An incomprehensible, unpredictable sense of crisis seemed to loom over him from the void, like a net descending from the sky, leaving him feeling lost and at a complete loss.
"What exactly is this intense sense of crisis?"
He carefully surveyed his surroundings, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. Standing on the cobblestone pathway, the lampposts emitting orange-yellow light should have represented a safe haven in the midst of the thick fog, right?
He still had his student ID card and had not broken any rules; the safety status couldn’t possibly fail, so where was the crisis coming from?!
Lin Yi paced around in distress, his instincts urging him to flee immediately, but he had not yet located the position of the next lamppost, and Wei Liang’s body had not regained sufficient warmth under the lamplight!
Without direction, recklessly running out of the light’s range would be a sure death sentence.
However, the sense of crisis did not abate because Lin Yi had not left the range of the lamppost. Leaning against the lamppost, Lin Yi felt more and more uneasy, as if thousands of ants were crawling over his shadow, making him restless.
"Where exactly is the problem?"
Lin Yi had no way of knowing whether this strange feeling stemmed from psychological suggestions caused by his surroundings or if his cognition was beginning to crack, silently contaminated by the plummeting layers.
He felt somewhat unable to distinguish "right from wrong," and he began to doubt whether the area he was in was truly in a safe state...
He felt the cold metal texture of the lamppost, the bone-chilling cold, and suddenly, with a shiver, jerked violently.
"No good! Was I just lost in confusion?"
"My will has slackened!"
The evening breeze was bone-chillingly cold, piercing Lin Yi to his core.
The seamless contamination, like a frog being boiled in warm water, made his skin crawl.
He realized he was precisely under the influence of the layers, like someone who had been swimming for a long time, whose skin would eventually become wrinkly from the water, no matter how steadfast he remained. If he couldn’t land, all that awaited him was exhaustion followed by drowning.
The lampposts were beacons, but not the shore; only the dormitory building was the shore!
He leaned on the lamppost, gasping for breath, trying his best to keep his mind cool, or rather, to maintain "what he considered a very cool" state, and then, he continued to search for the position of the next lamppost.
He glanced at Wei Liang’s hand in the lamplight. It remained pale and greyish-blue with coldness, the light having failed to warm it again, merely preserving Wei Liang’s body from further deterioration under these conditions.
He slowly withdrew his gaze—but just as he did, he suddenly discovered that the cobblestone ground beneath his feet had vanished at some unknown time, leaving only damp, soft sand. The cobblestones that should have paved the ground—no, at least what appeared to be "cobblestones" to the eyes, had completely disappeared!
Then he looked at the lamppost beside him.
The lamppost was still there, its light still dim, but he finally noticed something. He craned his neck, drew closer to the white paint on the surface of the lamppost, and gently touched it...
He quickly realized the white paint, with its written numbers, had faded much like it had been ravaged by countless years of wind, frost, rain, and snow. He looked up at the lamppost and saw that even the lightbulb inside the lampshade had grown dimmer.
His pupils dilated slightly, as if trying to take in more light.
But it was then that he noticed the object inside the lamppost’s lampshade didn’t seem to be a lightbulb but... some sort of glowing stone!!
Originally, the lamplight was bright, and with the presence of the lampshade and some moisture, as well as Lin Yi not having observed the lamppost’s lightbulb closely before, he subconsciously assumed it was the traditional pear-shaped glass body with a filament.
But as the light faded, the shape of the "lightbulb" gradually came into view.