"Those candlesticks are unique to the Art Building... how did one end up here?!"
"No, there was clearly nothing on the wall just now. When did this candlestick appear?"
The candlestick's flame glimmered faintly, swaying without wind like a clown's smiling face. Within that flame, something cold and sinister seemed to be smiling at him.
Just as Lin Yi reaffirmed his cognition, the candlestick immediately grew illusory again. At the same time, its flame began swaying for no apparent reason, and his vision started flickering rapidly along with it.
The rhythm of that flickering was perfectly synchronized with the candle flame's swaying!
Some extraordinary changes appeared in what he saw as well.
He saw the white plaster in the stairwell suddenly turn into ancient, yellowish-brown stone blocks, only to return to normal the next instant.
He saw the candlestick flicker in and out of existence. Whenever it vanished, the stairwell "returned" to normal, and whenever it materialized, the stairwell became a passage built from yellowish-brown stone blocks.
He seemed to see people squeezing against one another in the stairwell, inching forward, but he could not make them out clearly.
Suddenly, he felt something pushing him up the stairs, and urgent voices seemed to ring out around him:
"Hey, what are you spacing out for? Get moving!"
Another voice followed. "Xiao Mao, what's wrong?"
"Wait! Xiao Mao...?!" Lin Yi's heart trembled, and every muscle in his body abruptly tensed.
He whipped his gaze toward the candlestick at the turn in the stairwell. It had become utterly real, and the entire stairwell had turned into a passage built from those yellowish-brown stone blocks.
Then he experienced that sensation of falling from the clouds in a dream. He was clearly standing on a step, yet for some reason, he also felt a weighty