Rules-related weird stories: 4016.

Chapter 591 Layer Blending
He suddenly realized that perhaps this "looking up" was not the same as that "looking up".

"But if that's the case... does that mean the art building was always located in that place?"

Whether or not we can see it depends on the depth of the pollution, or rather, the depth of our understanding.

The art building has always been there, like a star in the sky; it's just that sometimes, people on the ground can't see it for various reasons!

"hiss……"

Lin Yi took a deep breath. An inspiration seemed to flash through his mind, but it was as fleeting as a shooting star. He couldn't even catch a glimpse of it before it disappeared.

Wei Liang nudged him helplessly and urged, "Let's go, the flowers are all withered! You're not in a hurry, but I am!"

"Uh...sorry, sorry, let's go." Lin Yi quickly let go of the sign and stepped onto the cobblestone path, but after a few steps, he suddenly remembered something and hurriedly said, "Wait a minute, Liangzi!"

Wei Liang looked at him suspiciously: "What's wrong?"

Lin Yi said, "Weren't you going to stay at the gym today? Then why are you in such a hurry?"

Wei Liang sighed, looking up at the sky: "I'm so damn speechless, Lao Lin! I may stay, but once PE class is over, will Xia Lian still be able to openly and legitimately have our lovemaking... no, will she still be able to openly and legitimately train me?"

"Wait a minute, repeat what you just said, straighten it out, what was that 'Mandarin Duck Play' again?" Lin Yi keenly caught the key words, "You two have already progressed to that stage?!"

"No, damn it!" Wei Liang's face turned bright red. "Let me explain! It was Xia Lian who said that you and Li Huiyuan were pushing your progress too hard and insisted on training me like that!"

"What progress have Li Huiyuan and I made, damn it!"

“Wait a minute, I think there’s a story behind that character ‘grass’!” Wei Liang’s ears perked up as well.

Lin Yi was speechless: "That was proper swimming training!"

“Am I not—?” Wei Liang’s eyes widened.

"Liangzi..." Lin Yi sighed.

"Hmph, spit it out if you have something to say?" Wei Liang sneered.

Lin Yi said, "Abbot Liangzi, would you like me to deliver a love letter to Abbess Lianzi at the nunnery next door?"

"Aaaaaah—Old Lin, I'm going to kill you!!" Wei Liang pretended to grab Lin Yi's neck and started shaking him.

Suddenly, a strange light flashed in Lin Yi's eyes: "Wait!"

He quickly reached up and touched his cheek.

"There are water droplets!"

"It's raining, Liangzi!"

Upon hearing this, Wei Liang immediately stopped playing around, quickly released Lin Yi's neck, and tentatively reached out to grab him.

“It’s not raining!” Wei Shan said in a low voice, as if thunder was rolling in his throat. He pointed to the dim sky, “It’s seawater! Seawater dripping down… scattered into droplets by the wind!”

Reminded by Wei Shan, Lin Yi was startled and quickly looked up at the sky.

The sky, as thick as a quilt, seemed to overlap completely with the black sea of ​​the art building's layers, the two layers pressing against each other like a millstone.

The seawater in the black ocean was already seeping into reality, and now, under such pressure, it became like viscous asphalt, dripping down the barrier of nothingness. Then, it was swept up by the wind deep in the clouds into countless dregs, which dripped down.

However, Lin Yi had already observed the image of the black sea seeping through the layer last night, and now that Wei Shan had reminded him, he was only getting more detailed feedback.

What truly shocked him was the discovery that the art building's layer and the real-world layer showed signs of complete merging at the edge of his field of vision!
"That is……"

Lin Yi's pupils contracted sharply. The scene at the end of his vision was not hard to understand. Just like Lin Yi had felt as if he were encased in a glass, the two layers that merged at the end of his vision were like the glass cover and the bottom!
"Is the entire world just an experimental field set up by some higher-dimensional life form, and we are merely guinea pigs in a container?!"

A strong urge to go to the edge of his field of vision suddenly arose in Lin Yi's mind.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, his field of vision actually trembled and then began to rapidly zoom towards the horizon.

At that moment, everything around him became unreal, and his vision seemed to be limited to the target on the horizon.

He felt as if his soul had left his body, his consciousness had detached from his physical form, and he was sliding away into the distance, following the spatial currents.

"Buzzing..."

Lin Yi's spirit seemed to break free from the rules of this layer and began to fly and traverse towards the end of the field of vision.

During this process, Lin Yi was completely unaware that as he began to comprehend the mysteries of this place, the "Ouroboros Ring," which had not reacted for a long time, silently appeared on his neck like a pendant.

Even more bizarrely, despite it being merely a mental journey, a pitch-black shadow appeared beneath him—the giant snake coiled within his shadow was now following his spirit and will, and had also journeyed through the area!
Lin Yi didn't know how much time had passed—it could have been a long time, or it could have been just a few seconds—but he finally glimpsed the mystery on the horizon.

"this……?!"

Before him, the black sea in the layers of the art building stretched all the way down to the ground along the arc of the sky, the surging and turbulent waves as if embroidered on a piece of cloth that fits the curved surface of space.

The end of the cloth happened to be an endless green forest.

"The seawater seeped through the coating and was carried in by the wind, so the sea breeze and rain I felt during my first PE class... really did come from over there!"

"Because of the interpenetration and fusion of layers, the path Lao Mo led me down... I was actually able to observe it once my understanding deepened!"

Lin Yi's heart trembled violently. As he murmured this, he suddenly thought of something else: "A Möbius strip!"

"Is the campus layout perhaps a giant Möbius strip?"

They are at one point on the Möbius strip, while the art building is at another point, seemingly overhead, but actually directly accessible through a route!

If this conjecture is true, then he is willing to call it the "Möbius strip space conjecture" or the "Möbius strip space paradox"!
On the layer he observed, where the layers merged, there was a huge building—a massive city wall!

The city wall was different from the giant egg that Lin Yi had seen in the stadium. It was a wall of ramparts like the Great Wall, built along the intersection of the art building layer and the real world layer, winding and twisting, looking like a line from a distance.

The giant dome of the stadium seems to be just one section of the city wall!
"It's a stadium! Just like the other buildings! A section of the city wall has been dragged from the image into reality—that's the stadium!"

Lin Yi suddenly realized, no wonder the stadium is called the first line of defense. That infinitely long wall, standing between two layers, is indeed the first line of defense!

He suddenly realized that the black seawater in front of the city wall was part of the Black Ocean! Once the city wall collapsed, the Black Ocean would flood into the real world!

"Could the world-destroying flood recorded in 'Saint J' be the seawater of the Black Sea? And the water that Yu the Great controlled was also the Black Sea?!" Lin Yi muttered to himself, the more he guessed, the more outrageous it seemed.

As he was speculating, he suddenly felt an undeniable call from the black sea, as if some distant song was coming from across the black sea…

At the same time, his heart suddenly started racing, pounding loudly.

Beneath that distant song, he felt a powerful sense of calling!
【…Sorgens skygge…】

【…Min skygge…】

【……Sorg……】

【…Uopprettelig…】

【...Gi opp...】

Lin Yi was deeply shaken, but he remained steadfast in his resolve, desperately trying to decipher the words in the calls. Finally, he managed to grasp and translate the meaning of a few characters: "a shadow of sorrow," "irreversible," "give up"...

The less he could hear, the more he longed to hear clearly. Invisibly, he was still chasing the light through the fog, getting closer and closer to the black sea.

At that moment, he felt a sharp, stinging pain.

He was terrified and his scalp tingled. In the darkness, he felt that as he approached the black sea, he was also beginning to be exposed to the attention of some terrifying being!

Who could be the terrifying being lurking in the black sea?!

"Angel"!
The strongest unit beneath "The Root" is merely a phantom hidden within the black tide, yet it is a terrifying existence that suppresses the Night Watcher-02, who wields the quantum giant clock "Sanctuary," to the point of almost being unable to breathe!
In a fantasy novel, he would definitely be at the level of a forbidden zone lord who has lived several lifetimes!

At that moment, Lin Yi suddenly realized that he seemed to have been separated from his body for a long time, so he quickly returned to his body.

The moment his will turned, the space behind him collapsed suddenly, like the peeling away of mottled wall plaster... Within the barrier, black winds and black waves howled and surged, and countless deformed and illusory grinning angels surged over like frogs laying eggs, trying to engulf Lin Yi.

Lin Yi seemed completely unaware of this, simply sliding towards his own body along the blurred layers of space around him.

Thus, countless deformed, grinning angels began to invade the campus along the path Lin Yi was currently traveling.

A twisted, eerie smile appeared on the face of the sly angel. Lin Yi, like a coachman, pulled them away from the layers of the black sea. Once they entered the campus, they were like fish swimming into the sea, where the sky was high and the sea was wide.

This is the same approach that the shopkeeper once abandoned because he was afraid of harming the innocent. Now that Lin Yi's perception has been clouded by the call of the black sea, disaster is indeed about to strike.

Just as the group of deformed, grinning angels were about to reach the campus layer following Lin Yi's path, a pitch-black shadow suddenly split off from Lin Yi's mind, opened its blood-red maw, and devoured the deformed, grinning angels...

After the shadow devoured the grinning angels, it transformed into a figure identical to Lin Yi behind him. However, the figure's head was shrouded in a gray mist, and its features were only vague outlines—it was none other than the shadow of the giant serpent.

The serpent's shadow's mouth was still moving, as if it was chewing something, and then, before Lin Yi could sense it, it merged back into his shadow.

……

On May 11, X023, at 14:37, at the notice board in front of the stadium.

Lin Yi swayed slightly, then suddenly regained his senses as if he were sitting up in shock from a terminal illness.

The first thing he did when he came to his senses was to raise his wrist and check the time!
"14:37".

"It only took a little over a minute! It really is the Dream Building state!" Lin Yi secretly patted his chest.

He wasn't wearing the "Ouroboros Ring" either; it seemed... the "Ouroboros Ring" had been lying quietly in the black wooden box the whole time.

Wei Liang glanced at Lin Yi's feet.

Under the dim sky, even shadows were indistinct, but it seemed that the shadow beneath Lin Yi's feet... gently twitched.

"I think I just went over there!" Lin Yi didn't hide anything and said directly to Wei Shan and Wei Liang.

Wei Shan nodded and said, "Hmm, seeing that you didn't move, I knew you were working on your dream again."

But he wasn't interested in what Lin Yi had discovered at all, and didn't even ask any further questions.

Wei Liang tugged at his baseball cap: "Alright, alright, if there's nothing else, let's set off."

"Okay." Lin Yi nodded. He had already wasted enough time today, so he had to focus on getting on the road from now on—if possible.

The three of them then crossed the sign and headed toward the stadium along the cobblestone path.

However, Lin Yi and Wei Shan both had somewhat unclear shadows, but Wei Liang had no shadow at all.

Wei Liang's shadow remained in place, as if delayed, for several seconds before disappearing.

Then, on the other side, Wei Liang's shadow appeared out of thin air beneath his feet.

……

The wind picked up again within the stadium area, forcing the three of them to keep their heads down and hurry along.

Wei Liang exclaimed loudly, "Old Lin, it's a good thing it's not raining now, otherwise if we were holding an umbrella, we might be blowing our trumpets!"

"You said that if we wore your super thin and breathable raincoat, we'd probably all turn into vegetables in a greenhouse!" Lin Yi said with a laugh.

"Stop yelling, stop yelling! I can't possibly bring this thick raincoat in here!" Wei Liang retorted, not putting up with Lin Yi's tirade. "If you're so tough, then don't use what I left over!"

The three of them laughed and joked as they made their way, seemingly quite used to this road in the stadium area.

Before long, Lin Yi suddenly spotted several figures ahead.

These figures are all trial participants, and it seems they've all gotten stuck in this layer.

"There are people ahead," Lin Yi said.

"Overtake on the curve! Overtake on the curve!" Wei Liang cursed. "We're not a tow truck, Lao Lin, we're not some clay bodhisattva crossing the river!"

(End of this chapter)