Rules-related weird stories: 4016.

Chapter 584 Conspiracy Theory of the Convenience Store Owner

Lin Yi pursed his lips: "I hope I'm just overthinking it..."

Wei Shan said, "You must be overthinking it. We are just ordinary people. We just need to find a way to complete the mission. Other things are not our concern."

"Hmm." Lin Yi nodded, but remained noncommittal.

For some reason, he always felt a gloom in his heart, as if he were wrapped in a semi-transparent veil, able to see things but not quite.

Upon arriving at the notice board, Lin Yi and Wei Shan casually returned the "Canteen Rules" to the bookshelf.

"You guys are here?" Wei Liang leaned against the edge of the notice board, looking at them with a bored expression, as if he had been waiting for a while.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Liangzi." Lin Yi waved his bundle and said with a smile, "We have a great harvest."

Wei Liang curled his lip and teased, "You guys have had a great harvest. It seems the other side of the story is in a terrible state."

"Do you want to get two?" Lin Yi asked.

Wei Liang subtly stepped back, pushing away while feigning a gentle breeze and bright moon: "Take it away...take it away..."

"It seems Elder Wei won't be able to enjoy this ginseng eggplant." Lin Yi smiled and slung his bag over his shoulder again. "Do you think we should send some over to Young Master Tian and Kuai Kuai later? They might not have eaten yet."

“Don’t worry about them,” Wei Shan shook his head and said. “Yin Bi has a lot of bad ideas. The tomatoes he finds will only be of higher quality than ours. They won’t go hungry at all.”

Although Wei Shan was very unhappy with Kuai Hongji, he often spoke very frankly. He was really good at criticizing his teammates for being bad during the development period, but when it came to team fights, he should have been able to tank damage and provide crowd control.

Lin Yi and Wei Shan quickly checked their clothes to make sure there was no ketchup, then left the cafeteria area with Wei Liang.

But in reality, how could they not have tomato sauce on their clothes after picking so many tomatoes?

They definitely had ketchup on them, even splattered all over.

However, Lin Yi absorbed it all at once, transforming it into primordial pollution within his body, while the rest was expelled.

After losing the power of supernatural abilities, the remaining tomato sauce turned into white powder particles, which he shook off by dusting off his clothes.

As he left the cafeteria area, Lin Yi once again used "Vision Insight" to observe the scene below the layer. He looked at the chef sculptures that almost occupied the entire field of vision, observed their details, and felt the faint scent of ashes floating on them, trying to piece together some of the secrets of the cafeteria area.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't understand how the ashes and residue, which appeared in the layer on the 5th floor and above of the teaching building, had drifted onto the chef sculpture.

Could it be that these chefs went to the fifth floor and above of the teaching building, then returned to the cafeteria area and died in the shape of sculptures?
That's completely unreasonable and doesn't make any logical sense.

The most uncertain point is that Lin Yi can't tell which type of bib the chefs are wearing.

Or rather, percentage.

The proportion of people involved, to some extent, helps him analyze the situation at the time.

He racked his brains trying to recall the events, and suddenly remembered that he seemed to have seen fragments of a feather sculpture near the cafeteria.

Those are the remnants of the petrified wings of the Grimace. The most important feathers in the wings of the Grimace will form feather pupils, and the rest can turn into large bunches of grape-like eyeballs, but they will also petrify in the form of feathers.

"Could it be... that the 'Primordial Ash Apostle' visited the cafeteria area, causing the ashes to fall onto the chef's sculpture?"

"Did this happen last night?"

There was no sign of the convenience store owner in the teaching building area, but the figure of the "Original Ash Apostle" appeared briefly...

Could it be that the shop owner did take action, but the homeroom teacher-040 didn't see it because of his lack of strength?
Lin Yi was also very concerned about the movements of the "original type Ash Apostle".

Based on previous experience, the "original Ash Apostle" moves around the campus almost every night.

"By the way, the eldest sister left the gym yesterday. Maybe we can ask her how she is this afternoon..."

The boss might know something about the situation, and if the "original Ash Apostle" did not appear in the stadium area, then it is very possible that it reached the cafeteria area, causing the deaths of a large number of chefs and leaving behind so much ash residue.

There is still a crucial question: did the shopkeeper actually receive the "principal's" information like he did, and what is the shopkeeper's attitude towards the "original Ash Apostle"?
"Hoo..." Lin Yi let out a deep breath.

Convenience store owner, "Funeral Corpse", "Original Ash Apostle"...

Lin Yi suddenly realized that in this campus where the "principal" has disappeared, the convenience store owner seems to have become the central figure in the mystery. His position in the overall environment determines the overall trend of this incident, and even the recent major incidents of gray fog invasion.

If the convenience store owner had any ulterior motives, wouldn't the entire campus be thrown into chaos?!

Lin Yi felt a chill run down his spine.

He discovered that after the official "principal" disappeared, the "convenience store owner," the second-in-command of the school's fighting force, became an unsupervised entity...

A conspiracy theory about the convenience store owner quietly took root in his mind and quickly sprouted...

……

X023年5月11日，12：45。

As Lin Yi pondered this, he left the cafeteria area with Wei Shan and Wei Liang and entered the teaching building area.

As soon as he entered the teaching building area, before he had walked more than a few steps, Lin Yi suddenly sensed a figure in the distance.

The figure had not yet appeared in his field of vision, but his senses had already relayed the information about the other party into his mind.

"Zhao Lingxiao?" After confirming the information of the person who came, Lin Yi's expression remained unchanged, but he muttered to himself. Today, when he saw Zhao Lingxiao again, even though they were far apart, he was able to pinpoint her presence with precision.

Inexplicably, he felt a strange connection had formed between him and Zhao Lingxiao...

This connection wasn't exactly a bond, but rather a feeling akin to that of a puppet on a string. It was as if an extra thread had appeared in his hand, and that thread extended into Zhao Lingxiao's body at the other end...

Lin Yi had a strong premonition that this thread was currently just dangling there, suspended in mid-air, but he could easily move it if he wanted to.

As for what might happen after this is triggered, he couldn't say.

His intuition told him it wouldn't be a good thing—neither for him nor for Zhao Lingxiao.

He immediately recalled the fragmented scene he had seen in his dream, in which Zhao Lingxiao, in a daze, followed his scent and ultimately seemed to become his... "The One Who Chases the Light Amidst the Mist"?
"Hiss..." Lin Yi gasped. Could that thread-like sensation have originated from this?
He frowned, sensing something was wrong.

Lin Yi sensed Zhao Lingxiao, while Zhao Lingxiao was a little slow to react before sensing Lin Yi's presence in return.

"Lin Yi..." A pinkish halo immediately appeared in Zhao Lingxiao's eyes behind her glasses, like a calm, infatuated girl seeing her idol. She appeared very calm on the surface, but her heart was churning with emotions.

Lin Yi and his two companions walked towards Zhao Lingxiao and soon came face to face. Zhao Lingxiao's heart pounded like a drum. However, they simply brushed past each other without even exchanging greetings.

As Zhao Lingxiao passed by Lin Yi, he couldn't help but take a deep breath. Then, with his back to the three of them, a morbid sense of satisfaction and pleasure appeared on his face, as if his mind and body had reached some kind of peak.

However, Lin Yi's senses captured this scene completely and fed it back into his mind.

"This Zhao Lingxiao... is finished!" Lin Yi sighed inwardly. No matter whose figure he was chasing, he would not get a good ending by piercing through the mist and chasing the light. This Zhao Lingxiao was obviously deeply involved.

What troubled Lin Yi was that Zhao Lingxiao was stuck in a quagmire not because of an angel statue, but because of him.

What troubled him even more was that, despite knowing this, he was helpless to do anything about it.

The decisive factor that enables an organization to embark on its journey through the fog and towards the light is not the light source, but the organization itself.

Birds fly down to earth following the sun, but what did the sun do wrong?

As Zhao Lingxiao brushed past Lin Yi, Lin Yi discovered that the aura of ash emanated from Zhao Lingxiao's body!

"Where did the ashes aura in Zhao Lingxiao's body come from? Could it be because of me?"

Lin Yi was shocked. What did he do to deserve this? How could he possibly allow others to get close to the "Ashes Apostle"?
Moreover, how could Zhao Lingxiao's physical aptitude possibly withstand the ashes?

When Lin Yi first met Zhao Lingxiao, he did not sense any ash from Zhao Lingxiao's body!
Because the "Ash Apostles" are interconnected and attracted to each other, and what he can confirm now is that Zhao Lingxiao has become the bearer of the ash. Although the degree of bearing is still somewhat different from that of the "Ash Apostles", it is not far off.

One of the conditions for becoming an "Apostle of Ash" is that one must be able to bear the ash without dying, and Zhao Lingxiao has already met this condition.

Given time, she will become the "Ashes Apostle," and also a mist-chaser who pursues Lin Yi.

It's incredible.

But that's how bizarre it is.

……

The lighting in the teaching building area had an indescribable dimness. Lin Yi looked around and felt that the nearby green belt was blurry, while the outline of the mountains a little further away was exceptionally clear.

The scenes near and far blended together, creating a strong visual contrast. Even the boundaries of space seemed to be blurred. Lin Yi walked on the cobblestone road for a while, gradually feeling dizzy from observing the environment.

He looked away, shook his head gently, and felt much better.

"Old Lin, what's wrong? Are you alright?" Wei Liang's voice rang in his ear, asking with concern, "It's so cloudy, you didn't get heatstroke, did you?"

Lin Yi was speechless: "Heatstroke on a cloudy day? Please, do you even want to listen to what you're saying?"

Wei Liang curled his lip: "Heatstroke doesn't discriminate based on the weather, just like a wallet doesn't discriminate based on age."

"Go away... Stop fooling around." Lin Yi shook his hand, brought his gaze to what was in front of him, and then subconsciously narrowed his eyes.

He began to understand why the campus trial period was seven days.

Seven days should be a threshold; even the most normal person will experience various abnormal hallucinations when approaching this time.

Even someone with his level of understanding would experience even deeper levels of hallucinations because of this.

The campus was like a vast ocean, and he was like a deep-sea diver. Just when he thought he had adapted to the shallow waters, the deep waters appeared. When he arrived at the deep waters, the ocean had only revealed a corner of its edge to him.

The mysteries of layers... cannot be fully comprehended by an individual alone!
Suddenly, his vision flickered slightly, and a subtle sensation arose in his perception.

"Huh? What's this...?"

His eyes gleamed as he looked toward the green belt of trees.

From a human perspective, all he would see is grass, trees, and shadows.

But after the vision flickered, it gradually penetrated the layers, allowing Lin Yi to see the appearance inside each layer. In one of the layers, he saw a large expanse of intertwined...flesh.

Countless bizarre creatures were huddled together in a certain area of ​​the green forest belt. Although the green forest belt was quite spacious, they only occupied a very limited space.

Those nocturnal creatures and pseudo-human sculptures were lumped together like clay, indistinguishable from one another, with no clear boundaries between their clothes. Only their protruding eyeballs remained, held together by blood vessels in their flesh, occasionally turning around, looking both terrifying and horrifying.

"All those nocturnal creatures and pseudo-human sculptures that can't be seen during the day are here?!"

"What are they doing?"

Lin couldn't understand the behavior of those strange creatures; these guys had actually hidden below the layers.

If it were just one or two, that would be fine, but the problem is that they all hid over there, as if they had received some kind of imperial decree.

The sculpture array, which was originally located in the green belt of the campus, has been transformed into a super-large blob in the image.

Lin Yi was puzzled and could only keep this phenomenon in mind, so that he could tell his homeroom teacher, Tian Bufan, later, in case they knew something.

"etc!"

Suddenly, Lin Yi thought of something, and then, as if possessed, called out in his mind, "Young Master Tian..."

There was no reaction.

He tried calling out a few more times.

There was no response.

He shook his head with a self-deprecating smile.

"I was really overthinking it..."

He saw that Tian Bufan had summoned him in the Forest of Corpses that morning, so he thought that he could try to do the same and summon Tian Bufan. That way, he could discuss the issue with Tian Bufan directly without having to wait until they met again.

But as it turned out, it didn't work.

But just as he was laughing at himself, Tian Bufan's voice actually rang in his heart.

"Old Lin, I'm here."

(End of this chapter)