by N. Heller
It was only then that the siblings reacted and followed her in a hurry. When the three of them walked past the other buildings in the residential area, the main doors of those buildings suddenly opened. From the looks of it, the buildings in this residential area had become weird 'demonic buildings'.
Haunted by the traumatic experience, the siblings gasped for air as they ran for almost over ten minutes before they finally left the residential area far behind them. They could already see the train tracks leading toward the train station. Reno suddenly stopped and gripped his sister's arm.
"What?" Rena shouted. Lin Sanjiu turned around.
"Look…" Reno said while he pointed in the direction that they came from. That residential building which was right in the middle of the blast was still standing. After the smoke and fire cleared, it returned to its normal position with the same cracking sounds without showing much damage other than a few dark burnt marks. It appeared to be normal once again.
Chapter 217 - Revelation 1
"So... what actually happened?" Rena plopped down on the stairs leading to the train station while she asked that question breathlessly. The siblings had never been in such a sorry state. When Lin Sanjiu first saw them on the train, they were high-spirited and seemed to not give a damn about their surroundings. Their previous attitudes had been totally destroyed by the dirt, bloodstains, and wounds which they were now covered in. Their clothes were in tatters and they looked like a pair of homeless children on the street. One of them had lost a shoe, so she walked around with one gray, dirty foot. The other teenager's hair was in a poofy mess after the explosion. As he was too close to the blast, his face was covered in thick black soot that even blurred his features.
After resting for more than an hour, the siblings, with their sore bodies, gradually regained some of their hearing.
"Hey, how could he be my brother?" Rena spat out some dirt from her mouth. Lin Sanjiu could see the suspicion on the girl's face despite the dirt and blood on her face. As Rena had just regained her hearing, she still found it hard to hear, so she spoke loudly, "If a normal person rotates his head 180°, wouldn't he die?"
Reno shot a glance at his sister. He was innocent and felt that he was treated unjustly, "I have been hearing you babbling about 180° this and that. What the heck are you talking about? When did I ever do that? Why don't you show me how it is done?"
"It's true! If you don't believe me, you can ask Lin Sanjiu—"
Lin Sanjiu was still feeling the heartache of losing that large amount of higher consciousness she had worked so hard to recover. When she heard her name, she looked at them and found the two teenagers staring straight at her, waiting for her answer. She couldn't help feeling a little guilty.
Even though she had successfully saved the siblings, she knew that it was largely due to luck. Though she had more or less understood what really happened, there were still many points she couldn't explain. The teenagers weren't stupid. Perhaps, once they saw the situation from her deduction, they might be able to put the pieces together and somewhat get to the bottom of the situation.
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and organized her thoughts. Then, she started writing on her 'skull' The siblings knew that she couldn't explain the entire situation in a few words so they were very patient. While they cleaned their own wounds, they looked at Lin Sanjiu ever now and then, ensuring that they did not miss a single word.
"That thing which could turn its head 180° was definitely not any living person. We did, in fact, see the spirit posing as Reno." Though Lin Sanjiu had used up a lot of her higher consciousness, her training over these few days allowed her to use her higher consciousness a lot more effectively. It was almost as if it was a part of her body, so she could now write her words in the time of a flashing thought.
"Huh, but I monitored him constantly." Rena pointed to her brother. The latter listened to his sister with a blank face and an opened mouth. "I didn't see him being swapped! Besides, without the cooperation of the real person, how could the spirits swap their identities so easily?" Rena argued.
"Have you forgotten that the building itself was problematic?" Lin Sanjiu replied in words. She immediately felt that it was difficult to explain some parts of the situation. She decided to start from the beginning. There were still many points which didn't make sense to her, and this was an opportunity for the siblings to help make sense of things.
"I think the key to this mystery lies in the building itself. For some reasons, the residential buildings in this area have all become spirits. Normally, they can't move. But when we entered that particular building, we immediately became its prey." After witnessing how the building could change its structure, it wasn't hard for the siblings to imagine, so they nodded in agreement.
"I don't know how these demonic buildings usually 'capture' their prey," Lin Sanjiu paused for a bit, deliberating over her words, "But, you two are definitely not easy pickings."
Over the few days, Lin Sanjiu came to know about some of the rules in this Kisaragi Train Station World.
The duoluozhongs there were different. They couldn't kill anyone directly. These duoluozhongs were humans who had totally assimilated with black matter. For some reasons, they evolved into all sorts of different spirits and could only attack humans who had been corroded by black matter. It isn't all that hard to meet this condition. Any outsiders would slowly and eventually be corrupted by black matter after they breathe the air and drink the water here. The spirits can also hasten the process.
However, Reno and Rena were different. When the siblings entered the buildings, only their eyes were corrupted by black matter. However, due to the quality of their Special Items, they were protected from head to toe. They even had mini filters in their noses for breathing. It was highly unlikely that the duoluozhongs could get the siblings like the same way they killed Lin Sanjiu.
Meanwhile, the demonic buildings were different from other duoluozhongs because they could not move. Since they could not move, any prey that entered their doors was extremely valuable. Therefore, the building used a roundabout way to keep them in.
Though the siblings were wearing protective gears, they weren't fully protected. The 'residential building' probably figured that out and acted accordingly. The siblings' weakness was that their exposed skin was still susceptible to black matter. To the building, Lin Sanjiu was merely a drop of wax on its plate. It couldn't consume her but it couldn't get rid of her either. She was slightly bothersome but she had never been a target.
"Are you saying that they tried to corrupt us with black matter by getting a spirit to pose as us?" Rena seemed to be getting the picture, but she was still confused.
"I know what she means. You're stupid." Reno didn't miss the chance to provoke his sister, "One of the spirts pretended to be you, and the other was pretending to be me. They were hiding in two different places close to us because it is easier to get us that way!"
"I guess those things that impersonated you were people who died in the building," Lin Sanjiu continued. She didn't have any evidence to support this, so it was just guesswork, "Just like the remoras on a large fish, they depend on the building to 'survive'."
Whether they were once posthumans and whether they could impersonate the siblings because of their abilities... Those were questions that could never be answered unless they returned to the building.
"I understand that part," Rena said while she touched a deep cut on her face. Surprisingly, she only drew a deep breath as she focused her full attention on the mystery at hand, "But, for a second, he was human, then he was a duoluozhong again. I don't really get it."
The constant changes were also too complicated for Lin Sanjiu, so she wasn't very sure herself. After pondering for some time, she wrote, "I think the building tricked us. It works like toy blocks."
"Toy blocks?" the two children stared Lin Sanjiu's words, finding it somewhat hard to process. "What do you mean?"
If Lin Sanjiu had to write out the whole exp
lanation, she knew it would be too much to write and too confusing. She might even need to continue writing to the next day. Besides, she needed the two teenagers to fill in the gaps in her deduction. With this in consideration, Lin Sanjiu wrote, "Why don't you two describe what you experienced after we entered the building?"
The two teenagers exchanged glances and began giving their own accounts of what happened. Just as Lin Sanjiu expected, even from the start their accounts differed in a curious manner.
"After my brother played a prank on us, we walked along the corridor trying to find an apartment unit to rest in..." Rena had just started when Reno interrupted, "Wait! I told you I didn't prank you! It was not me!"
"Oh yeah, you totally forgot what you did? And, you never said that before—"
Seeing that the situation was going out of control soon, Lin Sanjiu immediately wrote, "Ignore that, just continue". The kids instantly became quiet.
"It was very strange. All the other apartment units were old and shabby, but the one that my brother found was very beautiful... so we decided to stay there. We heard some sounds in the middle of the night. At that point, Lin Sanjiu, you went to check out that sound, right? But, you didn't return. I woke my brother up and got him to look for you. I didn't expect you guys to be away for so many hours. I went out to look for you guys but I couldn't find you. In the end, I waited in the room by myself..." When Rena said this, she suddenly shuddered as if she had returned to that creepy night. "Luckily, you came back."
While Rena was waiting for her brother and Lin Sanjiu to return, Lin Sanjiu had returned to an empty apartment. She searched the entire building all the way to the lobby and met the siblings on the 15th floor. After Lin Sanjiu wrote this, Rena's eyes grew wide as this was the first time she came to know of this.
Reno wanted to speak for himself badly but he winced as he held back his words. When Lin Sanjiu signaled for him to speak, he exhaled and described his version of events like a machine gun, "If that is the case, it was problematic from the beginning! I didn't play any pranks on you. I went straight to that beautiful apartment unit and Rena found that place... Yes, I didn't see Lin Sanjiu around. Rena told me that you went to check out the surroundings and would return soon."
Telling his part of the story to this point, Reno realized that the person beside him was definitely not a living person. His face turned slightly pale, "As you didn't return, we went out to find you. The elevator came up and it opened. Then, we saw you."
Unexpectedly, Lin Sanjiu's narrative matched Reno's at that juncture. Lin Sanjiu felt that she was getting a clearer picture, so she quickly mentioned about how she had heard a flushing sound and how Reno saw her corpse. She told them how she flew up to the floor above and found Rena. The teenagers were stunned as she recounted her experience.
"Ah, so the timeline goes like this," Reno said as he gestured the entire situation, "We entered two different apartment units at the same time. After Lin Sanjiu left, she returned to an empty apartment. Meanwhile, the fake Rena told me to look for you. I met you when you came out of the elevator. Then, you stayed with us in the apartment I was in. This occurred while fake Reno went out and left Rena alone to find for us. She didn't manage to find us. That was until Lin Sanjiu flew upward and met the real Rena."
Even though the situation was still extremely messy, they managed to figure out this part.
"No wonder..." Rena's face also looked pale, "While I was walking along the corridor, I felt that something was a little off. I even examined the angle of the wall. I just couldn't wrap my head around how a person can twist his head in that manner... Furthermore, my brother doesn't wear a Special Item in front of his c.h.e.s.t. So, from that point, it wasn't my brother."
"But how did the building do that?" Reno asked, "When Rena was looking for us, how did she miss the floor we were on?"
"She didn't miss it... When we were escaping, we witnessed how it acts. Or at least, some part of it," Lin Sanjiu continued. "It is actually quite simple. Every apartment and every corridor in the building is like a single toy block. The building can move each block in whatever manner it wishes."
"For example, when we were pranked. Reno walked around a bend and entered a stretch of corridor alone. At that time, the corridor was moved away and it was replaced by another corridor which the fake Reno. The duoluozhong probably died with his neck twisted in that manner. He might not have had enough time to change it, so he slipped up. Hence, he tried to pass it off as a prank so that he had an excuse. On top of that, the building used the 'toy block swapping' method so many times, because it works. On the other hand, we were totally confused by the situation."
Reno remembered that when he walked into the corridor, he didn't notice anything out of place. He couldn't help dropping his jaw.
Lin Sanjiu had solved the first part of the mystery which bothered her. She was more confident with her deduction so she urged the siblings to continue. The two siblings' narrative weaved around each other like casually drawn scribbles. Sometimes, they crossed each other and at other moments they were just very different. It resolved many questions that Lin Sanjiu had.
When they were almost done recounting what had happened, Lin Sanjiu stopped and thought for some time. She sighed. Even though this sounded a little weird, that building could the considered the craftiest opponent ever since she came to this world. At every crucial point, the building planned everything ahead of them. It created a very effective trap, using the duoluozhongs to create a smokescreen... If Lin Sanjiu had not been a bystander observing th situation, the siblings would have fallen prey to its tactics. They might have a fight to death with each other.
"Now, we can organize the points when the swaps occur," Lin Sanjiu wrote and felt relieved.
Chapter 218 - Revelation 2
The siblings continued from where they stopped and told Lin Sanjiu about their experiences. With everyone' narratives, they were getting closer to the truth.
"An important turning point in the situation was when I flew upstairs and found Rena." Lin Sanjiu found that it was too slow for her to write on her own skull and instead chose to write on the dusty marble floor of the train station. Before that, the building did not even care to recognize my existence. This was why it was unprepared when I found that there were two pairs of siblings in the building whose identities I couldn't ascertain."
"If you think about it, if I weren't around, you might not even have realized that the person beside each of you was a spirit. You probably didn't know that there was another you in the building... right?" Seeing Reno and Rena nodding, Lin Sanjiu continue writing, "For the building, the best scenario is that neither of you ever finds out that the person beside you is an impersonator. The rooms can move around like toy blocks, so both of you would never meet each other. If you were killed by the duoluozhong beside you without knowing anything, that would be simple and straightforward."
However, for better or worse, the siblings had Lin Sanjiu with them.
After a few encounters with those duoluozhongs, Lin Sanjiu could more or less tell what her higher consciousness form meant to them. She was like a floating piece of cotton wadding. A normal person wouldn't chase after it just to smack it to the ground. No matter what the duoluozhongs were planning, they certainly didn't calculate her existence into their plans.
When that cotton wadding has self-awareness and some abilities, it becomes an unexpected bug in a well-programmed process. When Lin Sanjiu found out about the"fake siblings" plan, the building finally realized its mistake.
"I would say that this building is crafty because it actually guessed correctly what I wanted to do next, and quickly made preparations." When those words appeared, the siblings, who had been matching their experiences with Lin Sanjiu, understood what she meant immediately.
"At this point, the building planned for me and Rena to meet," Reno added with conviction.
When Lin Sanjiu brought Rena down one floor to look at the additional pair of siblings, the build
ing moved away that apartment unit. When Lin Sanjiu and Rena were at a loss, Reno appeared. It was the real Reno. Ever since that 'prank', this was the first time the siblings reunited.
"Damn, it's smart..." Reno commented as he clicked his tongue, "Regardless, when someone finds out that there is an imposter around, his or her first thought would be to verify if that person is who they truly claim to be. And when that happens, the building would replace the imposter with the real person."
Lin Sanjiu agreed somewhat helplessly with a slight nod. The plan to verify their identities by their abilities was logically sound. However, once the building was prepared for this, they were playing into its trap."
"The building used the result of our verification to fool us... After both of you had displayed your own abilities to prove your identities, Reno and I went to another apartment unit across the corridor from where Rena was. At that time, I did not know that the apartment units were being moved around. I only know that Reno was on my right and Rena was on my left and that both of you were real. That was until the fake Reno walked out to inform me that he suspected that the real Rena wasn't his sister. I was stunned then."
"Of all things, his analysis of Rena's abilities did make sense..." Lin Sanjiu sighed, feeling a little scared when she remembered that situation. "The duoluozhongs who were impersonating you guys actually knew everything that had happened even though they were not around... From this, we can infer that the building had been constantly monitoring our every movement since the beginning."
After Lin Sanjiu was convinced by the fake Reno, she went to look for the 'real Rena'. She found the real Reno playing cards with the fake Rena on another floor. One could imagine her shock when she made that discovery.