"Fuck. Did you work in a demolition crew in the past?"
When Lin Sanjiu heard that familiar voice again, her wound-up nerves quickly relaxed. She could no longer drive herself with willpower, and the weariness she accumulated over these few days consumed her...
"I don't care anymore," Lin Sanjiu mumbled and dropped to the ground, closing her eyes. "Deal with the rest yourselves."
—
Six hours earlier, there was an oppressive atmosphere in the air. There wasn't a single hint of breeze.
Lin Sanjiu didn't think much about the exact size of this place. But considering the size of those snake-faced people and the fact that she couldn't even sense their presence after they left. She could only imagine how vast the place was.
While her thoughts ran wild, she leaped up and grabbed the branch above her before climbing up.
Lin Sanjiu refused to even consider the worst-case scenario.
Although she didn't know where B. Rabbit and the others were, or if they were alive, she followed her single motivation, which had never changed: if they were alive, she wanted to see them; if they were dead, she needed to see their corpses.
"If I give up just like that, what is the point of me struggling till today?" She grumbled to herself softly. She held her [Vibroblade] and struck it down on the portion of the branch beside her.
Although the knife looked too small compared to the size of the branch, the laboratory's technology truly deserved its reputation. When she used it for the first time, she was prepared to see the branch a few times. Surprisingly, once the blade landed on the branch, it was as if she was cutting through the air. It easily cut through the branch, and each time, it left an edge with a polished surface.
As she already had some experience with this, she immediately took two steps back. Boom! The smooth, polished sealed surface left by the cut from her Vibroblade burst open due to the pressure from the fluid in the branch. The tree sap sprayed out like a fountain.
The length of the knife wasn't long enough to sever the branch with a single clean cut. The branch broke in half at the point of the incision with a crack. The apple hanging from the branch lost its support and fell to the ground.
Lin Sanjiu ignored the apple, which fell with a scream. After the sap from the branch stopped spurting out, she climbed to the edge of the incision and flashed her light to check what was inside.
This method was inspired by the dead snake-faced person.
When she was dodging the attacks from the creature, its tongue pierced through the bark of the tree. Those areas exposed a thick layer of unknown plant material. Under that layer of cuticle, Lin Sanjiu discovered a dead body hanging from the edge of the damaged tree bark. It came out together with the tree sap.
That corpse was a little different from the other dead bodies she had seen. Even though his skin was undamaged, appearing to have died not too long ago, his body was in a deformed mess, as if it had been squeezed by something. Judging from how the tree sap spurted, the pressure of the fluid probably increased as they reached the tips of the tree, and this was the reason why the corpse couldn't even retain its original form.
'Maybe the flesh of the apples was made from the flesh of several dead bodies?' There was no way to verify this conjecture, and Lin Sanjiu didn't want to think about it either. She looked inside the broken branch and couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief when she didn't see anyone inside.
If B. Rabbit and the others weren't in the branches, there was still some hope of saving them.
She raised her head and looked up. The tree she was on didn't have a large canopy; it only had another 30 or 40 branches. But... Lin Sanjiu smiled bitterly, pretending that she hadn't seen the shadows of the other few colossal trees while continuing to climb to another branch.
"Anyway, I only know such a stupid method," she sounded bitter, perhaps because she suddenly thought of Nüwa. "If I can't chop down the trunk, I'll just chop off every path leading to its destination then!"
'If Nüwa was around, she definitely would be able to think of a better idea.' Despite how much she rejected this thought, she just couldn't help thinking when she had to see off the branches one by one.
'If I was Nüwa, what would I do?'
Lin Sanjiu did not dare to stop. She jumped, chopped, and dodged the explosion of fluid... This had already become a seasoned process for her, and her mind started wandering. "If I was Nüwa, I would try to locate B. Rabbit and the others first.
'If I was Nüwa...'
Lin Sanjiu rushed towards the crack in the branch to investigate. If she had a mirror in front of her, she would have noticed her gradually changing expression. Her expression was icy cold, yet there was a forgiving smile on her face. Whenever someone saw that expression, it would give the impression that she was looking at an insensible child while also looking like a patient who was on a deathbed.
That was an expression that Nüwa wore.
"I'm nearly stifled to death!"
When Lin Sanjiu slipped into a strange state unknowingly, she suddenly heard a voice she hadn't heard in a long while. Initially, she thought she had saved someone from a branch. However, when she looked around, she realized that she was all alone.
"Where are you looking?"
Lin Sanjiu was stunned for a moment. She finally realized that the voice was coming from her own mind.
"Mrs. Manas?"
The Nüwa-like expression quickly slipped off her face as if shattered ice. She couldn't react for a second as her eyes widened from her bewilderment. "My [School of Higher Consciousness] is still around?"
"Lin Sanjiu, you haven't even started your compulsory nine years of education. Why would I leave?"
Lin Sanjiu held her knife absent-mindedly while she stayed in the same spot without moving. In the past, she had to compose herself and slowly dive into her own consciousness—though she was not someone who could really meditate in reality. However, this time, she didn't know how she had somehow entered this state successfully.
The kindergarten didn't change much.
Mrs. Manas was still represented by two speakers. The teddy bear, Barbie, and Transformer figurine were still sitting on their stools. The foam flooring still felt very realistic. The only difference between now and her previous visit was that she was no longer holding an educational picture chart, and the red flower brooch had disappeared.
She never thought that she would actually miss this place a little.
"It has been so long since I met you, I thought my [School of Higher Consciousness] had been sealed completely..." Lin Sanjiu sighed softly. "When did you return? What is the state of my [School of Higher Consciousness] now?
Before Mrs. Manas could answer her, Lin Sanjiu stopped her promptly, "Forget it. This isn't the right time to discuss this. You should know my current situation, right? I need to look for some people as quickly as possible..."
After saying that, she planned to force herself out of her mindscape.
Just as that thought surfaced, a voice blared from the speaker, "Lin Sanjiu!" The tone of that voice was rather flustered. "Wait! I know a way to help you!"
"Huh?" Lin Sanjiu hesitated, "Aren't you just a manifestation of this ability? How can you help me?
Mrs. Manas decided to teach Lin Sanjiu a lesson on respecting teachers some other time; there were more pressing things right now.
The speed of the words coming from the two speakers hastened, "Actually, the kindergarten had been restored some time ago. The reason why I didn't let you attend a class was because I was dealing with a problematic student... Anyway, something you did just now triggered your elementary school entrance ceremony."
Lin Sanjiu listened on in a daze.
She had too many questions in mind about this weird ability of hers. But this wasn't the right time for a discussion, so she waited for Mrs. Manas to cover some of the main points.
"In short, you've learned [Consciousness Mimicry] during your first grade. When you activate this ability, you can temporarily adopt the person's mode of thinking and use the target's thought process to analyze a situation..."
Lin Sanjiu was dumbfounded and instantly recalled her attempt to think using Nüwa's point of view.
That must have triggered her elementary school opening ceremony!
Seems like this was the one that triggered the starting of the primary level.
"Of course, you can only successfully mimic the target's mode of thinking on the basis that you have had some level of contact with the target beforehand. This ability would disregard the difference in intellect, knowledge, and experience between the user and target to some extent..."
Lin Sanjiu was already itching to get out and try her new ability. After clarifying the details about how she could employ this ability, she ignored the ramblings of the teacher. She gave a quick farewell and left her [School of Higher Consciousness].
She returned to reality. She was still surrounded by that familiar darkness, and it was so quiet that she questioned herself if what had happened was just an illusion.
Lin Sanjiu steadied her breath and closed her eyes as she formed the image of Nüwa in her mind.
The Li Tao appearance that Nüwa took was already blurry in her memory. However, Nüwa's unique expression and her detached yet sympathetic attitude towards things were still fresh in Lin Sanjiu's mind. No matter what face Nüwa used, Lin Sanjiu felt that she would be able to recognize that woman.
As Nüwa's appearance and voice grew clearer in her mind, Lin Sanjiu's expression gradually changed.
After some time, she slowly opened her mind again. She had successfully activated her [Consciousness Mimicry].
When Lin Sanjiu remembered this moment in retrospect, she couldn't help shuddering at the thought of Nüwa's deep insights.
The total surface area of the planet was 90 million square kilometers. Subtracting the 45 million square kilometers of the ocean, the remaining land area was divided into square grids in Nüwa's mind. The image of the region of dry land transformed into a 3D lattice model. With a single thought from Lin Sanjiu, it began spinning rapidly. It finally stopped on a precise set of coordinates.
Using this set of coordinates as the spot where B. Rabbit and the rest were absorbed into the ground, and analyzing the rhizomes' path from its thickness, an image of the planet's landform appeared in her mind. Modeled the flow speed of the tree sap, including variables such as gravitational force, and using other planets as a form of comparison, Lin Sanjiu determined the location of this planetary core and simulated the few likeliest pathways in her mind.
Lin Sanjiu herself couldn't keep up with this series of calculations. A gazillion numerals, graphs, and netlist flashed past her mind. It was as if someone was controlling a computer remotely, and she couldn't comprehend the series of operations.
Lin Sanjiu didn't know how much time had passed when she snapped out of Nüwa's thought process. Lin Sanjiu returned to her normal thinking mode and took a large gulp of air. It was only then that she realized that she was drenched in sweat. She was exhausted; it was more tiring than those three days of non-stop digging.
"Here!"
Lin Sanjiu already knew the location of B. Rabbit and the others.
She searched through the area of the tree 20 meters below the position she deduced from Nüwa's thought process. Standing amidst a messy pile of tree barks and sap, Lin Sanjiu bore with her dizziness and counted silently.
After counting down for three minutes, she suddenly stuck her arms into a hole in the tree. As expected, she touched a soaked ball of fur that was pushed to this corner by the tree sap.
There was a chain of people behind the ball of fur. Lin Sanjiu gathered her strength and pulled hard. With that, she dragged that chain of people out from the hole in the tree.
Using the light from her [Ability Polishing Agent], she saw B. Rabbit, who was unconscious, lying motionlessly by her feet. The corrosive sap had mangled its fur so badly that it was as if B. Rabbit had been gnawed by a dog. From the looks of it, he must have shared his goth outfit with the rest of the gang. Xueqin, Error 517, and the twin sisters were tied tightly to a long goth-style belt.
Next, Lin Sanjiu walked over to the next set of deduced coordinates and rescued Snow without any worries. However, Lin Sanjiu was bothered by the fact that she was unable to find Hui Chuyan, no matter how hard she searched.
'Let's wake the others and ask them, then,' she thought uneasily.
For now, judging from her exhaustion, it was impossible for her to activate her [Consciousness Mimicry] again within this amount of time.
After Lin Sanjiu laid all the people she rescued in a straight row, B. Rabbit was the first to stir.
He twitched his hind legs a few times involuntarily before he finally opened his eyes.
Other than Lin Sanjiu's large head, he saw the messy pile of bumpy, uneven, tattered tree barks all around him...
"Fuck. Did you work in a demolition crew in the past?"