Chapter 75

Along with the "ah, ah" the gray-white monsters gave off —

Liu Zhiyi saw the sound waves throw out ball after ball of circles, stacked layer on layer into a mass, closing in toward where the stone had fallen, like a surging tide of human heads slamming across.

Liu Zhiyi drew a sharp breath and thought.

Shen Songyue really did have a lot of people to take revenge on.

But she didn't linger; she grabbed a handful of pebbles and went on feeling along the red thread.

She brushed against the gray-white monsters a few times along the way, and found that as long as she wore Shen Songyue's clothes, even if a sound drew them over, so long as she didn't touch them, the monsters couldn't find her.

No knowing how long she walked.

That's how it is losing your sight — not only can't you see, you lose all sense of direction and time.

—Buzz, buzz.

Liu Zhiyi stopped.

—Buzz, buzz.

It sounded like a phone vibrating.

"…Help."

A faint woman's voice sounded.

Liu Zhiyi turned; a ring of gray-white ripples passed under her feet.

She saw a figure lying face-down on the ground.

Past experiences of being tricked in dungeons rushed to mind; Liu Zhiyi's first reaction was a trap.

"…Help."

Another cry for help sounded, and as the ripples spread this time, the massed gray head-shadows had already gathered, closing slowly toward the source of the sound.

Liu Zhiyi hesitated a few seconds, then still took out the pebbles and threw them, saying in the instant they landed —

"Don't make a sound. The monsters can locate you by it."

The instant she spoke, she dropped flat; that was how she'd dodged the monsters before when she accidentally made a noise.

—Buzz.

The sound of a phone vibrating rose again.

Liu Zhiyi saw several faces squeezed into a cluster.

They couldn't be called faces anymore — no eyes, no nose, only a hole set in the center of the face, and the hole ran front to back; when the wind blew, it gave off a sound.

"Ah."

Liu Zhiyi covered her mouth and instinctively held her breath, to keep from making a sound.

But soon she realized she could see.

She saw gray-white light shining down from overhead — it was this light that lit the monsters clustered together.

Liu Zhiyi slowly raised her head.

And then she saw a phone screen.

It might sound funny put this way, but she saw a person — a person whose head was a phone.

—Buzz.

The phone vibrated.

"Still so easy to fool."

The phone buzzed, and a woman's voice came out of it.

"But I've found you at last."

Liu Zhiyi knew this voice well.

It was Shen Songyue's voice.

Liu Zhiyi: "Shen Songyue?"

The person with the phone head nodded — if the phone counted as her head.

"You actually recognized me. I'm a little touched."

Liu Zhiyi looked her over, up and down.

"How did you become like this?"

"Mutated." Shen Songyue answered. "An ordinary person's body can't stretch a dungeon this wide."

Liu Zhiyi was stuck for words; facing the cat's crowd, she never knew what to say, what she could say.

"You can't stop us like this." Shen Songyue crouched, the phone screen aimed at Liu Zhiyi. "Your heart isn't hard enough, or ruthless enough."

Liu Zhiyi looked at her without expression.

"Then will you kill me?"

White noise flecked the phone screen; Shen Songyue seemed to freeze.

Liu Zhiyi: "Seems you're not ruthless enough for that either."

Shen Songyue: "You've changed."

Liu Zhiyi tugged the red thread on her hand, fixed her direction again, and went on walking toward it.

"I haven't changed. I've only seen clearly that the gap between me and you can't be reconciled — no amount of talk means anything."

Honestly, all the way here it had been the woman outside blocking her, and inside it was Shen Songyue.

Liu Zhiyi was getting rather fed up.

It gave her the same sense as when she was going to work away from home, and her mother would set relatives on her one after another to talk her out of it.

The phone screen flickered several times in a row.

Liu Zhiyi found Shen Songyue's changes of mood showed on the phone screen — quite easy to read, at least.

Shen Songyue: "All right. Then there's no other way."

Hearing this, Liu Zhiyi immediately sprang to one side.

But she was still a step slow — after all, she'd lived over twenty years in peacetime, and even with this stretch of training in dungeons, her body's skills hadn't caught up; the light thrown from the phone screen caught her leg.

At that touch, Liu Zhiyi's leg wouldn't move, as if filled with cement — numb and heavy.

Shen Songyue: "Reacting much faster than before."

Liu Zhiyi braced both hands on the ground — this too was experience crawled out of the last few dungeons: she pushed her upper body up first, tipped to one side, and using the momentum, braced both hands to that side, dragging her leg out of the light's reach.

Shen Songyue gave an "oh."

Once out of the lit area, everything went dark before Liu Zhiyi again.

It seemed Shen Songyue's phone screen could light the surroundings.

Liu Zhiyi didn't stand up; instead she eased the force in her hands and feet and crawled outward.

That way she could greatly reduce the sound she made.

The Shen Songyue and the monsters in this dungeon all located by sound.

Before she'd crawled far, a white beam of light shot down from behind her, like the searchlight in some prison-break film, throwing a circle of light onto the ground.

By rights, light more or less spreads outward.

But this circle lit only that one ring, the light held fast within it. Beyond it, nothing could be seen.

Liu Zhiyi didn't move again; she pressed her body tight to the ground, eyes fixed on the ring of light on it.