Lin Sanjiu tumbled forward for what seed like the umpteenth ti. She sprang back to her feet, quickly glancing behind her before pressing on with her desperate escape. Yu Yuan stumbled along beside her, occasionally needing her assistance to keep up.
Any fool could tell that once they were trapped in this ga, there might be no way out. The ga's creator was observing them from the other side of the white docunt. No matter how much chaos she might cause, Lin Sanjiu knew she couldn't possibly crack this ga. The creator could simply patch up any vulnerabilities or change the ga's conditions to push her into a corner.
Giant characters, reminiscent of the undulating terrain ford by tectonic plate collisions eons ago, rose tremblingly from the expansive white ground. Words transford into mountains and plains, forming and coloring whole new worlds from the void with resounding rumbles.
But a mont's focus revealed that the rumbles seed to be only in her head, and the surrounding area was still silent save for her heavy breathing.
Black characters appeared one after another on the white paper, chasing Lin Sanjiu and Yu Yuan and unfolding into entire worlds. The sky was about to spread over her, and several tis she nearly stepped onto the grassland that suddenly erged before her. On this blank sheet, it seed they were like two flies darting about, and they couldn't predict when the next word would rise beneath them.
After all, this was just a blank sheet where the creator could start writing anywhere.
"Hurry, faster!" Lin Sanjiu shouted back at Yu Yuan, realizing he had fallen several steps behind. Just in ti, she used the last bit of her Higher Consciousness to pull him close before a straw hut could trap him.
Mrs. Manas muttered, "Every ti I recover a bit, it's used up. When will I be fully restored?"
Lin Sanjiu had no ti to pay her any attention.
On this sheet of paper, the mont a brush stroke landed and words appeared, they quickly spread to form a tangible world. When she looked back, the scenes looked like newly constructed television sets.
These scattered sets, ford in pursuit of them, varied greatly. So had gentle breezes coming from them, others had televisions on the walls, and still, others featured a woman from the countryside reaching out for her. If any of these caught them, they'd be dragged into the ga.
"Where do you think you're going?" Yu Yuan, with an arm wrapped around Lin Sanjiu, stumbled as they ran. His face was still expressionless. "No matter where we go, he can write."
"That's true," Lin Sanjiu said, wishing she could just carry him, but he was slightly taller than her. "Except where there's already writing, right?"
"So, you want to hide inside an already ford ga?" Yu Yuan asked.
Having seen the gas projected on the ground and having navigated the structure of the text multiple tis without any issues, she believed the creator couldn't overwrite already existing text. Lin Sanjiu responded, "Yes."
"I don't think that will work."
Before she could ask why, she suddenly felt a strong impact. It felt as though her ears, shoulders, and knees were going to fall off from the pain, blurring her vision.
"Step back a few ters," Yu Yuan said calmly.
'They ca running from behind.' Before this thought even fully ford in her mind, Lin Sanjiu instinctively leaped backward. As her feet touched the ground, she clearly saw that an unexpected line of text had appeared on the transparent barrier in front of her. At that mont, the last character "齐" was rging into a silhouette, transforming into another unfamiliar person. The person blinked his small, black-bean-like eyes, opened his arms towards them, quickened his pace, and lunged.
She hurriedly yanked Yu Yuan, enduring the throbbing pain in her head, and turned to run in another direction.
"Did you know we couldn't get back from the start?" she asked.
"It's not exactly knowing," Yu Yuan said, his tone sounding as casual as if he were lounging on a sofa with tea. "I just pondered deeply. To put it in terms you might understand, this world is like a handwritten book. Although every finished page must be bound together to form a complete book, when writing, each page is undoubtedly written separately on a sheet of paper. Every ga is a page, bound to the planet's surface, forming this ga world."
"So, we happened to run onto a blank sheet!" Lin Sanjiu shouted. "He noticed and began writing on this paper?!"
"Your understanding is quite correct."
That statent didn't co from Yu Yuan.
The voice emanated from the depths of the snowy white ground beneath them. The male voice seed sowhat appreciative. Lin Sanjiu couldn't fathom what kind of being could create such a world.
"What do we do now?" Her anger surged, especially seeing Yu Yuan's indifference, which fueled her irritation even more. As soon as she said this, she felt as though sothing had squeezed her heart. She quickly bumped Yu Yuan with her shoulder, diving with him to the side. At the spot they almost landed, a woman suddenly appeared, squatting on the ground.
"He's started using ga characters to catch us," said Yu Yuan. "Smaller, more agile, harder for us to evade."
If this was a solitary extracted page, it ant no matter which direction she ran, she would encounter the sa invisible boundary. Glancing back, across the vast expanse, countless new characters erupted from the ground, slowly forming parts of the ga: an ochre hill with crisscrossed cart tracks, stretching from a village, settling onto the blank paper-like land. There was a spot where rain fell, and the wind blew the slight chill of raindrops towards an empty, pure white space. Before long, this entire page would be filled with text. Then, she would have nowhere to run.
Lin Sanjiu, afraid to touch the text-ford world or the text-ford people, swiped away an approaching woman with [Tornado Whip], grabbed Yu Yuan, and loudly asked, "If we continue to stay here, we'll eventually get sucked into the ga. But this place is an isolated space. If it's not connected to anywhere, how do we get out?"
"Actually, if you think about it—"
Lin Sanjiu pinched his arm.
"Ah," Yu Yuan uttered indifferently—he probably didn't feel pain; otherwise, he would have passed out when he fell down the elevator shaft.
Not sure if the person on the other end of the blank paper was still watching, Lin Sanjiu feigned curiosity to keep up appearances. "What were you thinking?"
Yu Yuan glanced down at where she had gripped his arm. "Hmm... think about it, we don't need to run," he obviously changed his wording, "we just need to make sure he can't see us."
"Do you have a way?"
"I an... I have an item that might be useful for this situation."
During their conversation, both understood deep down that this was at best a temporary asure to buy ti. The isolated piece of paper, although disconnected from other ga paper spaces, did not imply that it was a dead end.
The most significant pathway was right beneath them. Since Whit E.'s text could cross the white paper to the other side, so could they; all they needed was to find a way.
Without much noticeable movent from Yu Yuan, Lin Sanjiu saw him, while running, pull out a large bundle of white cloth from his coat. Expecting to see the Special Item's function, Yu Yuan threw the cloth forward, saying, "It's big enough. Get in."
Could it be a space within a space? True to the Veda's reputation, he used a space-related item right off the bat.
As Lin Sanjiu stepped on the cloth, her admiration vanished.
"Hold one corner and step on it," Yu Yuan said. "When you squat, cover your head with the cloth. Hurry up; I think soone's coming."
Lin Sanjiu quickly glanced around and indeed noticed a long shadow being cast from behind a half-crumbled stone wall. She swiftly pulled the cloth over her head, hiding underneath with him, and whispered, "Please tell this cloth has a special function."
"No, I didn't have ti to create a Special Item."
So, they were just squatting under a piece of cloth like hens at a farr's market? Was this just self-deception?
"When he writes on the paper, he probably sees only the paper and the text," he continued. "If we appeared as two humanoid figures on the paper earlier, no wonder he noticed... But now, we're just a white blotch; he shouldn't see us."
"But the people ford from the text have eyes! They can see us!"
Yu Yuan paused for a mont. "Whether these words, before they co together and form a complete ga, have normal functionality is still unknown."
Lin Sanjiu pointed to a vague shadow through the white sheet—she realized by now it was a bedsheet—and said, "Look."
Yu Yuan took a glance.
"It's coming straight at us, isn't it?"
Yu Yuan nodded.
"Then why aren't we running?!"
Lin Sanjiu flung the sheet towards the approaching figure, grabbing Yu Yuan by his collar and pulling him back. Her timing was impeccable, and the sheet fell onto the stranger, covering them entirely like a resurrected mummy. She dragged Yu Yuan along, running towards the already materialized miniature world, asking while catching her breath, "Do you have more of those white bedsheets?"
"As many as you need," Yu Yuan said matter-of-factly.
When it ca to these useless items, there was an abundance.
"Then get two more," Lin Sanjiu said, quickly bending over to dodge a low-hanging tree branch. To her right was a forest ford by the text. The land, shrubs, and weeds reluctantly spread outward, nearly touching their feet.
"Where are you going?" Yu Yuan asked, pulling out another white bedsheet from his embrace.
"Your earlier deduction, I think one part might be right," Lin Sanjiu whispered, trying not to let the person on the other side of the paper hear. "When he looks at us, we might appear neither as text nor as a white space but rather conspicuously... If that's the case, I might have a plan that could possibly help us reach the other side of the paper."
"What's the plan?"
"You believe that wrapping sothing in the white cloth makes it invisible, right?" Lin Sanjiu felt that, although the idea was akin to a grade-schooler using white-out over a typo, Yu Yuan was a Veda after all; he couldn't be too off base. "We'll grab sothing ford from the text and wrap it in the white cloth. If he gets surprised and tries to retract the text, maybe he'll inadvertently take us with it."
"Didn't you forget? If you touch the text, you'll beco part of the ga it forms."
Lin Sanjiu had considered this. To be honest, she had co up with the idea inspired by Yu Yuan, even if she was reluctant to admit it now.
"Look at our surroundings," she said. "The ga he's designing for us is clearly set in an era where people draw water from wells, live in thatched cottages, and travel by ox cart. It's a ga with an ancient backdrop. I don't know if he mistakenly wrote sothing out of haste, but when he tried to capture us using text earlier, a group of characters appeared that clearly didn't belong to this ancient ga... If that text doesn't form a part of a ga, grabbing it should be safe, right?"
Yu Yuan glanced around, realizing her point.
"It's the television on that wall," he whispered. "That TV isn't part of the ga."
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