When Lin Sanjiu passed through the "Hesitation Zone", she did not hesitate.
Her eyes were fixed on the gate of the second wall, and her steps were swift. With every step she took, everything around her seemed to recede into the distance. Gradually, all that was left was the Palace of Enchantment and the person in its belly.
Now, she had another reason to enter the palace, although she had no idea what that reason was.
Was it to help Puppeteer get the medicine for regret? Was it to help him get the medicine for regret? Or was it to persuade him not to get the medicine for regret?
Before Lin Sanjiu stepped into the second gate, she suddenly felt something in her heart. It was as if a light and thin feather had brushed past her nerve endings. The feeling came so suddenly that she did not even have time to stop in her tracks. She turned around and saw two paper cranes swooping down from the sky one after another. They landed in the wide "Hesitation Zone".
"Are they the paper cranes I sent out?
From the looks of it, the paper cranes had already circled around the Grand Palace of Confusion … As they were too far away, Lin Sanjiu couldn't hear whether the affected paper cranes had played her "Where are you?" or not. While she was hesitating, she heard her mentor shout, "Watch out!"
Lin Sanjiu was startled. She quickly turned around and realized that she was about to fall into a river when she was supposed to step into the gate. Both she and her mentor stopped in their tracks. The second gate had disappeared, and their backs bumped into the seemingly endless wall behind them.
"Where did this river come from?" Lin Sanjiu murmured, "It wasn't there just now …"
Great rough blocks of stone were heaped out of the ground, and close to the tips of her feet was a man-made canal; on the other side of the canal were the ruins of an enormous courtyard.
The statue of a naked woman holding a water bottle in the middle of the pool was now badly mutilated and full of cracks. Large clumps of weeds and shrubs grew in the cracks between the bricks, the pool, and the ground. Dark green vines coiled around the broken marble pillars, giving the place a strange sense of savagery and vitality.
"We should cross the river now, right?" Her mentor said, "Even though the courtyard looks like it has legs …"
The old man from the Pocket Dimension had said that each area of the Grand Palace of Confusion was filled with different "contents". He called them "entertainment items", but Lin Sanjiu secretly called them "dumpling filling pocket dimensions". The courtyard on the other side of the river seemed to be one of the "entertainment items".
The river flowed along the outer wall, leaving only a space of about twenty centimeters between each man and his belongings. In the gap between the wall and the river, their backs were pressed against the wall, and they could not even straighten their legs. They had to move sideways, step by step, to a stone bridge.
Lin Sanjiu lowered her head to look at the dark green river and smiled bitterly.
Even though she had just walked in, the sweater thread was no longer pulled backward. Instead, it stretched across the river and disappeared into the depths of the courtyard on the other side of the river. It was as if she had turned around without even realizing it.
It was no wonder that everyone who came in would be trapped here.
Even though the old man had said that it was easy to leave the Grand Palace of Confusion — she just had to find her way out — the moment she stepped in, she had already lost the path she had come from. If it weren't for the sweater thread, she wouldn't even know how to get out of the palace.
Standing on the bridge, Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath.
"Puppeteer —"
His loud shout reverberated in the air above the palace, startling even the instructors beside him.
"Bo — si — mi — ya —"
Lin Sanjiu heard her voice echoing into the distance and dissipating in the wind, but there was no response. She was not surprised. She would be surprised if she could call her friends back with just a shout.
"Alright," Lin Sanjiu grumbled, "It's a waste not to try anyway. What if it works?"
"Do you want to enter the courtyard now?" the mentor asked worriedly.
"I'm here to look for someone, not to challenge the palace …" Lin Sanjiu looked at the river and rummaged through her card deck. She fished out a combat cane from the Munitions Factory. She had no idea when Silvan had given it to her.
The river was very close to the city wall and stretched out on both sides. Lin Sanjiu couldn't see the end of it. If she could think of a way through the river, she might be able to avoid the "amusement park" and preserve her strength as much as possible.
"Do you plan to walk through the river instead of going ashore?" the mentor asked as he watched her poke the river.
"It would be best if we could walk around the palace along the river. This river doesn't seem to be one of the attractions," Lin Sanjiu said as she stared at the river, "After we find the person, we will walk along the sweater line and walk out of the palace. Even though I don't have a boat, if the river is a route, we should be able to think of a way. We can build a raft, right? "
Lin Sanjiu touched the cane lightly, and a few ripples appeared on the surface of the river. There seemed to be nothing strange under the water, and the tip of the cane was only wet.
"Maybe..."
The mentor tugged at the corner of her shirt.
"What's wrong?" Lin Sanjiu turned around and asked.
The mentor's eyes were not on her. His mouth was half open as he stared at the courtyard. Lin Sanjiu followed his gaze and was stunned.
The courtyard had changed in just a few seconds when she lowered her head and touched the river.
What she saw before was a dilapidated wall, but now, it was as if time had reversed. The stone pillars were growing back, the cracks were mending, the plaster was regaining its color, and the broken edges were smoother. The collapsed pillars and broken flower beds were standing up one after another. However, this wasn't what shocked Lin Sanjiu.
She didn't know when, but a group of white statues had appeared in a large courtyard.
There was a statue of a young man with curly hair, a majestic statue of a man with a mane and the upper body of a fish, and a statue of a woman wearing a long dress with a water bottle on her head. Every statue was so tall that Lin Sanjiu couldn't even reach their calves. She had to tilt her head up to see the faces of the statues. Every statue had the same white eyes. They had no skin color and no pupils.
However, this didn't mean that they were expressionless.
At that moment, almost every statue was staring at Lin Sanjiu with their empty eyes. It was as if an invisible hand was sculpting their faces into bigger and bigger smiles. They were sculpting their nostrils and their snow-white, excited eyes.
"That's great."
A shrill, joyful voice came from the mouth of a child-like statue. Although it was a statue of a child, it was at least twice as tall as Lin Sanjiu. If it closed its arms, it could pull both Lin Sanjiu and her mentor into its embrace.
"Finally, there's someone to play hide-and-seek with us!"
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