Lin Yi paused. "You sound so professional. You seem to know a lot about this?"
"If you don't want to listen, I'll stop," Mao Feiyang said disdainfully.
"Sorry, I was wrong."
Lin Yi put on such a shamelessly smarmy air that Mao Feiyang choked for a moment. "I don't know why, but sometimes I almost feel like we've switched places."
"Professor Mao, please continue your lecture," Lin Yi said in a pinched, eunuch-like voice.
Mao Feiyang curled his lips. "We have a theory-an unverified theory..."
"Uh, wait... 'we'?" Lin Yi froze.
Mao Feiyang said, "Yes, 'we.' You, me, Young Master Tian, Wei Sang, Kuai Zi, and... Wei Liang. We proposed a theory: 'The Fog-Shrouded Light Chaser effect applies to all transcendent beings'..."
"Those lost souls have no concept of 'time' here. They might be creatures that fell into oblivion thousands of years ago, or they might have fallen only recently. But the deep layers froze their 'time,' allowing them to persist in some special form."
"And over that near-eternity, certain 'paintings' provided vessels for them, like 'worlds' that had been created... and so the Fog-Shrouded Light Chasers became part of the paintings' worlds."
"If we linger here too long and lose our own 'identities,' we'll be assimilated by the world too."
"Who created these paintings?" Lin Yi asked. "Not every painting qualifies to manifest an effect like that, right?"
"Of course not," Mao Feiyang said. "Only the Gallery's builders, the 'First Apostles,' and some outstanding artists of later generations had that ability."
"In their original conception, this arrangement was meant to trap and kill people like us, who use 'layer leaps' to reach 'her' Bedroom..."
"They didn't want 'her' state to be disturbed. They wanted her to remain in eternal slumber."
"Then what are you doing now?" Lin Yi asked.