Unspeakable Influence

Earlier, he had circled the outside of the basement, so Bai Yi remembered clearly that the entire circular basement had a circumference of only about fifty meters.

In other words, the basement's diameter could not have been more than ten meters at its widest.

Yet Bai Yi had already walked thirty or forty meters at least, and he still had not seen the wall on the other side!

Realizing something was wrong, Bai Yi immediately turned and retreated. But no matter how far back he went, the strange lumps of flesh remained beneath his feet.

Bai Yi remained calm and tried moving left and right. The result was exactly as he had expected.

"Something like a ghost wall?"

Bai Yi stopped wasting his strength and began to analyze the situation. First, he tried using the log to obtain information, but it was completely useless.

He then tried leaving marks, but that did not work either. Blocked by the black fog, he could not see what lay outside at all.

The only thing he could confirm was that he truly was moving, rather than walking in circles in place like some "ghost wall" trick.

Because no matter how he moved, the general direction of the shelter always pointed the same way.

At the same time, his series of tests made him realize that he had likely encountered some kind of spatial attack. What he was unsure of was whether the attacker was an aberrant demon or something else.

As the candle burned down, Bai Yi had been trapped here for nearly ten minutes.

The darkness around him kept him from firing recklessly. He could not determine the situation around him; the bullet he fired might break the deadlock, or it might make things worse.

In the end, Bai Yi stopped. He took out his revolver and began adjusting his position.

For the first ten minutes, Bai Yi had not attacked, instead trying to find a pattern or method to escape. But now that those attempts had yielded nothing, he would hesitate no longer.

Even being attacked was better than waiting here to die.

Using the shelter's position as a reference, Bai Yi adjusted his direction and made sure the muzzle was aimed toward the center of the basement.

Just as he was about to fire, an indescribable sensation swept over him.

Bai Yi felt as though his soul had left his body. He felt himself twisting and stretching, stretching endlessly, like a ball of yarn casually kneaded into a tangled lump.

The entire process was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of dizziness and nausea, as though he had left one space and entered another.

The strange sensation came and went quickly, ending after only a few seconds.

"Urgh—"

Bai Yi bent over and kept dry-heaving. He never wanted to experience that feeling again for the rest of his life.

As the nausea gradually eased, Bai Yi raised his head and discovered in surprise that the black fog around him had vanished.

He appeared to be inside a sealed square space roughly twenty by twenty meters. The surrounding walls were an extremely transparent layer of flesh membrane, beyond which was total darkness.

At the same time, the ground was covered in a thick layer of bones, their surfaces riddled with small pockmarked holes.

The bones looked like human skeletons, and Bai Yi was standing right atop them.

He did not panic. Instead, he first walked to the edge of the cube.

He reached out to touch the wall. Unlike the shelter's flesh membrane, with its distinctive softness and elasticity, this membrane was incredibly tough.

Bai Yi tried slashing it with his knife and shooting it, but neither caused any damage to the wall.

After those attempts failed, Bai Yi temporarily stopped focusing on the wall and turned to examine the other areas.

"Sizzle, sizzle—"

Suddenly, Bai Yi heard a strange sound coming from the bones behind him. He turned around and saw a drop of yellowish-green liquid continuously corroding a bone, leaving behind a small hole.

Bai Yi looked up, and his pupils suddenly contracted. At some unknown point, yellowish-green liquid had begun seeping continuously from the flesh membrane above, and there was more and more of it!

He darted aside, avoiding the falling liquid. Listening to the sizzling sounds, Bai Yi knew he absolutely could not let that liquid touch him.

As he continued to dodge, he also considered how to break out of this situation.

He had already roughly figured out what was happening. This was probably an unknown, immobile aberrant demon with spatial abilities.

The space atop those lumps of flesh had likely been stretched. Once someone stepped onto the flesh, they probably could not walk out again.

And Bai Yi was now most likely inside the aberrant demon's stomach. The bones on the ground and the liquid constantly dripping from above were the best proof.

Bai Yi guessed that liquid was something like stomach acid.

With a working theory, the next step became easier. Bai Yi needed to find a way to make the aberrant demon "vomit" him out.

He crouched halfway and touched a bone with his finger.

[You used "Flesh-Bone Conversion," Sanity -9]

The bones below began to deform. In just a few seconds, a bone umbrella appeared in Bai Yi's hand.

The umbrella canopy was made from a layer of bone. It could not be opened or closed, and it was quite heavy—an ordinary person could not lift it at all.

Holding up the bone umbrella, Bai Yi temporarily solved the stomach acid problem. He began searching beneath the bones to see whether there was anything useful.

Bai Yi had already made his worst-case plan: he would disregard the consumption of Sanity entirely and use Flesh Alchemy to frantically proliferate bones.

Once this space was filled to the brim, the aberrant demon would definitely choose to vomit out the contents of its stomach in order to feed.

But that would consume too much, so Bai Yi listed it as a backup plan.

For now, he was trying to see whether he could find something among this pile of bones that the aberrant demon could not digest to help him break out of this predicament.

Second by second, time passed, and Bai Yi had already searched a large area. As time went on, the air around him grew thinner and thinner.

Even after realizing that the air would only become scarcer, Bai Yi did not choose to stop.

Through the gaps between the bones, Bai Yi could vaguely see something below emitting light.

He found it difficult to describe that color. It seemed to surpass the limits of human comprehension.

That color, which had never existed within the spectrum of human vision, fascinated Bai Yi. It seemed to possess a strange pull, making people instinctively want to draw close to it.

Bai Yi's movements grew increasingly frenzied. He had been bewitched!

Suddenly, gastric acid dripped onto the arm Bai Yi had accidentally exposed while digging madly.

The intense pain jolted Bai Yi awake.

Covered in cold sweat, he panted softly. On his personal panel:

[Psychology: Greed 100/100]

This was already the second time he had been affected.

"No, something must be wrong!"

Bai Yi felt as though he had overlooked something. Whenever he desperately tried to recall it, the chaotic thoughts in his mind kept interrupting him.

"Why was I so obsessed with coming out to explore?

Because I wanted to find out what was inside the black mist before the treasure chests refreshed!

Because I came here!

No, that's not right. Because I wanted to become stronger!"

Several different answers echoed through Bai Yi's mind. He no longer knew why he had come out, nor could he understand why he did not simply return, instead continuing to explore the surrounding buildings.

The relentless strain on his brain placed immense pressure on Bai Yi's mind. He only felt that he had forgotten something, and overlooked something.

At the same time, an indescribable color settled in Bai Yi's mind along with his memories, continuously taking over his thoughts.

Before long, the chaotic thoughts in Bai Yi's mind were completely devoured by that unnameable color.

At that point, only one thing remained in Bai Yi's mind—

That ever-shifting—

Color!

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