When reality slaps someone in the face, they always want an explanation. The duoluozhong were evidently no exception.
"How is this possible?" The flattened rat wailed, its two bare human feet shuffling backward. "Old Sa! Old Sa! Come out, what's going on here?"
Lin Sanjiu chuckled coldly, one hand gripping the fissure's edge while the other wiped her nose.
The answer was as simple as could be. Thanks to Lin Sanjiu being a coward now, when her Higher Consciousness released the shape-shifting duoluozhong, it immediately flowed back into her body, pouring into her newly activated Defense Forcefield. Naturally, no one would waste Higher Consciousness protecting the chains binding them. She hadn't expected to fall into an illusion trap right away, but it turned out to be a perfect use of her energy.
The flesh-strip duoluozhong had a pitch-black tunnel inside its body, with the illusion trap serving as the tunnel's entrance. Anything swallowed by the entrance—whether chains produced by the Munitions Factory, explosives, or human flesh—would seem to evaporate, dissolving into wisps of smoke that were eventually absorbed into the tunnel's depths.
Higher Consciousness was no exception.
In the darkness, Lin Sanjiu couldn't see. She had to rely on Mrs. Manas's reports and her own sensations, feeling her Higher Consciousness dissipating like evaporating mist. Alarmed, she quickly realized the sturdy chains wound tightly around her were being ground down, getting thinner and more brittle. Given a little more time, they would vanish completely.
"The price for getting rid of the chains," she murmured, "is my Higher Consciousness."
For every bit of Higher Consciousness that was lost, she had to force out a fresh portion to replace it. Until the chains were fully digested, she had no choice but to keep feeding the bottomless pit with her remaining Higher Consciousness.
As she focused intently on channeling her Higher Consciousness, her stillness and cooperation must have seemed suspicious. After a while, the pink flesh-strip duoluozhong sensed something was wrong. The dark tunnel began to twist and squirm, trying to peel away from her.
By then, her hands were already free.
"You think you can swallow me, then spit me out like I'm chewing gum?" Lin Sanjiu muttered. She reached down, grabbed the fissure's edge, and found she could grip it. Without hesitation, she pulled it up. The sensation was bizarre, like lifting a dense, membranous mass fused with the musty air of an abandoned warehouse. Her hands, shielded by Defense Forcefield, made the duoluozhong writhe in pain. It couldn't shake free or digest her, and for a moment, it was trapped in her grasp.
It had to be said, these duoluozhong had an acute sense of danger.
The flattened duoluozhong suddenly fell silent, its body motionless. The black dots on its white, arched eye flickered like signal lights, as if it were calculating its next move. One dot remained fixed on the edge of its eye, focused on Bee Sting Venom. She hesitated, wanting to move toward Lin Sanjiu but too afraid to take a step.
"Not sure what to do now?" Lin Sanjiu said, her tone almost friendly. "Didn't anyone teach you that hunting comes with risks? How about this, I'll decide for you."
The sparse hairs on the flattened rat's head trembled slightly. Just as a black dot floated up in its eye, it saw her next move.
Lin Sanjiu hadn't been holding onto the fissure for fun.
When she was swallowed, she vaguely sensed that there was some kind of connection between the fissure and the pink flesh-strip duoluozhong itself. Now, with a slight turn of her body, her right hand reached back into the center of the fissure. When she had enough Higher Consciousness, she couldn't use her hands freely; now, her Higher Consciousness reserves were insufficient to form a constricting force field. But because she had been holding the fissure open, a large amount of air had already flowed in.
As long as there was air, she could use the vortex technique Hei Zeji had taught her.
1
The next few seconds, if one had to find a human analogy, were like forcing an industrial-strength fan, running at full speed, into someone's mouth while their jaw was pried open. It didn't matter if the mouth wasn't big enough; the spinning fan would carve it wide open amidst a spray of flesh, shattered teeth, and blood.
Unlike an iron fan, Lin Sanjiu's vortex was not only more powerful but could expand larger and larger. Eventually, it engulfed half the hall. The ceiling, the hanging lights, the screen walls, and an empty glass display case nearby were all twisted and shredded into countless fragments. The floor shook and hummed underfoot.
For several seconds, the entire experience hall turned into a massive amplifier. The roaring wind of the vortex became background noise, while the main sound was the high-pitched, childlike screech of something being torn apart, a sound so full of pain it seemed to shred every eardrum it touched.
Lin Sanjiu didn't even know where the flesh-strip duoluozhong had been hiding until it died completely.
The reason "completely" was the right word was because, in the end, she only saw rings of flesh, tissue, and sinew flung out of the vortex, splattered like paint across the exhibition hall, turning it into a hellish scene.
When the vortex finally stopped, it was almost impossible to tell what color Lin Sanjiu's skin had originally been. She was drenched from head to toe, but her eyes still burned with brightness. She looked at the flattened rat standing dumbfounded nearby, its sparse fur now flecked with bits of flesh and blood, and whispered, "Tell me, why didn't you let me leave when I wanted to? Now that I'm free of the chains, let's see how long you can last." 𝔯𝘼ΝΟᛒĘꞩ
"It wasn't me!" The flattened rat suddenly stood upright, exposing the layers of human arms stacked under its belly. It shouted, "Please believe me! It wasn't me who attacked you earlier. That bastard went back to his own body!"
Lin Sanjiu froze.
"Don't kill me, good girl! I'll tell you everything from the start! Here's what happened. I was sleeping peacefully inside the tube when suddenly someone pulled back the curtain. The light woke me up... Some short-haired bastard wearing a staff vest told me I looked smart. I could read his lips, of course! By the time I realized what was happening, he had taken control of my body..."
The flattened rat looked so distraught, it seemed like it might collapse and weep. It appeared utterly wronged. "When he realized he couldn't beat you, he returned to his body and left me here to take the fall. How can there be such wicked humans in this world? I thought only we duoluozhong were capable of such things..."