A posthuman of average combat ability surviving in the Twelve Worlds Centrum until now must have their own methods. The moment the tour guide realized that the voice didn't come from Lin Sanjiu's mouth, she grabbed the window ledge and was about to leap out.
Lin Sanjiu reacted quickly. Using the Higher Consciousness coiled around the guide's waist, she yanked her back just in time.
In her panic, the tour guide seemed to forget about the Higher Consciousness, likely thinking that whatever was grabbing her wasn't anything good—or perhaps it truly wasn't anything good. When she turned back abruptly, her face was as pale as a ghost. Lin Sanjiu quickly shushed her, glancing toward the window and shaking her head.
"Being caught by that organization is better than—"
The tour guide's eyes widened. She was forming words with her breath, but before she could finish, Lin Sanjiu shook her head again.
Perhaps the seriousness on Lin Sanjiu's face made the tour guide realize the gravity of the situation.
"Wh-what's going on?" she whispered, casting a few quick glances out the window.
"I think maybe we should stay and see what's happening," Lin Sanjiu's steady voice sounded from behind her. "I've encountered a similar situation before; it's very much like this..."
"You know what's going on?" The tour guide patted her waist twice, glaring back at her and whispering, "If you're going to talk, just talk—don't hold onto me—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
Lin Sanjiu's mouth was tightly closed; the voice that sounded like hers had also ceased. She was continuously shaking her head at the tour guide. The message was clear: the person speaking earlier wasn't her.
This time, when she actually opened her mouth to speak, a look of realization appeared on the tour guide's face. When Lin Sanjiu spoke, her breath, volume, and tone were affected—slightly trembling and urgent—completely unlike the steady voice from before.
"It wasn't me... Someone here can mimic my voice." She tried to lower her voice. "Now that we're thinking of jumping out, I'm afraid it's already too late."
"Why?"
"The structure of each floor is the same, right?" Lin Sanjiu gestured toward the window with her mouth. "What I mean is, when we jumped down from above, I noticed that on this side of the building, there's an even row of windows on every floor, correct?"
"So... so what?" the tour guide said, her golden eyes darting to the wooden walls on both sides. Whatever was behind them remained eerily silent, as if holding its breath to listen to Lin Sanjiu.
"The window we jumped through is the only one outside the wooden walls. That means behind these walls, there are more windows, all opening to the sky outside..." Lin Sanjiu said urgently. "Am I making sense?"
The tour guide thought for a moment, her face turning pale.
"You're saying that the people behind the wooden walls... could very likely be standing by the windows on both sides right now?" She swallowed hard. "Then I... I could just drop straight down, not giving them a chance to grab me..."
Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath. "That gray-haired woman who was after me—after infiltrating the tour group, you never noticed her, and she even participated in the high-altitude bungee activity, right?"
The tour guide hadn't expected her to bring up the gray-haired woman at this moment and was momentarily stunned. "Yes..."
"Since she could participate in the bungee activity, it means she also had a yellow ribbon. When she realized I was escaping with the tour group by jumping out the window," Lin Sanjiu paused before continuing, "why didn't she follow us down?"
The tour guide blinked.
"Because the iron chains on me are heavy. After we fell straight down, you didn't even have time to jump farther before you rushed into this window," Lin Sanjiu said, her gaze sweeping from the window to the wooden wall, finally resting on the tour guide. "In terms of distance, we're actually not far from the pocket dimension's hall. But ten minutes have passed, and we haven't seen anyone come down after us, nor any other tour members. The outside of the window has remained completely empty. Thinking about it now, that doesn't seem reasonable."
"What exactly are you trying to say?" The tour guide was on the verge of tears. "Just spit it out already!"
Lin Sanjiu gave her a quick once-over—she was wearing a tracksuit with a fanny pack, and aside from the yellow stone earrings on her ears, she had no other accessories. 𝘳𝓪Ꞑ𝙤𝔟Ɛȿ
"Your earrings aren't Special Items, right? Try tossing one out," Lin Sanjiu suggested.
One of the earrings was quickly removed. In the tour guide's trembling, hesitant hand, it was thrown out of the window. Both of their gazes followed it closely as it passed through the frame and into the blue sky outside. The air outside seemed to soften, bending slightly like a sheet of fabric, before splitting open into a black crack that instantly swallowed the tiny yellow earring.
As the earring vanished, the crack disappeared just as suddenly.
The sky outside remained unchanged, bathed in sunlight and dotted with a few clouds drifting lazily in the distance. What they had just witnessed seemed like a hallucination or an optical illusion.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
"Although I wasn't sure before..." Lin Sanjiu murmured, scanning the room despite having suspected something earlier. Even she seemed startled by what she had seen. "It seems like the people behind the wooden wall can't cross it. Why would that be?"
She had examined the wooden wall earlier; it was just ordinary wood. If the people behind the wall possessed such mysterious abilities, why go to the trouble of setting traps outside the window instead of simply breaking through the wood to attack them?
The tour guide frowned deeply, her hands gripping the windowsill tightly. She seemed lost in thought, as if she hadn't heard anything Lin Sanjiu just said.
"What's wrong?" Lin Sanjiu looked at her, a twinge of worry rising. "Are you okay? Were you scared?"
Given her limited mobility, Lin Sanjiu had no way to leave the area without the tour guide's help. Moreover, despite her own cowardice and selfishness, Lin Sanjiu still didn't want anything bad to happen to someone who wasn't inherently malicious.
"No... something's not right..." The tour guide murmured, her voice trembling. "This all feels so familiar..."
"A déjà vu?" Lin Sanjiu asked.
"No, not that..." The tour guide shook her head, then suddenly stiffened as realization dawned. The earlier question had been asked in her own voice.
Hearing her own voice coming from elsewhere was an unsettling experience, sending chills down her spine. Instinctively, she moved closer to Lin Sanjiu and whispered, "I think I know what's going on."
Before Lin Sanjiu could ask, she continued, "Laying a false illusion as a trap for prey... I've heard of this ability before. And when the prey is more than one person, confusing the targets with mimicked voices in heavy fog—I've heard of that ability too."
The word she used—"prey"—sparked a vague suspicion in Lin Sanjiu's mind.
Sure enough, the tour guide murmured, "These are... duoluozhong abilities."
But she didn't stop there.
"Only... as far as I know, these two abilities belong to two entirely different kinds of duoluozhongs," she said, her eyes scanning the wooden walls again. "Which means... behind these two walls, there's more than one type of duoluozhong."