I'm Trapped in the Block

Chapter 458: Chapter 455: Always Moving Forward

”If I had to choose between Coke and transcendence, I’d definitely choose Coke...”

Mo Ling mused aloud as he quenched his parched throat.

The wind gradually died down, and the great tree ceased its swaying.

Li Luo picked up her electronic screen and snapped a photo of Mo Ling’s purple skin.

*CLICK.*

The flash went off, and Li Luo smiled faintly.

”You actually look pretty good like this...”

”Xiaozhi, come back.” She beckoned to the Block. The threads on its surface immediately pulled away, reforming into a cord that wrapped around Li Luo’s wrist.

”Looks like you targeted the Block again... Why do you always do that?” Li Luo asked, looking at the cord in confusion.

The cord, of course, did not answer her.

Xiaozhi’s intelligence wasn’t that high, so Li Luo could only sigh helplessly.

A blue, rippling Olive floated nearby. Li Luo, curious, asked about its origin...

”So if we follow it, we can get to the fourth layer of the Abyss?”

After learning what the Olive did, Li Luo was quite surprised. She went up to it, curiously studying its flowing ripples.

”Let’s go.”

...

The Olive’s path seemed a little strange. Instead of leading Li Luo anywhere specific, it just circled around inside the boundless canyon of fragments.

The ground was covered in shards of glass, so Li Luo walked very carefully.

It wasn’t until the Block nudged her that she took the hint and climbed on top of it.

This sped up their travel considerably.

After some time spent circling, the Olive suddenly dove into a fissure in the canyon wall.

The fissure was well-hidden, wedged between several mountains of fragments. Without the Olive’s guidance, it would have been hard to spot.

Mo Ling quickly steered the Block to follow.

Once inside the fissure, Mo Ling discovered that it was a whole new world.

The further in they went, the wider the fissure became. Stranger still, the surrounding fragments began to grow more complete.

What were once fine slivers of glass slowly became large shards, and then larger, more complete panes of mirrored glass.

Deep inside the fissure, the ground and surrounding walls were now made of unbroken mirrors. Mo Ling almost thought he had returned to the mirror dimension.

Once the ground became smooth and whole, Li Luo hopped down from the Block.

She looked at her reflection in the surrounding mirrors.

Only her solitary figure was there; the Block cast no reflection.

”It’s happening again.”

The Block, it seemed, could not be reflected by mirrors.

The warped and twisted mirrors were all filled with Li Luo’s own image. Through endless reflections, the space seemed incredibly vast.

However, the further Li Luo walked, the stranger she felt.

A strange sense of dissonance rose in her heart, though she couldn’t pinpoint its source.

Finally, after carefully observing the reflections in the mirrors, she realized what was wrong.

”They’re not... reversed...”

Normally, a reflection in a mirror is supposed to be reversed, left for right.

But the reflections here weren’t.

When Li Luo moved forward, the reflection in the mirror beside her also moved forward.

When Li Luo raised her left hand, the reflection raised its left hand. When Li Luo stuck out her right foot, the reflection stuck out its right foot.

The thing in the mirror wasn’t a reflection, but some kind of copy, constantly learning Li Luo’s movements.

The realization sent a chill down Li Luo’s spine.

She quickly sped up to catch up to the Block.

Unlike Li Luo, Mo Ling hadn’t noticed anything wrong.

He had only noticed that the Block wasn’t in the mirrors; he hadn’t paid attention to Li Luo’s bizarre reflection.

Mo Ling’s attention was focused entirely on the Olive up ahead.

The Olive continued to float along at a leisurely pace, always staying in the center of the fissure’s passage.

At last, after traversing the winding, twisting passage, the Olive led them to a narrow exit.

Before they even reached the exit, a cacophony of voices drifted from up ahead.

It sounded like some strange language:

”What’s the synchronization rate?”

”Almost there, but there might be minor injuries.”

”Minor injuries are fine. To achieve our goal, it’s a trivial price to pay.”

”Understood.”

...

Both Mo Ling and Li Luo were startled by the strange conversation.

Pushing his vision forward, Mo Ling discovered that the voices were coming from two phantoms outside the exit.

The phantoms were blurry and indistinct, their forms coalescing into something like two clumps of transparent jelly.

’What are these things?’

Mo Ling wanted to hear more, but the two phantoms quickly dissipated.

Just as he was puzzling over it, the phantoms coalesced once more and began their conversation again.

”What’s the synchronization rate?”

”Almost there, but there might be minor injuries.”

...

They were the same words as before.

’Is this some kind of recording?’

While Mo Ling was still observing, the Olive had already slipped through the exit.

The Olive then passed directly through the two phantoms, moved to the area ahead, and floated quietly in the air, waiting for them.

The two phantoms, however, continued their conversation as if they saw nothing, dissipating again after a short while.

After another moment, the two phantoms coalesced once more...

’Looks like it really is some kind of recording.’

Seeing this, Mo Ling was no longer afraid and headed straight for the exit.

As soon as he passed through the exit, Mo Ling expanded his field of vision as wide as possible, only to discover that this place was a large, plaza-like area.

It was about the size of a soccer field, completely enclosed by a hemispherical glass dome. The floor was a mirrored surface, scuffed and rough, to the point that one could no longer see a clear reflection on it.

’Looks like a lot of things have walked on this.’

The rough mirror surface bore all sorts of strange marks. Mo Ling observed them closely: there were claw marks, scrapes from metal, stains that looked like paint... and even prints that looked like human footprints.

The fragile mirror had been worn down until it was extremely rough.

Mo Ling looked up at the high dome again and was surprised to find signs that it had been artificially carved.

This plaza, it seemed, was not a natural formation.

Just as Mo Ling was pondering this, the phantoms began to coalesce again.

This time, Mo Ling finally got a clear look.

All over the Mirror Square, phantoms appeared one after another, densely packed. They instantly filled the once-empty plaza, turning it into a bustling scene.

The cacophony returned, echoing endlessly under the hemispherical dome.

For a moment, it was as if Mo Ling had been transported to a plaza in some commercial district, surrounded on all sides by noise.

The phantoms’ appearances were still indistinct, but Mo Ling could tell that they were not all of the same race. Their sizes varied, some large and some small, and their silhouettes were bizarrely diverse.

There was some kind of giant insect, a writhing mass of liquid, and a metallic snake that looked like an iron chain...

These phantoms had gathered here, seemingly discussing the creation of something.