Chapter 228: Concept Erosion

"Cafeteria?"

Li Hu just had this absurd thought, and before he could mock himself, a feeling more terrifying than space turbulence scraping his bones seized his soul without any warning.

It wasn't pain, nor cold, nor heat.

It was a kind of… "sense of error."

He instinctively looked at Zhang Mei beside him, wanting to share this discovery, or rather to verify whether he was going mad.

But what he saw wasn't Zhang Mei's face stained with blood and tears.

It was a face, with all features present, yet… something was off. The eyes seemed a bit higher, the bridge of the nose at an odd angle, as if a clumsy artist had haphazardly cobbled it together from vague memory.

"Zhang Mei?" Li Hu called out tentatively.

"Hm?"

"Zhang Mei," she turned her head, and the features on her face instantly rearranged like flowing sand art. This time their positions were correct, but together they formed a completely unfamiliar woman.

"Li brother, what's wrong? Your complexion looks so terrible," the unfamiliar woman asked in Zhang Mei's voice, her tone full of concern.

Li Hu's scalp buzzed and exploded with a sudden sting.

He jerked his head and looked at Wang Zhize and Wang Zhitao.

The two children's faces also began to blur, like a poor signal image, flickering wildly between "Wang family brothers" and "two unfamiliar children."

"No… not right…" Li Hu muttered to himself, raising his hand, trying to grasp something solid.

His hand was still there.

But what is a "hand"?

The thought surfaced, and the five fingers he saw began to feel unfamiliar. Is this thing for grasping? Why five? Why does it grow on my arm? And what is "I"?

A flood of questions burst like a breached dam, overrunning the levees of his cognition. He felt himself being "dissolved," not his flesh, but the very concept of "Li Hu," being erased from this world bit by bit.

"Mother… stop hitting… I won't dare again…"

Beside him, Zhang Mei suddenly curled up, clutching her head, pleading desperately to the empty void. Her face was a mess of tears and snot, her eyes filled with a child's terror.

"Tiger boy doesn't understand; please don't spar with him… I'll take the beating for him, you hit me…"

Li Hu's scalp prickled at the words; wasn't Zhang Mei's mother already dead from illness?

"Zhang Mei! Wake up! Look at me!" he tried to shake her.

But his hand stopped halfway up. He forgot how to "shake." The concept of that motion had vanished from his mind.

It's over.

Li Hu felt a chill spread through his heart.

He would rather be torn to pieces than vanish inexplicably like this. That's scarier than death; it would utterly deny even the trace of his existence.

At that moment, the colossal beast that had been silent as a mountain moved.

"Roar—!!!"

A low roar, unlike any creature could produce, rolled over their heads.

The roar carried no sonic impact, yet it felt like an invisible giant hand, suddenly gripping Li Hu's disintegrating consciousness and forcefully shoving it back into his body.

In an instant, the world returned to normal.

The Zhang Mei before him was still Zhang Mei; though still sobbing, her face was correct. The two children's forms steadied. Li Hu looked at his hand again; the five familiar fingers were firmly attached, exuding strength.

"I… what just happened to me?" Zhang Mei raised her head blankly, wiping her face.

"Don't ask, don't even think!" Li Hu roared, horrified to discover that at the shelter's edge, that "sense of error" was seeping in again like mist.

The elder's roar seemed only to temporarily clear the "contamination" of this area, forming a brief safe zone.

Or, a "cognitive stabilization field."

Within this field, you are you, I am I, a table is a table, a bench is a bench. But once you leave…

Li Hu dared not think further.

The beast above clearly understood this. Its massive body shuddered violently, a force opposite to the surrounding chaotic energy expelled outward from its body.

The force wasn't mighty, but it carried an undeniable "definition." Wherever it passed, the chaotic space was forcibly given the concepts of "up, down, left, right," distorted light was defined as "light," lethal energy as "wind."

A fragile "real" bubble formed, centered on Wang Shan.

But this bubble was being eroded and compressed by the Outside World's "void" at a visibly rapid pace.

Wang Shan hesitated not at all.

A massive claw, armored with jagged bone plates—or a tentacle—dropped like lightning. It struck no one; instead, like a gentle giant net, it scooped up Li Hu, Zhang Mei, and the two children from the ground and flung them onto its back as broad as a mountain ridge.

"Hold on tight!" Li Hu could only shout that to the others.

The next second, heaven and earth spun.

Wang Shan moved.

It wasn't walking, nor flying, nor leaping.

It moved in the most barbaric, irrational way—by ramming!

"Boom—!"

The beast's massive body, like an icebreaker, slammed into the "wall" ahead, composed of chaotic rules and inverted concepts.

Li Hu lay on Wang Shan's back, feeling like a tattered leaf tossed in a raging sea. He clutched a protruding bone spike on the back, and with his other hand pressed the terrified Zhang Mei firmly beneath him.

The scene before his eyes could no longer be described in any language.

Colors lost meaning, forms lost boundaries. He saw a "river" burning, heard a "stone" singing. Countless faces, familiar or not, smiled at him in the void, then shattered like bubbles.

These things battered wildly at the "real" bubble Wang Shan had created.

Each impact made the bubble violently shake, and Li Hu felt his cognition on the brink of tearing again.

And Wang Shan, bearing all this, was paying a heavy price.

Li Hu saw with his own eyes a bone spike on Wang Shan's left shoulder, several yards long and as fierce as a blade, glide through ever‑changing "mist" without breaking or shattering, only to… vanish into thin air.

As if it had never existed.

Immediately after, a huge rock‑like shell on Wang Shan's back was silently erased in a spot, exposing the writhing flesh beneath. Yet that flesh appeared only for an instant before vanishing, turning into a void‑like "depression".

It uses its own "existence" to consume the "void" of this space.

"Damn…," Li Hu forced a few words through his teeth, unsure whether it was fear or admiration, "That old guy… really turned into a mountain…"

"Brother, look!"

Wang Zhize's voice pulled him back.

Li Hu looked in the direction Wang Zhize pointed, and saw that behind the "channel" they had smashed open, the torn space was "healing" in a bizarre way. It wasn't closing, but sprouting some entirely new, inexplicable things to fill the gaps.

The piece of "stained glass" that Wang Shan had shattered earlier now, in place, has grown a colossal eye that continues to blink slowly.

This damned place has no way out at all!

"Little brother, don't fall asleep!" Wang Zhize shook the drowsy Wang Zhitao vigorously.

After the recent ordeal, Wang Zhitao's internal energy was completely drained, leaving him extremely weak, relying solely on his brother's protection with the power of the jade tablet.

"Brother… I'm so tired…" Wang Zhitao mumbled sleepily.

"Hold on to Grandpa!" Wang Zhize's small face tightened; he manipulated the faint glow emitted by the jade tablet, barely constructing a tiny "barrier" on Wang Shan's broad back for himself and his brother, resisting the occasional pollutants seeping in through the "real" bubble fissures.

Just as Li Hu felt he could no longer hold on, the sense of collision ahead suddenly lightened.

Wang Shan's massive body surged out of the viscous sludge and landed heavily on a relatively "solid" ground.

The surroundings remained bizarre and uncanny, but the terrifying pressure that could outright erase concepts had indeed lessened considerably.

They seemed to have entered a relatively stable area.

Li Hu collapsed on Wang Shan's back, gasping heavily, feeling as if he had just been pulled back from the brink of drowning.

Looking back, the "path" they had come by had vanished entirely, replaced by a slowly writhing, indescribable chaos.

He glanced again at the colossal beast beneath him.

Wang Shan stood silently, like an injured demon god. Its body was riddled with countless "gaps"—not wounds, but pieces of "blank" permanently erased.

It remained motionless, seemingly gathering strength, yet also appearing to be on guard against something.

Li Hu's heart sank.

From one meat grinder, he leapt into a slightly slower meat grinder.

Does this count… as a successful escape?