I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 1289 Where is this?
□：
"?"

"Where is this?"

□：
"anyone there?!"

He shouted, but the sound didn't travel far before it followed a parabolic trajectory and fell...

Mo Ling didn't know where it had fallen to.

He couldn't even tell up from down anymore, and there were some strange things around him.

Mo Ling was a little confused. Why were there two small dots in front of her?

So he spun around.

◇

The little dot is gone.

◇：
"This place is so strange..." he couldn't help but exclaim.

However, the little dots reappeared!
Mo Ling turned around again.

□

The little dots are gone again!

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"Will the little dots appear whenever I speak?"

"!"

"It seems that the little dots appear not only when I'm talking, but whenever I'm thinking!"

Mo Ling seemed to understand, but not entirely...

The tree roots of the Chali tribe kept sending him messages to calm his mind, but his thoughts were also wandering, leaving him in a state of "half-dreaming, half-awake".

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"Wasn't my leg entangled in tree roots? How come I seem to have turned back into a cube? Am I a person or a cube?"

Mo Ling was confused, and he tilted his head.

◇

Because of a cognitive bias, he was no longer able to distinguish what he really was.

Humanity?

Square?

Humans can also be cubes.

Humans are symmetrical, and so are cubes.

Humans have length, width, and height, and so do blocks.

Human cognition has its limits, and so do blocks.

Humans can roll on the ground, and blocks can roll on the ground too.

Humans can be stacked, and blocks can be stacked too.

Therefore, humans are blocks!

Mo Ling compromised with his own chaotic understanding, and tilted his head again.

□：
"Shouldn't I be standing high enough?"

Mo Ling looked down, feeling somewhat lost, wondering if he had already arrived outside the sandbox.

This place is strange; it has no color, only pure black and white.

In the pure white space, there were incomprehensible black stripes everywhere. The stripes looked simple, but staring at them for a while made my head feel swollen.

It was like jumping into a chaotic ink painting.

Mo Ling drifted and immersed himself in the black ink stripes. When he emerged, the world had changed again.

The space turned pure black, while the stripes turned white.

And he...

■

Mo Ling was stunned.

His focus shifted to himself, and his perception became distorted once again.

What is black? What is white?
He seemed a little confused, staring at the "black" square for a long time.

■：
Are you black?

He tilted his head and confirmed with the cube.

◆

The black cube also changed direction; from his perspective, it seemed to have turned into a rhombus, and the two small dots beside it disappeared due to the status refresh...

The cube didn't answer him; he was just talking to himself.

◆：
"What am I doing?" Mo Ling tilted her head and tapped her head.

Then he froze.

▉：
"Am I a cube? Why am I hitting myself on the head?"

He looked at "himself" again and found that the pattern had become a little "flat".

However, it doesn't seem very obvious.

Is it really flattened?
He thought for a moment, then smacked himself hard on the head again.

He heard a series of clanging and banging sounds, wondering how he could move the cube, and then stared in disbelief at the changes it was making...

▉▊▋▌▍▎▏

As the changes became more and more obvious, the string in Mo Ling's mind snapped.

This is easy to understand; some things just get flatter the more you hit them...

▏：
"But is that right?"

Looking at his emaciated body, Mo Ling suddenly felt a sense of relief that he was becoming more and more like a human. In his dazed thoughts, boundless joy burst forth, and he couldn't help but run around in this pure black space.

He skipped over the white stripes, skipped over the gaps of chaos, and he completely rediscovered the joy of being a "Homo erectus"!

▏：
"I'm so happy!"

This makes me happier than anything else, happier than being with everyone.

This world is vast. Millions of years ago, when humans first stood upright, they were just as happy, running across the vast grasslands, with the world at their feet.

Mo Ling felt the joy recorded in the oldest genes of mankind, just like the crowds coming and going in the square. It seems that as long as humans can "move forward", they have enough fun, and this has been the case for millions of years.

He was so thin that he jumped around in the pure black world, as if all his troubles had left him and his confusion had disappeared.

Since it's been "wrong" from beginning to end, I don't care if it continues to be "wrong".

From another perspective, has the human upright posture always been "crooked"?
Mo Ling thought for a while and then put those doubts aside. He ran freely, knowing only that he was now "absolutely perpendicular to the ground" and the most "upright" person in the world.

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"so fun!"

He couldn't hear the warnings coming from the roots of the Chali tribe's tree, and just kept running.

until……

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"oops!"

Mo Ling fell heavily to the ground, getting a mouthful of black mud.

The joy in his heart faded away, replaced by a profound sadness.

Homo erectus was still defeated.

He thought he could roam freely in the vast world, but after running for a short while, he got stuck on an inconspicuous rock, and his dream of traveling around the world was shattered.

"Are you alright?" A concerned voice came from the tree roots.

▂：
"It's nothing, I'm just a little sad..."

Mo Ling lay on the ground, still savoring the joy she had just experienced.

"You've flown too high and lost your way. You need to look back at us, at this world, follow the intersecting souls, and find your way back..."

Perhaps because it was too far away, the sounds from the tree roots became increasingly indistinct, eventually turning into a jumble of noises.

While the Chali tribe was still talking, Mo Ling's thoughts had already drifted far away.

Soon, the noise turned into regular musical notes.

At this moment, from this unique perspective, the musical notes slowly intertwined to form a gentle melody, which began to play in Mo Ling's ears.

Mo Ling turned over, looked at the "sky," and began to hum along to the tune.

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"Dudu dudu lulu da da da, di di dang dang~"

As the music played, Mo Ling could no longer contain her sorrow and burst into tears.

Tears didn't fall; instead, they welled up on him.

He absorbed those sorrowful tears like a sponge.

▂▃▄▅▆▇█

The cube gradually swelled up from being soaked in tears.

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In the melodious tune, only a lonely cube remains.

The cube had always followed the girl, but now that she was gone, he didn't know where to go.

He lay there, just as he had when he first landed in the jungle, awaiting the twists of fate...

(End of this chapter)