Wei Miao, who had just rushed back, bumped into Luo Wei, who had just stepped through the door. Qin Ci and Wei Dong each grabbed one of them and dragged them back to the starting room. Luo Wei, ignoring Wei Dong's restraint, stared at Wei Miao with slightly reddened eyes behind his glasses: "Did you trigger the hidden world?"
Wei Miao shook his head, crying: "I was so scared... I was afraid Nezha would kill me, I... I didn't dare ask him where the sword was..."
"Let me go!" Luo Wei turned and shouted at Wei Dong, "Let me go, I'll go ask Nezha—"
"The world that Nezha Conquers the Sea can trigger is most likely the world of the Eyebrow Ruler, not the Heavenly Book of Wonders." Mu Yiran calmly told him, and briefly explained everyone's analysis of the matter, "Currently, there is no particularly obvious commonality between Nezha Conquers the Sea and the Heavenly Book of Wonders." "
Then—which other world is possible?!" Luo Wei pressed, his gaze fixed on Mu Yiran, Ke Xun, and Qin Ci's faces.
"It's really hard to judge..." Qin Ci's tone was heavy and troubled, his eyes filled with the pity and regret of a doctor for a patient with no cure.
Before he could finish speaking, Luo Wei rushed to Ke Xun and urgently shoved paper and pen into his hands: "Since your intuition is so accurate, please draw a lot for Ya Qing again, please!"
Ke Xun meowed a few times, and Mu Yiran took the paper and pen, writing on the paper while translating his words: "He can't write Chinese characters now, so I'll do it for him. But what Ke Xun means is that his intuition isn't always accurate, like with Qi Qiang last night. So I hope you don't put your hopes on this. While there's still a little time left, settle your affairs."
These words, spoken calmly by Mu Yiran, sounded particularly cold, yet everyone knew that this was actually the only thing Luo Wei and Li Ya Qing could do now.
Li Ya Qing cried until she almost fainted. Luo Wei frowned tightly and held her in his arms, his lips trembling uncontrollably.
The two exchanged a few words, but no one listened carefully, or rather, no one had the heart to listen. Wei Miao slumped to the side, weeping bitterly. Qin Ci walked over and softly asked if she needed to leave a message for her family.
Ke Xun pulled out a slip of paper for Li Yaqing, which read "The Taoist of Laoshan."
Luo Wei's pale face revealed his despair.
If Ke Xun's intuition was correct, then the world that could trigger the hidden world of "The Heavenly Book of Wonders" was the world of "The Taoist of Laoshan." However—"The Taoist of Laoshan" was also a hidden world, and it had not yet been triggered.
Not to mention that there wasn't much time left, even if there was plenty of time, they needed to find out which world could trigger the hidden world of "The Taoist of Laoshan"...
Luo Wei didn't want to give up. He went forward to pick up Li Yaqing's treasure bowl prop, wanting to use it to make the most of their remaining time to continue searching. However, the treasure bowl had become extremely heavy, and the two of them couldn't move it, especially since Li Yaqing was now collapsed on the ground, unable to even stand up.
Luo Wei looked at the others in the room, not asking for help.
Who could help? Asking someone would be tantamount to asking them to die for Li Yaqing.
Luo Wei dejectedly released his grip, walked to Li Yaqing's side, and pulled her into his arms. His voice was strangely calm, still possessing the rationality and composure characteristic of a science student. He calmly said to Li Yaqing, "Don't worry, I will take good care of your aunt and uncle, and I will completely unravel the secrets behind this world in the painting. I will definitely avenge you. I will never forget you in this life."
Li Yaqing tightly gripped his lapel, crying uncontrollably.
The box in the center of the room opened with a "snap."
Mu Yiran walked over and saw another piece of paper inside, which read: Write down the title of the other animated film you have unlocked.
As everyone expected, this was a request to write down the title of the hidden world they had triggered.
Ke Xun, Mu Yiran, Zhu Haowen, and Wei Dong stepped forward one by one to write on the paper. Wei Miao, who had been crying all along, suddenly got up, struggled over, and also wrote a name: "Meijianchi".
This was indeed very likely a hidden world that could be triggered in her world, but whether it would work... was unknown.
Ke Xun asked Mu Yiran a few questions in a low voice, asking if he would suffer a backlash if he wrote Ge Lei's name.
Mu Yiran pondered for a moment and gently shook his head: "I'll wake him up. If he can regain his senses, let him write it himself. After all, he's still alive. I don't think it's appropriate for you to write it for him."
Ke Xun nodded, watching Mu Yiran wake up the unconscious Ge Lei. However, Ge Lei seemed to have really been frightened into madness. Even though he no longer screamed and ran around like before, he now sat on the ground in a daze, as if he had lost his soul. No matter who spoke to him, he seemed not to hear them.
"Go write it," Qin Ci said to Luo Wei, who was still holding Li Yaqing and refusing to move. "Don't let Xiao Li regret it."
After all, it was because of Li Yaqing that Luo Wei was dragged into this deadly world of the painting.
Li Yaqing nodded repeatedly in Luo Wei's arms, pushing him to write her name on the paper.
Luo Wei calmly got up, helped Li Yaqing up as well, and the two of them wrote the film title on the paper. Then they sat back down against the wall without saying a word.
Ke Xun looked at the silent Huang Pi: "Meow meow?"
Mu Yiran translated: "You really don't want to live anymore?"
Huang Pi glanced at the two of them indifferently and said in a hoarse voice: "I'm already tired of living. Dying here is not bad."
Ke Xun thought for a moment, then suddenly took out his phone, opened the music stored on the device, swiped around for a while, finally found a song, pressed play, turned down the volume, and handed it to Huang Pi.
Huangpi took the phone, held it to his ear, and heard a distant yet incredibly familiar melody: "
The wind whistle blows, we spread our tiny wings. The white sails billow, we face the colorful sunlight.
La...la...fly bravely, sing joyfully, the flag begins its voyage.
Seagulls beep ahead, guiding us. Waves crash beneath our feet, singing for us.
La...la...fly bravely, sing joyfully, the flag begins its voyage..."
As Huangpi listened, he slowly smiled, revealing a set of yellow teeth stained by tobacco and alcohol.
"The Flag Cruiser," he said with a hoarse laugh, then suddenly closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wall behind him, and hummed along to the music on the phone, even though his voice was unpleasant and tone-deaf.
The star and moon patterns on the walls and ceiling became hazy and dreamlike, swaying, shimmering, and twisting, slowly transforming into the faces of adults.
From the box in the center of the room came a playful, childlike melody, like the opening theme of an animated film.
Wei Miao let out a heart-wrenching scream.
She lay on the ground, her whole body convulsing, the flesh on her back contorted as if an elastic waistband was being pulled out
of her pants. It felt as if an invisible hand was tearing her tendons out of her flesh.
Before Wei Miao's agonizing, inhuman screams had even subsided, Ge Lei, seemingly driven mad, began to scream as well.
Even insane, he still felt pain. He rolled on the ground, his flesh peeling away piece by piece, revealing his bloodied internal organs and bones, as if something unseen was gnawing at him bit by bit.
Wei Dong was terrified, his body going limp as he slumped against the wall. He couldn't bear to look at the horrific scenes unfolding before him, but his body was too terrified to function, leaving him only able to sit there, unable to tear his gaze away from the blood-soaked landscape.
Zhu Haowen turned his head away, his gaze falling on a door nearby. Even though he was colorblind and couldn't see the blood, he didn't want to see the two people's bodies, deformed or mutilated from the brutal killing.
The third to scream was Li Yaqing. Her scream wasn't a scream of agony or a cry of pain, but one of terror.
An irresistible force was emanating from the treasure basin, pulling her towards it.
Luo Wei desperately held onto her, but he was no match for that force. Ke Xun rushed over to help, even though he knew it was futile.
Luo Wei could only watch helplessly as Li Yaqing was dragged into the basin. The dark opening of the basin led to some unknown space; it swallowed her, but rejected him, excluding him from the basin. No matter how hard he tried to squeeze or jump in, it was all in vain.
Ke Xun pulled Luo Wei away, offering futile comfort by gripping his shoulders. Luo Wei, panting heavily, tried to accept reality as quickly as possible.
Just as his emotions began to calm down, a sound came from the treasure basin. Both of them looked over and saw a person suddenly and forcefully ejected from the basin, tossed into the air, and then crashed heavily to the ground.
Upon closer inspection, it was Li Yaqing, lifeless.
Luo Wei was about to pick her up when another sound came from the treasure basin, followed by another person being forcefully ejected from the air and crashing to the ground like a tattered sack full of garbage.
His gaze fell on it again—and it was another Li Yaqing.
A dead Li Yaqing.
Luo Wei stood motionless.
The sounds from the treasure basin continued, and again and again, more and more bodies of Li Yaqing were ejected from the basin—one, two, three, a dozen.
"Stop—you bastard—stop—" Luo Wei suddenly broke down, tearing at his hair with both hands, screaming at the treasure basin with heart-wrenching cries.
Ke Xun stepped forward and grabbed him, pressing his head firmly into his chest, preventing him from seeing this incredibly cruel and vicious scene.
The pain of seeing one lover's corpse was already unbearable, but that cruel and vicious force was going to create more than a dozen more to display before his eyes.
Ke Xun was so angry that the veins on his forehead bulged.
But he could do nothing but forcefully hold down the nearly insane Luo Wei.
Mu Yiran stepped forward, bent down, grabbed one of the legs of the treasure basin, and with a forceful upward lift, the large bronze basin crashed down. Mu Yiran lifted it again with force, and the basin flipped over, mouth down.
The basin's mouth was blocked by the ground, finally stopping the spraying of corpses outward.
Ke Xun turned his face to look at the entire room; Wei Miao was also dead, the flesh on his back crumpled into a heap. Ge Lei's upper body had already been "eaten away," while his lower body was still being devoured by an invisible mouth.
Huang Pi, who hadn't uttered a sound, was now mostly embedded in the wall.
The protagonist of the Laoshan Taoist story had learned the art of walking through walls in his dream.
Only half of Huang Pi's face and one hand remained outside the wall, his hand still clutching Ke Xun's phone.
"...Flag...flag...begin...far...voyage..." Huang Pi hummed laboriously until his entire face was embedded in the wall. All that remained outside, besides the Confucian scholar's cap prop lying on the ground, was that hand that had once been stained with the sins of the world, the phone playing a song he had sung with his kindergarten friends when he was a child.