Puzzle Madness

Chapter 157 Circle (Part 7)
DouDou casually tucked the radio she had pulled out under her arm: without saying a word, she struck again with lightning speed, shoving her arm into the mouth of her occipital bone.

He's determined to find the guy hiding inside.
"Where did you go? Where did you go?"

DouDou frowned, wishing he could turn his whole body over and crawl inside his own body.

No matter how much he stirred and searched, nothing grabbed his hand this time; only coarse grains of sand surrounded his fingertips.

"Wow, they're really good at dodging."

It's time to try a different approach.

DouDou lowered her head, withdrew her arm again, and shook it lightly; then she tightened her shoulder blades and opened her right arm like a wing. She raised her right hand to shoulder level, straightening it—
He swung his fist and smashed it into the back of his head.

throat!
An indescribable crashing sound. The shockwave whipped up dust and sand, sending the stumbling researchers flying; the wooden floor beneath their feet caved in and snapped in two sections.

Small buildings along the street tilted and collapsed to the ground, filling the gaps left by the rising smoke from the rain.

Even DouDou's head was buzzing, but he didn't care; he simply pulled out his hand again, clenched his fist—and plunged it into his mouth against the occipital bone:

boom!
Another sound. The blood-covered people's bodies surged like ocean waves, almost disintegrating and disintegrating under the force of the punch; tiny blood droplets detached from their bodies, only to be pulled back and stuck back into them by invisible threads.

"Tsk."

DouDou ground his teeth in dissatisfaction.

His right hand was like a drill, relentlessly pounding into the mouth on the occipital bone: even the teeth on the outside of that opening were shattered, and the flying fragments were like bullets.

Bang bang bang bang!

The ground beneath my feet was riddled with cracks, which were spreading outwards; the foundation was about to collapse entirely. The pedestrian street was quickly turning into a sandpit for antlions, everything tilting inwards—
boo.

Amidst the roar, DouDou heard a soft sound; finally, something had been shattered by his blow.

The blood-soaked figure stopped swaying, and the cataloger halted the rotation. Some invisible remote control had pressed the pause button, forcibly interrupting their actions.
Boo, boo, boo, boo, boo
Wow!

The surrounding blood-soaked figures instantly disintegrated and exploded, turning into pools of bright red water that fell to the ground; they were washed away by the rain that began to fall again, and the water seeped into the cracks of the rotten wooden floor.

Only the open, hemispherical shells, the limbs ripped off by the pockets, and the square metal plates proved that they had been there.

boom!
The cataloger plummeted from mid-air, crashing into the already dilapidated wooden floor without any cushioning; sawdust flew everywhere. His limbs must have been broken in the fall, bent at an agonizing angle; his entire body arched backward, head tilted high.

Splatter, splatter: jets of dark red water gushed from the round hole in his face, the blood and rainwater that had just been injected into it.

The so-called "ritual of the circle" seemed to abruptly end in that instant.
"Huh? That's it?"

The commotion was so big just now, and it all came to an abrupt end like this:

DouDou pulled his hand away, swaying and dizzy. He waited there unwillingly for a while—finally admitting, rather reluctantly, that the chaos seemed to have temporarily come to an end.

He finally had a moment to examine his "trophy." Although everyone had been talking about "round" all night, this radio was perfectly square.

[Oh, I get it! Because a circle is the most inclusive shape, so this is a rectangle—okay, I can't keep this up.]

In his hand was a Grundig Yacht Boy 400—also known as the "Yacht Boy," a German-made radio. DouDou knew the model number not only because it was a European brand, but also because this model could receive television audio.

This trendy feature is quite rare, as it's not commonly found on Panasonic radios. A classmate once used it to eavesdrop on basketball games during class: NBA games are always played in the morning due to the time difference.

DouDou had seen the advertisement for this radio: it seemed to be just like its name, marketed as a radio for use while fishing at sea or at water parties. That scenario was even less relevant to DouDou. Besides, it was quite strange that you could only hear the sound and not see the expected television picture.

But the most noticeable feature is the dent on the radio's casing—it looks like a handprint on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with clear fingerprints; it's etched onto the metal and plastic, even covering the knobs.

I counted them carefully. There seemed to be about ten fingers of different sizes and thicknesses that left marks on the shell.

What exactly was that grabbing the radio and wrestling with DouDou just now?

DouDou gently tapped the radio twice, then waved it near her ear—finally shrugged and rubbed the back of her head, which she had been hitting for so long:
"No matter what, it's free, so getting it is a win."
-
DouDou can feel it--
Whatever was just here has now left. The surrounding pressure has vanished, and the rain is falling again, like bullets from the sky.

Sizzle.
Heavy thuds and staggering sounds: white smoke rose from the pores of the researchers' faces, as if they had short-circuited.

Some crawled a few steps towards DouDou, raising their hands; it was unclear what they were asking for.
But in the end, those researchers who were just able to move around normally collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

They should have truly become corpses.

As for why these people were able to move freely across the land with their heads blown off, it remains a mystery to DouDou:
It's definitely related to that PhD—but as for the reason, I have no idea. That PhD is really strange; does anyone know what's going on?

After thinking about it, he decided not to scavenge among the clutter: he noticed that many things were still intact, such as the MD controller; the one at his house was almost worn out.

But these are other people's memories. Memories should leave with a person's death; it's really impolite to take them back and use them like this.

He wandered around, picking up the corpses one by one and placing them under a sheltered roof.

"It's such a mess. Will we still be able to come to Changshan Beach to play in the future?"

This place is a mess somewhere between reality and fantasy. Although someone will definitely come to clean it up—I don't know which one—it will probably take a long time to rebuild it.

If this commotion continues every day, the entire Mong Cai city will be reduced to ruins in less than half a month.

If it affects their studies and they can't go to school at all in the future, the consequences would be too serious.

DouDou walked up to the cataloger, who was stuck in a hole in the wooden floorboards: the small hole had been made by the fall from mid-air, allowing him to embed himself into the folded wooden board.

He should still be alive, his limbs trembling involuntarily, but his face was a hollow, dark hole, with no visible features; his whole body twitched intermittently, and his fingers curled repeatedly.

DouDou listened intently—the other person might have fallen into a deep coma and couldn't hear any mental broadcasts at all.

He grabbed the cataloger and leaned close:
"Could you pass on a message for me? Don't shout it as loudly as before, making people bleed from all seven orifices; just make sure the coverage area is wide enough. Okay?"

The cataloger didn't respond at all. The breath of life seemed to have no intention of lingering, and was slowly slipping away; it was as if DouDou was saying this to herself.

With the experience he had just gained, DouDou thought for a moment and realized what to do—he usually listened attentively in class and knew how to apply what he had learned to other situations.

He reached out and stuffed his entire hand into the round hole in the cataloger's face, until his whole arm was inside and his shoulder was against the mask; the shards at the edge of the tear scraped against his sleeve with a creaking sound.

Just as DouDou predicted, the inside was unfathomably deep—
The texture is peculiar. The cataloger is like a bag filled with water, with no organs, bones, or muscles inside; all you can touch is liquid, which is quite different from a pocket.

"Cough, cough, cough!"

DouDou cleared his throat forcefully, mimicking Professor X's pose from X-Men, pressing his index and middle fingers against his temple with his other hand; he muttered to himself:
"Everyone, please calm down, the kids need to go to class. Everyone, please calm down, the kids need to go to class. Everyone, please calm down, the kids need to go to class."

DouDou tried to imagine the cataloger as a human-shaped megaphone—
(End of this chapter)