to a shaded place, but… the temperature difference was a bit too big, wasn’t it?

“It's probably a bit of an effect of the layers… Let’s go, let’s go to the gymnasium first.” Lin Yi muttered, unwilling to linger, wanting to get to the gymnasium as soon as possible, afraid that if he kept dwelling on it, some charming little accident would happen again.

The cobblestone path to the gymnasium was winding and twisting, surrounded by scattered lampposts and green belts planted with camphor trees, while the depths were obscured by towering trees and heavy fog, the light dappled inside, exuding a gloomy atmosphere.

Continuing forward for a while, by the time they reached the notice board in front of the gymnasium, the road behind them was already somewhat invisible. All that was left in their vision was the gymnasium building complex that looked like eggs with spiced dried tofu.

Passing the notice board, the air around them began to fill with a faint dampness.

It was noon, and the sun should have been at its brightest, but the actual sunlight that fell into the gymnasium area was stingy, only a few scattered rays. The stuffy sky and humid environment made people feel like they were standing in a bathhouse wearing dry clothes suitable for spring and autumn.

Even the gymnasium in front seemed to have an indescribable sense of strangeness.

“Liangzi, do you think we might have taken the wrong way?” Lin Yi asked softly.

Wei Liang shook his head: “Hey, don’t be so suspicious! There’s no such thing as taking the wrong way. It’s just that the weather is a little bad! Let’s go to the gymnasium quickly!”

After Wei Liang said this, Lin Yi understood something. Indeed… "doubt" with a clear mind and "doubt" with an unyielding will are essentially the same sense of questioning, and questioning can easily loosen an otherwise impenetrable cognitive defense.

Lin Yi calmed down a bit and continued to walk with Wei Liang along the cobblestone path towards the gymnasium.

This road wasn't long, just a bit winding. You could reach the gymnasium by simply looking at it.

But after walking for a while, Lin Yi felt that something was wrong again, and quickly stopped Wei Liang: “Liangzi, wait!”

He quickly squatted down and looked at the cobblestone path under his feet. This look made him feel an invisible horror!

The cobblestones… were actually twisted!

“I knew there was a problem!” Lin Yi's face turned ugly. “Liangzi, come here quickly, there’s something wrong with this road!”

He looked up, only to find that Wei Liang, as if he hadn't heard him, had unknowingly walked away again.

“Tsk!” Lin Yi cursed inwardly and quickly ran over, shouting as he ran, “Liangzi, Liangzi! Don’t go yet! Wait a moment!”

But Wei Liang couldn't hear him at all and kept walking forward.

Lin Yi became more and more anxious and couldn't help but speed up. But he was completely unaware that the entire world around him seemed to be twisting and trembling.

After running a few steps, he realized something was wrong and quickly looked around. But the world around him seemed to be covered with a funhouse mirror, expanding, contracting, and twisting in an illogical way…

Part of the surrounding green belt was stretched out like a blown-up balloon, while another part was sunken in like a spot on glass.

And the cobblestone path under Lin Yi's feet became incredibly smooth like a Dove chocolate ribbon, each cobblestone changing its shape, stretching out like a gummy candy, filling all the gaps on the road…

Even more bizarrely, when Lin Yi's gaze focused on the sky, he discovered that even the sky had turned into an abstract cartoon drawing, with thick clouds floating like bubbles.

If it were just blue skies and white clouds, that would be one thing, but the sky was a gloomy expanse, resembling a scene from a horror movie.

Lin Yi realized that he seemed to have fallen into a painting!

No—no, not fallen, but already there!

“Cognitive overwrite!” Lin Yi's scalp tingled, and he instantly reacted upon realizing his situation. “An art student's technique!”

At the same time, a strong sense of crisis, like the Grim Reaper wielding a giant scythe, slowly enveloped him. His subconscious began to react defensively, and he heard the whistling sound of a train passing by. The view before his eyes began to flash and flicker rapidly…

His brain seemed to be overloaded, frantically processing all the environmental factors around him, but his body was being eroded by fatigue because it couldn't keep up with the consumption of brainpower, and he knelt on one knee.

“Huff, huff, huff…”

Lin Yi supported himself on the ground with both hands, his breathing becoming heavy. Only in the corner of his eye did he vaguely see a blurry figure emerging from a green belt beside the cobblestone road, gradually closing in on him.

It was a person covered in bandages, carrying a bandaged object on their back that was difficult to distinguish as a cylinder or a gourd.

“Huff, huff… Pseudo-human… Art student… Huff…”

A layer of fine sweat appeared on Lin Yi's forehead. His vision was somewhat blurred, but his will was exceptionally clear.

“I'm being targeted… They actually went to the trouble of coming all this way to deal with me…”

“They really think highly of me…”

The bandaged pseudo-human art student slowly approached Lin Yi, who was now in a somewhat disheveled state, and babbled incessantly in two different tones, as if suffering from a split personality:

“Buze is so troublesome… I don't really want to Buze anymore… How about we just kill him directly…”

“Don't violate Lao Ren's orders!”

“Lao Ren is over at the kiosk with Zhang Lingzhen. How could he possibly know what this kid is really like?”

“Ugh…”

“Besides, I haven't eaten enough… Look at him again.”

“Look at his physical qualities, they're really quite good…”

“His flesh, his heart…”

“Slurp—”

“He looks so delicious… Let's eat the delicious parts first, and the remaining parts can be recycled and used to make first-class sculpture blanks…”

“Hehehe… What do you think?”

“This…”

“Don't hesitate, how about I give you ten percent… no, thirty percent! How's that?”

“This…”

“Forty percent!”

“Deal!”

“That's right! Let's skip the tedious 'purification' process and start the 'physical Buze'!”

“Hahahaha…”

It approached Lin Yi step by step, the bandages around its mouth loosening, revealing a pale mouth full of fangs.

The bandages on its body also began to loosen on their own like ribbons, turning into circles of chain-like things, dragging a string of sparks on the ground…

Lin Yi seemed unable to move, but in reality, he saw everything clearly. His understanding of art students was too limited, and he could only use Mu Daxian as a reference…

Of course, if this pseudo-human art student really had Mu Daxian's methods, then he would be certain to die today unless he used some kind of cheat on the spot.

Lin Yi quickly observed the surrounding environment. Everywhere was a distorted picture, and even he was somewhat distorted, but the bandaged pseudo-human art student seemed completely unaffected.

“It has accepted the environment it overwrote, and I am effectively in its domain…”

“What to do… what to do?!”

“It has overwritten reality. Apart from the cobblestones under my feet, I know nothing else for sure!”

“If I run around randomly, bumping into the green belt would be the least of my worries. If I accidentally lose my footing and roll down the hillside or get lost in the green belt, lost in the deep forest… then even if I escape, it would just be jumping from the dragon's pool into the tiger's den…”

Just then, Lin Yi heard a “rustling” sound. Those chain-like bandages slowly swam over like flexible vipers, trying to encircle him.

He quickly dodged a little.

“Oh, you actually have mobility?” A hint of surprise appeared on the bandaged pseudo-human art student's lips. “Normal senses… Your perception hasn't had much of a problem either… Not bad.”

It seemed that in its domain, the experience subject should be completely defenseless.

Its hand under the bandages was incomparably pale. As it spoke, one of its fingers unnaturally bent ninety degrees, as if triggering some kind of mechanism. The bandages probed out nimbly and instantly wrapped around Lin Yi's calf.

With a gentle tug, it sent Lin Yi falling backward. If the backpack hadn't absorbed some of the force, the fall would have been severe.

Even so, his lower back was aching from being pressed against the shoes in the bag.

“Ugh!”

Lin Yi bit his teeth in pain and subconsciously reached out to grab the cobblestones on the ground. Unfortunately, the ground was now as smooth as hair washed with Pantene, and the cobblestones seemed to have been smoothed out, leaving no trace at all.

He couldn't even get a grip even if he broke his fingernails!

At this moment, several more bandages entangled him, binding his hands and feet completely, and then dragging him little by little in front of the bandaged pseudo-human art student.

“I'm starting to regret it… Maybe we really should 'Buze'…”

However, even though it showed an expression of appreciation, the next moment, its sharp-toothed mouth curled into a cruel arc: “'Buze' what 'Buze'? I don't agree now, I must eat! I must!”

“At least… eat its heart, and we'll draw a fake one for it. Anyway, Lao Ren won't be able to tell!”

It looked down at Lin Yi, who was close at hand. Under the somewhat loose bandages, it revealed a pair of gray-white eyes that were completely opposite to the ferocious expression on the lower half of its face, devoid of any emotional fluctuations, almost petrified.

Despite having no hope of breaking free, Lin Yi continued to struggle, and in the gap between his struggles, his gaze inadvertently fell on the face of the bandaged pseudo-human art student. At that moment, his heart suddenly shook!

The face of this bandaged pseudo-human art student… actually gave him a strangely familiar feeling!

Thanks to book friends “usjdnshhs”, “琳 skylark”, “川崖明” for the rewards!!

PS: I originally saved 10,000 words and planned to give you a surprise quietly, but this week I was sprayed by the leader on Monday, and I have been sprayed for several days. I can't even touch the fish code at work. I had training again yesterday, and I will have the exam tomorrow. Today I brushed the questions for a day, and finally squeezed out my manuscript (the last 4300 words will not be hidden, and it will be sent in one breath)…

I will continue to update on Saturday, and then take a day off on Sunday to take a breath, and by the way, carefully sort out the plot of the gymnasium (because some readers have recently reflected that the rhythm is a bit slow, I am thinking of simply planning it again, removing the unnecessary details, and adding some of the things that everyone is curious about and wants to see), please understand…

If there are no accidents, it will be updated steadily from Monday to the end of the month.