AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 86 - 40 The Nonexistent Path (5,200 words, with an additional 1,000 words!)

Chapter 86: Chapter 40 The Nonexistent Path (5,200 words, with an additional 1,000 words!)

Not until the Little Genius Sculpture turned to leave did Lin Yi, who fell seated on the ground, suddenly realize he had confused several issues:

"Was the clothing on the Little Genius Sculpture always a sculpture from the beginning?"

"If that’s the Little Genius Sculpture... then where is Liangzi?"

And the most crucial point was:

"Why did I always think it was Liangzi before the sculpture turned towards me, when it was clearly the sculpture of Little Genius?"

"Did this gust of sea wind interfere with my ’recognition’ of Liangzi?"

Lin Yi, fighting against the foul-smelling sea breeze, struggled to get up from the ground, while the Little Genius Sculpture still walked in front of him.

Lin Yi watched its figure from behind and suddenly thought that when he had mistaken it for Wei Liang, he hadn’t sensed much danger at all.

But when it turned around and faced him, that intense sense of crisis, along with the sea breeze, violently lashed at his face, chilling him to the bone.

"Where did Liangzi go?!" This question suddenly burst in his mind, and as he watched the sculpture of Little Genius, he suddenly realized that at the end of the path the sculpture was walking on... there was no gymnasium.

He was stunned.

"No gymnasium?"

He quickly turned around.

There was no Teaching Building behind him.

Not only was the Teaching Building missing, but even the signboard in front of the gymnasium had vanished.

There was nothing around him.

Only the wind.

The endless, foul-smelling sea breeze.

Blowing from an unknown direction in front of him, toward his back.

"Wait...!" He seemed to realize something and couldn’t help but survey his surroundings again.

Then, he swallowed hard, and his whole body froze in place.

There were no street lamps around him.

Not even a single lonely lamp post could be seen.

There were no lamp posts, no flowers, no trees, nothing.

In his entire world, there was only the sculpture of Little Genius and the unending gale, as if following the sculpture was the only correct path to take.

Just as he was bewildered, a deep rumble of thunder suddenly arose from the depths of the sky.

"Rumble——"

Lin Yi raised his head to look at the sky, where the cloud cover behind the sky was pressing down low, as if it might collapse at any moment.

The thick and dense cloud layers were oppressively dark, and a terrifying storm’s eye was slowly forming in the depths of the clouds, like the cold eye of heaven indifferent to everything below.

There was nothing below.

Only him.

Only Lin Yi.

Lin Yi, looking up at the sky, seemed to be locked in a gaze with the storm’s eye that was overlooking the earth.

The vast and profound vortex was distorting all light and shadow, twisting everything in the world that Lin Yi could see through his eyes.

The wind seemed to have lines, the earth seemed to have contours, and Lin Yi’s feet were on a twisted path.

It was like someone pulled out a thread from a tangled ball of yarn and tossed it aimlessly into the storm, where it trembled unceasingly with the tempest.

Lin Yi felt an intense dizziness as the dim world inexplicably turned into an irregular prism, with colorful lights and shadows filling his vision along the world’s lines, crowding his mind.

His head felt heavy and sunk, his limbs started to weaken, and uncontrollably, he fell to the ground.

He instinctively reached out to support his falling body when the earth suddenly caved in like a cotton candy.

His face smashed heavily onto the ground, and what originally felt like cotton candy suddenly punched back like a boxer’s fist, making his head see stars and causing him to hiss in pain.

But as soon as he inhaled, the foul-smelling sea breeze mixed with the decay filled his lungs, and he felt a strong urge to vomit, but the more he tried to vomit, the more the sea breeze he inhaled.

He felt he was suffocating in the sea breeze.

All he could hear was the wind in his ears.

He felt as though the world was moving away from him... no, it seemed as if he had already been abandoned by the world.

Only the sea breeze remained, foul-smelling, filthy, chaotic, decaying...

As he was about to lose consciousness, he heard a distant singing within the howling sea breeze, like a Sea Monster that had crashed onto the rocks along with the waves hitting the reefs, singing...

The sea was singing.

The abyss was calling.

Darkness... was embracing him.

"Boom——Crack——"

The thunder roared, and pure white light tore through the chaotic world, illuminating Lin Yi’s disheveled face.

The thunder in the sky lit up like ignited fire, and Lin Yi’s previously vacant eyes refocused.

The thunder shattered the darkness, jolting Lin Yi’s spirit.

He struggled to rise from the ground, then vigorously struck his own head, like a skilled craftsman at a 45-degree angle hitting an old-fashioned closed-circuit television.

The snowflake interference in the television disappeared, and the signal was restored.

Lin Yi’s thoughts also gradually cleared.

In the depths of the sky, the thunder rumbled, and the fierce wind still raged.

The storm’s eye became even more profound.

He had a premonition of something.

"It’s going to rain..."

This was the calm before the storm.

Lin Yi, struggling to stand in the sea breeze, reassessed his environment and had to force himself to accept a fact:

He had left the only road that led to the gymnasium; the road he was now on was the very one the gymnasium’s signboard emphasized as the one "without installed street lamps."

[The road leading to the gymnasium is the only one, equipped with street lamps (with lamp numbers), do not step on the road without installed street lamps.]

But clearly, "without installed street lamps" was just one of the criteria to judge whether one had stepped on "this road."