What was she thinking?
How did she have so much confidence in her own judgment that she dared to rush into the thick haze that seemed to be impossible to tear apart?
Why didn't she mimic the grand prize before she took action? Was it too late to turn around now?
Lin Sanjiu felt as if her regret and fear had been twisted into a deafening volume. The impact caused her legs to wobble and she almost tripped. She turned around to look, but all she could see was the thick smog. She couldn't see any red shadows. Perhaps it was already too late. She was about to be buried under the sea of leaden fog, alone, Lin Sanjiu thought to herself.
In the thick fog, something scuttled across the ground, giving her a fright. She snapped out of her daze and broke out in a cold sweat.
It seemed to be a rat. It ran away in the blink of an eye. From the rustling sound, it didn't seem big. Soon, it stopped moving. Lin Sanjiu took two deep breaths and checked her limbs again. Under the pressure of her Will, her arms were hanging stiffly by her legs, and her feet were still in the air.
She couldn't muster up the courage to talk to "Mrs. Manas". When a person was immersed in the thick smog that almost blinded them, it would not take long before their sense of direction, distance, and even their grasp of the flow of time began to blur and disappear. How far had she run since she started running? Twenty meters? Or a thousand meters?
If the worst-case scenario were to happen, the red brick wall might still be on her right. She had to make sure that she was out of the range of the red brick wall. There was only one way.
She blew away the smog again and looked at the red brick wall again.
The cracks and damages seemed natural at first glance, but if she looked closely, she would see many humanoid figures waving their hands with their heads raised, eyes darting around, and postures comical. One by one, they spread out like a long dragon. There were probably hundreds of them. It was best not to look at them carefully. Once she was sure that the red wall was still there, she quickly turned around and continued running.
When Lin Sanjiu thought of this, she suddenly realized that she was holding the [Tornado Whip] in her hand again.
She hesitated for a moment. As long as she blew away the smog, she would no longer be followed by the humanoid figures on the red wall.
"Mrs. Manas?" Lin Sanjiu forced herself to call out.
There was not a single sound in his mind.
Sometimes, Lin Sanjiu wondered if the haze had already crept into her eyelids and eyeballs through the corners of her eyes and into her skull. That was why Mrs. Manas could not be seen.
Gritting her teeth, Lin Sanjiu withdrew her [Tornado Whip] and took a big step forward.
"Mrs. Manas?" she called out again.
"… There's someone in front," the female figure on the red brick wall replied after a pause.
Before Lin Sanjiu could process the meaning of the sentence, her body reacted first. Cold sweat and her pores stood on end. Her muscles tensed up. She raised her hand and conjured a whirlpool of air. "Who is it?" But the words got stuck in her throat. "Who is it?" she asked.
The smoke was blown away by the blast of the airflow. It was unknown how many layers of lead fog had been washed away, but a vague, round, black shadow gradually appeared — it was the back of a head.
Lin Sanjiu could only see a neck under the man's head. The woman's voice in her head suddenly became excited. "There's more. Look to the right." Lin Sanjiu could see that the man's body was completely covered by the thick fog, so she could only see a section of the man's neck.
She turned her head slowly.
Indeed, on her right, the shadow of another head appeared. The neck of the head was half turned, revealing a flat and swollen gray side of its face. It was staring at her silently from the corner of its eyes.
After a long period of silence, Lin Sanjiu realized that the person could no longer move.
The whirlpool of air whizzed from above and dispersed the smog. As more and more of the smog receded, Lin Sanjiu could see more clearly. It wasn't just in front of her and to her right. In fact, there were many skull-shaped silhouettes emerging from the smog. They were of different heights, and they were in groups of twos and threes. Under the skulls, there were many bodies, blocking Lin Sanjiu's path.
Some of the figures were looking up at the sky, some were looking down at the ground, and some, like the head on her right, had their heads half turned as if they were spying on the people behind them. Although the black shadows' arms were raised stiffly in the air, their legs were raised high, and their knees were bent exaggeratedly, none of them were really moving. Every black shadow was frozen on the ground, motionless, as if they were a group of sculptures by a modern artist in different poses.
Lin Sanjiu walked slowly toward the back of the silent crowd. She even held her breath subconsciously.
She could see the figures closest to her the most clearly. Every one of them should be human. Their hair was tangled and dirty, and their clothes were tattered and corroded. Their skin was no different from the color of the lead fog.
They were very close to each other, and their movements were exactly the same. All of them were crouching and lifting their knees, just like characters in a shadow puppet show. Lin Sanjiu noticed that all of them were carrying the same mountaineering backpack, which had been corroded to the point that its color was indistinguishable.
"Walk in the Clouds, Coin Making and Circulation Office."
The line of words was blurry and damaged, but the different mountaineering backpacks echoed each other from a distance, so it wasn't difficult to piece together the original content.
Lin Sanjiu stood for a few seconds amidst the dead silence and bustling crowd. She took out a small knife and with a gentle slash, cut open one of the backpacks. The man's body was slightly pulled by her strength, and after a moment of shaking, he regained his balance. Just a few pieces of skin fell off his face like hair falling off his face.
The items that fell from the hole in the backpack were obviously not protected by the backpack, so they were also corroded beyond recognition. One of the backpacks broke into pieces when it fell from the backpack. Countless black threads flew into the air and flew everywhere.
"So, this task force has been here all along."
"What should we do now? This is where you are heading," the woman with the red brick wall in Lin Sanjiu's mind said. She seemed to be taking pleasure in Lin Sanjiu's misfortune half-heartedly, "It seems like you can only walk through this crowd."
Lin Sanjiu swallowed her parched throat.
She lowered her head and looked at the frozen figure. "Is this person dead? Or what? Why is he in such a state? " Gao Yang raised his arm and went under it.
The more she walked forward, the denser the shadows became. It was as if this group of people had gathered here to listen to a concert. Their bodies twisted and turned along with the music. Lin Sanjiu tried her best not to touch any of them. Seeing that the lead fog was about to close up again, it became more difficult for her to walk forward.
Soon, the people that appeared next to her couldn't be considered as people anymore. This was originally a deserted place. Regardless of whether it was the posthumans or the duoluozhongs who had come down to complete their mission, or the various creatures that wandered in the smoky haze, they were all treated equally near the red brick wall. Regardless of their original form, they gradually stopped moving when they saw the human figure on the red brick wall stiffly and exaggeratedly moving forward.
The black shadows that stopped moving were like a pile of snow, accumulating more and more in the silence.
Slowly, Lin Sanjiu tried to walk forward between the black shadows. She could no longer see anything clearly. Before she took a step, she had to use the stick to test the ground before she could find an empty space. She had no doubt that if she hadn't noticed it earlier, she would have walked into the crowd of black shadows and become one of them.
"Mrs. Manas?" Lin Sanjiu called out to Mrs. Manas when she passed through the crowd of black shadows.
After a short moment of silence, Mrs. Manas's familiar and normal voice rang in her mind, "We are finally out!"
I didn't sleep well last night, so I'm sleepy. Even though I have finished writing this chapter, I don't know if it's good enough … I feel that when a person is sleepy, their linear focus will disappear. Their mind will be filled with unsolicited thoughts. Sometimes, I feel like the rope is going to come loose when I write a sentence. I have to tie it a few times before I can write a sentence logically. Anyway, this is the level of my human speech. You guys can make do with it.
(End of Chapter)
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