Free Web NovelChapter 221: Chapter 25: Friends of Liu Chengzi
Wang Shi, with a mindful heart, could hardly make out the differences in the styles.
Although it felt somewhat natural to the touch, compared to his normal physical strength, but it would certainly feel odd with just a bit more force applied.
Under some sort of restriction, these replicated bodies became extremely frail and brittle, a fact Wang Shi had come to realize convincingly.
"If only we could convey this information to the others right now, it would be great. We don’t even know if Lin Wurou and the team have encountered Bai Wu," he said.
Wang Shi, inflating with a breath like a war chariot, looked directly at the crumbling, mud-like physique that could hardly withstand a single blow.
They seemed like delicate porcelain, clearly not intended to cause fatal collisions, yet they were shattered to pieces.
This collusion was also a delicate anomaly—Wang Shi felt that particularly with these three replicated bodies, their very essence was fragile.
Wang Shi was struck flying by the impact.
Bai Wu had no way to evade this time, and striking swiftly, he collided with Wang Shi, who hadn’t been maintaining this thought for very long.
Wang Shi, also startled, watched as Wu Jiu evaded with an exaggerated speed, wondering whether this really was the team leader.
Wu Jiu, with incredible speed, dodged Wang Shi who hadn’t reacted in kind.
He wanted to definitively confirm the true strength of these replicated entities, this rough one in particular.
Directly facing Wu Jiu’s wild charge, Wang Shi discovered an abnormality: this was not the usual Lin Wurou’s Forest that softly spoke.
Being the bravest of the new recruits that year, Wu Jiu was chosen to enact a particular trial, setting the precedent for this kind of direct collision.
It wasn’t Wang Shi’s style to bulldoze through situations; however, he almost encountered something similar with Lin Wurou’s Forest, Wang Shi at the other end.
...
...
He didn’t even know how he had gotten there, thoroughly lost in Lin Wurou’s Forest after continuously choosing paths at random.
It seemed he touched something soft, almost liquid in substance, not the hard crystalline a water droplet would be.
Gradually, the crystal water disintegrated upon contact, now unable to cast a reflection of any object, the hand of the triad slowly blending into it.
"It seems we are gradually adapting," said Wang Shi, "and we still have plenty of opportunities with no connection yet."
The light in the eyes known as "Wang Shi" emptily transformed into voids.
"Wu Jiu" looked at his own hands. "I don’t even seem to be able to move properly."
"I don’t even have a good grip yet," he expressed.
"Bai Wu" said.
But in Lin Wurou’s Forest, there was no one chasing the triad. "Bai Wu" didn’t turn back at all, let alone a frantic chase. Lin Wurou had no response.
The sound from "Bai Wu" was still incredibly calm, almost entirely silent.
"Where do you want to go, Wurou?" freёwebnovel.com
The first to realize was "Bai Wu", even before him running off.
The moment Lin Wurou had the thought, he broke into a run.
This place was like a maze; if he ran around aimlessly on his own, they definitely couldn’t keep up with him.
If he just kept running without daring to stop, then after a lengthy entanglement, Lin Wurou, hearing Bai Wu’s words, made a decision.
He didn’t look back at all, always being led by "Wang Shi," "Bai Wu," and "Wu Jiu," who were right there with him.
That kind of strenuous effort was plainly visible on his face; Lin Wurou couldn’t dare to continue performing so attentively.
"Nor dare to fight, nor dare to run; blind to what’s really beneath, only to feel the nuisance of being disturbed."
"Am I seeking death? Is this team really planning to follow me, the true length of the queue being so formidable? And how much longer till I can catch up with my own... replication process..."
His hand had already pressed the button on that row of knives.
While contemplating his next move, Lin Wurou didn’t exchange a word with anyone.
Now, relying solely on himself, he no longer had the queues in front or behind to depend on.
"Even Wang Shi cannot guarantee that my reactions will be quick enough, not to mention the team. If I truly am an intelligent machine, then... Ah, I see. That must have been what Bai Wu originally meant by those words: all these people could simply be fakes."
As Lin Wurou began to force himself to calm down, he suddenly discovered that his "replication" had entirely become capable at his side.
...
Undoubtedly, Lin Wurou was not one to be toyed with easily; his nerve was as solid as iron when it came to his team.
These peculiar creatures, like Bai Wu and Wu Jiu, in the eyes of Lin Wurou, seemed nothing but an ordinary occurrence when examining the numerological value of these people’s wristbands.
If intelligence was useless without the ability to keep calm, then Wu Jiu recognized Lin Wurou as highly intelligent; a person who, as expected, held his intelligence in reserve against Evil Fallen, prioritizing it secondary to his queue. This is precisely why Lin Wurou had joined the seventh queue. ƒrēewebnovel.com
One meticulously dissected every Evil Fallen’s body structure, barking like a mad dog in pursuit, while another could not even be pulled away from his obsession with slicing the Evil Fallen into pieces.
Both Lin Wurou and the small merchant left a deep impression that was hard to forget.
Having survived a trial in the White Zone area, this small merchant with a few peculiar quirks seemed to stand out amongst the fresh newcomers, much like Lin Wurou.
Such creatures were considered as rare as a phoenix’s feathers or a unicorn’s horn, having been continuously examined during the selection process in the team’s queue akin to Bai Wu.
The sight of the monstrous creatures outside the tower was enough to cause great shivers in the legs of many new soldiers. The quality of these new recruits hardly matched.
Chu Qing, however, had initially chosen this rather feminine-looking, attractive young man because of his above-average vitality amongst his peers for the frontline squad, not to mention his absolute indifference towards Lin Wurou’s intelligence or Prayle’s Eye.
But in reality, it was not just appearances deceiving. Lin Wurou, having passed through the Yinfrost and queue before Bai Wu’s arrival, thought little of it.
(Thanks to the old bug, the Domain Master, ha, barely a dozen bookworm friends have already completed the Hundred Alliance agreement, lacking only thirty-nine areas.)
"I think you already know who she is."
They had no choice but to curry favor with themselves to avoid suffering; only by winning their favor could they escape the relentless trial and be spared a bite of those Evil Fallen bred in the hot springs.
Observing her own sister being subjected to such inhumane treatment, bitterly begging, struggling to win favor, she left as the most detested one; eventually, she became the plaything by someone’s side, her position plummeting.
While one became a coveted creature, inducing fierce resentment and grudges from the skinning process, the other two were not so fortunate.
One had previously been a part of a small family of three flowers, barely escaping a tragedy and considered lucky. You have already seen a little wildflower from that small cluster not long ago, and the other two, just a short distance away, had been seen by you for generations.
A perfect metamorphosis: a perfect abomination. Sensory deception, identity confusion, recognition homogenization, rare variation terms: ninth-grade variant creature.[
Bai Wu could not help but hold back for a moment after finally being noticed.
Bai Wu became aggressive, even indulging his gluttonous thoughts about Prayle’s Eye, which scrutinized every detail of these variety of Evil Fallen.
But it was not Lin Wurou.
In front of this person, who is the authentic existence, the other was nothing more than a shoddy imitation, an inferior counterpart.
It took only a short second for Bai Wu to make a clear judgment of Chu Qing’s form.
"Indeed, you are a wily spirit to have found me," he said.
Lin Wurou nodded and asked, "Are you really you?"
The battle between the two was very brief, just a momentary touch.
Lin Wurou immediately drew a large combat knife from a row of such weapons and engaged Bai Wu in combat.
"You wouldn’t know what’s real or fake even if it smacked you in the face,"
He spoke, looking at Bai Wu with doubt in his eyes, which clearly didn’t trust him.
Suddenly, Lin Wurou appeared in front of him out of the mist.
"Bai Wu, are you the real Bai Wu, or are you another fake?"
They were meticulously planning to pull each one of them back onto the right track at the appointed time—another count among the variables.
Meanwhile, Wang Shi and the team leaders stood waiting at the original site; somewhere in a looping death scenario, a certain Mr. Hu was dying, after discovering that Lin Wurou had walked away. He observed a particular direction with his eyes, having just untangled the third faux body.
Another precise prediction of Bai Wu.
"It seems that if we observe closely, the answer will come to us very soon. We felt a certain pressure right after it happened, but at the beginning, there was no sensation of being pressured. It’s only after realizing we were being pressured that we began to feel it,"
Although this ability is still incredibly strong, it has regressed to a lower-quality version, much like today’s water crystals.
An unbounded proliferation—the birth of something truly terrifying under the catalyzing force of the water crystals, leading ultimately to Shen Shuyue’s transformation into Evil Fallen due to his resentment and theft of the "Shadow Water Crystal" ability. As a ruler, he had calculated his own demise to become a toy "Shen Shuyue." However, Bai Wu still had a hunch even though he had no prior experience with the incident at hand.
"One would think that these guys went mad at that time, concluding that... it was a result of merging with Shen Shuyue,"
"This thing, compared to the original-grade weapons, is not worth discussing; it is rather unfortunate. It’s just become a silicon handgrip feeling good only in comparison to some bad batch. These are small fish and a little blacksmith trying to make a big deal,"
"Are each and every one of these red-hued grudges transformations even comparable to a Beauty Mark that appears when one’s identity is at stake? Shouldn’t the perfectly intact water crystals be able to replicate the true form at the very least?"
He picked up a piece of the broken plaything and toyed with it for a moment.
Bai Wu had already come to a decision about the third-tier replica, even though his vision was not yet fully restored, and so he didn’t wait to continue speaking about the replica.
"This thing is quite brittle because of that, but it’s still somewhat interesting to observe. It only has a touch of usefulness in conversations because it can still convey real emotions—perhaps they should try this out. In the end, the doll is quite precious, I guess. I thought it was fake? Using silicone instead, why don’t the children looking for girlfriends for seven hundred years just settle for that?"
—He had already noted this in the brief moment before the dark dissipation.
In his presence, any pretense seemed even more straightforward— Bai Wu on this side.
...
...
The three-tier replica, fundamentally unable to reflect, crumbled into bits, inevitably becoming the target of public severance due to Wu Jiu’s decisive strike.
Wu Jiu, having created a silence devoid of breath—the most critical element, discovered footsteps of Bai Wu after the noisy dissipation.
Although this place had screened its spiritual consciousness from all senses except that of sight and hearing, inducing in Wu Jiu a feeling of terror, the movements had already been made.
Wu Jiu had concluded that Bai Wu et al. required a multitude of stringent replication protocols.
Strong as it was, Dwarf was still short in stature.
Due to a tall seven-foot soldier in his team mocking him, which led him to fall face down, Wu Jiu had personally ordered this scene to move up in line before the seventh team.
In essence, Wu Jiu had just been a test pattern, an outlier, having never undergone the white zone beyond the High Tower. He was as Bai Wu was before arriving—a subtle intelligence among the squad members, a comrade-in-arms like Qin Frost and Fifth-Woody.
Compared to Lin Wurou and Wang Shi, Wu Jiu was just a simpleton.
...
...
The illusion-transformed Lin Wurou in front of him had the appearance of anyone, and cognitive assimilation endowed her with the memories belonging to the real body of the transformed figures.
This was a perfect Evil Fallen spy. So much so that Bai Wu was envious at first sight. With such an ability in hand, integrating with the Evil Fallen would be a breeze.
Bai Wu did indeed guess who "Lin Wurou" was and stopped a certain thought because he was aware of the identity.
Liu Chengzi’s aberrant behavior yesterday was not without reason, and it wasn’t solely because of the Purple Line Grass that she experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. She had truly — captured the scent of a former good friend.
Qu Li.
Liu Chengzi, Qu Li, Shen Shuyue.
Years ago, in the High Tower, they had been part of the underclass’s landscape, three vibrant young girls whose passion for life was undiminished despite living at the filthy and perilous bottom.
Bai Wu still remembered the sparkle in Liu Chengzi’s eyes when she talked about wanting to clothe the underclass in attractive attire.
Compared to Dwarf’s desire to change the destiny of all the underclass people, their wish might not have been as grand, but it was warm enough to touch hearts.
But everything had changed. A twist of fate had caused a major turn in the destinies of the three girls.
Bai Wu, having seen the Beauty Mark first, had always focused on Shen Shuyue, but he had not forgotten the other girl.
The guardian of the fourth floor in the huge attic inside Bastion turned out to be Liu Chengzi’s friend, a variability that even made Bai Wu sigh at the fickleness of Destiny.
He slowed his pace.
Bai Wu had already figured out Qu Li’s subsequent plan.
It started with a copy inside the crystal sent to die, giving Wang Shi, the captain, and Lin Wurou the illusion — if they clashed and didn’t shatter their opponent, it meant the opponent was real.
Then, using a doppelgänger to further confuse the three.
Just like in the scene of the recent fight, if it hadn’t been for Prayle’s Eye, Bai Wu might also have failed to realize that this Lin Wurou was fake, but it would definitely have taken some time.
But Wu Jiu and Wang Shi would most likely be deceived.
Bai Wu chuckled, the term "cognitive synchronization" allowed Qu Li to know his name and some basic memories.
But she didn’t know that she and Liu Chengzi were good friends.
"Lin Wurou, slow down."
"We need to hurry and find the captain."
"No rush, the captain is very strong, no need to worry. By the way, do you remember the purpose of our trip out of the tower?"
"Purpose? Aren’t we here to destroy this place?"
Through the cognitive synchronization with the doppelgänger, Qu Li had already learned the motive for Bai Wu and the others’ arrival.
She had her own hopes, but when she thought about the fact that these people were facing monsters even more terrifying than the top Evil Fallen, she let go of some of her unrealistic thoughts.
Only by obeying the person at the top could they survive, could the Evil Fallen women who were once born here survive.
"Yes, but before that, I received a commission related to this place," said Bai Wu calmly.
Even if the doppelgänger had confused the captain and the others, it was too late for him to go to their rescue now, so he might as well take care of this main body right in front of him.
"I think we should hurry up and meet up with the captain first," urged Qu Li, posing as Lin Wurou.
"No rush, it’s a secret mission, instructed by a mutual good friend of ours."
Qu Li stopped in her tracks. She had been disinterested because somewhere in the maze, there was a trap capable of killing these humans.
She had only thought of finishing the mission quickly, but under Bai Wu’s repeated urging, to act more like Lin Wurou, she turned around.
The gaze of "Lin Wurou" seemed to be stuck on something at that instant.
She shook her head lightly, the composure she had struggled to maintain already shattered.
Bai Wu did nothing but take out a photo.
"How can you forget? We have a friend, named Liu Chengzi."
