Before either of them could properly speak, Lin Sanjiu and the tour guide resembled two octopuses frantically spraying ink—shaking their heads, wiping their faces, and spitting out whatever had gotten into their mouths. The sound of "pfft" and "bleh" filled the air for several seconds until they finally managed to talk without swallowing chunks of debris.
"What the hell just happened?!" the guide exclaimed, her eyes watery and red. Turning around to look, she froze in place.
The wooden wall that had been slowly creeping up on her moments ago had vanished without a trace.
With the wall gone, the space before them opened into a large hall. Inside, numerous cylindrical objects, each about two people tall, stood silently draped in deep red cloth. The cylinders were spaced three to four meters apart, and the hall was eerily quiet, devoid of any sound or movement.
"What... is this?"
The guide, utterly baffled, turned to look behind Lin Sanjiu. The other wooden wall had disappeared as well. Behind her, an identical expansive hall stretched out, similarly filled with cloth-covered cylinders. The entire space was empty—no sign of people or duoluozhong.
"What just happened? Where are the walls? And all those duoluozhong—where did they go?"
Lin Sanjiu, on the other hand, was utterly miserable.
Both of them were drenched in the viscous bodily fluids of the duoluozhong: a slimy, stringy, foul-smelling substance clung to their clothes and skin. Mixed in were ashy black particles, splintered wood fragments, bits of shredded flesh, worm-like white tendrils resembling nerves, and countless other grotesque substances Lin Sanjiu could barely glance at without feeling nauseated—let alone name. The iron chains binding her created countless crevices and grooves that trapped these substances, making her discomfort unbearable.
"I lied earlier when I said the wall behind me was real," Lin Sanjiu said, spitting out another chunk of something unrecognizable. "Now help me wipe my face first!"
Unable to use her bound hands, Lin Sanjiu had been wildly shaking her head like a drenched dog. However, this only caused more unidentifiable muck to drip down her neck and into her clothes, leaving her wishing she could snap the iron chains apart.
The guide let out a quick response and scanned the surroundings for anything useful.
With her own clothes nearly soaked through, she was just as eager to clean herself off. Naturally, her gaze landed on the nearest cloth-draped cylinder. Stepping toward it cautiously, she glanced around and whispered, "So the other wall wasn't real either?"
"No," Lin Sanjiu replied, keeping watch. "I'm not entirely sure how it worked, but those two walls were likely two separate duoluozhong disguising themselves. One moved closer to us, though luckily, I caught it. The one behind me stayed still, pretending nothing was wrong, waiting for an opportunity. It thought that since I was tied up, I'd be an easy target. Guess it was just out of luck."
"But you are tied up," the guide said, now standing before the cylinder. She glanced back at Lin Sanjiu and asked, "How did you manage to destroy it?"
The answer was simple.
Lin Sanjiu's arms were bound tightly behind her back by layers of iron chains, but her hands were left exposed. It wasn't out of negligence—quite the opposite. The gray-haired woman who had tied her up had been incredibly meticulous. Observing that Lin Sanjiu could materialize and dematerialize items as cards through her palms, the woman had deliberately avoided binding her hands directly. Instead, she had focused on restraining Lin Sanjiu's wrists.
When the wooden wall crept close enough, [Mosaic Censorship] activated without issue.
Explaining all this felt unnecessarily tedious, so Lin Sanjiu opted for a brief response. "I have an explosive ability I can activate even while tied up."
"Is that so? That's amazing!" The guide couldn't suppress the envy in her voice. As a posthuman with only average combat abilities, she likely lived in a constant state of anxiety and insecurity. "If it were me tied up like this, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I'd just wait for death."
She reached out and grabbed the seemingly ordinary cloth. With a firm yank, she pulled it off.
The fabric was clean and thick, perfectly ordinary.
But as the cloth fell, it revealed an enormous duoluozhong underneath. There was no doubt it was a duoluozhong because no other creature in existence could defy description the way it did. Countless tiny fleshy tubes formed waves of mottled brown, grayish white, and pale flesh tones, undulating like a sea anemone. They swayed eagerly, pressing toward the guide.
She let out a sharp scream, stumbling backward and tripping over the heap of discarded cloth on the ground. Lin Sanjiu's hair stood on end as she took a closer look. "It can't get out! It's inside a container!" she shouted. ŕἈ₦O͍𝔟̧
The guide fell backward with a thud, landing in the pile of cloth, trembling all over. It seemed to take every ounce of courage she had to lift her head and look again. As soon as she exhaled in relief, her body went limp as if her bones had been removed. Her voice carried a quiver as she cried out, "Why... why would they put duoluozhong in here?"
A cylindrical glass tube encased the duoluozhong, its surface writhing with countless fleshy tubes. It looked like a grotesque, life-sized figurine. It was impossible to discern where its head or feet were—if it even had such features. Each tube ended in a tiny black circular opening, moving en masse to follow the guide's every motion outside the glass.
The guide's face turned ashen, and it looked like she was about to throw up.
She turned away abruptly, refusing to look at the duoluozhong. Her eyes scanned the hall, taking in the rows of cloth-covered cylinders, and realization dawned on her.
"Are all these cylinders... containing duoluozhong?"
"That's my guess," Lin Sanjiu replied, her voice uneasy. "It looks like there's more than just three kinds of duoluozhong here."
"Then... then the ones from earlier—"
Scanning the hall, Lin Sanjiu continued, "With so many glass containers here, it wouldn't be surprising if some of them broke and released the duoluozhong."
Her words hit the guide like a needle, sending a shiver down her spine. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed the discarded cloth, and rushed back to Lin Sanjiu. While Lin Sanjiu had grown more timid, her past experiences with danger and grotesque sights meant she could still maintain some composure. She stared at the duoluozhong and its glass enclosure for a few seconds before suddenly gasping. "There's writing on the glass!"
Small text was printed on the glass tube, barely noticeable amidst the overwhelming visual impact of the duoluozhong inside.
The guide had no intention of turning back to look. As she frantically wiped the sticky substances off Lin Sanjiu with the cloth, she asked, "What does it say?"
Lin Sanjiu stared blankly for a moment, struggling to make sense of the words.
"Duoluozhong Experience Hall Display Unit?"