Chapter 2282 Orderly <TOC> Chapter 2284 Inner Ring
Translator: SumTLMan
What is called a sprint, but it’s a different matter from the real-world sprint.
It’s more appropriate to describe it as a special kind of movement technique. Under this technique, Angel, staying inside Woof Woof’s belly, didn’t even feel any movement of the liquid inside Woof Woof’s body.
The sensation of “sprinting” arises because the surrounding bizarre space begins to rapidly recede.
Although Angel is inside Woof Woof’s belly, it doesn’t prevent him from seeing the outside scenery.
Everywhere there are bizarre and varied scenes, like the aurora crossing the sky, the clear and murky layers separating, and the mingling of black and white specks of light like swarms of butterflies. These scenes, due to Woof Woof’s rapid movement, recede, turning into fleeting glimmers, and the surrounding scenery then becomes a blurred vista of multicolor.
Almost nothing is clear, only a colorful mist full of dazzling and stark contrasts, bizarre and grotesque.
Woof Woof’s speed is still increasing, it seems very wary of the colorful scenes around, silently heading towards a certain target.
And Angel falls into contemplation.
From the current situation, Woof Woof should have started to “traverse” towards the treasure location.
According to Woof Woof’s earlier statement, Angel should now be unable to think, and all his sensory abilities should be lost. But the reality is not so, except for a slight suppression of his emotional module, Angel is almost unaffected.
Woof Woof’s understanding of this place is obviously far superior to Angel’s, it wouldn’t act without reason. Under normal circumstances, Angel might indeed follow Woof Woof’s script.
But the current situation is clearly abnormal, how did this abnormality arise?
Angel’s intuition, and the only thing he can think of at the moment, could only be related to the incident with the Heavenly Eye.
Perhaps because he was brought to a bizarre dimension by the Heavenly Eye, and stayed there for a very long time, he developed a certain immunity to the current situation. That’s why he didn’t experience what Woof Woof described.
But is this really the bizarre dimension that the Heavenly Eye once brought Angel to?
It seems similar, but not entirely.
The reason for the similarity is because Angel was also “ascending” at that time, and during the ascent, his emotional module encountered problems. However, the difference is that at that time, the emotional module was completely stripped away, whereas now, although his emotional module is suppressed, it has not been lost.
However, Angel does not believe that the bizarre dimension he was brought to by the Heavenly Eye and the bizarre dimension he is in now are two different spaces.
He is more inclined to believe that it is indeed the same bizarre dimension, only that the place Angel went to last time was deeper, or to say, the place Angel went to last time is the complete version of a high-dimensional space; whereas the space Woof Woof is bringing him to now, is situated between the two, in the gap between the real world and the high-dimensional space.
Only this situation can explain why his emotional module is only suppressed, not stripped away.
——Because it’s not deep enough.
On the other side, Woof Woof was unaware that Angel was pondering the true nature of this space; it continued to dash forward, head down.
Its path avoided the surrounding anomalies, including the bizarre spectacles and the colorful mists around them, because it knew how terrifying these seemingly harmless phenomena could be.
Upon its first entry into this strange world, an innate intuition warned it never to touch these anomalies.
The naive Woof Woof initially followed its instinctual premonitions, but later, driven by curiosity, it touched a light spot that seemed non-threatening and resembled a white butterfly.
The consequence… the light spot, shaped like a white butterfly, entered Woof Woof’s body and rapidly “flapped its wings,” destroying everything inside Woof Woof.
It was like a terrifyingly destructive virus, deadly upon contact.
Fortunately, Woof Woof, realizing the white butterfly had entered its body, immediately split its body in half. The half that contained the white butterfly quickly decayed and died, while the other half managed to survive, albeit barely.
And this was only the anomaly that Woof Woof felt was the least threatening.
Given the destruction caused by the white butterfly, Woof Woof dared not imagine the effects of the other anomalies, nor did it attempt to explore them further.
Luckily, in this strange world, as long as there was a fixed direction or coordinate, a path would naturally open for it to travel without encountering anomalies.
Thus, Woof Woof could move unobstructed here.
Of course, this path was not truly safe; minor issues occasionally arose, but these were the consequences of not adhering to the laws. As long as one followed the laws of this place, there would be no problems.
Woof Woof was naturally very obedient to the laws, but unexpectedly, even though it followed the laws of this place, an accident still occurred——
While Woof Woof was “running” without any distractions, a small patch of red mist suddenly appeared in the previously empty passage ahead.
Woof Woof was startled by the red mist, but having learned its lesson, it was extremely cautious in the strange world, reacting quickly. With a swift lift, weave, and descent, it managed to avoid the red mist.
Back on track, before Woof Woof had time to feel relieved or fortunate, a new situation arose.
Spikes in the shape of protrusions stabbed in from both sides of the corridor, forming a horizontal thicket of thorns.
These spikes exuded a terrifying aura, and Woof Woof knew that if it touched them, its fate would be even worse than when it had encountered the white butterfly.
Retreating was not an option, as the path it had come from was already blocked by anomalies. It couldn’t return outside either, because by estimation, the outside was still engulfed in a void storm, and venturing out would mean both it and Angel would be pulverized by the storm.
The only way forward was to dodge through this thicket of thorns using its agility and movements.
With the path behind it beginning to collapse, Woof Woof couldn’t hesitate and charged into the horizontal thicket. Its movements were incredibly agile, barely finding a path through the spikes that could accommodate its form.
To Angel, Woof Woof at this moment resembled a thief attempting to steal a museum’s secret treasure, dodging countless bell-hung red ropes in the hall before the treasure.
Woof Woof performed exceptionally well, not touching any “red ropes” and not awakening any bells.
However, according to the narrative necessity for dramatic plot developments in stories, even if a thief manages to evade the red rope traps and reaches the treasure, it’s highly likely they would trigger some mechanism, which often proves to be fatal. Even without mechanisms, there’s a chance of encountering other guardians descending from above.
As Angel thought this, Woof Woof had already passed through the thorn forest and, after a long sigh of relief, suddenly discovered something even more terrifying not far ahead.
Above the path, a vast shadow stretched across, its length unknown, and this shadow was slowly descending.
Without needing to calculate the speed of the shadow’s descent, Woof Woof knew that even if it dashed at full speed, it would be hard to cross the passage before the shadow fell.
Moreover, no one knew how long the shadow was; it might cover the entire path behind.
With shadows ahead and the path collapsing behind, Woof Woof was trapped in the middle of the road.
It hadn’t anticipated that this journey would be so fraught with difficulties, and judging by the current situation, there seemed to be no way out.
Unable to escape, retreat, or advance.
What was going on? For the first time, Woof Woof felt a sense of despair.
Perhaps due to the emotional suppression of this strange world, the despair did not last long, and Woof Woof returned to rational thought. In its rational thinking, Woof Woof suddenly had an idea.
It forcefully stretched its flexible body into a “twisted” posture, pulling its eyes down to its stomach.
Through this posture, Woof Woof saw the person inside its stomach.
And the person in its stomach was blinking back at it.
Blinking?! Woof Woof snapped back to reality and immediately sent a message to Angel. ——Fortunately, Angel was inside it, and its bodily fluids could serve as a medium to convey the message to Angel.
“Why are you awake?”
Before Angel could respond, Woof Woof’s second message wave came, urgent: “Put everything else aside, have you been letting your mind wander? If so, stop immediately, don’t think about anything. Otherwise, we’ll both die!”
Having said that, Woof Woof dashed towards the passage obscured by the shadow. Because if it didn’t run now, the anomaly behind would catch up.
Upon entering the shadow-covered area, Woof Woof felt an unprecedented pressure.
Although the shadow had not fully descended yet, the threat of death hanging over its head had already taken root in its consciousness.
Woof Woof didn’t know if the appearance of the shadow was related to Angel, but now it could only hope for Angel, emptying its own thoughts while transmitting to Angel: “Don’t think about anything, don’t think about anything.”
What Woof Woof didn’t know was that its almost crazed muttering could sometimes serve as an anchor for “new thoughts.”
Of course, that’s usually the case with ordinary people.
For Angel, a wizard of his realm, he could easily cast aside worldly distractions and enter meditation at any moment, naturally unaffected by Woof Woof’s crazed ravings.
Although Angel was unaware of why Woof Woof suddenly urged him not to think about anything, given Woof Woof’s urgency and clear warning of a potential death, Angel naturally refrained from any further reckless speculation.
He quickly reined in his wandering thoughts and distractions, excluding all thoughts of the “museum theft” from his mind, leaving his consciousness empty and void.
At this moment, the shadow from the outside world had already descended by a great deal, with the height of the passage reduced to only a third of its original size.
Woof Woof was already running fast below another kind of anomaly, yet even so, it could not see the end of the shadow ahead.
Perhaps, the shadow truly covered all the paths ahead.
Just when Woof Woof felt it might indeed meet its end today, the shadow suddenly stopped descending.
Through a special perspective, Woof Woof saw Angel, who was meditating with closed eyes, and immediately understood that Angel had gathered his thoughts.
Woof Woof dared not be distracted, nor did it dare to disturb Angel. All it could do now was to move as fast as possible, distancing itself from the shadow to reach the end of the passage as soon as possible.
Woof Woof ran for what seemed like an eternity, in its perception of time, the length of the passage seemed to extend infinitely.
Finally, Woof Woof arrived at a familiar coordinate.
The place it corresponded to in the outside world was no longer the void storm, but the inner ring of the void storm, a void space. This was also the destination Angel aimed for.
Without any hesitation, Woof Woof left this strange world.
Upon leaving, Woof Woof looked up at the shadow above, which still existed and its length remained unknown.
This meant that Woof Woof’s previous speculation was correct; the shadow spanned the entire length of the passage. It was fortunate that Angel was prompted to stop his wandering thoughts in time, or else a significant problem would have indeed occurred.
Descending… descending…
This “descent” corresponded to the initial “ascent,” where ascent represented a special form of sublimation, while descent felt more like a divine intervention.
The suppressed emotional modules began to rapidly recover until they were completely normal.
Simultaneously, Angel felt the liquid that enveloped him slowly recede until he could once again perceive the existence of the void.
Angel opened his eyes, the first thing he sensed was a sense of oppression coming from afar.
However, the sense of oppression was only temporary and not as intense as the feeling of being stared at directly by Woof Woof.
“Have we arrived?” Angel hesitated for a moment before speaking.
Woof Woof continued to stare at Angel without responding. However, from the surrounding sensations and seeing the void storm not far away, Angel could confirm that they had left the bizarre dimension and returned to the void.
“What just happened?” Angel paused, “Thinking, could it lead to serious consequences?”
Woof Woof, who had been silent all along, finally spoke, “Before we started traversing the void, I had said not to think about anything. Because there, just thinking can trigger the anomalies around us. And just coming into contact with an anomaly, even the ones that seem least threatening to me, could completely obliterate us.”
“Was that shadow an anomaly?”
“Not just the shadow, the red mist we encountered earlier, and the numerous spikes, were all anomalies,” Woof Woof added, “This was not the case before.”
In other words, all these anomalies were caused by Angel’s thoughts.
Angel now understood why Woof Woof had been so urgent in asking him to stop thinking, as it really could lead to terrifying consequences.
Recalling the endless shadows, Angel couldn’t help but show a relieved expression as if he had survived a great disaster.
Taking a deep breath, Angel showed a remorseful expression to Woof Woof and sincerely apologized.
Woof Woof didn’t mean to blame Angel, understanding that it was partly responsible for not making the consequences clear from the beginning. Plus, since the outcome was satisfactory, Woof Woof let it go.
Rather than blaming, it was more curious about something——
“Why were you not affected?”