AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 156 - 71: The Vertical Ocean and Sky_2

Chapter 156: Chapter 71: The Vertical Ocean and Sky_2

It was as if the gods themselves were painting with the universe as their canvas, using a fiery gold lacquer to trace a circle on the blackness of the sky.

And this circle was the black sun itself.

Lin Yi felt it looked familiar, this black sun gave him a sense of déjà vu...

"Seems like I’ve seen it somewhere before?"

Before he could react, the sound of waves crashing against the rocks reached his ears again.

The noise came from behind him, mingling with the wind as it entered his ears...

"Waves?"

He was slightly startled, and from the corner of his eye, he began to catch sight of a preposterous and laughable scene.

He saw an ocean.

An ocean...

A goddamn vertical ocean.

"?!!!!"

A sense of cognition being brutally dragged across the ground assaulted his brain, leaving his mind completely blank at this moment.

He turned numbly to face the expanse of sea.

Right then and there, an extremely subversive abstract scene appeared before his eyes.

To his left was the ocean, and to his right was the sky.

The dividing line between the ocean and the sky laid out in front of him like a tumultuous wavy line.

"..."

"..."

He stared blankly at the scene, as if turned to stone.

He looked to his right.

The pitch-black sky was dominated by the black sun with its golden edges.

Then he looked to his left.

The pitch-black waters were smacking against the pitch-black rocks.

He looked down at his feet.

The rock face was full of scratches, black, and riddled with holes.

The rock face was covered with moss.

His subconscious had already recognized a problem, but he numbed himself with a dulled will, and his heart kept repeating that same phrase—

[I am inside the dormitory building.]

[I’m goddamn... inside the dormitory building!!!]

But obviously, he wasn’t, he was in an unknown world.

And he was far from normal.

Not the ordinary kind of abnormal, but freakishly abnormal.

The dividing line indeed was the divide between ocean and sky.

The ocean wasn’t actually standing up.

It was he who had turned sideways.

He was still standing on a cliff that was vertical to the horizon—defying gravity in a way, goddamn like Spider-Man.

He remembered now.

This place... he had indeed been here before.

It was while he was in the Gymnasium, gazing at the Ancient Lamp within the Swimming Hall, that he accidentally experienced a Phantom Vision.

In that vision, he stood at the edge of a cliff, with a world shrouded in mist before him and a sea stretching into the dense fog.

Then, beside the cliff was the figure of a Security Guard, carrying an Ancient Lamp.

And now... he had entered such a vision again.

But there was a subtle shift in location, he moved from atop the cliff to "on" the cliff.

Finally, his rational mind could no longer triumph over his perception, and he began to feel the full force of gravity bearing down on him.

He... was about to fall off the cliff!!!

When what he believed was no longer that he was inside the dormitory building, and illusion began to replace reality, truth and falsehood were no longer important, neither were visions and reality.

Everything started to twist, leaving only the most primitive "belief" anchoring his position!

But now, the anchor had problems.

His anchor, was set on the cliff!

As gravity started enveloping him, dragging him to tumble down below the cliff, the sensation of impending death entwined him like countless tentacles, eager to plunge him into oblivion at once.

"What do I do?! What should I do?!"

In the face of the breath of death, his brain began to work frantically once again.

He went over the "Dormitory Regulations" in his mind again and again, finding not a single one applicable to the current situation.

At the crucial moment, he thought of his homeroom teacher.

[An iron will is key to combating contamination.]

"Iron... will."

Lin Yi clung to it like a drowning person grasping at straws, a sharp glint suddenly bursting forth in his eyes.

"Yes! Will!!"

"I was just in the dormitory building!"

"Dormitory building, dormitory building, dormitory building..."

He desperately conjured up the scene "before coming here" in his mind!

He was in the dormitory building.

He had just walked past dorm 1412 with Wei Liang, about to reach dorms 1413 and 1414!

He kept reinforcing this cognition in his mind, constantly imagining himself in the corridor of the dormitory building.

"I am in the corridor! I am in the corridor! I am in the corridor..."

Gradually, the sense of gravity that had been enveloping him, actually began to dissipate somewhat.

"It works! This method works!!!"

He was ecstatic, nearly shouting out loud.

If a loosening of willpower led to phantom visions and these visions caused issues with anchoring, then why couldn’t he do the opposite by setting down anchors again in the original area?

But... anchoring needed a reference frame.

So he needed to find a new point of reference, an anchor that could distinguish between this strange place and the one he came from!

He kept consolidating his will––this was no longer a matter of attention, it was a contest of willpower!

Finally, something flashed in front of his eyes!

He caught this image—it seemed to be... a wall!

An ethereal wall!

White walls, brownish-yellow tones, with embossed patterns on it, that was...

It was the pattern in the dormitory building corridor!

It was the dormitory building’s wall!

The ethereal wall!

The ethereal dormitory building!

It was like an illusion!

"Dormitory building! Dormitory building!!"

Lin Yi roared inwardly, but with the fleeting vision of the dormitory building’s wall, that sensation of gravity being forced upon his body reemerged, slowly engulfing him!

The loosening of his perception of the current plane awakened the "anchor" based on that plane.

The steadily increasing gravity, the whimpering, icy sea breeze, accompanied by the thin mist, began to enfold him, these indistinguishable elements of falsehood and reality were fortifying his cognition, striving to push out the influence of the dormitory building in his mind!

At this moment, the dormitory building instead seemed like a phantom vision, the ethereal wall growing even more illusory, and the already vague patterns of the corridor began to blur even more!

Lin Yi clenched his teeth, but his will eventually began to falter.

Misfortunes followed one after another, and as his will was being suppressed, another cry that was completely alien to this world suddenly mixed into the sea breeze.

It was the second time he heard this anguished scream in the short of night, but this time, amplified by this world, it sounded even more terrifying.

It was as if an ancient age shrouded by thick fog was returning from the depths of the sea, and in a trance, as if a group of ancient and strange priests were waving their staffs, dancing around a bonfire, a dance emanating an heretical air, chanting a prayer which humans could not accurately pronounce, filled with an evil that made one’s blood run cold:

"I AvgruNnen av tåKe og jaGer forTapte Sjeler fanTome"

No will could resist such a voice, even one of steel felt as thin as a cicada’s wing in its presence!

This unreasonable voice drilled into Lin Yi’s brain like a drill, beginning to tear at his spirit.

"Dormitory building... Dormitory building... Dormitory building..."

Lin Yi’s mind held onto these last three words.

But even these final three words became incredibly unfamiliar under the onslaught of that voice...

Just as he was about to be enveloped by darkness, a golden-hued light cascaded down from a cliff.

It was like someone drowning in shallow waters who looked up to see sunlight penetrating the surface of the sea.

Warmth, strand by strand, thread by thread, as if reflecting the blue sky.

The source of the light seemed to be a lamp, an... Ancient Lamp.

That tower-like figure stood atop the cliff, holding the Ancient Lamp as he looked out at the ocean, like the final Watcher.

The light from the Ancient Lamp enveloped Lin Yi, and so the darkness dispersed, and so the eerie voice and sea breeze all vanished.

Lin Yi stared at him blankly, his mouth slightly open, but he couldn’t utter a word.

He looked down at Lin Yi, his eyes a red gold that was sunnier than the black sun.