Rules-related weird stories: 4016

“Whoosh—”

The rapid sound of the wind, accompanied by some moisture, impatiently squeezed out from the crack in the door, constantly buffeting Lin Yi's face.

The wind carried a faint, indescribable fishy stench, instinctively reminding one of a sea surface filled with freshly dead deep-sea fish.

The stairwell behind the door was filled with the howling of the wind, like countless ghosts crying.

Lao Mo used a great deal of strength to push the iron door open just enough for one person to pass through, and then couldn't push it open any further.

“You go first!” Lao Mo roared, his arm muscles bulging, resembling intertwined old tree trunks, looking full of explosive power, but even so, he didn't seem to be able to force the iron door open any wider.

Lin Yi didn't hesitate and decisively squeezed through.

As he crossed the door, he could clearly feel the iron door vibrating at some terrifying frequency, giving the impression of a high-frequency blade.

Even with several centimeters of space, he felt like his skin was about to be sliced open.

It was hard to imagine what kind of monster-level physique Lao Mo possessed to be able to hold the iron door open with his bare hands.

After Lin Yi passed through, Lao Mo roared and forcefully pushed the door open a bit more, then darted through like a nimble swordfish.

Even so, as soon as he released his hand from holding the iron door, it slammed shut with a terrifying force, as if a pair of invisible hands had appeared behind the door, pushing the door panel with all their might, trying to crush him flat.

Seeing that he was about to be beheaded by the iron door, Lao Mo snorted coldly, and everything around him instantly slowed down.

The scale of space began to undergo some bizarre and distorted changes, and he passed through the gap in the iron door like a rubber man.

“Layer Transposition.”

When he landed again, he was already standing next to Lin Yi.

Strangely, what happened on this layer level would be a different scene when observed with the naked eye, but Lin Yi actually took it all in.

Seeing this scene, Lin Yi couldn't help but point at the iron door, opening his mouth, but unable to say anything.

Lao Mo patted Lin Yi's shoulder and said, “What's wrong? A little trick has shocked you for ten thousand years?”

“That's not it…” Lin Yi clicked his tongue, “I just thought of something…”

“What is it?”

“The thing about ‘returning the way we came’…”

“Hmm? Is there a problem with that?”

Lin Yi said quietly, “Let's not even talk about how to get to the clock tower later, just that ‘returning the way we came,’ I mean… you mean later we'll come down from the clock tower again, and then one person will use brute force like you to open this door and return to that corridor…”

“Even if I can force the door open, after leaving the corridor, as soon as I open the door, I'll have to break through the encirclement of the night-stalking species covering the entire wall, and then crawl and roll back to the art gallery…”

“Even if I really manage to return to the art gallery, I still have to pretend not to hear the sound of ‘Amon's Music Box’ and leave the art gallery…”

“Even if I really leave the art gallery…”

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

Lao Mo was silent for a while: “What you said… does seem a bit difficult…”

“Lao Mo… cough cough!” Lin Yi said awkwardly, “I feel like this difficulty is no less than a pirate rowing a small broken wooden boat with a revolver to rob an aircraft carrier…”

Lao Mo pursed his lips: “Well, there are still some differences… Pirates robbing an aircraft carrier have to know how to operate it, but you don't need to master the method, just follow the example…”

“That's not my point, Lao Mo…”

“Then what do you want to say?”

“What I mean is…” Lin Yi's gaze slowly fell on Lao Mo's somewhat withered, dead-fish face, and his tone changed from complaining to a bit more serious, “Can you not be so ready to die, let's go back alive together?”

“I'm just a backup hidden energy source, things like earth-shattering battles are destined not to be related to me…” He looked a little worn out, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.

Lao Mo was stunned for a moment, thinking that Lin Yi was worried about a way out, but he didn't expect him to be a little concerned about him.

He smiled wryly: “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 stairwell in front of him.

After passing through the iron door, the wind in the stairwell was not as rapid, but the cold and damp atmosphere became more intense.

The stairwells of clock towers usually spiral upwards, narrow and long, but the passage in front of Lin Yi was actually spiraling downwards.

The walls of the stairwell were made of thick stone blocks, covered with traces of years of erosion.

Moss grew and spread in the corners of the walls.

On a stormy night like this, some rainwater flowed down the outer wall of the clock tower, seeping into the gaps in the stairwell, making the walls look wet, as if they were bleeding.

The stairwell was dimly lit, with only a few candlesticks holding up faint rays of light.

On a stormy night, the sea breeze mixed with pollution seemed to squeeze in from the cracks in the walls, causing the candlelight to flicker.

When lightning flashed across the night sky, the entire stairwell would rumble, and the walls would tremble slightly against each other, as if they could collapse at any moment.

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

“Why are these stairs going down?”

He had seen the silhouette of the clock tower's phantom from afar outside the art building.

That thing should be at the highest point of the art building, so why aren't these stairs going up?

“Could there be another route?”

Lao Mo walked to the entrance of the stairwell and said, “All the rules in the campus tell you to go up and down the stairs along the right-hand side, and you will soon know why.”

Lin Yi immediately thought of many things, but he didn't rush to answer.

In fact, he wasn't completely ignorant of the matter of ‘going up the stairs along the left-hand side,’ because as early as May 7th, when he was sleeping, he had followed Maozi up the stairs of the teaching building through a dream, and at that time, Maozi was going up the stairs along the left-hand side!

And the path that was supposed to be ‘returning the way we came’ had led to a completely different stairwell because Maozi went up the stairs along the left-hand side, and eventually passed through those somewhat strange areas to reach the dormitory building.

‘Could it be that every staircase, when reversed, will intrude into other layer paths?’

Lao Mo reached out his hand to Lin Yi.

“Next, there will be a path of ‘layer transposition’ nature.

You may feel very uncomfortable.

Hold my hand, no matter what happens, I will pull you to the clock tower side.”

Lin Yi then took Lao Mo's hand.

Lao Mo's palm was like a somewhat stiff mannequin, cold without any warmth.

“Keep up.”

Lao Mo said softly, then stepped onto the steps at the entrance of the stairwell, and then started walking along the left-hand side.

One step, two steps…

The clock tower's stairs were made of the same brownish-yellow stone as the walls, a kind of limestone. The surface was generally smooth, but still had some pitted and uneven areas, giving a solid feeling underfoot.

At first, when following Old Mo for the first two steps, Lin Yi felt relatively normal. Aside from a subtle, indescribable awkwardness, there was hardly any other sensation.

However, with the third step, Lin Yi suddenly felt the ground beneath his feet become uneven, even causing his center of gravity to shift…

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

Maintaining his balance while moving forward was already difficult enough.

If he became distracted, he feared he would fall.

This sense of fluctuation was indeed somewhat similar to "Layer Shifting." Lin Yi had received guidance from Old Mo before, so while he couldn't say he was completely at ease, he was somewhat familiar with the process.

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Of course, to achieve this, one had to be completely focused. Looking around was definitely out of the question.

But soon, even if he didn't observe the environment, the environment came looking for him.

His perspective began to undergo a bizarre twisting, stretching, and shifting, beyond his control. This shifting had no logic to it, like a novice baker kneading dough, with no consistency in their hand strength. Every move could be described as 'random force'.

This random and illogical spatial fluctuation began to impact his vision and spatial awareness, giving him a feeling similar to motion sickness, a sense of nausea.

They traveled through these layers for some time. When the feeling of being kneaded like dough almost disappeared, Lin Yi suddenly realized that they had gone from descending the stairs to ascending…

"This…? !"

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

The stairs were still the same stairs, and the candlelight on the walls was still there, but the steps, which should have been spiraling downwards, had actually turned to spiral upwards!

Old Mo explained: "Remember the concept of a 'precision instrument' I mentioned before? Now imagine two meshing lead screws, or the gears of a shredder. When the first lead screw rotates, the other one meshing with it will be driven, creating a mirrored movement."

"But in that case, shouldn't we also be mirrored downwards?" Lin Yi was a major in architectural design; these kinds of questions were no problem for him.

Old Mo glanced at him: "What if… one of the lead screws was fixed?"

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

"But Old Mo… how can you be sure that the other lead screw remains fixed?"

Old Mo pointed to his head: "Anchor a layer with absolute will as a reference… and then just climb."

"Absolute Will."

Lin Yi inwardly gasped. He almost forgot that Old Mo was a ruthless character who relied on his will to lock himself to his last drop of blood without dying, then stubbornly held on until the convenience store owner came back to kill the monster!

Worthy of the name 'Absolute Will'.

"So that's how it is… no wonder the trainees aren't allowed to go up and down the stairs along the left-hand side," Lin Yi realized.

Old Mo nodded: "They don't possess that kind of willpower. Wandering around will only cause them to be drawn into unknown layer fissures, eventually becoming lost in the endless stairwells, dying with fear and mental breakdown…"

"Once they die, they will 'drift' to some dead corner, like the red-numbered lampposts, becoming a member of that pile of dead body sculptures…"

"'Dead Body Sculptures'?" Lin Yi was stunned. He immediately thought of the stalactite grotto that Maozi had seen at the end of the stairs, filled with grotesque sculptures. Could those be the dead body sculptures?

"What do you mean by 'Dead Body Sculptures'?"

"They are completely dead sculptures," Old Mo said. "The green belt in the campus hides many Simulacra. During the day, the transcendent power within them is dispelled, turning them into a substance similar to sculptures, but not actually sculptures… That kind is essentially a Simulacrum, but to distinguish whether they can move, they are given the name 'Sculpture'."

Lin Yi understood. After all, when those Simulacra were still, they were basically no different from sculptures.

And the rules wrote 'Sculptures' essentially to prevent the trainees from knowing the concept of "Simulacra."

Because the Simulacra Sculptures, in terms of life form, were closer to Nightwalkers.

Dead Body Sculptures, on the other hand, looked like things that were beyond dead, with absolutely no possibility of transforming into Nightwalkers or Simulacra.

Lin Yi pondered, "So, in that case… Dead Body Sculptures are the true death?"

"You can generally think of it that way for now, but there are always exceptions… Don't think they're not a threat just because they're Dead Body Sculptures. Never let your guard down at any time," Old Mo warned.

Lin Yi nodded, remembering Old Mo's teachings.

Perhaps, Mu Daxian had also rapidly learned much of this "theoretical knowledge" in this way?

Lin Yi looked up at the steps above. The staircase spiraled upwards, like a Fibonacci sequence, seemingly endless, making one feel slightly dazed after looking at it for a few more moments.

He quickly withdrew his gaze and continued to walk upwards.

The higher he went, the more unstable he felt the stone steps beneath his feet, with occasional "clattering" sounds, like the stone bridge over a river in an old village, always making strange noises when many people walked on it.

And from above, from the dark Fibonacci sequence staircase, some "thudding" sounds began to fall, like raindrops hitting some steady, heavy metal.

Old Mo suddenly reminded him in a deep voice: "Watch your step, don't slip. It will become very difficult after entering the mist area. Don't be distracted by the Grinning Angels."

"Mist area… Grinning Angels? Didn't you say there was a Night Watcher's domain here?" Lin Yi asked, puzzled.

"The Night Watcher uses all his power to fight against the descent of the 'Angel', leaving his back vulnerable. Angel sculptures will attack him at this time," Old Mo said. "Mosquitoes can't kill humans, but in that kind of top-level game, any subtle influence can cause a butterfly effect, leading to a complete collapse of the battle."