I'm Trapped in the Block

After licking the rim of the bottle clean, Old Xu sighed wistfully. "Ah, truly delicious!"

He looked at the two people behind him, raised the bottle, and asked, "Want to try some?"

Startled, the two of them immediately took a few steps back, waving their hands in refusal.

Seeing this, Old Xu burst out laughing.

"This stuff tastes really good," he said. "That toad was ugly, but its slime is incredibly delicious. In Oasis City, a bottle like this could be traded for a lesser relic."

Old Xu gazed at the bottle of thick slime in his hand as if it were a priceless treasure.

"Are you sure it’s not poisonous?" Mo Ling asked. The memory of the hideously ugly toad and the bumps covering its skin still made him nauseous.

"No, really. You should keep it for yourself," Li Xiangyi said with a wry smile, declining Old Xu’s offer.

Seeing their looks of revulsion, Old Xu sighed and explained, "We usually call that kind of toad a Honey Toad, because its slime is as sweet as honey."

"And that’s not all. Its swollen skin has a chewy, jelly-like texture. When you bite through it, a sweet juice bursts out that tastes like lychee, and it has a uniquely refreshing aroma."

"When we get back to Dawn City, I’ll add a bit to some floral tea. You have to try it; it’s sure to be good."

It seemed Old Xu still hadn’t given up on getting them to taste it.

After carefully stowing the bottle, he led the two of them onward.

Past the pool, Old Xu stopped before a tributary that flowed downward. The stream of water was now just a trickle, and parts of the channel were dry.

"This tributary has the lowest danger level, and there aren’t any major disturbances. Let’s keep moving."

Old Xu was visibly more relaxed after leaving the pool. It seemed the slime had helped calm his nerves.

It was a tributary that spiraled downward. It didn’t look like a natural channel, but rather a deliberately carved path with a very gentle slope.

As they walked, the relaxed look on Old Xu’s face vanished, replaced once more by a grave expression. He would periodically raise a hand to signal a halt, his eyes constantly scanning the channel.

"Is something wrong?" Li Xiangyi asked, noticing Old Xu’s cautious demeanor. "Are we in danger again?"

As she spoke, the shuttle on her back began to vibrate slowly.

Old Xu shook his head without answering, his expression remaining grim. He even crouched down, scooped up some mud from the channel, and began to examine it.

’Did he find something?’

Mo Ling’s attention was also drawn to Old Xu’s strange behavior, and he quickly submerged his vision into the floor of the waterway.

Soft mud and sand were everywhere. The meager stream of water trickled slowly by. Unlike the area around the pool, there were no mysterious caves nearby.

Other than the peculiar spiral path, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Just as Mo Ling was wondering, Old Xu began to mutter to himself, "The soil is getting harder... No, this isn’t right. Why are we going down?"

Li Xiangyi drew closer to Old Xu and overheard his muttering.

"What do you mean, ’down’?" she asked in confusion.

Old Xu grabbed a handful of soil, holding it up in front of her as he explained:

"I’ve been following my instincts this whole time, but we keep going downward. The soil here is getting harder, too, which means we’re going deeper. We’re not leaving the waterway—we’re heading in the opposite direction!"

However, his explanation only confused Li Xiangyi further.

"We’ve been going down this whole time?" she asked. She raised a finger, pointing first to the ceiling, then to the floor, as if she couldn’t tell up from down.

Then she looked back down the tunnel they’d come from, paced back and forth, and after turning around a few times, asked vacantly, "Which way did we come from?"

Li Xiangyi looked to Old Xu for an answer, but he just stared at her with wide, bewildered eyes. The two of them stared at each other in stunned silence...

It wasn’t until Li Xiangyi explained the price of her relic that Old Xu nodded in understanding.

"Don’t worry about it. Just stick with me," Old Xu said reassuringly. "In any case, heading toward lower danger levels is never the wrong choice. I’ve been through things like this many times."

And so, the group continued their descent along the spiral waterway.

As they walked, Li Xiangyi began to describe what it felt like to have lost her sense of direction.

For her, all directions were a jumbled mess. Take the pool they had just passed, for instance. Even if you told her it was ’above’ them, she would have no idea where that was.

Li Xiangyi’s mind didn’t process relative space; she only had memories of individual scenes and environments.

These memories were linked together purely by time, like scenes in a movie, cutting from one to the next. She didn’t even know how she got from one scene to the following one.

One moment they were at the pool, and in the blink of an eye, they were in the spiral waterway. She could remember the changing locations, but she was completely unable to connect them spatially in her mind.

The ’movie’ scenes kept changing, and she moved from one film set to the next. The only constants were Li Luo and Old Xu, which was why she could only follow others.

As Li Xiangyi explained, she moved closer to Li Luo, afraid of getting separated from the group.

"Life in the Abyss must be hard for you, but you still managed to find Oasis City," Old Xu remarked with a sigh.

"I was just wandering aimlessly," Li Xiangyi said sheepishly. "Whenever I ran into other people, I’d tell them the price of my relic and ask if they’d let me travel with them for a stretch. Most of them were happy to help."

In her eyes, the Abyss still had more good Hunters than bad.

The group chatted as they walked, and a long time passed. But the spiral waterway seemed incredibly deep, with no end in sight.

Old Xu would periodically crouch down to inspect the soil, and his conclusion was always the same: they were moving farther and farther from the surface, descending deeper along the waterway.

"The danger level keeps dropping. Where in the world is this path taking us?" Even Old Xu was growing puzzled.

Moreover, the group noticed the spiral was getting tighter, the curve sharpening like the tip of a conch shell.

Finally, after descending one last steep slope, the group emerged onto a vast, white plain.

The plain was covered in a thick layer of shattered shells, resembling an endless ocean of white bones.

Stepping on them produced a loud CRUNCH. The shells weren’t very sturdy, shattering easily under their feet.

Mo Ling sent his vision down into the ground. He had no idea how many fragments were piled up in this ocean of shells; he couldn’t even see the bottom. There might be even more beyond the range of his sight.

’Where are we?’

’Why are there so many shells?’

Mo Ling looked over at Old Xu and saw that he, too, was utterly astonished, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Old Xu picked up a few shell fragments to examine them, his expression growing increasingly grim.

He paced back and forth, constantly scanning his surroundings and picking up different shells to compare. Soon, he voiced an even more shocking revelation:

"These are the shells of the Shell People."