Puzzle Madness

Chapter 154 Circle (Part 4)
The blood people slowly moved their feet, forming a circle, with DouDou and the cataloger in the center.

They each stretched out their hands to the left and right, clasping them tightly. Some even interlocked their fingers, their palms pressed together, slippery from the rain; carrying an unusual intimacy that made onlookers uncomfortable.

Plop, plop.

Even the bloodied man who had been torn in two by DouDou joined in.
Its upper and lower halves moved and crawled, finally joining together. With a "swoosh," the broken surfaces fused together again, leaving no trace of the break. It nimbly got up and joined the crowd as if nothing had happened.

The rain was still falling, the wind was blowing, but there was a different smell in the air.

A pungent, burnt smell filled the air; the rain was no longer light; something invisible, heavier, was falling, pressing down on everyone's heads.

What are these blood-soaked people up to? Are they playing drop the handkerchief?

DouDou sniffed and frowned:
"What's that weird smell?"

While observing the bizarre behavior of the blood-soaked people, my mind wandered elsewhere:

To be honest, I'm really bad at naming things. The overweight old man I met at the electronics market during summer vacation, I called him "Meat Man"; and these guys I called "Blood Man."

[So from now on, we can only call them things like "bone people," "skin people," or "muscle people"? We need to think of some fresh naming methods when we have time, otherwise it'll sound really unoriginal.]
-
Looking left and right, the blood-soaked people held hands and began to slowly sway their bodies, shifting their weight from their left foot to their right foot, then back again, repeating this process over and over.

Perhaps it's dancing, or perhaps it's simply expressing emotions through simple movements: DouDou doesn't know.

After the initial long howl, the cataloger merely trembled; the man's mind was in and out of control, and his mental broadcasts had completely shut down.

What exactly is happening right now?
DouDou suddenly clapped his hands:

"Everyone, hold on a minute! I need to go ask your colleagues what's going on before we continue. Okay? Otherwise, I'll be completely confused and won't know what you're doing."

Naturally, none of the blood-covered people stopped—it was even uncertain whether they could hear what DouDou was saying.

With a whoosh, the rain circled around in the blink of an eye, creating a gap about a meter high before falling again.
When he stopped, he threw the bloodied limbs he was carrying under his arm, in his hand, and even those resting on his chest with his chin on them, onto the ground, letting them roll into the puddle.

He originally planned to grab the blood-soaked men one by one, pick them up, and throw them across the sea like rockets:

But the blood people's torsos have changed again.

This time, their torsos were no longer gel-like frozen substances, but had a water-like feel; DouDou's hands passed through their bodies with almost no resistance, let alone grabbing them and throwing them away.

So DouDou had to tear off their limbs to make the blood-soaked people stop.

"what?!"

But when they turned around and looked back, they were dumbfounded.
The bloodied figures, their limbs torn off, had no lower limbs for support, yet they still hovered a meter in the air, their arrangement still neat.

The raindrops, like water flowing into a pool, created ripples and tiny bubbles on the trunk.

Hoo-la:

The fluid emerged from the gap, then solidified; crimson limbs replaced the various hands and feet.

The blood people didn't take it to heart and held hands again, even closer than before.

[So many strange things. Never mind, I'd better ask someone who knows! Where's the researcher?]

"Make way, make way; everyone please step aside."

DouDou waved his hand impatiently; in a flash, he slid to the researcher closest to him.

Before DouDou could even speak--
The researcher's throat made a gurgling, gurgling sound, as if blood was stuck in his trachea.
"No, no, we can't let him perform the circle ritual." DouDou hesitated for a moment, then gave up the idea of ​​patting his back.

"What are these red blood and [Dr. Human] clones doing? They must be copies of [Dr. Human]."

"What exactly happened? You were all so supportive of this cataloger just now, and now you've made such a mess of things. What's going on with this ceremony?"

The researcher suddenly let out a scream, giving an irrelevant answer:
"Ugh... It smells burnt! It's burnt, it's charred... how could the consistency be like this?"

"It's you! It's you! You!"

He raised his hand and weakly waved it in front of his face to shoo it away:

"No. Don't come any closer. My—your, your longing is too intense—plus the round, round ritual."

DouDou was busy thinking about the new words she heard in those words:
What is "[Wave of Longing]" again? The cataloger was just mentioning it too. Wait, I think I heard it before. I think Asia-Europe Post called it "[Heart Ether]"? Or maybe "[Karma]"? I've forgotten. Is it the same thing?

The cataloger hunched over, turning over his colleague's body. His hands trembled as he raised them, grasping the ends of the head:

"Aaaaaaah, it's so round!!"

The screams turned into wails, and then stopped abruptly.

The researcher's head was swelling and bulging; crack! With a soft sound, the hood of the NBC suit tore open, revealing his scalp.

Meanwhile, the black hair on the scalp is thinning at a visible rate: because the researcher's head is getting bigger and the scalp is being "stretched"; the distance between each hair root is increasing and becoming more and more distant.

Click, click, click.

The straps securing the gas mask snapped open abruptly; the researcher's entire head was exposed. Between the scalp lay something no human should have—
It was a round hole in the center of the skull, with smooth edges; it was unclear whether it had been surgically opened and polished long ago, or whether it had appeared in a short time.

The brain and diaphragm are not visible in this round hole; instead, a jumble of debris is pouring out.

If a hard-boiled egg is overcooked, the egg white and yolk will squeeze out from the cracks in the shell, turning into a yellow and white mess.

That's what the researcher's mind is like. Countless tiny details are pouring out of this circular opening:

The original brain tissue was no longer pink and soft. It seemed to have deformed and solidified, repeating this process again and again until it was completely different—
There were several yellowed pages of paper and photos, test tubes and parts, half a dog frisbee, a complete Sega Mega Drive controller, and two rings strung together.
They all fused and intertwined, forming a long, coiled solid; like squeezing toothpaste, a round tube was sprayed out, hanging down to the ground like intestines.

DouDou reached out and poked it: it felt hard, all solid; and made a clicking sound against the tip of her fingernail.

"Hey, this—"

He looked around, intending to ask a few more researchers:
As a result, some of the other researchers had a wad of banknotes pop out of their eye sockets, pushing their eyeballs to the ground, scattering them everywhere in the wind; others had their mouths agape, almost bursting open, and vomited out neon tubes shaped like beer glasses onto the ground, flashing brightly.

The contents that leaked out varied: DouDou even saw another researcher rolling on the ground—a deflated basketball and half a racing car engine, like the kind used in Formula One, were squeezed out of her skull.
"Oh dear—I'm so confused, what are we all doing?"

DouDou casually pressed down on the photo and smoothed it out—it was a family portrait: a couple, two children, and a chubby Samoyed dog.

He compared the photo with the face of the researcher in front of him: the man looked exactly like the father in the photo.

"Is this your photo? But—"

But why do these things appear in my brain? They certainly weren't stuffed in.

(End of this chapter)