AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 335 - 156 The Human Sculpture Ascended the Stairs_2

Chapter 335: Chapter 156 The Human Sculpture Ascended the Stairs_2

And then Lin Yi witnessed a scene that seemed beyond belief: the calf area of the sculpture’s leg, made of what appeared to be a plaster-like material, began to show distinct muscular lines. It no longer resembled rigid plaster but started to feel fleshy, as if a body had been coated in special material and cosplayed.

The humanoid sculpture slightly flexed its leg and then, as though stepping onto a stage, its entire body emerged from the mist, crossed through the realm formed by the light, and entered the world illuminated by light from the dark, foggy one.

It was indeed a humanoid sculpture, its limbs still somewhat stiff, and after reaching the top of the stairs, it stopped moving.

It closed its eyes and remained motionless, and at that moment, it actually looked exactly like a sculpture.

[They are harmless under the light.]

Lin Yi felt as though he could hear Class Teacher-040’s words echoing in his ears, but at the same time, another voice overshadowed this sentence, [When you or the sculpture are within the range of light, you are safe, and the sculpture is harmless.]

This was a description of the safe state of the Art Building according to the Art Student Rules.

The key point was that one was safe under the light.

And this safety was even effective when the sculptures appeared!

Lin Yi’s heart trembled. His focus was on the fact that the rules and the words of Class Teacher-040 shared a commonality, showing that being [under the light] meant being in a relatively safe state, regardless of one’s status or identity.

This was one of the underlying logics of safety, which should also be helpful for Li Huiyuan.

So, he looked again at the statue that was almost in absolute stillness, and gradually he noticed something amiss—although the humanoid sculpture had reached the staircase covered by the corridor lights, tufts and strands of mist were eerily swirling around its body.

These mists, like those ribbon-like breaths that wrap around the peaks of snow-capped mountains, encircled the humanoid sculpture, and their ends were connected to the darkness behind, like umbilical cords to the fog deeply embedded in the shadows.

As the humanoid sculpture stood still, these mists were being stripped away from its body and were returning, at an extremely slow pace, back into the mist behind it.

And as the mist dissipated, the pure white plaster-like texture of the humanoid sculpture began to slowly fade, gradually turning from white to grayish-white, then from grayish-white to bluish-gray, and finally, it assumed the color of normal human skin...

With this change, the clothes on the humanoid sculpture also slowly transformed into normal attire.

By the time the mist was fully gone, what was in front of him no longer resembled a humanoid sculpture, but had become something Lin Yi was entirely familiar with—

’Non-human classmates’?!’

Lin Yi’s heart skipped a beat—what had he seen?

What had he seen?!

The humanoid sculpture... in front of him had transformed into a Non-human Classmate!!

"I—Shit!!"

Nothing could be more shocking than witnessing a transformation firsthand!

Like Ultraman’s human host shouting "hen-shin," Kamen Rider transforming before someone’s eyes, or a female Ultraman’s human host having her suit torn off in front of a monster... cough, that doesn’t count.

In short, Lin Yi was overwhelmed with shock, and a multitude of inspirations flashed through his mind. The surge of these ideas made his skin crawl and his hair stand on end.

"After the human sculpture entered the range of the light, did the light dispel the contamination within it, turning it into a somewhat less polluted ’non-human classmate’?"

He immediately restrained the impulse to think in this direction and instead gave himself a mental suggestion to dilute the negative impact this layer of cognition had on him.

["The human sculpture under the light is the non-human classmate,’ don’t question, don’t think, don’t overthink.]

He chanted this in his mind a few times, then took a deep breath and forcibly accepted this piece of information.

He understood that this kind of thing, which touched on the essence of transformation and involved the core logic of contamination, absolutely could not be thought about or reasoned in this place. Even a thought remotely related to it could not be allowed to arise.

So he "sealed" everything he had just seen in his mind, saving it for a detailed "frame-by-frame" analysis after he returned to the dorm, determined to thoroughly research the human sculpture, or rather, to overwrite cognition at that time.

Just like when he overwrote the cognition of the relationship between tomatoes and the heart.

After the human sculpture turned into a non-human classmate, it slowly opened its eyes.

Its eyes were normal at that time, but the expression was vacant and scattered, unable to focus at all, as if the sculpture’s eyes had no pupils, so even if they transformed into "people," they couldn’t see anything.

The non-human classmate walked with stiff steps, like a marionette climbing up the stairs. After reaching the corridor, it eventually pushed open the classroom door and walked in.

"Some of my classmates are these things?!"

The thought that some of the human sculptures in the phalanx of sculptures were his classmates from Class B, Group 2, made Lin Yi’s skin crawl uncontrollably, and goosebumps rose on his arms layer upon layer.

Lin Yi still didn’t overthink the transformation conditions between the human sculpture and the non-human classmate, but he pondered one thing—if the human sculpture turned into a non-human classmate under the light, then could it be assumed that when the layer collapsed and the mist returned, the non-human classmates would turn back into human sculptures?

That is to say...

After the classroom lights went out and the mist poured in from outside, the non-human classmates absorbed it and transformed back into human sculptures, then they started to slaughter the Experience Students who saw them and had unstable cognition?

Because Experience Students lacked the Art Department Rules cognition, they had no understanding of what a "sculpture" was, let alone what kind of cognitive shock seeing a moving sculpture would cause.

Once questions like "Is that a moving sculpture or someone dressed as a sculpture?" and "Aren’t all sculptures in the Art Building supposed to be half-sculptures? So am I in the Teaching Building or the Art Building now?" emerged in the Experience Students’ minds, their cognition would be compromised. If the mist representing contamination then invaded their bodies, the human sculptures would be able to sense their location.

And once the Experience Students made eye contact with them, the sculptures could initiate Void Target Search and kill them.

And after the Experience Students were killed... because the contamination still remained in the bodies, would they turn into those white plaster-like substances under the sunlight?

Hence, after being killed, would Experience Students become part of the Nocturnal species, or turn into non-human classmates?

Li Huiyuan beside him was still discussing the details of going to the cafeteria for dinner with Class Teacher-040, oblivious to the fact that the temperature around Lin Yi was slowly dropping.

Lin Yi certainly exercised self-restraint, but he underestimated the "contamination value" of this piece of information and his own inspiration, and so, uncontrollably, he thought on this level...