"You got lucky. The patch of red clay you dug up should be suitable!"
Lin Baici looked around. "I think most of the red clay around the Clay Figure Monster should work. It looks similar to the piece it picked."
Ma Yuan frowned and looked toward the travelers more than thirty meters away.
Wasn't the kid implying that the soil those people had dug up wasn't suitable?
"What about mine?"
Song Li looked worried.
"I don't think it'll work!"
Lin Baici answered honestly. "But this is a matter of life and death. I'm only making a suggestion. You'll have to decide for yourselves. Don't blame me later if something goes wrong, saying I was selfish and didn't warn you."
Song Li fell silent.
Thinking of Lin Baici's performance on the train, 18D made up his mind. "Bro, I trust you!"
Xia Hongyao saw that Ma Yuan hadn't moved and offered a piece of advice. "I suggest you listen to him!"
"All right!"
Ma Yuan actually thought all the red clay looked the same, and that it didn't matter which part they used.
Seeing that Ma Yuan and 18D had both taken Lin Baici's advice, Song Li followed suit.
"Once you've got your mud embryos, follow me!"
The Clay Figure Monster stood up, cradling a coconut-sized lump of red clay, and walked back to the Earth Platform.
On the north side of the Earth Platform lay many rectangular stone slabs, an inch thick, more than two feet long, and a foot wide. They looked like cutting boards. Beside them were stacks of little wooden boxes about the size of a palm.
"See those stone slabs and wooden boxes? Take one of each!"
The Clay Figure Monster gave its instructions.
The travelers immediately rushed over, jostling one another. They obviously all wanted to pick first.
Lin Baici took a close look and, after confirming that none of the stone slabs seemed different, picked one at random.
It was pretty heavy!
He guessed it weighed around ten pounds!
Then he picked up a wooden box and opened it. Inside was an Iron Carving Knife about as long as his index finger.
"Do as I do!"
Once everyone had returned, the Clay Figure Monster set a stone slab on the ground, knelt beside it, picked up its mud embryo, and began slamming it against the slab.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
"Raise the mud embryo over your head. Use moderate force and slam it one hundred and twenty times!"
The Clay Figure Monster explained the technique.
"How much force counts as moderate?"
The Programmer with Dark Circles whom Lin Baici had seen earlier in the Waiting Hall asked, working up the nerve.
He hated vague instructions like that.
"Use your own judgment!"
The Clay Figure Monster's answer nearly drove everyone mad.
"When a Chinese chef teaches you how to cook, they say to add 'an appropriate amount' of every seasoning. I didn't expect making a clay figure to be the same!"
The Fat Man swore.
"Move faster. I won't wait for anyone. As soon as half of you finish this step, I'll immediately explain the next one!"
The Clay Figure Monster warned them.
Those words made everyone tense up at once. They all began slamming their mud embryos, afraid of falling behind.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
The mud embryos hit the stone slabs with crisp, ringing thuds, one after another.
"Don't slack off. Follow my instructions exactly!"
The Clay Figure Monster repeated.
It raised both arms, lifting the mud embryo above its head, then slammed it down again. Its expression remained utterly serious throughout, and its movements brimmed with a powerful grace.
It looked like a master sculptor.
Each traveler's red-clay mud embryo weighed at least three pounds. At first, slamming them didn't feel like much, but after dozens of hits, their arms began to weaken and tremble, and their muscles started to ache.
Quite a few travelers slowed down, and their movements grew sloppy. They weren't doing it properly anymore.
"I feel like an idiot!"
The diabetic old woman who had asked Lin Baici in the Waiting Hall what was wrong with her cursed under her breath.
She was already in poor health and obese, with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol. Now she was doing hard physical labor, and after only thirty-odd hits, she was exhausted.
She stopped raising her mud embryo over her head. Instead, she lifted it only to neck height before slamming it down.
When Song Li had slammed hers more than sixty times, she grew tired. And kneeling on the ground of the Earth Platform with her bare legs was deeply uncomfortable.
At last, she couldn't take it anymore and decided to do a half-hearted job.
But when she raised the mud embryo to her chest and was about to slam it down, the aloof Big Male Student spoke up. "If you don't want to die, follow that monster's instructions exactly!"
"Huh?"
Song Li jumped. "We could die?"
"I... I doubt it's that serious, right?"
18D cut in, sneaking a glance at the Clay Figure Monster. "If it doesn't see us, it won't matter if we slack off a little, will it?"
"You only get one life. Are you willing to gamble it?"
Lin Baici asked in reply.
Song Li swallowed and decided to keep going a little longer.
"Bro, don't scare me!"
18D pulled a long face. He'd been planning to slack off when the Clay Figure Monster wasn't looking, but now he didn't dare.
In less than ten minutes, someone finished—faster than the Clay Figure Monster.
Before long,
the Clay Figure Monster finished too. It kneaded the mud embryo into a ball, placed it on the stone slab, then stood up and began walking among the crowd.
Many travelers grew nervous as they watched the Clay Figure Monster patrol like an exam proctor. It had also said that it would begin the next step once half of them were done, so everyone picked up the pace.
Some were already exhausted, and now their slamming grew half-hearted without them even realizing it.
Song Li finally finished, her arms aching and swollen with fatigue.
She watched the travelers who hadn't slammed their red clay one hundred and twenty times with a hint of schadenfreude, waiting for the Clay Figure Monster to punish them.
But the Clay Figure Monster did nothing.
It patiently waited for them to finish the first step.
"Fuck you! So you were messing with us?"
The Fat Man cursed.
The travelers who'd frantically rushed to finish were all annoyed. If they'd known, they would've taken their time!
Song Li looked at Lin Baici with the slightest hint of resentment in her eyes.
"Little Lin was right to be cautious!"
Xia Hongyao spoke up for Lin Baici.
"Once the mud embryo has been pounded into prepared clay, you can move on to the second step: body sculpting!"
The Clay Figure Monster picked up an Iron Carving Knife. "Body sculpting means carving and shaping the clay figure's body. This time, we're making humans!"
"Please make a clay figure of the same sex as yourself."
"It doesn't need to be detailed, but its individual features must stand out!"
As it explained, the Clay Figure Monster moved the knife with incredible speed.
The Iron Carving Knife darted across the rounded lump of prepared clay, like a butterfly dancing, shaving off piece after piece.
Clay Powder drifted through the air.
Putting aside the Clay Figure Monster's identity, its movements while sculpting were effortless and elegant, a pleasure to watch.
The travelers watched closely.
In just three minutes, the lump of clay had been transformed beneath the Clay Figure Monster's knife into a ten-centimeter-tall miniature replica of itself.
It just didn't have any facial features or a hairstyle.
"You can begin!"
The Clay Figure Monster set down its freshly completed work and gave them a solemn reminder. "Do your best to sculpt your figures so they resemble you. That way, you'll have a better chance of getting a high score in the final evaluation and passing your apprenticeship!"
"You have thirty minutes. Hurry!"
Hearing they had so little time, everyone grew anxious again. They quickly picked up their carving knives and got to work.
Fortunately, they were sculpting clay, not performing surgery. Even if they made a few bad cuts, they could still fix them.
Lin Baici picked up his carving knife and considered where to start. "God of Gluttony, aren't you going to give me some advice?"
[You chose good clay. Ten points. You did a perfect job pounding it into prepared clay. Ten points. As for the sculpting, just do as the Clay Figure Monster said!]
Lin Baici had done so well that the God of Gluttony had no room to criticize him.
"I didn't ask you to praise me!"
Lin Baici rolled his eyes. "What should I watch out for in this step?"
The God of Gluttony fell silent.
Lin Baici curled his lip. He'd have to figure it out himself!
For an ordinary person who'd never worked with clay to pick up a carving knife for the first time and try to make a lifelike clay figure was a pipe dream.
Fortunately, this step wasn't about testing how realistic the result was.
Lin Baici recalled the Clay Figure Monster's instructions.
"Make a clay figure of the same sex as yourself. It doesn't need to be detailed, but its individual features must stand out!"
Lin Baici had an idea.
The clay figure's clothes should match what he was wearing. Then, he could use the muscles to show off a strong physique—especially the eight-pack abs, which had to stand out.
He could do that by shaping the outline of the abs beneath the figure's tight-fitting clothes.
The Clay Figure Monster hadn't asked for a realistic likeness, but Lin Baici still wanted to make the figure resemble him as much as possible. The clothes, build, and even the brand logo on his shoes should all match.
Lin Baici gripped the Iron Carving Knife in his right hand and began shaving away at the mud embryo!
No one spoke.
The travelers focused all their attention on sculpting their clay figures, trying to stay alive.
Black Shark III stood on the railroad tracks, watching the yellow sand swirl all around him. He sucked in a sharp breath, still shaken.
If the bubbles blown out by the Nautilus hadn't wrapped around him and shielded him from Rule Pollution, he would have been forced into another terrifying God's Taboo Game.
A pollution intensity of 5.0 could kill you.
The God's Taboo Object Black Shark III and Octopus Ball had been transporting was called the Clay Figure Divine Puppet. According to information from the Nine Dragon Pavilion, they had stolen it from a wealthy man.
After Lost Coast got its hands on the object, they feared being hunted down by the Nine Provinces Dragon Guard. So the group leader had sent all eight members off in pairs, each pair going a different way.
Black Shark III and Octopus Ball were very strong, but the group leader still wasn't at ease. He even lent Black Shark III the Nautilus, telling him to activate the Clay Figure Divine Puppet if he ever faced danger.
Black Shark III and Octopus Ball both thought the group leader was making a fuss over nothing. So far, they'd never failed a mission.
Their combination of Divine Grace and the Coral Sea was practically unbeatable.
But this time, things had gone wrong!
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Black Shark III cursed, kicking the railroad tracks.
Who the hell was that male student?
How had he found Octopus Ball so quickly and killed him? It was unbelievable!
The seawater had flooded the entire train, and they'd had ten minutes at most.
Even Sherlock Holmes couldn't have found Octopus Ball in that short a time.
"Fuck, it's such a shame I couldn't kill him myself!"
Black Shark III spat a thick wad of phlegm and peered through the sandstorm at the faint outline of the train.
He was sure Lin Baici was as good as dead!
There was no way he could survive a God's Taboo Game with a pollution intensity of 5.0.
On the group leader's orders, Black Shark III had attached a Remote Bomb to the Black Coffin sealing the Clay Figure Divine Puppet in advance. That way, if they ran into an enemy they couldn't beat, they could blow up the Black Coffin, break the seal, and activate the God's Taboo Object. The resulting Rule Pollution would trigger a God's Taboo Game that could take out their enemy.
"But I can still mutilate his corpse!"
Black Shark III lit a cigarette and waited patiently.
Who knew what God's Taboo Object he might find when he went to collect the body?
He couldn't wait!
Before you continue