I'm Trapped in the Block

Turtle jelly.

A straightforward, yet all-encompassing answer.

Although the explanation was in terrible taste, it was also so simple it was easy to understand.

"They’re extracting the Vortex Turtle’s energy."

Those black threads bored into the ground, drawing out the Vortex Turtle’s energy and transferring it to the other threads, which in turn produced this effect of near-omnipotent creation.

’The Vortex Turtle really did contribute immensely to the Oasis,’ a strange thought suddenly occurred to Mo Ling.

It used its own body as the foundation, created the circular channel that stored the Oasis’s water, and even provided the energy to create the Oasis itself.

Even the shell-kin who lived on its body were helpers in the Oasis’s creation.

But this was surely not of its own free will.

Mo Ling was confused. Why had the creature of purple gauze—now Li Xiangyi—gone to such lengths to create the Oasis?

Watching Li Xiangyi, who was surrounded by countless flying shuttles, Mo Ling was completely baffled.

’What is her goal, exactly?’

As he was pondering this, the Little Elf beside him watched Li Xiangyi and said calmly, "It’s about to be over. She can finally just be human."

"Over?"

"Mhm." The Little Elf continued to gaze into the distance.

With the creation of the Oasis complete, the shuttles around Li Xiangyi spun rapidly. The colorful gauze net quickly retracted, and threads of every color were pulled out one by one, spiraling back onto the shuttles.

With another wave of her hands, the shuttles returned to her back one by one.

The moment the shuttles returned, Li Xiangyi’s expression instantly became dazed.

Her body started to twist and sway. As if she couldn’t stand steady, she began to spin in place.

Not only that, but she also raised her finger and began to point randomly—one moment at the sky, the next at the ground, and soon after, she was tracing circles in the air.

Finally, she could only sit down on a nearby rock, constantly twisting her head and looking around in confusion.

"What’s wrong with her?"

"Her loss of direction has gotten worse. It’s the price for using that relic," the Little Elf explained. "That relic doesn’t make you lose all sense of direction right from the start..."

From the Little Elf’s explanation, Mo Ling gradually came to understand the properties of the relic known as the "Rainbow Shuttle."

This relic was extremely powerful. Its various threads each possessed incredibly unique abilities. Its potential was immense; with enough energy, it could even destroy the world.

But the price was the user’s sense of direction.

At first, the loss of direction would only manifest in small ways.

For example, being unable to tell left from right.

Many normal people have this problem, being unable to distinguish left from right.

At this stage, the user is merely confused by certain directional words.

When others say a word related to direction, the user can’t recall what the word means.

If someone says "left," the user has to think for a long time about what "left" even means.

Of course, that’s only the beginning.

Soon, the user begins to be unable to distinguish various directions. Forward, backward, left, right, east, south, west, north—these nouns become high-level vocabulary for them, extremely difficult to understand.

It’s like trying to describe the shape of an elephant to someone who has never seen one; it is incredibly difficult for others to describe directional words to a user of the Rainbow Shuttle.

At this point, the user’s sense of direction becomes completely scrambled.

If you tell her to go east, she’ll go west. This isn’t because she’s stubborn, but because she genuinely can’t tell the difference.

In her eyes, "east" and "west" are no different.

Following that, the user descends into a state of being unable to comprehend any direction whatsoever.

For example, if you say to a Rainbow Shuttle user: "The direction of gravity is down, which comes from Earth’s gravitational pull."

She can understand the meaning of the entire sentence, but she doesn’t know where "down" is.

The physical sensation of gravity has been completely disconnected from her perception of direction.

If a user of the Rainbow Shuttle is forced to connect their physical sensation of gravity with the directional sense of "down," the price will even begin to affect their sense of gravity itself.

The user will instantly lose track of their center of gravity and become confused about the sensation of standing on the ground.

This is the next problem the user will face.

Because a human’s sense of direction is inherently linked to various other senses, it’s impossible to completely separate them.

When they try to use their sense of gravity to understand "down," their sense of gravity itself becomes muddled and confused.

When they try to use proprioception to understand "forward, backward, left, and right," their proprioception is also affected. Their own limbs become indistinct, and they can’t tell their own body parts apart.

The heart is on the "left."

The stomach is in the "lower left."

The head is at the "very top."

Left hand, right hand, upper limbs, lower limbs...

These senses all gradually blur. Even other people, as seen by the user, become a jumble of limbs.

The Little Elf said that in the eyes of a Rainbow Shuttle user at this stage, other humans are just masses of mashed-together flesh, with no up or down, left or right, and no distinct eyes or noses.

Because the positions of these organs could help the user "understand" direction, they too are affected by the relic’s price.

After this stage, the user’s understanding of the world is completely different. Everything is a directionless mishmash; the world is a chaotic mess:

Birds with eyes on their wings crawl on trees.

Twirling leaves drift in the lake after passing over mountain-like branches.

Tongues lick elbows.

Teeth gnaw on bellies.

...

During this process, the user can only continuously adapt to this world, completely excising the "sense of direction" from their mind.

They must try to experience the world through intuition.

Everything they experience becomes like a distorted, jumbled movie, presenting itself scene by scene. There is no sense of space, only a series of bizarre, jumping images.

The user becomes like a jumper in this bizarre world, watching themselves go from one unfamiliar place to another, with their surroundings twisting in a new way each time.

Only users with sufficiently strong intuition and talent can face the price of the Rainbow Shuttle head-on and fully adapt to the feeling of having no sense of direction.

But things aren’t that simple.

After experiencing various things, humans develop all sorts of "synesthesia." This would normally help in understanding space and location, but this "synesthesia" is also affected by the Rainbow Shuttle’s price.

For instance, the aroma of good food indicates the "direction" of the kitchen, the sound of chopping meat indicates the "direction" of the cutting board, the sound of a keyboard indicates the "direction" of the study, and the sound of rushing water combined with an unpleasant smell indicates the "direction" of the toilet.

These sensory links to "direction" are also quickly affected by the price, leading to confusion.

Just like the visual blurring, all information about "direction" within these smells and sounds becomes completely chaotic, until nothing is left.

And so, the user begins to hear the sound of chopping meat in the study.

The clatter of a keyboard in the kitchen.

The smell of something indescribably strange from under the bed.

And the aroma of delicious food from the toilet...