"Didn't do anything."
Chaichai squinted her eyes, but her tone remained calm, "Just pondering so world mysteries that have troubled
for years,
like whether an oyster is still an oyster after it's cooked;
if a person commits suicide, does it an there's one more suicide in the world, or one less;
did Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei have to bow and swear allegiance to Lord Guan's statue in the Peach Garden;
I feel like once I crack these world mysteries, the Nobel is not far from ."
At this mont, she was swapping identities with Li Ang, inheriting all of Li Ang's relationships (though there were only a few contacts), and along with it, his speaking style and vocabulary.
According to the Brain Worm team's analysis, the similarity level could reach around 90% in a short ti, which was enough to handle most situations.
"..."
On the other end of the phone, Wang Congshan was silent for a mont.
"What's wrong?"
Miss Chai's eyebrows furrowed imdiately, "Is there sothing you want to tell ?"
"No,"
Wang Congshan took a breath, her voice sounding a bit low, "Recently, I just haven't been feeling great...
Could you co out and have a al with ?"
————
Far away on the script mission, Li Ang was unaware of the happenings in the real world.
At the mont the weightlessness brought by the halo disappeared,
he suddenly unleashed Swamp God Power and Psychic Abilities, sweeping outwards in all directions to map out the terrain and scout for potential threats.
He didn't find any suspicious targets...
Li Ang opened his eyes, the subtle shift in body perception reminding him that he should be standing upright on the ground.
Here is...
At this mont, his location should be inside a tal container,
The container was cramped and narrow, with a human-shaped interior,
the walls embedded with nurous dense tal spikes, precisely positioned at the eyes, shoulders, arms, thighs, and so on.
Iron Maiden?
Li Ang furrowed his brows slightly, the Iron Maiden was a form of dieval European torture device, consisting of hinges, nails, and two doors that could enclose a person, resembling a mummy sarcophagus.
During its use, the executioner would confine the victim inside, close the doors, causing nurous spikes to penetrate the victim's body, continuously harming and intimidating them to extract information or cause suffering.
The Iron Maiden Li Ang found himself in was made of an unknown material, with nails capable of piercing the Dragon Head White Lab Coat and the Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat.
The Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat has a high efficiency for absorbing energy attribute attacks and can absorb kinetic impacts, but since it's handwoven by Li Ang himself, there are narrow gaps between each strand of red mane,
The spikes on the Iron Maiden's inner wall were thin and sharp, like knitting needles through a sweater, so already penetrating the Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat,
had it not been for Li Ang's skin and muscles that could automatically adjust shape, inwardly contracting an inch or two, he would have been severely injured.
These nails, do they extend forward automatically?
Li Ang's brows furrowed. To enhance the torture effect, real Iron Maidens had movable spikes in various positions inside, which could change puncture locations and force, prolonging the victim's suffering,
and at this mont inside the Iron Maiden he was in, the spikes on the inner wall were slowly and steadily extending inward without showing any signs of stopping.
Automated torture device? Or is it controlled externally?
A myriad of possibilities intertwined in Li Ang's mind,
his slightly drooped hand opened slowly, fingertips released a massive amount of vine fibers,
first wrapping around his body to prevent being pierced by the nails,
then rapidly proliferating, weaving in and out of the gaps between the spikes, filling the entire device.
Crack—
The massive vines gathered imnse strength, pushing outward,
accompanied by the nerve-wracking sound of tallic bolts turning, the two doors of the tal torture device were forcefully pushed open by a slit.
"Phew...."
Amidst the wildly dancing vines, Li Ang crawled out of the tal torture device leisurely, casually patting his body, and the holes on the outside of the Dragon Head White Lab Coat instantly restored to their original state.
"The Red Mane Coat is a bit lacking in defense performance against such purely physical piercing damage..."
He sighed, and the skin beneath the lab coat, adapted to prevent piercing injuries, slowly returned to normal,
no longer appearing like a strawberry that could send a trypophobia sufferer screaming.
"What about the others..."
Li Ang stood on the spot, looking around,
this seed to be a large, dark, square room with no light, with nurous identical Iron Maidens arranged on the floor.
All the devices were neatly arranged like chess pieces on a board,
so tightly closed,
others left open, revealing hollow insides.
With the amplification of the Group Night Vision Spell and biologically modified eyeballs, Li Ang could see clearly that so of the open devices left behind desiccated black blood stains,
with withered and shriveled flesh remnants at the tips of the spikes,
while massive stains of dried blood were evident on the hall's floor.
What is this, a venue specifically for placing torture devices?
Li Ang frowned slightly. After stepping into the halo, he was directly transmitted to the torture device,
and even his wide-ranging psychic ability detection failed to sense any intelligent beings like him in the room.
In other words, the halo teleportation array dispersed everyone to different locations.
"Strange, is the purpose of the halo teleportation to kill players? Or is this just a trial segnt? But placing so many sarcophagus torture devices here doesn't seem to fit the definition of 'Sacred Mountain'..."
Li Ang muttered to himself sarcastically, when suddenly, a noisy and chaotic sound, indistinguishable between male and female yet exuding a solemn, sacred aura, echoed in his ear.
[Searching for... the path... upward, complete... your trial]
The voice seed to have a bit of interference, intermittently breaking off, clearly not a creation of Spiritual Energy or another power system.
Path upward?
Li Ang surveyed the room; there was no apparent trapdoor on the ceiling, but there was a door at the end of the room that seed it could be opened.
Li Ang wasn't in a hurry to leave, but instead picked up the Lightning Eleven Walkie-Talkie given by Hoenhem, pressing the button, "Hello? Hello? This is Li Rising, can you hear ?"
The walkie-talkie emitted a crackling electric current noise, and after a mont, Ding Zhensi's voice ca through the channel, "Yes."
Being able to hear ant their straight-line distance was less than ten kiloters.
Li Ang steadied his mind and asked, "Did you hear the hint tone just now? Where are you now?"
"I heard the hint tone as well, telling us to find the way up. It doesn't seem to be a system prompt but so kind of chanism automatically triggered in this area.
Right now, I, ahem, should be in a closed room filled with a large number of humanoid stone statues, probably erected to commorate the heroes who once ca to the Sacred Mountain..."
Ding Zhensi said, "So have already been destroyed, and the remaining number totals four hundred and seventy-seven.
Wait, the Hero Team Statues we saw in the fresco in the underground palace are here too, placed at the front of all the statues,
and there's also a statue of them in the middle of all the statue formations..."
"We'll talk later, soone's coming here."
Li Ang's ears twitched as he pressed the button to turn off the walkie-talkie, silently slipping into a half-open torture device, shrank his body, and hid.
Step, step, step.
An orange-yellow light erged at the far end of the room,
accompanied by rather peculiar footsteps,
as if soone was wearing an excessively large pair of boots, soaking wet, stomping on the marble floor, giving off a sticky, sluggish sense of sight.
The room remained dim and unlit, but with the enhanced effect of the Group Night Vision Spell, Li Ang clearly saw,
a pair of sturdy, thick legs slowly advancing from the far end of the room, stepping out of the dead angle of the torture tool's vision, appearing in Li Ang's view.
This visitor had an extrely... bizarre appearance.
His lower part had two legs comparable to those of a muscular man,
not wearing pants or shoes, but embedded with nurous sharp tal shards, deeply piercing the skin and muscle, forming brownish-yellow pus and scabs at the wounds.
So scabs had already fallen off, with pus dripping down, making one feel uncomfortable at the sight.
His, or rather its, feet were covered with octopus-like suckers, secreting a sticky transparent liquid from between the suckers that emitted a pungent odor,
making a "squish" sound whenever stepping on the ground.
Its upper body was even more bizarre,
essentially a spherical aggregation of human arms, nearly two ters in diater,
the arms were diverse in origin, with different skin tones and shapes, with one green arm being as robust as an industrial crane arm,
seemingly derived from different hosts.
About a dozen arms extended from the sides of the spherical aggregation, holding various items,
including but not limited to a particularly old and broken kerosene lamp, a slightly rusty sword, a flintlock, a set of prisoner restraint tools (handcuffs, shackles, etc.)...
The most noteworthy was, within that sturdy green arm, a jet-black keychain was grasped,
with dozens of keys hanging from it,
producing a continuous jingling sound like wind chis as this oddly shaped creature moved.
Is this sothing that escaped from the Silent Hill set?
Li Ang was hidden inside the Iron Maiden torture device, with vine fibers extending from his fingertips, securing him in place without touching the spikes inside the torture device.
The spikes inside these open torture devices wouldn't extend out like the previous one,
but they all had sothing in common.
The tips of all the spikes were coated with so kind of mineral powder...
Li Ang quietly lifted his arm, gently touching the spike through the Mirage Dragon Red Mane Coat,
and as the powdery substance at the tip of the spike touched the skin of his fingertip, it began to absorb energy at a slow rate.
So that's it.
Li Ang's heart stirred, if it was an ordinary hero teleported in and got pierced by a spike, the energy within their body would be slowly absorbed by this mineral powder,
if they were a bit weaker, they might not even escape the torture device, eventually dying a slow death in the Iron Maiden—the bloodstained open torture devices in the room silently testified to this fact.
But why?
Was the purpose of the teleportation array simply to harm heroes? Or is the entire Sacred Mountain trial all just a lie...
Li Ang's eyes narrowed slightly, gazing at the deford creature.
He saw it holding up the kerosene lamp, appearing to wander aimlessly in the room,
after walking a certain distance, like suddenly rembering sothing, it took a tattered mop from one of its arms,
dipping it in the sticky liquid from its feet, it began mopping the floor stained with dried blood.
The bloodstains on the floor, of unknown age, were firmly attached to the surface, with the tattered mop unable to clean them, making an even bigger ss,
yet the deford creature seed oblivious, silently mopping the floor.
After about three minutes, the deford creature slowly put away the mop, as if reacting sluggishly, slinging the mop over its shoulder (above the spherical aggregation of arms), and headed towards the Iron Maiden torture device Li Ang had previously escaped from.
It stopped in front of the torture device and extended an arm,
lightly feeling the opened seam, finding no blood inside the torture device,
a gurgling sound, perhaps the equivalent of "confusion," emanated from the spherical aggregation.
After a few seconds' pause, it slowly turned around and headed towards the far end of the room.
From another Iron Maiden torture device, Li Ang, having observed the deford creature's action patterns, narrowed his eyes,
that creature, though not very intelligent, appeared exceedingly clumsy and slow-witted, but it should be the servant or worker of this area,
responsible for cleaning the area, detaining those who appear in the Iron Maiden, shackling them with the handcuffs and shackles it carries, before transferring the detainees to another location.
Interesting.
Li Ang silently slipped out of the torture device, his figure disappearing into the darkness, treading on the invisible ladder ford by the Cloud Ascending Ladder, hovering above all the Iron Maiden devices,
approaching the wall,
trailing at a distance behind the deford creature, tracking it.
He wanted to see what other behavior patterns this creature would exhibit.
The deford creature was completely unaware of the presence of a tracker behind it, silently exiting the room, walking through a dimly lit corridor, arriving at another spacious room.
The entire structure Li Ang was in currently resembled a grandiose ancient castle,
and the new room the deford creature arrived in seed to be the castle's dining hall, with a long wooden dining table in the center.
The deford creature retrieved a pile of fruit similar to potatoes from a cabinet beside the dining hall, casually washing the fruit under a water pipe constantly dripping water along the dining hall wall,
then returned to the dining table, slicing the fruit open with the rusty longsword, and began to eat.
After finishing eating, it even washed the longsword and the used plate, floundering to its feet, continuing towards the next room filled with dirt and planted with so kind of crop, beginning to water and farm.
"..."
Li Ang watched the slow-moving deford creature, frowning slightly, finally deciding not to stay hidden,
casually releasing the vine that adhered to the ceiling, dropping from the air, landing in front of the deford creature while it was watering the farmland.
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