Chapter 203: 199 Splitting

"Lin, Lin Laoban?" Facing the elusive Lin Ling, Yu Lianyun felt somewhat flustered; after all, she had just been thinking about some disrespectful things regarding him, feeling that the half-bodied woman she saw underground earlier was just another "amusement" cooked up by Lin Laoban.

Lin Ling smiled and said, "I saw fireworks here, so I came closer to take a look. They are quite pretty, though the color is a bit monotonous."

"Hehehe, Lin Laoban, you really love to joke." Yu Lianyun laughed dryly. That towering pillar of green fire was the flame produced by the explosion and combustion of Green Oil, a substance that even most Abnormal creatures dared not touch.

Lin Ling blinked, feeling a bit puzzled; he was just stating the facts.

After a brief dry laugh, Yu Lianyun gathered her courage and asked, "Lin Laoban, what exactly is the state of Dr. Kelake right now?"

"State?" Lin Ling pondered for a moment. It wasn't that he didn't know the answer, but he was thinking of a way to phrase it that the other party could understand. He said, "He has split open."

Yu Lianyun was stunned for a moment. Of course, she knew Dr. Kelake had already split open, and that his brain had even been removed.

After thinking about it, Yu Lianyun changed the question: "Has Kelake been to your little shop, and did he buy anything?"

"He bought a pair of shoes," Lin Ling admitted.

"Shoes?" Yu Lianyun knew well that things in the little shop could not be viewed with common sense, so she asked one final follow-up question, "Is there anything special about those shoes?"

"Hmm... something special? Perhaps it's that those shoes aren't meant for wearing..." Lin Ling looked down at the shoes on his own feet—new shoes, just bought. His toes were moving inside the shoes, as if ten thousand long worms wanted to crawl out from within.

Lin Ling suddenly sighed. His eyes were clearly smiling, yet his expression was somewhat sorrowful; it was hard to imagine a person's face could simultaneously display such contradictory emotions. "Do you think that every event in this world must have a reason?"

Yu Lianyun didn't know why Lin Ling suddenly asked this, but she assumed he meant that the fact "shoes bought cannot be worn" was an unreasonable thing. She immediately voiced her opinion: "Uh, I think there should be. Even if shoes are bought and not worn, they can have other uses, like for collection. As far as I know, some people's hobby is collecting all kinds of shoes."

"So, you agree that all things in the world have cause and effect?"

"... More or less." Yu Lianyun felt her answer was a bit imprudent.

Lin Ling smiled slightly: "If everything has a cause and effect, then where did the universe's initial cause come from?"

Yu Lianyun was speechless. She now felt that Lin Ling's question was indeed quite unreasonable, and she truly couldn't think of an answer; after all, the "which came first, the chicken or the egg" problem itself was a dead loop of chasing the "cause."

"Therefore, cause and effect are not the entire logic of the universe's operation. No reason, no cause and effect, is also a part of how the world works. Perhaps the initial cause came from a groundless act." These words from Lin Ling made Yu Lianyun feel he was profound, but she tried her best not to dwell on his point of view.

However, Yu Lianyun still gained some insight from Lin Ling's words. "Is this the reason why we humans can never maintain our sanity? Because humans are chasing logic, feeling that everything must have a cause and effect, so when encountering Abnormal events, they cannot find an explanation, and being unable to accept the unknown easily leads to the abyss of mental collapse. Only by accepting the 'rationality' of unknown Abnormals can a person maintain their sanity."

Lin Ling grinned, "I meant to say that the existence of those shoes is the same." After saying this, he turned into a small alley and left, disappearing after rounding another corner.

Yu Lianyun fell into deep thought, "Could it be that those shoes are a 'product' without reason?"

Watching the green fire pillar on the horizon gradually recede and dissipate, before the crowd could cheer, a high-pitched, shrill shriek suddenly surged from beneath the XC District. It conveyed the despair and madness of the sound's owner from every crack in the ground and every pore, and the hearts of Yu Lianyun and the other Mysterious Investigators sank once again.

As Hela's human head, which could no longer be described as beautiful, leaned toward Kelake's face with her elongated neck, a dagger that had long been hidden fell from Kelake's sleeve and fiercely stabbed into Hela's right eye.

Hela, whose eye suffered a penetrating injury, immediately let out a scream, her neck retracting rapidly like a spring. Kelake took this opportunity to grab the wrist of Milaier beside him and run, bypassing Butler Walunte and Miss Hela, and dashed toward the wooden bridge in front of the Castle.

But halfway there, Kelake stopped in a daze and knelt on the spot along with Milaier.

"The bridge... is gone?" Kelake looked at the wooden bridge that had originally connected the two cliffs; it had actually broken, and only two bare piers remained at the bridgeheads.

Walunte turned back with a sinister smile, walking slowly and leisurely toward the despair-stricken Kelake and Milaier. His low voice was like a death warrant for the two: "Did you think I wouldn't know what you wanted to do? I destroyed the bridge long ago."

"Why do this? Don't you even consider your own way out?" Kelake was incredulous.

However, Kelake's questioning was met with loud mockery from Walunte and Hela.

"What's so funny!?"

Hela, as if she had no complaints at all, pulled the dagger out of her eye socket nonchalantly. Her head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to look at Walunte and said: "Walunte, why don't we just tell them? After learning the truth of their despair, won't they be a bit more obedient?"

Walunte chuckled and said: "That's true. Then let's tell you the truth about this world."

The flesh-mountain monster arrived in front of Kelake, seemingly blotting out the sky and sun, its massive figure pressing down on Kelake's face.

"This world is not real." Walunte stared at Kelake's shocked expression, secretly satisfied, and said, "To be precise, this is a mental world, a world jointly created by the spirits of dozens of people!"

Kelake felt as if struck by lightning, unable to speak as he continued to listen to Walunte.

"Yes, in this world, except for the people in the Castle, everything else is an imagination supplemented by our brains to satisfy the logic of an illusory world. Here, identities are fake, money is fake, all matter is fake; everything obtained here is not real." As Walunte spoke, he split off countless hands to continuously caress Hela's face, Hela's face revealing expressions that were at times mournful and at times enjoying.

"To get out of here, one must control this mental world, otherwise, one cannot break through the Mental Barrier." Walunte said with a strange laugh, "Originally, we might never have realized the strangeness of this world in our entire lives. Unfortunately, Bluebeard and I were the rare defective individuals in this world who possessed a desire for slaughter, only at the time, only Bluebeard knew how to use Demon-Suppressing Arts."

"When Bluebeard and I joined forces to kill the first person in the Castle, and Bluebeard used that person's corpse as material for the Demon-Suppressing Arts, we successfully contacted the great existence behind the Mental Barrier—the sage in the Xiafeng Zhijian, the Peering Shadow of All Things, Yinzike Pu!"

"Yinzike Pu's eyes let us see the truth of the world. To leave this fake world, one must kill everyone. And after killing them, offering them to Yinzike Pu can exchange for wealth in the form of knowledge and power. Once I return to reality from here, I will be the individual closest to an Alien God."

"I don't believe your story!" Kelake refuted the other's claims. He pointed at Hela and said, "If everyone must be killed to return to reality, why is she still alive?"

Hearing this, Walunte and Hela both burst into frantic laughter.

The two heads intertwined via their elongated necks and then strangely merged into one. That face, half-male and half-female, said in unison: "That is because we were originally one complete individual! Not just us, but also that Bluebeard, heavy with lust, and... your little maid of justice beside you, Milaier, are all the same! We all come from an individual named Xiawa; we are the Avatars of her split mind!"