Monster - Chapter 111
Chapter 111: Dream Castle - Perspective
Lou was rarely quiet when she was with Lin Sandie. In fact, her personality tended to create a chaotic scene no matter who she was with. But perhaps Lin Sandie had a special way with her. During their time trapped in the wardrobe, she had remained quietly nestled against Lin Sandie, so well-behaved that Miu, who glanced over from time to time, wondered if she had been possessed.
In some ways, it had to be said, Lou was completely wrapped around Lin Sandie's finger.
Fortunately, they weren't in the wardrobe for too long. About an hour later, a commotion from outside disturbed the two who were still sharing a tender moment. Lou peered through the crack in the wardrobe again. For some reason, a large amount of water had suddenly begun pouring from the ceiling of the room.
Saya and Xing Meilu quickly got themselves together and hurried out the door. Lou and Lin Sandie hadn't been hit by the water yet, but seeing how heavy the downpour was, they simply bought two raincoats from the points store. After putting them on, they climbed out of the wardrobe.
"The water's fine, just ordinary cold water," Miu said.
"Why is it suddenly raining so much water?" Lou asked. She was wearing a clear white raincoat, while Lin Sandie wore a bright yellow one.
"I don't know what Enzo is up to. Cheng Gui is killing his way over. There are a lot of people Cheng Gui killed in the basement now. Do you want to go down?"
"Saya and Xing Meilu have also gone to the first floor. The people from Bite Mark have arrived, and so have Wei and Mike. Tsk… it's a lively night."
"We're coming to find you."
Lou and Lin Sandie left the room. The hallway outside was also being drenched with water pouring from the ceiling. It was pouring rain in the wilderness outside, and it was raining inside the castle. Water began to pool on the floor, flowing towards the first floor.
The castle's first-floor hall had an atrium-style design, with two spiral staircases winding up to the second floor. As they descended the stairs, Lou and Lin Sandie saw many bodies lying scattered across the first-floor hall. Unlike the second floor, where the water flowed downward, the water here was much deeper. Blood from the dead mixed with it, turning it into a bloody pool, and the corpses were soaking in the ever-deepening crimson water.
Even though she saw it from a distance, it was Lin Sandie's first time seeing so many dead people, and she uncomfortably averted her gaze. Unlike the large-scale explosion in the ghost town, many of the people here had been hanged or shot indiscriminately. They looked as if they hadn't died in peace. Staring too long would envelop one in an even deeper sense of despair.
Standing on the second floor and looking up slightly, they could see Miu perched on a small ledge of a high window. Lin Sandie searched for a moment before spotting Miu's pitch-black figure in a corner untouched by the light.
The moment she glanced over, a cold gust of wind swept towards her from behind. Lin Sandie was startled, but Lou had already grabbed her. Then, the two of them were lifted by the cold, almost tangible wind and flew directly to where Miu was.
For someone like Lin Sandie, the greatest fear was an unpredictable change she couldn't control. So, almost subconsciously, she gripped Lou's clothes tightly with both hands. Lou simply held her until they landed on the protruding platform where Miu stood.
"Lin Sandie, are you afraid of heights?"
"No." Lin Sandie felt her feet touch solid ground, took a deep breath, and then let go of Lou to look down.
"Good." Seeing Lin Sandie was steady, Lou sat down on the platform, dangling her feet, her gaze unfocused as she looked ahead. Miu jumped onto her shoulder.
Lin Sandie also slowly sat down beside Lou. They were no longer getting wet here. Lin Sandie looked around. Lightning flashed outside the window behind them, but for Miu, flying away would be easy; they wouldn't be trapped in the castle.
"What was that just now?" Gaining a new layer of understanding about a Guide's actions, Lin Sandie asked Lou in a low voice.
"Little Crow's Spirit Separation state. I have it too~" Lou didn't turn around, just smiled as she answered, then held out a hand to Lin Sandie.
Lin Sandie looked down. Lou's hand was about the same size as hers, just much rougher, with calluses on the palm.
Not understanding, she placed her hand on top, but it didn't touch Lou's palm. Instead, it touched a fleshy pad, with what felt like a lot of fur and sharp claws at the edges.
Lin Sandie couldn't see what she was touching, but she could feel it. Her interest piqued, she held the fleshy pad with both hands. After feeling it all over, she guessed curiously, "Is it the paw of a beast?"
"What kind of beast?" Lou asked with a grin.
"I haven't studied animals." Lin Sandie rubbed the large paw pad with the ball of her thumb. It felt a bit rough. The fur was soft but grew from the crevices of the pad. This paw had five smaller pads on top of the main one. It was different from a cat's paw, which has four small pads above the large one and another on the side, like a plum blossom.
But the paw from Lou's Spirit Separation state had five small pads arranged neatly above the large one, with long, curved claws above them. If an ordinary person were swiped by such a large paw, they'd be crippled if not killed.
Lin Sandie was genuinely interested in this invisible beast paw, playing with it endlessly with both hands, as if determined to figure out what kind of beast it belonged to.
"Want to see what we're seeing right now?" Lou asked, seeing how bored Lin Sandie seemed.
"What?" Lin Sandie saw Lou retract the claws into the pad and was trying to knead them back out. She had owned a cat as a child, after all.
"Close your eyes," Lou instructed, and Miu jumped onto Lin Sandie's shoulder.
Lin Sandie did as she was told. After a moment of darkness, a layer of circuitry appeared before her eyes. She saw dark gold wires shooting out in all directions without order or rules, their speed ever-increasing. The chaotic, rapidly moving circuits made her brain ache and feel dizzy, until she caught hold of several circuits and saw numerous scenes at the ends of those lines: Saya and Xing Meilu, Cheng Gui, herself, Wei and Mike, and many people she didn't recognize…
All the images merged, throwing her thoughts into chaos. Combined with her dizziness, she opened her eyes and gasped for breath. Before Lou could speak, she stubbornly closed her eyes again to capture the images.
Without needing an explanation from Lou, she knew those images belonged to Lou and Miu—the dynamic perspectives of people in Leviathan they were monitoring.
Calming herself, Lin Sandie once again focused on the lines that resembled a simple circuit diagram. She decided to look at just one scene first, choosing the one she was most concerned about: Cheng Gui.
Cheng Gui was walking through the basement of the Dream Castle. The basement was set up like a perverted serial killer's private execution chamber. Red lights flickered everywhere, and many iron cages were stacked around, forming a maze. Most of the cages held several zombies, but now most of them had been judged and killed by Cheng Gui.
Lou had told her about Cheng Gui's new appearance. He was no longer the middle-aged man from the hitchhiking incident, but a large, bald young man with bulging arm muscles. The leather notebook, which had seemed large before, now looked much smaller in his hands. Because the basement was also being drenched with water from the ceiling, Cheng Gui was holding a black umbrella in one hand.
In Disorder Land, anyone with a few points and some common sense knew how to use the points store. Since the downpour was strange, Cheng Gui had the same idea as Lin Sandie and Lou: it was best to avoid getting wet. So, buying an umbrella on the spot was a common thing to do.
Lou intentionally had Lin Sandie get used to this Sentinel-Guide monitoring system from the Main World. Building on her view of Cheng Gui, Lou also showed her the feed of Enzo she had just tracked with a Line. The latter was in a room with only a huge black Doberman beside him. Everyone else had rushed outside. Cheng Gui was only about a hundred steps away from Enzo.
Enzo was wearing a pair of special rain boots. When the water inside had mostly stopped, he took something that looked like a tiger's tooth from his pocket and threw it on the ground.
"Ice Age." As Enzo uttered these two words, the water-covered ground rapidly froze over. The ice spread visibly throughout the castle, frost quickly climbing the walls and growing thicker, like a heavy coat of white armor.
The sudden drop in temperature was uncomfortable. First, her body temperature plummeted, then she started sweating, accompanied by nausea and dizziness. In this cold, Lin Sandie could no longer maintain the monitoring perspective. Her face pale, she opened her eyes and gripped Lou's hand tightly to keep herself from falling off the platform.
"Saya and Wei's side have started fighting too," Miu reported. As if to prove its words, a continuous series of explosions sounded in the distance, and the castle shook slightly.
Seeing Lin Sandie looking unsteady, Lou decided she couldn't let her push herself any further. She took her arm, let her lean against her, and simultaneously cut her connection to the "Line."
"What happened?" Lin Sandie closed her eyes again but saw nothing. She cursed herself internally for being useless before asking Lou.
"Enzo sprayed the water to use a magical item with a freezing effect. Now, the closer you get to the basement, the colder it is. In this environment, Cheng Gui's already pathetic defense is now close to zero, and his 'judgment' can only be used if he sees Enzo in person…"
Lou stopped her explanation midway. She saw Cheng Gui throw away his umbrella and start running. The parts of his body that had been wet were rapidly freezing over.
"Guilty. Imprisonment!" Cheng Gui stared coldly at the locked door of the basement room. As he issued his judgment, a huge transparent glass window immediately appeared on the sealed room. Cheng Gui, on the outside, could see everything inside clearly, like the one-way glass of an interrogation room. Enzo, inside, couldn't see what was happening outside.
As long as he could see the criminal, Cheng Gui's death sentence could proceed smoothly. However, in his human body of flesh and blood, his lips were already purple from the cold.
"Guilty. Death penalty!" Cheng Gui continued his cold judgment. The next second, Enzo, still unaware of what was happening, missed a step and fell into a pit. Then, countless invisible stones appeared from the void, hailing down on him like heavy stones.
Enzo's pained screams echoed from the room.
Before long, Enzo was crushed into a pile of meat paste by Cheng Gui's stoning.
The body Cheng Gui was using was also frozen solid by this point, unable to move.
It raised its head slightly, looked towards the sky, and said nothing.
Lou blinked, knowing what Cheng Gui was expressing.
"There's not a single living person in the basement, and it's the center of the freezing zone. How are we supposed to retrieve Enzo's magical item?" Miu complained.
"He helped me take out Enzo, so it's not like either of us is taking advantage of the other."
Lin Sandie listened silently. She understood that Cheng Gui had lost the ability to move in the basement, Enzo was dead, and from the conversation, she deduced that Cheng Gui's purpose here was likely for a magical item Enzo possessed. The current situation probably meant Lou had to go down and retrieve it for him.
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