Chapter 327: Living Person

Chapter 327: Chapter 323: Living Person

Zhang Wenda struggled for ages before finally stopping in front of six water slides, all covered in identical white tiles. ‘What the hell is this place!’ His voice echoed across the empty pool.

If he wanted to re-establish the Third Line and find others to join forces against 1999, he had to get out of this bizarre place and return to the world under the open sky.

But now, he was finally forced to admit a hard truth: this place couldn’t be breached by brute force. He had also discovered another problem—just like Area 1, this place seemed to have no borders at all.

He wasn’t even sure if he could ever get out, even if he spent an entire lifetime phasing through walls. Since a physical escape wasn’t an option, Zhang Wenda immediately changed his strategy. His first priority was to keep himself out of danger.

This place was far too bizarre; God only knew what he would run into next. ‘First, I need to figure out the rules here,’ he thought. ‘I can’t let this be a repeat of Area 1.’

After a moment of thought, he began to assign tasks. “Little Clowns, head to the Prefrontal Strait. Monitor the memories closely. Report any logical inconsistencies to me immediately.”

“Roger! No problem!” From the other side of a square portal, the clowns from his Inner World saluted him before departing with a flourish of acrobatics.

“Oh, and Hippocampus, keep the recording running. You and the Little Black Cat—” Zhang Wenda stopped mid-sentence, his ears twitching. A sound.

It sounded like a low, choked sob, which was especially eerie in the cavernous, empty pool area.

‘There’s something else alive in this godforsaken place? An enemy? A monster? Or some kind of creature native to this area?’

‘Whatever it is, as long as it’s tangible, it’ll be easier to deal with than something I can’t see or touch.’

As he thought, Zhang Wenda crept toward the sound. Gradually, he caught a faint, fishy stench.

As he rounded a corner in one of the corridors, he saw a body floating in the pool. It was a bizarre-looking man. His upper half was human, but where his two legs should have been, there were two black-and-white tentacles instead.

He was floating face down on the water, motionless. He looked dead.

The red monster—Zhang Wenda—shot forward like an afterimage. With a loud SMACK, he snatched the creature from the water and slammed it against the nearby tiled wall.

As the man slid down the wall, he let out a pained groan.

The sight of red blood on the wall, along with a front tooth now embedded in a tile, made Zhang Wenda relax his guard slightly.

‘The man wasn’t dead, and it seemed he wasn’t all that different from a human, after all.’

Zhang Wenda walked over and used his foot to flip the man onto his back, revealing a pale, weak face.

The man looked young, maybe in his early twenties. If it weren’t for the tentacles, he could have passed for a fresh-faced college student.

Although he was alive, he was clearly in bad shape. He looked extremely weak, with sunken cheeks, but had no visible wounds on his body.

“Hey? You alright? Can you communicate? Do you understand me?” Zhang Wenda tapped the man’s cheek, but it had no effect. He showed no signs of waking.

With a crisp snap of his fingers, a rift opened beside him. A cat’s paw emerged, handing him a cup of black pain.

The trick worked. As the pain was poured into the man’s mouth, he, who had been on the verge of death, was instantly in so much agony that his tentacles began to flail wildly. He thrashed on the ground like a fish out of water.

When the young man finally came to his senses, his eyes fell on Zhang Wenda. He immediately reached out with both hands, pleading, “I’m hungry… I’m so hungry…”

‘So he just fainted from hunger? No wonder he didn’t have any wounds.’ Zhang Wenda pulled out a pack of “Old Beijing” brand instant noodles and was about to hand it over, but on second thought, he broke off half of the dry noodle brick and offered that instead.

‘Seeing how starved this guy is, food must be incredibly scarce here. I’d better be frugal with my own supplies.’

The moment the man took the noodle brick, Zhang Wenda understood the meaning of ravenous. The man barely chewed, simply grabbing the brick and shoving it down his throat. And somehow, he managed to swallow it.

After eating, the man instantly perked up, his eyes glued to the noodle package in Zhang Wenda’s hand.

If it weren’t obvious that he stood no chance against Zhang Wenda, he probably would have tried to snatch the rest by force.

When Zhang Wenda waved the package to the left, the man’s eyes followed. When he waved it to the right, his eyes followed again. “You want this? I’ll ask you a few questions.”

“Yes, yes, yes! Ask away, ask away!” The man’s eyes were fixed only on the food; he seemed easy to fool.

Still, Zhang Wenda couldn’t tell if this was an act or if the man was genuinely this desperate. Past events had left him on edge.

“What’s your name?”

“Wang… Wang Shaojie,” the man said, licking his lips.

“Where is this place?”

“The Shallow Water Area.”

“Good. Do you know how to get out of here?”

“Out? Out to where?” For the first time, Wang Shaojie’s eyes left the food and looked at Zhang Wenda.

“To the outside, of course. To Thought Wave Two.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” As if terrified Zhang Wenda would think he was lying, he quickly added, “It’s been four months since the world became like this. People have come here from other Threshold Realms, but I’ve never heard of a single person making it back to Thought Wave Two.”

“What? Four months? ‘Has it really been four months?'” Zhang Wenda then recalled how long he had spent near 1999. Clearly, the flow of time was different there.

But then, a far more important question popped into his head. “What did you just say? No one has ever returned to Thought Wave Two? So you’re all trapped here?”

“Y-You could say that, yes.”

“What is this ‘Threshold Realm’ you mentioned? Is that what these different worlds are called?”

“Yeah. They all look different, but they’re all massive. You can find ways to travel between them. I’ve told you everything I know. Can I have the food now?”

‘How could this be…’ Zhang Wenda’s brow furrowed as he processed the man’s words. Just then, the voice of the blue rabbit piped up unexpectedly from behind him.

“Tell me… is there even a normal world out there anymore?”

“What do you mean by that?” Zhang Wenda turned to look at it.

“If it were just one place, we could write it off as an isolated incident. But this is the second place like this. Don’t you find that strange? And considering what this man just said… what if all the great Thought Waves of the past have collapsed? What if the Earth we knew—the one with a sun and a moon, with clearly defined regions—is gone forever?”

“Think about it. Time and space are fundamental properties of the universe. They’re interdependent and form the foundation of our understanding of physical phenomena. But the ambiguous nature of time in the Internet World, your own transmigration, the fact that Uncle Niu can live in the cracks of the past—all of it proves that 1999 has the power to influence them.”

“But what if 1999 has now destroyed even those most basic concepts? What if the very ideas of ‘universe’ and ‘Earth’ no longer exist? If that’s the case, then in what form, and in what place, do we even exist right now?”