AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 570 - 258 "Sorry, time’s up.

Chapter 570: Chapter 258 "Sorry, time’s up.

[Take us with you... Lin Yi...]

[Hahaha...]

[Let’s go... together... together...]

[Hehe...]

"Go?"

I was going to leave, so if you have the ability, try and stop me.

Lin Yi wasn’t absolutely certain that this plan would work, but he had more than eighty percent confidence it could succeed.

And in this place, having more than fifty percent confidence was extremely precious!

He first crouched on the flowing steps, then adjusted his breathing and mindset properly before taking a look at the time.

10:43.

Determination flashed in his eyes, and slowly, he stood up straight against the fierce wind, standing firm as a rock and gradually adapting to the sensation of being eroded by the wind, then started taking steps up the staircase!

"Pff!"

With each step he took, a spray of water splashed beneath his feet.

His expression unchanged, he continued ascending the stairs.

Each step was extremely difficult, but he had no intention of considering stopping, maintaining a rhythm of one breath for each step up.

[Lin Yi...]

[Don’t waste your effort... You can’t escape... can’t escape...]

[Hehehe...]

[Take us with you... together... together...]

[Hehe...]

The sound of the "light and clanging" chains in the wind constantly struck an eerie rhythm, blending with those demonic calls, as if a song designed to disturb the mind, incessantly drilled into Lin Yi’s ears...

"You think you can use me?! Dream on! Dream on!" Lin Yi clenched his teeth hard, maintaining his rhythm and never stopping as he climbed.

But the steps seemed endless, the end in the distance was just a vague white dot, and the wind kept surging in, flooding the place like sea water.

"Thirty-six!"

...

"Seventy-eight!"

...

With every step Lin Yi took, he silently counted in his mind. Sweat had drenched his back, yet the clothes on his chest were long blown dry by the wind. The fierce gale was like an invisible pair of hands that seemed to be stretching his body...

"Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninet—nine..."

With a heavy step, the ninety-ninth, Lin Yi paused to catch his breath.

He glanced at his watch.

10:48.

"Time is just right..." he murmured to himself.

Then, he took another look at his surroundings.

"Sorry, time’s up..." Lin Yi sneered inwardly, "A hundred steps... five minutes..."

"Farewell."

He silently lifted his foot, the endless staircase still ahead of him, the white blur seemingly still at the horizon’s end, yet a confident smile emerged at the corners of Lin Yi’s mouth.

The hundredth step.

He silently counted in his heart, looked down at his feet, and as his gaze followed his shoes, moving from the ninety-ninth step, it landed on the hundredth step.

"Tap."

A firm step, and as the shoe touched the ground, it didn’t kick up any spray of water.

The step underfoot was perfectly normal, the texture of the Student Passage’s steps, without any uneven or slippery surfaces, no running water atop, no gale in front of him, no sound of wind in his ears, and no more of those bizarre and malevolent calls...

He slowly raised his head, Wei Liang’s back right there as if nothing had happened, seemingly oblivious to the ordeal.

But at this moment, he had already left the Student Passage, arriving in the area in front of the Student Cafeteria.

Everything was back to normal, the recent events seeming like a nightmare, the only proof that it was not a dream his soaked shoes and a hairstyle blown into a reverse faux-hawk by the wind.

Lin Yi quickly sat down by the wall, feeling an overwhelming joy, yet without any strength left to express it.

He succeeded!

He truly did it!

Without using any existing anchors, he had escaped from that bizarre layer!

"My idea was indeed correct!"

"’Cognition’ is the underlying logic of anchors! And the most stable anchor is not just ’anchoring one’s self-awareness,’ but even more so, ’anchoring the cognition of the campus area’!"

What was going on here?

The reason lay in the fact that Lin Yi, who could only see Wei Liang’s back, remembered something Wei Liang said when he carried him out of the Student Passage among the mist for the first time—

["One hundred steps, no more, no less!"]

And that time, he had checked the time before entering and after leaving the Student Passage!

A total duration... just over four minutes!

With these two conditions, Lin Yi postulated the "cognition" that "there are a total of 100 steps in the Student Passage, maintaining a normal pace should allow passage, taking about four minutes."

Under such circumstances, facing this nearly infinitely long trap layer, if one only chased after the white light of the exit, then no matter how long one walked until dead, that white light would remain elusive as a mirage.

And if one tried to anchor oneself back with information like "My name is Lin Yi, my student ID is X0230506098, I am in the cafeteria’s Student Passage" ... firstly, it was uncertain whether one could return before one’s identity was taken, and whether one could really dig oneself out of such a deep layer; secondly, even if one did return, it was doubtful whether it would be "oneself."

In such an environment, Lin Yi could only rely on this "unique anchor point" that seemed to work solely for himself.