Rules-related weird stories: 4016

Chapter 363: The Clock Tower's… Clock Face

Having lost the art student's overwrite, that painting was like a genie's lamp with its lid removed.

The genie trapped within instantly lost its restraints, permeating beyond the canvas with newfound freedom.

Its arm, adorned with sharp fingernails, burst forth from the wall as if piercing a layer of plastic wrap.

[Shriek—]

As soon as the Grinning Angel's body seeped out of the painting, it immediately assumed its translucent, ethereal form.

Seemingly liberated from its cage, it expressed a sense of utter relief, like someone suffering from severe constipation finally finding release.

However, awaiting it wasn't freedom, but Old Mo.

Old Mo gave it no chance, immediately wrapping his arm with golden energy and seizing its wings.

His posture was exactly that of a farmer reaching out to grab a large white goose.

The Grinning Angel realized something was amiss and tried to struggle, but Old Mo forcefully pinned it to the stone slab beneath him.

Immediately following, a flood of golden energy poured down upon it.

Time was of the essence, and Old Mo wasn't being the least bit ambiguous.

Right now, he was a standard chef, preparing fresh ingredients with the most efficient techniques.

But this time was different from before; this Grinning Angel was carrying a lantern.

And so, under the cleansing of the golden energy, the meridians within this Grinning Angel gradually became clearer.

Following that, its body began to exude colorful gases, primarily composed of gray mist…

Soon, the Grinning Angel's surface turned grayish-white.

It twitched as it transformed into a solid form, like an angel statue descending from the sky, face-planting first.

The feathers on its back were as straight as blades, and the water droplets clinging to those feathers gradually solidified.

Once it had completely transformed into a petrified angel statue, Old Mo took out his pig-slaughtering knife and tapped the statue's shell a few times with the handle.

The next moment, accompanied by a series of subtle "crack" sounds, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the angel statue's entire body.

Seeing that the time was right, Old Mo slapped it forcefully.

"Bang!"

The angel statue peeled off like old tree bark, revealing a pale-faced, unconscious dormitory manager amidst the scattered fragments.

This dormitory manager was slightly chubby, even a bit simple-looking.

His unconscious appearance resembled someone lost in a dream.

Beside him was a petrified hourglass that had rolled away.

The sand within the hourglass was frozen in the state of pouring down, with a considerable amount still remaining.

Old Mo picked up the hourglass separately and then rolled up the dormitory manager's sleeve.

A translucent card could be seen on the dormitory manager's wrist.

This card seemed to be merging with the skin on his wrist, but it hadn't completely fused yet.

Old Mo took out his pig-slaughtering knife and peeled the translucent card from the dormitory manager's body along its edges.

This scene should have been incredibly bloody, but the dormitory manager remained sound asleep throughout the entire process.

Not even a drop of blood or tomato sauce-like viscous substance was left on his wrist, as if he were an android.

"He's beyond saving," Old Mo said.

"Just like that art student."

"What you see now is just the 'human' form remaining.

His will is almost dead, meaning that everything except his toes has entered the gates of hell.

With our current conditions, the probability of waking him up is zero."

"And even if he were awakened, he wouldn't have a chance to leave the art building."

"Rest in peace," Old Mo murmured, unleashing his domain, completely extracting the extraordinary power from the "sleeping" dormitory manager's body.

And indeed, as Old Mo had said, only a trace of gray mist remained in the dormitory manager's body.

When the gray mist was completely gone, he completely turned into a statue and then disintegrated.

Lin Yi silently watched this scene.

For some reason, he surprisingly didn't feel a trace of sorrow.

It seemed that when this dormitory manager was annihilated with the designation of "non-human," it was no different to him than the death of a wild beast.

"If we didn't kill him, would he have turned into a Night Walker?"

"Almost," Old Mo said.

"He would have become a high-level fusion material with the qualifications to become an Aberrant Sculpture… a 'Super Night Walker'."

"Whether it devours and fuses with other Night Walkers, or it is devoured and fused by other Night Walkers, an Aberrant Sculpture will be born."

"Of course, Aberrant Sculptures themselves also greatly favor this type of material…"

Lin Yi nodded.

In short, there was no chance of survival.

If he was overwhelmed by sympathy and wanted to save him, then he would become a target of the Aberrant Sculpture along with him.

Old Mo glanced at the card in his hand and then handed the translucent card to Lin Yi.

Once this card was peeled off, the part that was attached to it immediately turned into petrified sculptural fragments.

"Kid, remember this: from the moment you started returning, you were no longer a person 'without an identity'.

You are… 'Dorm Manager - 33 - X0221119003'."

Lin Yi took the card, looked down at the number on the card, and then hesitated, "He… entered the school on November 19, '22?

It's already been half a year…?"

"It has indeed been half a year.

The '33' is the 33rd floor of the dormitory building.

If he hadn't been nailed to the wall by that art student, he would have become a veteran Grinning Angel long ago, which is why I said you were lucky."

Old Mo held the pig-slaughtering knife in one hand and the hourglass in the other, then walked towards the exit without looking back.

After helping Lin Yi settle things, his only goal was to save Mu Daxian.

Lin Yi closely followed Old Mo, and rubbed the dormitory manager's identity card that he had put into his pocket.

Suddenly, he thought that the state of the art student using himself to seal the Grinning Angel in the canvas seemed a bit like… someone trapped in a spaceship's sleep pod?

Once the hatch is opened, will they "wake up" from the point in time when they fell asleep?

"No!

That Grinning Angel clearly had a feeling of relief, which means that its state is completely different from 'sleep', but rather a state of being awake but unable to perform any action— ultimate torture!!"

Too lonely!

It's only because they are just Grinning Angels.

Otherwise, if they were intelligent beings, they would definitely go crazy.

Lin Yi couldn't help but think that if he was stuffed into the canvas and had to watch the outside world's time flow by…

Lin Yi shivered involuntarily, it was simply a kind of exile, an absolute emptiness and loneliness!

Time flows through eternity, yet does not apply to me, is this not a kind of exile?!

He quickened his pace to catch up with Old Mo.

As the fog area thinned, the wind and rain overhead gradually poured in, this large amount of water mist, like sea waves crashing against the city walls and breaking into water droplets.

Lin Yi suddenly realized that the trickle of water constantly flowing down the inner wall of the stairwell was not entirely seeping in from the cracks in the wall, but perhaps a lot of it was flowing down from above, all the way to the bottom of the stairwell.

"Wait, does this stairwell... have a bottom?"

"If I remember correctly, when Old Mo and I went upstairs just now, we seemed to have inexplicably arrived here, not climbing up from the bottom?!"

They simply arrived at a certain section here through layer transition, and then began to rush non-stop to the top floor.

In that case...

What is at the bottom of this clock tower?!

Lin Yi couldn't help but feel dazed, a ridiculous idea popped into his mind, could it be that the bottom is directly a spiral down into the sea?

Impossible, absolutely impossible.

"We're here," Old Mo's voice came from ahead, awakening Lin Yi's thoughts, "Later, when this hourglass turns back into a kerosene lamp, you can return to the elevator shaft on the observation deck side by following the 'original route'."

"You will be attacked, but remember, no matter how injured you are, it doesn't matter, as long as the kerosene lamp doesn't go out, you won't die."

"Once you reach the elevator shaft, just do as I say."

"Old Mo, what about you?" Lin Yi asked unwillingly.

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"Me?" Old Mo smiled slightly, "A person who has already died, if he can still fulfill his last wish before death, how awesome do you think that would be?"

He patted Lin Yi on the shoulder.

"Don't feel pressured, your task is already completed, next, it's time for me to take the stage and perform."

As Old Mo spoke, he walked towards the front.

At the end of the clock tower corridor, there was a landmark sculpture, which was a dead body sculpture, no different from the sculpture reminding the Russians to leave the stairs.

It's just that there was no door here, only a layer of invisible medium, separating the two worlds.

If this were a cafeteria, there would at least be a symbolic plastic curtain, but there was nothing here, making it impossible to see the nature of a "door".

This layer of medium was like an exhaust vent, constantly spraying wind and rain towards them, one would think there was a nuclear-powered humidifier hidden inside.

And besides the water mist, some muffled "thumping" sounds were also occasionally emitted from behind the medium, these "thumping" sounds were exactly the same as the sound Lin Yi had heard all the way, it was obvious that the source was on the clock tower.

Old Mo's figure disappeared behind that layer of medium, Lin Yi followed immediately upon seeing this.

The moment he crossed the medium, Lin Yi felt as if he had drilled into a distorted kaleidoscope, the surrounding space twisted in a way that he couldn't find the pattern, and complex noises began to ring in his ears, the "buzzing" sound made his head ache.

At the same time, he felt raindrops falling constantly, and in the blink of an eye, his hair was soaked.

The water flowing across his cheeks emitted a faint salty and damp smell, needless to say, it was mixed with seawater.

He began to suspect that he was falling into layers again, but the gradually recovering vision and Old Mo's back in his field of vision told him that there was no problem with the layers.

"So... this is the clock tower?"

The world in front of him kept shaking slightly, more like a fishing boat being blown east and west by the wind and waves than a clock tower, he was immediately drenched as soon as he poked his head out of the cabin.

But as he completely crossed that layer of nothingness, this feeling immediately disappeared, and his vision finally recovered.

This was a square "room", about the size of an ordinary family's living room, his feet and the surroundings were still the normal clock tower layout, three of the surrounding walls had carvings of some religious murals, and the last wall was cast with an exquisite totem made of unknown metal.

This totem looked very much like the pattern on the surface of a clock, some special points seemed to correspond to the positions of certain stars.

Around the totem, there were also twelve equally divided marks, with long and short hands in the center, the time on the hands was a little off, showing 10:42.

"10:42?!" Lin Yi was shocked, what was going on?!

He quickly looked down at the quartz watch, the time on the watch was 1:18.

He paused for a moment, and immediately understood - there was no time engraved around this clock, and this wall was transparent, the clock was inside the building, but it was for people outside the building to see.

The surface time of 1:18, if viewed from behind, would be 10:42.

The moment he realized that there was no problem with the time, Lin Yi breathed a long sigh of relief, even he himself didn't know why he was so nervous.

And just then, his eyes saw the situation outside through the glass on the surface of the clock tower.

He saw that the thick dark clouds had pressed down on the spire of the clock tower, covering the entire world like a soaked black cotton quilt, and the spire of the clock tower was the "tallest one when the sky falls"!

Water mist filled the entire space, even the wind in the square space was as uncomfortable as rapping, and what really gave the rhythm to this rap was the "thumping" sound!

"Thumping sound?!"

Lin Yi seemed to be reminded, and quickly looked towards the area where Old Mo had walked before, and only when he looked at it did he realize that there was a stone staircase leading to the top floor in the clock tower, those stone steps were built in the corner farthest from the clock tower's dial, and when his gaze followed the steps to the top floor, he was shocked!

The top floor of the clock tower is a typical Gothic style design - no, according to Old Mo's popular science, it should be said that this design is the ancestor of the typical Gothic architectural style.

It added a pointed tower top supported by four pillars to the square building with a huge clock face, the tower top was slender and sharp, like a sharp sword pointing to the sky.

And in the blank area of the four pillars, six circular pillars were built on each side.

These pillars were hollow designs, so wind and rain could blow in.

And in that hollow area surrounded by twenty-eight pillars, under that pointed dome, hung a huge ancient bell!