Chapter 74

And just as she thought it, something appeared in her palm.

The woman: "A red thread?"

Liu Zhiyi: "To trick me into the dungeon, your captain deliberately joined a red thread to the pieces of his own body. So in reverse, I can use this red thread to find the other pieces."

Thought really is a strange thing — sometimes you want to make yourself believe you can't, but sometimes you can do it easily.

The woman gave a startled laugh. "I didn't expect the captain to hoist a rock and drop it on his own foot. But that's still not enough — you haven't convinced me."

Liu Zhiyi kept thinking.

She was actually the kind of person who thought about solving a problem only once it was in front of her; a lot of the time she didn't want to think too much.

But having thought a great deal just now, she found a few problems.

Liu Zhiyi: "I do think there's some sense in your plan, but I can't force my own heart to acknowledge you."

The woman: "Yes. A lot of people think the same as you, which is exactly why we chose to control people — so they won't think too much."

Liu Zhiyi: "But then again — since your thinking believes that people without thought or feeling can delay the false-god invasion, why won't you believe that people can defeat the false god?"

"A dungeon is produced by feeling and obsession, and so are props; in the end, these are all the power of thought and feeling." Liu Zhiyi asked back. "Why can't that power be victory?"

The woman went still.

After a few minutes, she smiled.

"There really is some sense to it."

"But someone proposed this theory of yours long ago."

The woman smiled.

Liu Zhiyi startled, but thinking it over — with so many people in Yiling, and even extreme ideas like the cat's — it was impossible no one had thought of her idea.

The woman: "The truth is, the difficulty in facing the false-god invasion isn't whether there's a good ideology, but practice."

Liu Zhiyi gripped the scissors in her hand.

The woman: "In theory, if people's minds believe they can defeat the false god, then they can. But in reality, how do you carry it out? How do you make most people believe? How do you gather that power together?"

Liu Zhiyi opened her mouth and let out a few short syllables, but couldn't form a whole sentence.

She didn't know how to answer the question.

The woman said, smiling, "And the idea you speak of would also mean many people learning of the false god's existence — but if they don't even know the invasion is happening, how would they form the thought of winning? Yet doing it that way is very risky; no one can be sure that, when it comes to it, everyone will think that way."

With that, the woman sighed.

"Thought and feeling are far too hard to fathom and control. Malice, though, is quite easy to steer — or Shen Songyue wouldn't have turned out the way she is now."

Liu Zhiyi: "You've said a lot, but it doesn't mean what you're doing is right."

The woman nodded. "You're quite right. Many things can't be sorted into right and wrong — only who acts first, who has the nerve to act. If someone wants to realize their own ideology, I won't stop them."

With that, the woman turned side-on, clearing a path for her.

Liu Zhiyi had thought there'd be another fight; seeing the other side suddenly give way, she was slow to react.

The woman was still smiling. "Some parents are always thinking of protecting the child — don't do this, don't do that, afraid their child will get hurt. I don't think that way. If you want to do it, then do it, and whether the outcome's good or bad, you bear it yourself."

Liu Zhiyi: "…Thank you."

She said nothing more to the woman and ran toward the dungeon.

Seeing the woman wearing Shen Songyue's coat, Liu Zhiyi put hers on too.

Shen Songyue's dungeon couldn't be seen, but it had sound; as she drew near, the wind carried blurred human voices — listen closely and it was like people speaking softly, yet you couldn't make out what they said.

Like some soft, sapping music.

After she entered the dungeon, everything went dark before her again.

But Liu Zhiyi had prepared in advance; she laid a finger on the red thread in her palm and felt her way in the dark toward the thread's direction.

No matter how many times, Liu Zhiyi could never get used to the feeling of being blind.

Her sense of direction was completely lost; she guessed she was walking on the sidewalk, because her foot occasionally kicked a raised brick, and reaching ahead she'd touch a rough tree trunk — a tree planted in the sidewalk, it should be.

Because making a sound seemed to draw certain monsters —

Liu Zhiyi stepped very carefully.

But even so, her foot met empty air.

Liu Zhiyi realized she might have walked off the sidewalk; many sidewalks stand a step higher than the asphalt road.

In the instant she stepped into nothing, her body drew taut, and she worked to lift her foot a little, so she wouldn't come down too hard.

This was thanks to clearing several dungeons, which had improved her physical fitness so her body could react to sudden situations.

But even so, her foot coming down gave off a small "pat."

Then a gray-white ripple, like a sound wave, spread out all around.

As this sound wave passed through some objects, it spread again — so the gray shadow of a tree trunk, a lamp post… were all "seen."

A bit like a bat, "seeing" things by sound.

Liu Zhiyi stopped.

Because she saw a ring of gray-white human figures crouched around her.

Liu Zhiyi held her breath.

Then she slowly crouched down and felt to both sides.

She remembered there should be a tree nearby; trees planted in the sidewalk have their roots protected — some sealed straight over with cement, some heaped with small stones.

And Liu Zhiyi touched some small stones.

She picked up a stone and listened, head tilted.

These gray-white figure-monsters also made some sounds, but some of the sounds could form waves and some couldn't.

Liu Zhiyi listened a while, then felt the red thread again, and once she'd roughly fixed the direction, threw the stone off away from the thread.

—Pat.

A sound wave rippled out.