Puzzle Madness

Chapter 214 Heavenly Fire (Part 4)
Ai Xi opened her eyes, and the observatory's dome was still as blurry as a mosaic. Although she was in Mong Cai on an autumn night, the enclosed space was very stuffy and filled with a faint, almost imperceptible smell of burning.

As she pushed herself up from the ground, she saw two blurry figures weaving between the steps of the giant box tower, the sound of their heels striking the box surface particularly loud.

Occasionally, a box would loosen and sway as you stepped on it, then fall like a rolling stone.

Ruan Jingbo was becoming increasingly detached from human form, the sleeves of his school uniform torn to shreds. The forearm flexor muscles on his forearm had completely broken free from his skin, tinged with bright red, trembling and writhing like snakes, increasing the area covered by his grasping movements.

The face is also changing. The facial bones seem to have become soft rubber, and even the hollows of the eye sockets and the pupils within them move haphazardly across the face; the features alternate in position, even colliding like pinballs.

Even if the tourists are short, the elderly people they carry should fit perfectly into Nguyen King Bo's "tactics list".

But actually——
Nguyen Kyung Bo couldn't even get close to the tourists; instead, like a bull, he swept past the short man again and again, leaving dinosaur-like footprints and dents on the surface of the box.

It was obvious that she was completely unable to adapt to the rapidly changing body. The same "move list" was completely different due to the huge difference in physiological functions; every time Ruan Jingbo stepped on the square box, she could only rush out in a straight line across the entire surface of the giant tower, without any ability to turn twice.

Not to mention her shifty facial features, which made her already narrow field of vision even worse, forcing her to modify the dance machine's input again and again.

Even as Ruan Jingbo occasionally flipped and used his contorted joints to leap and cling to the wall, accelerating his impact amidst the falling cement debris and making his attacks more three-dimensional—
But the tourists weren't fast; they strolled leisurely. They could easily avoid Nguyen Jingbo's movements and her strangely trembling arms simply by turning to the side, crouching, rolling, or turning around the corner of the giant box tower.

The two are now playing a bloody and brutal game of hide-and-seek, but only the tourist is leisurely enjoying himself.

The first raid wasn't entirely ineffective—but it was clear that Nguyen King Bo had failed: the tourists were still unharmed, even wearing their sunglasses perfectly; only the elderly man behind him was missing half his head and had rolled off somewhere.

One chased, the other fled; thin streams of blood gushed from the old man's remaining jaw, leaving a long, scarlet trail behind the tourists.

Even if they were to be hit by sheer luck, it would only tear a few more chunks of flesh from the old man's already damaged body; without a leader's guidance, Ruan Jingbo's lack of awareness and limitations in his sense of distance were magnified many times over.
Ai Xi stood up, covering the bullet hole in her chin and the scorch marks left by the muzzle flash.

She tried to speak and give Ruan Jingbo guidance, but only spat out a mouthful of blood, along with pieces of teeth and flesh.

Ai Xi stared blankly at the mess on the ground—a tongue broken in two, several red and white broken teeth, and brain tissue that had been ejected from the top of the head and scattered on the ground.

She reached into her mouth and felt two openings in her upper and lower jaws. One was smaller, the other larger; the edges had rough, hard scorch marks from friction.

Whoever had such a wound should be dead by now.

She raised her head, her gaze shifting from confusion and bewilderment to unparalleled rage—this trap was even more troublesome than she had initially come to terms with.
-
"Ha, they really fired. I told you, you have a martyr complex."

The tourists noticed Ai Xi getting up. He turned his head, his words full of mockery.

Even while being pursued by the inhuman monsters behind him, he still had the energy to observe Ai Xi, his voice shifting near and far due to the movement of his body:
"It's strange that I can still move."

"Don't worry, it's not because I shot the wrong spot; a shot in the chin can certainly be fatal. I originally thought you were going to shoot the temple, but it turned out like this—"

boom!
Like a derailed high-speed train, Nguyen King Bo swept past the tourist from the side and behind, her fingertips just missing his head by a hair's breadth, only knocking off his fisherman's hat; she crashed into the corner of the observatory wall with a bang, stirring up a cloud of dust, the loud noise drowning out the tourist's unfinished words.

The tourist waved it off nonchalantly, caught the falling fisherman's hat, and put it back on. He seemed completely at ease, as if he were in the middle of a Spanish bullfight.
"--If your tongue is broken, you can't speak. It's okay, just listen to me; what's your friend's condition called, input delay? That's quite serious--"

boom! boom! boom!
This time, Ai Xi turned her gun around and used the sound of gunfire to interrupt the tourists' chatter. She first aimed around and fired three shots, observing the location of the bullet impacts: she was aiming straight ahead, but in the end, a streak of light appeared on the box to the left front, and stray bullets whistled past her ears.

The remaining two shots were the same: the bullets did not travel in a straight line, but would suddenly turn ninety degrees after traveling a certain distance from the barrel.

This illogical trajectory might truly be due to the existence of the mind ether, or it could be that the tourists are concealing some information:
But at this moment, the only thing to do is to make good use of everything you know.

"Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah."

She had lost her tongue, but her vocal cords were not damaged; Ai Xi bit the earpiece next to her collar and squeezed out a melody from her throat. She recalled the move list they had agreed on before and adjusted the song she was humming: now it was Wu Bai's "Westward Walk," only without the drumbeats.

As for the questions about death, Ai Xi had completely put them out of her mind.

She opened her blood-blinded eyes wide and readjusted her aim:

Each box is the same size and length, arranged like a table; therefore, Ai Xi can use them as a coordinate grid to estimate the bullet's impact point after it turns a corner.
".ah!"

Ai Xi's humming stopped abruptly.

Dong:
Instead, a loud bang was heard.

From the fog in the corner of the observatory, locust-like figures darted out; from Ruan Jingbo's bent arms, python-like muscle bundles pierced out, and his thigh muscles swelled and engorged with blood, almost reaching his waist.

She lunged at the tourists, her facial features rotating incessantly.

Ai Xi didn't fire; she waited—waited for the tourists to scatter. The vague melodic instructions only roughly indicated the direction, far less precise than a well-calculated shot.

The tourist didn't move, or even turn around. He simply raised his hand behind him, clenched his fist, and raised the old man's fingers, like blades, high to meet the onrushing Nguyen King Bo.

Ai Xi silently raised the muzzle of her gun, aiming it in a direction completely unrelated to the tourists:

boom! boom! boom!
Bullets veered and swerved, taking bizarre trajectories, sweeping towards the tourists—
At the same moment, the old man's frail fingers touched Ruan Jingbo's swollen palm: without a sound, Ruan Jingbo disappeared like a bubble.

Only the wind she stirred up caused the hem of her floral shirt to flutter.

Click, click, click.

Even after running out of bullets, Ai Xi was still pulling the trigger.

The tourist stumbled backward. Several patches of crimson blood quietly spread across her floral shirt—she had been hit after all.

Not only that:

Hissing sounds.
A red line slits up the tourist's thick neck: blood spurts out from the wound on the side of his neck, dripping onto the box.

*Snap.* Ai Xi tossed aside the empty pistol, her vigilance undiminished.

The tourist shrugged, remaining ramrod straight and not raising his hand to cover his wound; as if the bullet hadn't hit his carotid artery.
"Huh? You hit it. As expected, the tactic of feinting to the east while attacking in the west will never go out of style; well done."

The tourist stood there with the tiny fountain on his neck humming softly, like the sound of the wind. He pushed up his sunglasses and continued:
"Luckily I didn't get slapped in the mouth, otherwise we would have been staring at each other; that would have been so embarrassing and shameful—but I'm afraid I'll have to live a little longer now."

"Don't worry, don't worry. Have you figured out what's going on?"

"The concentration has exceeded the critical point, and the sea of ​​suffering has entered the human world. This is the intersection of the material world and the chaos after death."

"Scientists call it the [gap effect] or [brain reality]; the mind ether now completely overrides the laws of physics."

"You can't die, and I can't die either—right now, in the entire observatory, no human being can find relief through death."

(End of this chapter)