AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 193 - 89 Dormitory Building Corridor and Cliff_2

Chapter 193: Chapter 89 Dormitory Building Corridor and Cliff_2

Now, the stairwell had become a dormitory, seemingly a random one at that.

In other words, last night, Mao Feiyang had pushed open the door of Dormitory "2820" and arrived at the dormitory building, but once he closed the door, he had severed the connection with the stairwell, and the world behind the door reverted to Dormitory "2820."

"This...?!" Lin Yi’s scalp tingled.

"What on earth is going on?" Mao Feiyang trembled uncontrollably, "What happened to the ’Artistic Journey’ we were promised?"

His voice was trembling and weak; he felt a sense of emptiness deep inside.

Gradually, dense mist began to spread from nowhere, slowly engulfing Mao Feiyang’s body.

Lin Yi knew he couldn’t change anything, but he was still frantic with anxiety, even though he "knew the future" and knew that Mao Feiyang would eventually appear in the castle; the unknown process still filled him with dread.

"Don’t be scared... don’t be scared... I will meet the Art Teacher, I will meet the Art Teacher..." Mao Feiyang murmured to himself.

Just then, in the fog-shrouded corridor, the sound of door locks turning suddenly arose.

"Click! Click! Click..."

The lock of Dormitory "2820" began to turn, that of Dormitory "2819" followed, then "2818," "2817"...

Before long, it seemed like all the locks were turning, but not a single door opened completely.

"Bang! Bang bang bang!! Bang bang bang!!!"

There came a low roar from inside the dorm rooms, as if people were furious and powerless because they couldn’t open the doors.

"Bang bang bang!"

"Bang bang bang!"

The people inside were banging on the dormitory doors like mad, but the sturdy doors didn’t budge an inch.

The loud noises terrified Mao Feiyang; his lips quivered and he didn’t dare to move, like a little boy shuddering in fear upon hearing thunder on a rainy night.

Suddenly, in the dim corridor filled with mist, a breeze arose from nowhere...

The cold wind was so subtle, like an unexpected draft in a cave, that swirled the mist past Mao Feiyang’s arms, giving off a sensation as if spirits were extinguishing lamps in the dead of night.

Mao Feiyang’s arm hairs bristled sharply, and soon he heard a "drip-drop, drip-drop" sound; droplets from the corridor’s ceiling were falling, splashing little droplets of water around him.

He suddenly felt his pants getting wet, and subconsciously he reached down to touch the ground.

His body stiffened suddenly.

His hand found a puddle, no, a patch of water...

The floor where he had been crouching now had a watery stain that had appeared from who knows when.

The whole corridor was covered with a thin layer of water, not deep enough to submerge a shoe sole, but below it were slippery stones covered with moss.

It was hard to imagine that this place was the corridor of a dormitory building; it more closely resembled a small stream beside a village or a set of steps often submerged by river water on a riverbank.

Mao Feiyang mustered his courage to wave his hand through the mist only to find that he was surrounded by a vast expanse of white.

He touched the floor beneath him again, becoming more and more confused about his recognition of this world.

The mist seemed to have submerged the entire world; had not Mao Feiyang’s subconscious anchored himself in the corridor of the dormitory building, he wouldn’t have known where he would end up.

"Where am I...?" But Mao Feiyang murmured to himself, quickly doubting his own position.

Mao Feiyang’s words reached the ears of Lin Yi, who viewed things from the first-person perspective, startling him greatly.

Lin Yi knew that once the recognition became unclear in an abnormal environment, the layer of reality he was in would start to fall, but of course, Mao Feiyang did not know any of this.

Having experienced the abrupt transition through three completely different environments in the stairwell, Mao Feiyang had no faith at all in the normalcy of his surroundings.

The only thought that sustained him was a singular one—he would meet the Art Teacher and embark on an Artistic Journey.

"Artistic Journey", this was his last retreat.

Lin Yi touched the dampness beneath him, felt the moss-covered stones, and then calmed his heart to observe this world submerged in mist.

His mind spun rapidly, and worlds that appeared in his Phantom Vision flashed through his consciousness, attempting to find one that "matched" with this one.

But he found no match.

Beneath the mist was an even deeper mist, and the only clue lay in the moss soaked in water.

"Moss...?"

He squinted his eyes, feeling the moss in the water through Mao Feiyang’s touch.

An exceedingly clear sensation, transmitted to Lin Yi through Mao Feiyang’s palms.

For a moment, he had the illusion of Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream.

How do I know if Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, or if the butterfly dreamed it was Zhuang Zhou?

In the dream that is me, how can I know it is truly my dream?

It was then that he caught some other sounds amidst the wind...

"Whoosh...whoosh...whoosh..."

The sound of the wind dancing in the waves, the echo of a whistle swirling in the wind, and some kind of song from a distant place...

"It’s... the ocean!"

[If you hear the sound of the wind, waves, whistles, or any kind of song that reminds you of the ocean, do not doubt your hearing. Instead, tell yourself with the firmest belief: ’This is the Dormitory’s cure for insomnia’, and try not to think too much in that direction.] The "Special Circumstances" version of the Dormitory rules exploded into Lin Yi’s mind.

"The ocean, the wind, the mist, the singing... and the moss!"

Elements merged in Lin Yi’s mind, gradually weaving together into a terrifying conjecture.

"Could this be... that cliff?!"

He had once hallucinated in the Dormitory building’s hallway, seeing himself standing vertically on the steep cliff wall, level with the horizon.

So to say... does the Dormitory building’s hallway, in terms of layers, have a certain "fall" relationship with the world where the cliff is located?

If there’s a critical point of falling between two layers, then depending on where their core factor lies, the key is whether they’ve anchored themselves on the positive or negative side of the Y-axis!

The mist began to shimmer with eerie sounds such as the wind, suggesting a nightmare was nigh. Whispers from another world, not belonging to the campus but to an infinite sea of suffering, seemed to drift from an unfathomable depth.

In a daze, Lin Yi seemed to witness an ancient and murky epoch within the harrowing mist.

On a solitary island deep in the ocean, a group of primitive people wearing bizarre bone masks adorned with feathers, wielding staves made of bones, danced a grotesque and disjointed dance around a huge bonfire under the dark night.

An indescribable, evil-laden, spine-chilling chant floated around like ghosts, impossible for a human to accurately produce:

"I AvgruNnen av tåKe og jaGer forTapte Sjeler fanTome"

No creature’s will could resist such a sound, just the syllables alone could chill to the bone, reminding one of their own insignificance and vulnerability. Mao Feiyang felt as though his very soul was being torn to shreds.

Pain, fear, cold, insignificance, death...

Negative emotions poured from Mao Feiyang onto Lin Yi, making him empathetically fall once again into the boundless storm of suffering...

Lin Yi painfully grasped "his" own hair, wanting to scream out in agony, but his throat felt corked, stifling any sound, and he could only emit a "woo woo woo" as his face turned the color of liver.

In a trance, Lin Yi’s twisted and blurred vision saw shadow after shadow of illusion. It was unclear whether these were just ghostly apparitions formed by the layering fog or the manifestation of some indescribable creatures...

These shadows seemed like souls lost in the abyss and shadows.