AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 666 - 304: Sunken Ship, Castle, The Sea, and... Night Watchman - Part 2

Chapter 666: Chapter 304: Sunken Ship, Castle, The Sea, and... Night Watchman - Part 2

Just with this one glance, Lin Yi felt as if he were being melted away. He tried to turn his head aside but found that he had completely no control over his body.

After a few seconds of eye contact, Lin Yi felt that he could no longer see anything else. His eyes seemed to only contain the Night Watchman’s sun-like eyes.

Suddenly, the Night Watchman’s tightly pressed and slightly downturned lips finally relaxed, and he slowly began to speak. His voice was deep, thick, and commanding, like the resonance of an ancient bell echoing through the ages, breaking through the confines of time and space, forming some sort of terrifying caution, shattering waves and storms, sounding across the Gray Mist Sea:

"「De som jager lyset i tåke blir til slutt fantomer!」"

He raised the Ancient Lamp, and with it, thunder tore through the night sky.

「Boom—Crack!!!」

It felt as if the world was being torn apart, with boundless brilliance flooding in like a deluge.

In Lin Yi’s "shot," he felt like his face was hit by a wave of glaring light beams, turning the whole world into a blinding white...

"Lin Yi... Lin Yi..."

"Lin Yi!"

He felt someone shaking his shoulders.

As the white light faded, his vision gradually returned.

He saw the illuminated water surface and the tiles, the soft light from the incandescent lamps, and a buoy close at hand.

The voices became clearer and clearer. He turned his head and saw Li Huiyuan’s face filled with concern.

The moment he saw Li Huiyuan, an expression of immense joy mixed with tears appeared on her face. A layer of mist swirled under her swimming goggles, unclear whether it was from the water or tears welling up in her eyes.

She excitedly shouted to someone nearby, "Boss Boss, Lin Yi has come back to his senses!"

「Boss?」Lin Yi was momentarily stunned, then realized that at some point, the Boss had already made his way to the edge of the pool near him.

Seeing him regain his senses, the Boss’s gaze immediately returned to its usual cool detachment, and the remaining concern dissipated entirely.

"「Ashes」has indeed been cleared in an instant, but you need to explain to me exactly what happened this time." The Boss said coldly from the shore, his cold eyes filled with undeniable intent.

Li Huiyuan also spoke up, "Yeah, Lin Yi, I just finished telling you not to go to the deep end, but why did you swim over here with just a flick of the tail? I tried to stop you, but you pushed me away!"

Her tone was very dissatisfied but still carried a hint of worry. As she spoke, she rubbed her... ahem, chest.

Lin Yi’s eyebrows involuntarily twitched.

Could it be...?

It can’t be, right...?

I... don’t remember anything at all!

But he didn’t have the luxury to think about these things. Looking at the buoy in front of him, he immediately fell silent.

He was indeed in front of the buoy.

But... he was not on the shallow side, rather, he had come to the deep end!

Li Huiyuan said, "You suddenly dived down, and I waited for a while but didn’t see you come up. When I was about to go down and check on you, you suddenly popped up from the water, but you had crossed the buoy to the other side of the deep end. You were motionless, like you lost your soul, I thought you were bewitched!"

"I..." Lin Yi’s gaze flickered, the scenes from just before flashed through his mind.

The Phantom Vision of the sunken ship...

The Phantom Vision of the drowned castle corridor...

The Phantom Vision of the sea shrouded in storms and fog...

And the... direct Phantom Vision of the Night Watchman’s eyes...

And somehow, his intuition told him that it wasn’t his own strength that had pulled him out of the Phantom Vision, but the Night Watchman who had shattered the Phantom Vision and brought him back to reality.

Or rather, it was because he had made eye contact with the Night Watchman in the Phantom Vision that all the Phantom Visions around him vanished into thin air.

Then the question arises—「The sunken ship, the castle, the ocean... what exactly are they all about?」

"Could it be a multi-layered dream, like nested illusions similar to those in ’Inception’?"

"And that abyss! And the persistent phantom figure shackled by chains in the abyss!"

"Except for the last vision of the sea where I didn’t hear the sound of chains, it seems like the sound permeates through the rest of the layers of illusion!"

Another key issue is, what exactly is going on with him?

Why are the phantom visions becoming more frequent and... appearing so smoothly, without any warning?

Moreover, in the most recent vision, he was clearly aware that it was an illusion, but it was like his spirit was under some sort of hard control, as if an invisible force was pressing him into the illusion!

"Could it be... the swimming pool?"

"Hey hey hey, are you alright? I’ve been talking to you, why are you zoning out?" Li Huiyuan waved her hand in front of him, again and again.

Lin Yi quickly came back to his senses.

The boss by the poolside spoke up, "If there’s nothing wrong, come out of the water for now."

Lin Yi then climbed out of the pool and looked back at the swimming pool with lingering fear.

The water was very calm with only slight ripples.

The surface of the water reflected the broken incandescent light and some LED lights, but there was no feeling of strangeness or discomfort, as if nothing had happened.

"Boss, did you just say... all the ’Ashes’ inside me are gone?" Lin Yi looked towards the boss.

Hey hey hey, do you have a network delay or something? What about all the things I’ve been saying to you? Why don’t you respond to me, is your mind only on what the boss says? Li Huiyuan stood on the side with her hands on her hips, of course, she didn’t actually say that out loud.

Priorities—she could still tell them apart, so she sent all those words in glances, though naturally, Lin Yi was unable to decipher them.

"That’s right, it is a very strange phenomenon," the boss said. "Even though only a tenth of the ’Ashes’ in your body remains, the last part shouldn’t have been absorbed completely all at once. What did you do?"

"Could it really be related to the Night Watchman?" Lin Yi muttered to himself.

"Night Watchman?" The boss narrowed his eyes, "What’s going on?"

Lin Yi explained the content of the brand-new version of the phantom vision he had just experienced, including the final eye contact.

"Maybe it’s because of that eye contact," Lin Yi said.

The boss hesitated, "Illusion... after all, is an illusion, those things are reflections of your own mind, how can they be effective?"

Lin Yi was stumped.

Suddenly, he kind of wished Young Master Tian was here.

With such a question, if Tian Bufan were here, he would probably be able to come up with a more reasonable speculation.

But his own speculation could only reach this point, "Could it be... because of some channel’s position, I really made eye contact with the Night Watchman on some level?"

The boss looked a bit uneasy, "I’ve never heard of such an operation... have you had such an experience before?"

"Uh... this is the first time," Lin Yi admitted honestly.

The boss fell silent.

After a while, she shook her head slightly, "Then it doesn’t serve as a reference. However, if this happens again in the future, you could take note and look for a pattern."

"If it really works like that, it might become your most powerful lifesaving trump card."

"Alright... I’ll pay attention," Lin Yi scratched his head, although what the boss said tempted him greatly, the whole thing was far from certain, and even if it was true, it was still too random.

"And you..." the boss was speaking when her body suddenly paused without reason, and the words at the tip of her tongue also stopped abruptly.

The boss seemed to sense something and cursed softly, "Not good!"

"What’s..." Lin Yi was about to ask when his heart seemed to be viciously squeezed, causing his entire body to shudder!

He saw that, at some point, a layer... of mist had appeared on the surface of the pool!