AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 278 - 129 Deception

Chapter 278: Chapter 129 Deception

"Li Huiyuan, can you come out on your own?" Lin Yi asked from outside the door.

Inside the women’s restroom, Li Huiyuan curled up in the corner, tightly hugging her knees. Only when she heard Lin Yi’s words did she lift her head buried in her knees. The starfire-like, flickering golden flames in her eyes slowly faded away...

She struggled to get up from the ground and then shakily walked toward the door. Upon seeing Lin Yi, a sense of safety from the arrival of a teammate surged in her subconscious. She didn’t care whether he was real or fake, and she staggered over to him.

Lin Yi immediately observed her at lightning speed, confirming that he didn’t feel any aversion or sense of crisis coming from her before he started to believe her identity.

But it wasn’t until Li Huiyuan came out of the restroom and stepped into the sunlight-bathed corridor, without exhibiting any abnormal behavior, that Lin Yi was fully convinced that she was indeed the real Li Huiyuan. Only then did he carefully support her, asking with concern, "What happened?"

Li Huiyuan didn’t realize that Lin Yi had checked her for a counterfeit mark in the few steps it took her to walk. Only after feeling the slight warmth from the sunlight did her emotions slowly begin to stabilize, and then she said, "Classmate Lin, I, I... I think I just saw a ghost!"

"Slow down, what exactly happened?" Lin Yi asked.

Li Huiyuan looked fearfully in the direction of the women’s restroom: "I... I had just finished using the toilet and went out to wash my hands, and after washing them I sorted my clothes out in front of the mirror, but the me in the mirror didn’t move at all..."

"I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I subconsciously wanted to take a closer look. Then, I saw it open its mouth as if it was trying to say something, but no sound came out..."

"My scalp went numb at that moment. At first, I thought it was the mirror, but it turned out to be a person who looked exactly like me!"

"It was identical to me, and it was standing right in front of me! No, there was actually a window between it and me! Right, it was looking at me through the window, trying to tell me something!"

Li Huiyuan held herself tightly, recalling the scene from before. The terror in her heart surged anew, as if the darkness was about to engulf her.

"No, no, no... I... it seems I heard it say something...?"

All of a sudden, Li Huiyuan’s expression turned haunted, as if a neurotic person was experiencing auditory hallucinations. She hesitated, focusing her gaze on the emptiness before her, as if listening to something...

"’I am Li Huiyuan...’ ’I am Li Huiyuan...’ it... it was saying that, then, who am I, who am I?!"

"No, I am Li Huiyuan! I am the real Li Huiyuan!!!"

Suddenly, she showed an expression of pain, as if she had suddenly heard a piercing, shrill sound in her ears, or as if she no longer wanted to hear a certain voice, bowing her head and curling up to cover her ears!

"Li Huiyuan!" Lin Yi hurriedly helped Li Huiyuan up, but as his hands touched her shoulders, an ice-cold chill rushed straight from Li Huiyuan’s shoulders into the palm of Lin Yi’s hand.

It spread a cold frost on Lin Yi’s palm instantly, like a cold wave from Siberia passing through vast plains and pouring into the mountains.

’Damn it!’ Two words flashed through Lin Yi’s mind.

It wasn’t him who was in trouble, but Li Huiyuan!

Extreme coldness, the body becoming like a chunk of ice, was one of the manifestations of layer collapse!

"Li Huiyuan! Li Huiyuan!" He kept calling out Li Huiyuan’s name, but her expression became increasingly pained and struggled as if she couldn’t hear his voice at all.

’The sun!’ Lin Yi looked back at the sky, where the fierce sun shone down from the clear sky above. The place they were in was like a warm room, but even so, Li Huiyuan remained like a block of ice, unable to melt, as if all warmth could not reach beneath the ice to the deep sea.

’Student ID card...?!’

’Damn it! She doesn’t have an "Identity Credential," so even under the sun, she doesn’t have enough "safe status"!’

’This is bad!’

He realized that he couldn’t even move Li Huiyuan; at this moment, her body was becoming hard and heavy like stone as if she was truly transforming into a stone in the snow...

At least, that was how Lin Yi felt!

’How can I pull her out of this decline?’

Lin Yi began to recall Li Huiyuan’s previous words. In this critical moment, his mind was extraordinarily active, and he immediately found the root of the problem.

[She is Li Huiyuan, so who am I?]

’Doubt?’ He realized she had fallen into doubt about her own identity!

’Many regulations in the student handbook require holding the student ID card in hand and confidently keeping one’s name and student number in mind!’

’I got it! The reason for doing that is to remind oneself "I have a student ID card," and with that foundation, combined with firm recognition, one can anchor their identity!’

’But Li Huiyuan has lost her student ID card, and in every way, she doesn’t meet the conditions necessary for self-anchoring!’

’Her recognition of her own identity is collapsing!’

’"Identity Credential," "Identity Credential"...’ Lin Yi racked his brains for a solution, and a glimmer from the corner of his eye suddenly caught sight of Wei Liang’s foot.

The moment he saw Wei Liang, his mind exploded with an idea!