Rules-related weird stories: 4016

"When did I say we couldn't?" Lao Mo retorted, "I only said that the extraordinary power drawn from these Nightkin is too mixed. Recklessly absorbing it will only deepen the pollution and cause you to fall."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Yes..." Lao Mo said noncommittally, "So I didn't let you absorb it, but let you eat..."

"Extraordinary power is like a mana bar, but my state is 'dead,' while you are 'alive.' So once I leave the cafeteria area, the mana bar starts to deplete in an irreversible way. But you can recover on your own. Eating just speeds up your recovery."

"Your recovery speed has been growing... Actually, I've been absorbing your extraordinary power all this way, you just didn't notice."

Lin Yi was stunned, then surprised, "I always thought that was the influence of the gray mist!"

"That's only part of it. Another part is because of me, so you can assume that your extraordinary power consumption is twice the normal amount..."

"Wait... Lao Mo, don't tell me that until now, your 'mana' hasn't been consumed at all?!" Lin Yi's voice rose a few notches. He thought to himself, no wonder I thought I was having kidney deficiency. So you've been using my body for fourteen times a night?!

Lao Mo coughed dryly, "That's not true... I used a little of my own, after all, starting the car still requires its own battery to ignite before it starts burning fuel."

This analogy made the corners of Lin Yi's mouth twitch. He thought of Lao Mo using "Layer Shifting," using his own extraordinary power as a guide, and then almost draining him dry...

So this whole way, it's almost been this kind of operation?!

"Damn..."

Lao Mo's old face stiffened, and he said sternly, "After absorbing the matrix's extraordinary power, I thought it would be enough to support the use of 'Layer Shifting,' but I didn't expect that you would interact with the 'Shadow of Origin' when you came into contact with the scales. So that slash... consumed all the extraordinary power I extracted from the matrix."

Lin Yi's heart tightened when he heard this.

He was still wondering why he hadn't seen Lao Mo use that move that almost tore the layers apart along the way.

That slash, gods blocking were killed, Buddhas blocking were slaughtered, shocked him quite a bit.

He thought that the consumption of that slash would be very large, but seeing Lao Mo looking calm, he almost thought that Lao Mo's normal attacks were so unmatched, until now he realized that the foundation of that slash was built on the energy consumption of the matrix.

It took the power of half a matrix to unleash that limited skill.

No wonder...

Lao Mo said, "Don't be so reckless. If I hadn't said it just now, wouldn't you have realized it yet? Did you think that was your normal state? Do you know what this means?"

Lin Yi shook his head.

Lao Mo said, "It's like you've been carrying a load all this way, and the weight you're carrying has been getting heavier and heavier, but you've 'adapted' all the way. This means that when you leave me and return to the campus... your use of extraordinary power will increase by several levels."

"A person who can normally eat, drink, and excrete while carrying 100KG, when the load is removed, wouldn't they be able to float on water with iron legs? In the future, if ordinary angel sculptures want to kill you, how easy would it be to float on water with iron legs?"

"Moreover, the extraordinary power wandering around the Art Building is very rich, and your recovery speed is faster than in other places."

When Lin Yi heard this, he felt a sense of accomplishment from being PUA'd and couldn't help but feel a little proud: "What you said seems to make sense."

"So bear with it for a while."

"Huh? Bear with wh... Ah—"

Lao Mo's gray eyes instantly turned into a cold, brilliant gold. His domain slowly enveloped Lin Yi, and a terrifying suction force burst out instantly, almost drawing out his soul.

In just a few breaths, Lin Yi felt like he had been drained. This feeling was like cutting him open and digging out everything in his body, domineering and unparalleled, but leaving him a chance to linger on.

"Don't be afraid, kid." Lao Mo's voice rang in his ears, "Your recovery hasn't reached its limit. Take this opportunity. Even the boss can't do such precise control that keeps you at 'one last drop of blood and not dying.'"

Hunger and fatigue gradually enveloped Lin Yi, and Lin Yi began to frantically absorb the surrounding extraordinary power, while grabbing the food at hand without any image. However, just as he put the food to his mouth, he realized that the "Faceless" version of himself had no mouth.

He was stunned for a moment, and then, driven by instinct, he reached out and touched the corner of his mouth...

Like unzipping a zipper, he opened a huge slit at the arc of his mouth, from the root of his left ear to the root of his right ear, like a terrifying cracked cloth doll.

This scene stunned Lao Mo, who was planning to help him open a mouth, but Lin Yi didn't realize anything was wrong and continued to devour everything he could grab at hand.

The bundle folded from bed sheets that he carried on his back had lost a lot of things when encountering Nightkin along the way, but the quantity was still considerable, and now it has become the focus of his attention.

And the more "normal" part of the extraordinary power in the air was frantically devoured by Lin Yi. Gradually, whether it was the part wandering in the air or the part squeezed out of the Nightkin's bodies, all of it was devoured into his body, regardless of friend or foe.

Seeing this, Lao Mo was startled and wanted to slow down the absorption rate to give Lin Yi a breather, but at this moment, he suddenly froze.

"This kid... what's going on?!"

Lin Yi was like a deranged madman rummaging through the trash, his eyes flashing with some flickering brilliance, violently tearing open the packaging of bread, biscuits, and other foods, and then constantly sending them into his mouth. At the same time, his body was like a filter, screening the extraordinary power. A large amount of extraordinary power was absorbed into his body, and those unused "dregs" were all discharged.

This form is like a Klein bottle with a filter installed?

Lao Mo rubbed his eyes, a little disbelieving, thinking that this kid couldn't be a Klein bottle becoming a spirit, right?

Isn't this too outrageous?!

He increasingly understood the boss. If he found such a "magical" guy, who knows how he would train him, how could he easily let others toss him around?

Understand the boss, become the boss, surpass the boss.

Gagaga...

Thinking of this, Lao Mo suddenly shrank his neck. A crooked idea suddenly popped up in his heart—if he spread a fake message that "Lin Yi had hung up" to let the boss know, would he directly kill him and then whip his corpse, and then take him and Lin Yi back to campus?

Just like... he killed to save Mu Daxian?

“Huh, things are surprisingly similar…” Old Mo smacked his lips, subconsciously reaching out to touch his chin, but after some thought, he felt he was being unkind.

Being unkind aside, it seemed a little… stupid.

Because this plan seemed good, the only apparent flaw being how manpower-intensive it was, but in reality, the biggest problem was how to spread the false news of "Lin Yi being trapped in the clock tower"…

Once this problem arose, everything circled back.

If I had the ability to spread false news back to the campus, I would have already returned, damn it!

I'm such a little genius…

Old Mo sometimes felt he had a dark sense of humor. Of course, thinking about these things while "recharging" could still help regulate the atmosphere to some extent. Moreover, this kind of thinking with "human characteristics" could effectively distinguish him from the summons from the art building.

In contrast, Lin Yi, while frantically devouring extraordinary power and food, gradually seemed more like a beast hiding in a dark corner, secretly enjoying its prey. The slightly hunched back and the faint "Feh, feh, feh" sounds from his throat made him look increasingly terrifying.

If Old Mo couldn't see Lin Yi and only heard the sounds coming from Lin Yi's direction, he would really think there was a beast lurking there.

Old Mo sometimes couldn't help but wonder, compared to Lin Yi, who mostly looked like a normal person but seemed less than human at critical moments, he, a dead man, seemed more alive.

Lin Yi's stomach was like a bottomless pit, hungrily devouring food. After eating a piece of bread and a piece of tomato, he couldn't swallow anymore, so he drank some water. In the end, almost all the food nearby was eaten, leaving only half a bag of tomatoes by his side.

He reached out to grab the tomatoes, but Old Mo snatched the backpack away.

“Feh…?!” Lin Yi looked fiercely at Old Mo, like a beast whose food had been taken away. Two clumps of black-edged golden vortexes appeared in his eye sockets, which were invisible except for the zipper-like split mouth, like the faint light in the terrifying deep sea.

His body tensed and began to exert force, like a swift cheetah ready to pounce and kill.

Looking at Lin Yi like this, Old Mo frowned and said in a commanding tone: "Enough."

“Feh—” Lin Yi seemed not to have heard, rushing out like a blue lightning bolt, his target being the backpack.

However, Old Mo's speed was even faster than Lin Yi's at this moment. He grabbed Lin Yi's split-mouthed, evil ragdoll-like faceless face and slammed him hard on the solid stone ground under his feet!

“I said… enough!!”

[Bang!!]

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The sound of the impact rang out, muffled as if it would crack the stone slabs underfoot.

Lin Yi's body was smashed on the ground in a strange way, like a piece of xylitol that had been stepped on, but in the blink of an eye, it began to repair itself, until it returned to its original state.

Apart from these strange manifestations in his physical movements, Lin Yi's eyes also quickly returned to normal.

“I…” Lin Yi propped himself up and sat up, touching his slightly swollen head, “…I’m fine.”

Old Mo opened his mouth, speechless, and said: “I think I’ve confirmed that you’re fine…”

He pulled Lin Yi up from the ground, looking him up and down, as if he were looking at some strange creature.

Lin Yi felt a chill in his heart from Old Mo's gaze, and subconsciously smoothed the goosebumps on his arm: "What's wrong?"

Old Mo shook his head slightly: "Do you… have any impression of what just happened?"

Lin Yi was stunned for a moment, and then said: "I was gobbling up food, and then you suddenly took the backpack away. I reached out to grab it, and then you pressed me to the ground…"

“Emmmmm… just ‘pressed to the ground’?”

“Ah? Isn’t it?”

Old Mo slowly squeezed out a breath through his nose in silence: “…”

Lin Yi: “Gah?”

Old Mo shook his head: "It's nothing…"

He threw the backpack with the remaining half bag of tomatoes to Lin Yi: "It's not good to eat too much. Carry the rest. Let's go upstairs."

“Ah? Aow, aow, aow!”

After Old Mo finished speaking, he began to walk towards the depths of the corridor.

Compared to the road they had walked along, this corridor, although dark, didn't even have the shadow of a single nocturnal species, as if it were a pure land in the art building.

The candlesticks on both sides of the corridor released dots of candlelight, illuminating a limited area.

Lin Yi followed Old Mo for a while, looked down at the time, and found that it was already past 1 o'clock.

He was a little surprised and realized that he had only been focused on eating just now and hadn't expected that it would take more than 40 minutes.

“Checking the time?” Old Mo’s voice sounded.

“Yeah.” Lin Yi nodded.

“What time is it?”

“Just past 1 o’clock, um… 1:02.”

“Not bad…” Old Mo nodded and continued to move forward.

Lin Yi pursed his lips, unable to restrain himself from asking: "Old Mo… that music box, what exactly is going on? I mean, you seemed hesitant before in the gallery. I don't know if we can talk about it now that we've left the gallery?"

In Lin Yi's understanding, if that music box had a mechanism similar to the 'Shadow of Origin', then there seemed to be no problem discussing it after leaving the gallery. Moreover, compared to the existence of 'Shadow of Origin', whose name could not even be spoken near the matrix, Old Mo still mumbled the name 'Amon's Music Box'.

“Are you talking about… ‘Amon’s Music Box’?” Old Mo asked while observing the environment ahead.

“Yes.”

“That thing… is a creation that carries extraordinary characteristics.”

Lin Yi's heart stirred slightly. Within the scope of the art building, there were quite a few creations that carried extraordinary characteristics, but anything that Old Mo treated so solemnly was definitely not simple. He couldn't help but guess: "Could it be that the creator of that music box is special? ‘Amon’s Music Box’… ‘Amon’… Was this created by someone else and given to the person named ‘Amon’, or was it created by the person named ‘Amon’ himself?”

“It was created by ‘Amon’.”

“Amon… ‘The First Apostle’—one of the earliest ‘Apostles’ recorded in the Codex Arcana. Even the concept of ‘Apostle’ was proposed by them…”

“And ‘Amon’… He designed more than 90% of the Black Moon Outpost area all by himself.”

“He is also one of the few ‘Apostles’ in history to have a title…”

Old Mo's expression was terribly heavy. He narrowed his eyes, as if chanting some kind of name, and slowly uttered that title:

“The Designer.”