Chapter 72

It wasn't that Liu Zhiyi's character was so noble she could sacrifice herself for others.

It was simply that she couldn't stand by.

She couldn't fold her hands and watch while others suffered a disaster, while her own hometown was struck by calamity.

The boy: "Hard to understand."

Liu Zhiyi turned to look at the boy and thought a moment.

She'd been led along by the boy's words all this while, and hadn't thought some things through.

It felt a bit like bullying an honest soul.

But in the past, when she and her mother clashed, it was mostly her mother who gave in — as long as she got a little fierce.

She walked a few steps forward, swept the boy into her arms, and said very earnestly.

"I'm getting out! If you won't let me out, I'll die right in front of you."

"What did you say?"

The boy seemed shocked; a button eye even fell off.

Liu Zhiyi: "I'm going out! Or else you kill me."

The boy opened his mouth, as if to say something, but in the end the yarn of his mouth turned into a wavy line, and only one line came out.

"How can you talk like that…"

Liu Zhiyi sighed.

"Let me go back. Since you take on my mother's viewpoint, you should understand."

The boy lowered his head, his button eyes wet.

"I don't understand. I just have a feeling… if you insist on going, there's nothing I can do."

Just as she'd thought — from the very first dungeon, she'd faintly sensed that some dungeons were actually simple to solve.

Liu Zhiyi smiled. "My mother really couldn't do a thing with me."

The boy deflated. "You just know that under the prop's influence I can't do anything to you. But I'll say the hard part first: this dungeon you're in is mine. My dungeon was originally blank; that it's like this now is because I've been influenced by the dungeon."

"In short, even I don't know what's going on with this dungeon now."

The boy stuffed the fallen button eye back in.

"You'll have to find your own way out."

It sounded rather complicated.

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment. "You mean your dungeon is influenced by me?"

The boy: "More or less."

Liu Zhiyi's gaze shifted to the building of mixed gray-tile-white-wall and old apartment block.

The entrance was a blue-green security door.

But this door was a bit special, because the peephole was covered with a little metal cap.

Liu Zhiyi studied it a long while; she hadn't seen this kind of old security door in some time, and it took her some effort to realize the door had been put in backward.

The side it opened from was installed on the outside.

But nothing in a dungeon appears for no reason.

Liu Zhiyi realized something; she stepped forward, laid a hand on the security door's handle, and pressed down gently.

—Click.

As the door pushed open, she heard the sound of glass shattering.

A crack split open by her foot and ran spreading backward.

The boy gave an "ah," seeming to want to say something, but it was quickly drowned out by the wail of a police siren coming from behind the door.

Liu Zhiyi pushed the door open.

The motion-sensor light in the stairwell outside came on in answer.

She was out.

Liu Zhiyi stood there dazed.

So leaving a dungeon was this simple.

Just like when she'd once made up her mind to leave her mother and work away from home.

She'd only made a decision, pushed open the door of home.

And she'd left.

Once she'd gathered up her sorrowful feelings, Liu Zhiyi began to take stock of her surroundings.

She noticed a good deal of garbage scattered in the stairwell — smashed pots and dishes, clothes and trousers wadded into balls.

It looked like the scene of some flight from disaster.

Liu Zhiyi turned and went inside; there wasn't much change in the flat.

The cat hadn't come out of the dungeon with her — or rather, was he even in the dungeon at all?

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment, put a hand in her pocket, then opened her backpack and rummaged.

Not there.

So she searched the whole room, and still didn't find it.

The little cat paw she'd brought out of the dungeon, a part of the cat's body, was gone.

So helping the cat find his body really had been a scheme set up just for her — to trap her, they'd truly gone all out.

Liu Zhiyi was angered into a laugh.

Setting aside her grievance with the cat, one question lay before her.

What now?

The cat had said the pieces of his body were buried over by the earthquake belt.

Liu Zhiyi took out her phone.

She'd half worried Shen Songyue and the others might have killed the signal, but her phone had full bars, and the latest news pushes were all about the Yiling earthquake.

Just as she was reading the news, the ground shook again.

Liu Zhiyi ducked under the table at once.

The shaking lasted only a few seconds, not strong.

Once it stopped, Liu Zhiyi quickened her hands, gathering all the props into her backpack, and took along the bottled water, easily-carried snacks, and medical supplies from the flat.

Shen Songyue's coat was still in her hands.

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment, and in the end stuffed the coat into her backpack too.

Once she was ready, she went straight downstairs.

The stairwell was still strewn with garbage, chaotic footprints trodden over it.

Liu Zhiyi ran down to the ground floor in one go, pushed open the unit door, and stepped out to see a bustling crowd standing in the street, auxiliary police in yellow vests weaving through to keep order, a loudspeaker hung on a nearby railing repeating without stop.

"The aftershocks have not stopped. Please stay in open ground and do not run about."

Liu Zhiyi raised her head and looked at the sky.

Unlike what she'd seen in the dungeon, though the sky was covered by a layer of something here too, what she'd seen in the dungeon was cloth, and now it was a thick layer of dark cloud.

It seemed Shen Songyue had done some covering up in reality too.

Liu Zhiyi unlocked her phone, opened the map app, and found the location of the earthquake belt in it.

But before that, she planned to make a stop at the police station on the way.

Honestly, facing a situation like this, Liu Zhiyi didn't think her own strength could turn the tide; if she could find help, she'd find help.

With that in mind, Liu Zhiyi headed for the nearest police station.

The street was full of people coming and going, and quite a few held up phones — recording, or livestreaming, no telling.

Most people were a little anxious but not heavy-hearted.

At a glance, the buildings hadn't taken much damage either.

So it seemed the cat was right — they didn't want to harm ordinary people.

But as she neared the earthquake belt, there were fewer and fewer people on the road.

Liu Zhiyi glanced at the phone screen; the police station was at the corner across the road.

She quickened her steps.

"Don't go that way."

Liu Zhiyi had just crossed the road when a woman's voice came from behind.

She turned and saw a woman standing on the far side, right on the curb, staring without a single blink at the space behind Liu Zhiyi.

"That way's been sealed off. Don't go over."

Sealed off?

Liu Zhiyi turned back.

Before her was a pedestrian street, always so lively before, now utterly empty, several streetlamps not even lit.

Something was wrong.

Liu Zhiyi turned at once and ran toward the woman.

The woman raised a hand.

Everything was suddenly slowed to half speed.

Liu Zhiyi saw the woman's eyes widen slowly, her face going white bit by bit, as if she'd seen something terrifying.

"Quick!"

—Whoosh.

A violent wind struck from behind, surging into Liu Zhiyi's ears with a "hum."

Then everything went dark before her.

Liu Zhiyi didn't move.

She suspected she'd entered a dungeon.

Though there'd been few people on the road just now, she could still more or less hear voices from afar.

But now the silence all around was frightening.

And she could see nothing.

Not the kind of nothing where your eyes are shut or covered — even then you can more or less sense a change in the light before you.

But now she couldn't even perceive light.

Trouble.

Liu Zhiyi crouched down and reached out, feeling carefully around.

She touched tactile paving.

That meant she was still on the sidewalk.

Liu Zhiyi sat down and took off her shoes.

No help for it — the sneakers she wore had thick soles that dulled the feeling in her feet.

Not being able to see badly affected her senses; Liu Zhiyi remembered she'd been standing on the sidewalk at an intersection before she went blind, but once blind, she lost even her sense of direction.

She couldn't tell front from back or left from right; if not for feeling the tactile paving, she probably couldn't even walk a straight line.

And she couldn't see the watch either.

Liu Zhiyi felt around on her arm for a while; the watch had buzzed a few times just now — the task must have updated.

Just then —

"…Oo."

An air-sound rose, sounding like someone crying.

Liu Zhiyi went still.

"…Oo."

Another.

The crying was very strange — it sounded like weeping, yet held an "ah" air-sound, spreading from the left.

Liu Zhiyi saw the sound.

Though it was pitch black before her, she saw a ring of gray-white ripples spread out, like ripples on water.

Each time the crying sounded, a ring of ripples spread.

Liu Zhiyi slowly turned her head toward the ripple-sound.

"…Oo."

Another ripple — only this time a gray oval sat at its center.

"…Oo."

The oval stretched, as if growing two legs.

Liu Zhiyi froze, but the crying came one after another, the ripples ring after ring.

"…Oo."

Three holes appeared on the oval — two small ones above, one large one below.

No.

Liu Zhiyi suddenly realized — were those three holes eyes and a mouth?

This thing had found her!

Without a thought Liu Zhiyi turned and ran.

In the pitch dark she didn't even know where she was running, only that she crashed into several things.

"Over here!"

The woman's voice sounded again.

Without a thought Liu Zhiyi lunged toward it.

The next second, a white light stabbed in.

When she came to herself, Liu Zhiyi found she was standing in the middle of the road, and the woman she'd met before was gripping her arm.

The woman: "Come a bit further — the dungeon's expanding, don't get sucked in."

Liu Zhiyi was still dazed, but obediently followed the woman forward.

"A dungeon can expand?"

The woman: "Why not? The more people a dungeon affects, the bigger it can grow. Mind your step."

Liu Zhiyi lifted a foot onto the curb, steadying herself with a hand on the woman's arm.

At the same time, the watch on her wrist buzzed again.

Liu Zhiyi startled and looked down, seeing a prop alert on the watch.

[The Queen's New Clothes.]

Wasn't this Shen Songyue's prop?

Liu Zhiyi looked at the woman.

The woman paused, then smiled, as if a little helpless.

"You've found me out."

"I'm acting on someone's request too." The woman spread her hands. "Shen Songyue and the others don't want you mixed up in this. Run far away — this dungeon's expanding pretty fast."

Liu Zhiyi: "Are you all going to drag the whole of Yiling in?"

She'd walked maybe less than two kilometers from home to here; the size of this dungeon's range frightened even Liu Zhiyi.