Rules-related weird stories: 4016

"Oh?!"

A glint of light flashed in Lin Yi's eyes as well, and he quickly looked in the direction Lao Mo was pointing.

However, upon this glance, the area was still shrouded in a hazy mist. The floating fog, shifting with the changes in light and shadow, constantly presented overlapping phantoms, making it difficult to discern whether what lay behind was forest, rock, or some unknown, mysterious entity.

A faint golden light appeared in the depths of his eyes. "Visual Field Insight" seemed about to be used under the drive of instinct, but just then, Lao Mo had already pressed down on his shoulder, pulling him away from the Path of Returning Tides!

"Boom—"

The view in front of Lin Yi's eyes suddenly went white. When he regained his senses, the vast white slowly dissipated, and the view before him gradually became clear. Coupled with the soft touch under his feet and the "rustling" sensation, he quickly realized where he was.

"This is… the Green Forest Belt?"

The environment here was almost indistinguishable from the depths of the Green Forest Belt.

Although Lin Yi had never entered the Green Forest Belt in "true form", he had already been there several times in his dreams and was no stranger to the environment.

While pushing aside withered vines and old trees, Lao Mo said, "Have you been here before?"

"Never… I guessed."

Lin Yi shook his head.

Lao Mo nodded slightly. It wasn't hard to guess. He pulled away the last handful of weeds, revealing a dilapidated, abandoned lamppost. The red painted numbers were as striking as blood, and hadn't faded despite the passage of countless years.

"Red… red paint?!" Lin Yi muttered in shock, his gaze falling on the scarred surface of the lamppost. From the mottled traces, he vaguely discerned the numbers, which seemed to be, "A lamppost with red painted numbers?!"

"…Moon Outpost…6…8…?!"

"What does this 'Moon Outpost' mean?"

Lin Yi naturally knew this was the "Black Moon Outpost", but in order to obtain more information, he certainly needed to pretend he didn't know anything, so that Lao Mo wouldn't "leave out any knowledge points" when explaining it to him.

Lao Mo said, "The characters are incomplete. The full name should be 'Black Moon Outpost'. The 68 at the end is the serial number, similar in nature to the lamppost's number."

He reached out and gently stroked the red painted numbers, as if sensing something, or perhaps, as if reminiscing about something.

"Black Moon Outpost? Red painted numbers… Lao Mo, this, this, this…"

Lin Yi was incoherent, half of it was due to his acting skills, and the other half was because he was genuinely shocked.

He never expected that the "landmark" that led Lao Mo away from the Path of Returning Tides would actually be an abandoned lamppost with red painted numbers!

"Is this the second stage of the route to the Art Building?"

"'Second stage'?" Hearing this term, Lao Mo paused for a moment, then said, "If you want to understand it that way, it's not impossible."

Lin Yi then asked, "As long as we find the red lamppost during the Path of Returning Tides, can we enter this 'second stage'?"

His expression was extremely serious and earnest, like a good student attentively listening to a lecture, wishing he could take out a notebook to take notes.

Lao Mo thought for a moment, then said, "Imagine the entire campus as a large machine driven by countless high-speed gears and belts, with two points on the surface of the machine that are far apart."

"If you walk around the shell of the machine from the stadium to the Art Building, it will take a lot of time, but if we go through the inside of the machine, we only need to walk a relatively straight distance, which can save a lot of time."

"And the greatest danger inside a running machine is the moving parts. If we accidentally brush against them, we will be crushed to pieces."

"But these parts are not airtight. During their operation, there will be a lot of gaps. As long as we can reach the other side safely and then move over little by little, we can pass through safely… Do you understand?"

Hearing this, Lin Yi pondered for a moment and said thoughtfully, "It's like there are many large pendulums along the way. If we get hit by them, we'll be done for, but when they're not swinging over, we're safe?"

"And there are many large pendulums along the way, so we need to control the 'time' and 'distance'?"

Lao Mo showed a chilling smile, "It's easy to talk to someone with good comprehension. Look over there…"

He pointed behind Lin Yi, in the direction they had come from.

Lin Yi looked over, and through the mist, he could vaguely see the Path of Returning Tides. It seemed to be a path laid in the void. If it weren't for the statue of a walking dead person as a reference, he would never have been able to observe it.

But at this moment, a very strong wind seemed to blow through the Path of Returning Tides, and many ashes broke out of the statue of the dead, as if it was annihilating.

"If we were still on the 'Path of Returning Tides' at this time, we would be blown by this wind. Although it wouldn't kill us, it would be enough for you and me to have a small half pot of trouble. The most important thing is… it wastes time."

Lin Yi asked, "Is this a 'high tide'?"

"Yes."

Lao Mo said, "Like breathing, the closer you are, the easier it is to be crushed to pieces, so I said, that road is difficult to walk."

While Lao Mo was speaking, he seemed to have found some direction through the lamppost of the Black Moon Outpost, so he let go and said, "Follow me."

The mist surged in the forest, looking extremely dangerous, but after Lao Mo finished speaking, he plunged into it without hesitation.

Lin Yi followed closely, then whispered, "How does the lamppost point the way? Black Moon Outpost… how far is it from the Art Building?"

"There's no such thing as how far the distance is."

While peeling away weeds and tangled wood, Lao Mo said, "The 'Black Moon Outpost' is the 'Art Building', or rather, the name of the Art Building's predecessor."

Despite being prepared, many waves still rose in his heart when he heard Lao Mo say this.

"The Art Building is actually an outpost…?"

Lao Mo said, "You'll know when you see the Art Building. How could that kind of architectural style have been built together with the campus in '99."

"Oh?" Lin Yi narrowed his eyes. He knew clearly that S City University was built in the year X999.

Lao Mo continued, "Rather than saying that S City University was built in '99, it's better to say that its construction plan was established in '99, using the suburbs of S City as the surface layer, radiating and connecting many areas through the connections between the layers… The 'Black Moon Outpost' is one of these areas, and also the most important one."

"Radiating and connecting…?" Lin Yi pondered.

After a moment, as if probing the surrounding environment, Old Mo led Lin Yi back, returning to the front of the lamppost.

Old Mo released his hand from the lamppost, casually grabbing two branches with messy twigs, and then slowly brought them closer.

"Look, like these two branches, the places I'm holding represent S City and the Black Moon Outpost respectively. These extending small branches are the 'pathways' radiating from them. The first batch of architects, when building the school, connected the branches that were similar or close on a layer level, forming some illusory paths on the layer level."

Lin Yi looked at the twisted and complex branches, shocked: "This… If that's the case, doesn't that mean the Arts Building is like the campus, existing on the surface of a certain city?"

The Arts Building in the inner layer of the campus is the surface of another place?

The newest novel is first published on 69shu.com!

And for that place, the campus is the inner layer?

So that's why there's the saying about going back and forth?

For art students, no, for the strange art students, the campus where the cafeteria is located is actually the inner layer. So eating in the inner layer of the mountain is very dangerous. Relatively speaking, for them, the physical education students and security units living in the inner layer are the truly terrifying beasts?

The definition of so-called "safety" and "danger" is based on one's own positioning, resulting in different relative effects!

Old Mo was very satisfied with Lin Yi's comprehension and explained: "That's right, and the location of the Black Moon Outpost is not within the Huaxia region."

"You will see the Arts Building later. Its architectural appearance is a castle with a very strong Gothic style. And you know, there are no castles in Huaxia."

"Even later architects, when building other 'Dark Zones' within the Huaxia region, tried to use Huaxia's local architectural style, especially the Tang style."

"The Black Moon Outpost, its initial location, was near the 'Scandinavian' peninsula in Northern Europe, on a coastline in the area of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden… There is even a saying that that area originated from Greenland."

"Only those archaeologists know about things that are too distant. I'm not very clear either. Anyway, the first batch of scholars or other personnel discovered traces of extraordinary power, and then spent a lot of manpower and material resources to build the castle in order to observe this fluctuation."

"Then, as time went by, they also realized that the destructiveness of 'pollution' to society and the world was far greater than its plasticity. Therefore, in order to prevent that fluctuation from causing a greater impact, they established the initial observation and defense works… which is the 'Outpost'."

"That is the origin of the word 'Outpost' in 'Black Moon Outpost'. And the group of people who established the Black Moon Outpost also called themselves 'Apostles'."

"Since then, in the unknown history of the world, there have been a large number of existences studying extraordinary power, and a group of people who have limited the development of world civilization to a relatively 'stable' 'layer' in order to prevent extraordinary power from spreading."

"That group of people has many names, and with the development of history, they are still active in civilizations and legends all over the world… such as 'Alchemists', 'Qi Refiners', 'Priests', 'Wizards'…"

"Of course, the most active group of people at present are called 'Physicists'."

Lin Yi staggered: "Wait a minute, Old Mo… Physics?! What does this have to do with physics?!"

Old Mo twitched the muscles on his face with a fake smile: "Do you know what 'physics' is?"

"Uh… now that you ask, I can't really explain it. Physics seems to be the study of the laws of motion of matter and the basic structure of matter, and then exploring the laws of nature, and analyzing its phenomena, exploring and analyzing the reasons and processes of its formation… a subject, right?"

"Discovery, observation, exploration, summarization… and forming a systematic theoretical knowledge, and even applying its laws to life,"

Old Mo said, "Is there any difference between this and what those 'Apostles' did to 'extraordinary power' in the first place?"

"Uh…?" Lin Yi was stunned and could only shake his head slightly, signaling Old Mo to continue "lecturing."

Old Mo then said: "The so-called physics is actually a whole anchor point in itself."

"The 'Apostles' were never able to break through the mysterious patterns unfolded by the veins of extraordinary power, so they summarized the limited laws into widely known 'laws' and spread them out as 'physics'…"

"Just like how the experience students use their student IDs to self-anchor… this world is a broken cage, already riddled with holes under the erosion of extraordinary power."

"The outside world is like a larger S City University. All the people who have received this physics education are people holding student IDs, using the anchor of 'physics' to anchor this world in a relatively 'scientific' layer."

"You can think that… the global technology tree is actually locked within a limited range by the 'Apostles', just like an experience student, walking on a land full of pollution and gray fog. Once the threshold is crossed, there will be eternal doom."

"It's just that, as time goes by and the pollution deepens, necessary technological fields will be unlocked… This is not a 'breakthrough', but a 'relaxation', because the anchor of the world has once again lost its balance, so it needs to be strengthened to anchor it in a deeper layer of soil to prevent the ship from going out of control."

"During the recent World War, the fluctuations of the war made the precarious world even more dangerous, so Einstein proposed the 'Theory of Relativity', which strengthened the anchor of physics again…"

"The existence of the theory of relativity is like when you are polluted, you will soon become a pseudo-person, but the homeroom teacher pulls you back, giving you the opportunity to continue to live as a 'person' in the identity of an art student or a physical education student."

Lin Yi thoughtfully said: "You mean, the world is about to be destroyed, so physicists deliberately relaxed some… the scale of knowledge?"

"The scale of knowledge is very difficult to control. Too much will cause irreversible pollution, and too little will have no effect… Physicists are a group of guys who have mastered the leverage."

"And architects, build and strengthen the leverage."

Lin Yi narrowed his eyes, his expression solemn: "So the more in-depth the exploration of physics, the closer it gets to… the 'source'? Is this why Newton spent his later years studying theology?"