Rules-related weird stories: 4016

"You… what… what did you blow up this time…?" Old Mo moved towards Mu Daxian like a stop-motion animation with lagging frames, inspecting him from head to toe.

After asking, he didn't wait for Mu Daxian to answer. He pulled out a cleaver from seemingly nowhere and began scraping Mu Daxian's arm like he was giving him a 'gua sha' treatment.

Despite his somewhat 'laggy' movements, he was very precise when scraping, his expression focused, a stark contrast to his usual numb self.

Mu Daxian then recounted the events of the evening, bit by bit, like a general returning from battle, entrusting his wounded body, defenseless, to a knife-wielding doctor.

Seeing this, Mao Feiyang lowered his guard towards Old Mo a little.

When he heard that Mu Daxian had been chased by the Grinning Angel, Old Mo frowned: "You should have led them here."

"There was no chance…" Mu Daxian shook his head helplessly. "Besides, even if I led them here, then what?"

"Then… I would… take action…" When Old Mo spoke, a glint flashed between his eyelids, like lightning tearing through the night, giving Lin Yi the feeling of Little Li's Flying Dagger being unsheathed.

"Spare me, you can't even speak properly, yet you want to wield a knife? Just stick to logistics… Leave the frontline to us daredevils," Mu Daxian mocked without reservation.

Old Mo's grip on the knife tightened, scaring Mu Daxian into sitting up straight: "Okay, okay, next time I'll leave it to you, next time I'll leave it to you."

He wiped away sweat, thinking that he almost got verbally taken advantage of by Mao, and his arm was still in Old Mo's hands. He almost slipped up and couldn't dodge in time…

Old Mo said calmly: "Want… to try… my… precious… sword's… sharpness…?"

"Alright, alright, no need, no need, let's heal first…" Mu Daxian curled his lip.

Before long, Mu Daxian's arm gradually recovered under Old Mo's 'gua sha' knife technique. Lin Yi couldn't understand the principle behind the whole process. He could only feel some extraordinary power flowing into Mu Daxian's arm, and then something else being stripped away from it…

"Done…" Old Mo released Mu Daxian's arm.

Mu Daxian pressed his shoulder joint and swung his arm, grinning: "Hehe, full health restored! No need to worry about the Pseudo Art Student's sneak attacks anymore! Hehe…"

Mao Feiyang: "???"

"Wait… were you worried about sneak attacks just now, so you didn't say a word the whole way?" Mao Feiyang seemed to realize something.

Mu Daxian then smiled: "Of course? If they had ambushed us just now, I would have led the way to the afterlife."

"…"

"Wait… Brother Xian, you couldn't handle them just now?"

Mu Daxian shrugged: "That's right, I lied to them, so we had to run for our lives just now."

"Hiss…" Mu Daxian's empty-fort strategy made Mao Feiyang gasp, then he said speechlessly, "They're really easy to fool."

Mu Daxian glanced at the cheap mutt Mao, thinking, 'Whose side are you on, kid? You're still speechless even though you're alive?'

"Easy to fool?" He sneered, "They're very shrewd. That's exactly why they didn't dare to gamble that there were no bullets in my gun."

Mao Feiyang was slightly stunned, then suddenly realized the danger and boldness behind Mu Daxian's trick, and a look of admiration gradually appeared on his face.

Mu Daxian patted his shoulder: "Little Mao, remember, when you're out there, your confidence comes from yourself. As long as you act convincingly enough, you can fool anyone."

"Uh, even angels?" Mao Feiyang asked back, being a smart aleck.

Mu Daxian: "…"

"Get lost, it's your turn to heal."

Saying that, he pushed Mao Feiyang in front of Old Mo.

Old Mo grabbed Mao Feiyang's arm, and was about to start using his knife, but suddenly froze.

"What's wrong?" Mu Daxian asked.

Old Mo pondered: "Very… familiar… aura…"

Mu Daxian was silent for a moment, then said: "Little Mao triggered the mark left by 'Him' on the street lamp, perhaps it's that aura?"

Old Mo hesitated, then shook his head slightly: "I can't… deal… with His… mark…"

Mu Daxian said: "You don't need to deal with it. Just heal his hand. We'll talk about the rest when we get back to the art building."

"…" Old Mo nodded. "Okay."

Lin Yi quietly watched Old Mo giving Mao Feiyang 'gua sha', and had a guess in his mind, not knowing if it was accurate. That is, the 'familiar aura' that Old Mo mentioned may be because he and Tian Bufan had passed by him during the day…

Because Mao Feiyang had transmitted the pollution, the few of them should all have some kind of similar aura.

「Wait!」 Lin Yi's eyes lit up, 「So the layer where this 'Old Mo' is located is the same layer where the other passages are!」

「Eh, that's not right!」

He turned his head again to look at the road that Mu Daxian and Mao Feiyang had just come from.

He had a faint, indescribable feeling of strangeness just now, and now he finally remembered—the step that tripped Mao was non-existent!

When he was eating, he came up from the student passage, and then walked to the side to wait for Tian Bufan and the others. At that time, the place he went to wait was a little further ahead of where Mao Feiyang tripped, and that place… in his memory was a wall!

But when Mao Feiyang followed Mu Daxian up from the other passage, the position that was originally a wall became a step!

Walking past that step, they went from the other passage to the student passage!

Lin Yi immediately thought of another thing—twice, he was chased by the green-aproned chef after putting away the plates.

The first time, Xu Shunkang appeared out of nowhere and hit the green-aproned chef back with a home run with a baseball bat;

The second time, another sports student appeared and smashed the hand that the green-aproned chef grabbed out of the plastic wind curtain with a baseball bat…

And he had been ignoring another detail, that is, whether it was Xu Shunkang or the sports student, they didn't come from the student passage!

Because Xu Shunkang clearly walked away in another direction after finishing the job, going to the entrance on the other passage side.

And those few times, he was always in a hurry to leave, and didn't pay attention to the sports student's movements.

「So, these layers should be able to communicate with each other to some extent?」

「Like floating and sinking in water?」

「So… the green-aproned chefs that come out of window 10 are actually similar to the layer where Old Mo is located to some extent, and can only cause harm to us when certain special conditions are met?」

「For example… key items 'containing tomato-like elements'?」

「It doesn't seem quite right…」

「Perhaps my guess is wrong, and it should actually be something else I don't understand?」

Lin Yi seemed thoughtful. If other areas in the school also possessed this characteristic of the cafeteria, with multiple interconnected layers, then wouldn't there be many... unknown routes?

For example...

"For example, the road to the gymnasium, would that have a fork in it?"

While Lin Yi was pondering, Lao Mo had already healed Mao Feiyang's injuries. Then, Mu Daxian bid farewell to Lao Mo, taking Mao Feiyang back to the area near the other passage.

"Mu... Daxian..." Lao Mo slowly spoke, calling out to Mu Daxian's departing figure.

"What is it?"

"Be... careful..." Lao Mo said with utmost seriousness.

Mu Daxian paused slightly, then narrowed his eyes: "Did you discover something?"

"No..." Lao Mo shook his head slightly.

Mu Daxian didn't speak, his eyes merely narrowed into slits, before he nodded solemnly: "I understand. Live well, see you next time."

"You too..." Lao Mo said, "I don't have... many friends... You... count as one..."

...

As Mu Daxian led Mao Feiyang back to the area between the other passage and the student cafeteria, fragments of broken dawn scattered down, depicting the gaps in the brick walls with a golden hue, but the cafeteria's interior remained unlit.

"It's dawn," Mu Daxian said.

"Yes, it's finally dawn!" Mao Feiyang also breathed a sigh of relief, but then noticed Mu Daxian frowning, "What's wrong, Brother Xian? Isn't dawn good?"

"Dawn is good, but we don't need dawn to come so quickly," Mu Daxian said in a deep voice.

"Huh?"

"The entrance to the convenience store appears at the boundary between light and darkness. If it's broad daylight, it will be very difficult to find."

"The boundary between light and darkness?"

"In layman's terms, it's the area of the cafeteria that isn't illuminated by the lights but is illuminated by sunlight."

Mao Feiyang reacted quickly: "That's the wall near the window?"

"'Window,' an interesting concept," Mu Daxian raised his eyebrows with a smile that wasn't quite a smile, leaving Mao Feiyang somewhat confused.

But he suddenly, inexplicably, thought of the window he saw in the stairwell of the teaching building...

"An Interesting Concept"

There wasn't supposed to be a window in the stairwell, but he saw it...

Could it be that the cafeteria...?

Hiss... Mao Feiyang faintly gasped.

"Are you a snake, or a suction pump? You've already survived under the Smiling Angel, don't make such a fuss," Mu Daxian said with disdain.

Mao Feiyang pursed his lips, remained silent for a moment, and then said: "Brother Xian... what happened to that Lao Mo just now?"

Mao Feiyang was actually very curious about Lao Mo's story. Lao Mo looked like a pseudo-human, and even when he first saw Lao Mo, he had a creepy feeling.

If eyes can deceive, intuition doesn't.

Lao Mo exuded an aura that made him feel terrified, especially when Lao Mo held a kitchen knife.

That kitchen knife... was very strange. It looked like an ordinary meat cleaver, and you couldn't even see the blade, but it was as if it possessed magic, actually scraping away his extraordinary power little by little.

Looking at his arm now, the wound looked like it had been zipped up, leaving only a faint trace.

"Lao Mo, huh..."

Mu Daxian looked in the direction of the student passage, a hint of reminiscence appearing in his eyes.

"Lao Mo is one of the few people I admire in this school."

"Hiss--ugh!" Mao Feiyang wanted to gasp again, but remembering Mu Daxian's reaction just now, he quickly covered his mouth like lightning.

"But I don't feel like you admire him very much, awoo..." he blurted out.

Mu Daxian glanced at him: "Admiration isn't something you put on your lips."

The time was not yet 5:40, and the cafeteria hadn't opened yet. Mu Daxian was perhaps feeling sentimental due to the surroundings, and didn't know whether he was talking to Mao Feiyang or talking to himself: "Lao Mo and I met relatively early..."

"Back then, he was just an ordinary cook, and I was just an unknown extra experiencing life."

"At that time, he had nothing but a kitchen knife, and I only had good looks..."

Mao Feiyang: "..."

Mu Daxian continued: "I first met Lao Mo on a foggy day... If I remember correctly, it should have been one day during the 63rd Grey Mist Invasion..."

"That was when I first entered the school, on September 5th, 2021. I can't quite remember the specific time in the evening..."

"I just remember that after dinner that day, I left the cafeteria to return to the teaching building, and got lost halfway due to the fog."

"The lights weren't on yet, and because I felt like I had only left the cafeteria a few steps, I quickly ran back along my memory, but it started raining halfway..."

"Because the time was not yet 6 PM, and the fog was really thick, I didn't dare to approach even if I saw the street lights."

"The only way at that time was to abide by the student rules and return to the nearest building to take shelter, and the cafeteria was the closest building to me."

"But even though it was only a few steps away, I just couldn't find the cafeteria..."

"And the pseudo-humans in the green belt began to appear one after another and surround me—at that time, I didn't know the concept of pseudo-humans, I only knew that they were some human-like, non-human things..."

"I didn't dare to act rashly, so I squatted on the spot and stared at the cobblestone road..."

"At that time, I only had cobblestones in my eyes anyway. I could even see a world in the cobblestones, but I quickly became muddled. I could feel those pseudo-humans surrounding me, like countless tombstones stuck around me."

"They were chanting something similar to the Night Watcher's Iron Laws, chanting scriptures exuding the aura of forbidden lore like some kind of strange gods and Buddhas, as if they wanted to immediately send me off to the afterlife..."

"Just when I was about to lose my mind, those tombstones were chopped to pieces like cutting melons and vegetables. When I came back to my senses, Lao Mo had already appeared beside me, like a god descending to earth..."

"I remember very clearly that Lao Mo at that time was wearing a black, oily leather apron, holding the kitchen knife he has now in his hand, and his white chef's uniform was covered in ketchup..."

"His expression was very cold, completely different from the numb look you see now... If I were a woman, I would have devoted myself to him back then."

Thanks to book friends "usjdnshhs" and "SUPK" for their rewards!!

It's the end of the month, Xiaoqiu is asking for monthly votes, let's aim for 2000 monthly votes, it's almost there, I feel like it's possible.