Ryan immediately ran back.
But his legs grew heavier and heavier. Every step he took felt like stepping into scalding asphalt.
He looked down.
Half of his left leg was already gone. From the knee down, his skin, muscle, meridians, and even bone had turned into a cloud of gray-white light particles that constantly crumbled outward. These particles did not fall to the ground like ordinary dust; instead, defying gravity in an eerie fashion, they hovered in midair and were sucked in bit by bit by the surrounding thick fog.
“Hur...”
Ryan opened his mouth, desperately trying to force out a roar, or even just a simple warning.
But he failed. To his horror, he realized his vocal cords and trachea had also begun to dissolve at some point. The moment he exhaled, his vocal cords disintegrated into cold, fluorescent powder. He could not make a sound at all, save for a sharp, chilling wheeze like air escaping a punctured tire.
Unable to stand, the second his left leg completely dissolved, he collapsed heavily into the dense pile of shattered bones.
Yet he did not stop. He could only use his remaining limbs to desperately crawl forward on all fours.
Yes, crawl.
He dug his sharp fingernails into the eye sockets of skulls left behind from some unknown slice of history, using that tiny bit of leverage to drag his body forward inch by inch.
Because his right leg was also starting to break down.
The sensation was utterly terrifying. He could only watch helplessly as his skin peeled off in sheets like white candle wax melting under thousands of degrees of heat, revealing the mutated flesh beneath, from which brilliant light erupted.
While his physical body was rapidly perishing, his consciousness, conversely, reached an unprecedented level of clarity and intensity at this very moment.
The 【Lantern】 craved knowledge.
The 【Lantern】 was knowing.
As the defenses of his physical body fell to their lowest, the memories buried deep within his subconscious bubbled to the surface.
The first time, he died to a withered, desiccated claw deep in the cave.
The seventeenth time, because he stepped on and shattered a piece of keel he shouldn't have touched, he was instantly vaporized into nothingness.
The forty-third time, in an extreme state of mental breakdown, he tore his own throat open with his fingernails.
The hundred and sixth time, the three hundred and twentieth time, the six hundred and fortieth time...
Countless "Ryans" who had died horrific deaths, struggling in despair and madness, opened their eyes inside his mind at the same time. Crowding into his narrow skull, they let out hysterical screams, cries, curses, and wild laughter.
The sheer volume of information was so immense that a mortal brain could not withstand it for even a millisecond. Ryan's left eyeball vibrated violently. A massive influx of extraordinary knowledge, like water forced through a funnel, threatened to split his skull open from the inside.
He finally remembered.
He remembered everything.
“Those were all me.”
Every intersection, every marker, and every skeleton that had sent shivers down his spine was a corpse and a legacy he had left behind with his own hands in countless past loops. He had already explored this godforsaken island hundreds, thousands of times. He even knew exactly how many meters into each cave a collapse would occur.
Yet, with every reset, he would be stripped of all his memories. He would open his eyes on the beach again like a greenhorn explorer, leading Simon and Alvin, filled with hope and believing he had grasped the dawn of survival.
This was a trap specifically designed for the path of the 【Lantern】.
Because believers of the 【Lantern】 could never reject the truth. The more fog you threw at them, the more they insisted on raising their lanterns to illuminate it. The more puzzles you set, the more they would use their pitiful shred of rationality to analyze and pursue them.
Thus, this eternal cage constructed of "Black Bone" generously laid out all the truths and clues before the seeker. It did not dispatch powerful imaginary realm creatures to hunt you down, nor did it actively inflict mental pollution upon you. It simply sat quietly in the abyss, watching you like a foolish moth, voluntarily devouring forbidden knowledge that far exceeded your capacity, loop after loop.
And then, at the very last second, when you thought you had seen through the nature of the world and were about to grasp the answer...
It would use the terrifying weight of that knowledge to utterly crush your laws, your existence, and your history from the real world.
“Can't... let him... repeat this...”
Ryan clawed desperately forward with his right hand, which already had half of its white bones exposed.
At that moment, the thick fog ahead parted abruptly without any warning.
The instant he saw what lay ahead, Ryan's pupils, mutated to the point of near-rigidity, contracted violently.
He saw a familiar figure.
It was a young man wearing a slightly tattered captain's uniform. Salty crystals of seawater still clung to his hair, and his gray eyes shone with alertness and clarity.
At this moment, the young man was standing beneath the shadow of a massive, closed ribcage of a whale, warily scanning his surroundings.
It was the Ryan who had just stepped into the middle cave entrance.
Go back... Don't look... Don't come over...
Ryan let out the most agonizing screech in his mind. He did not even know where his strength came from, but his mangled body, which had almost dissolved into transparency, lunged forward, dragging a long, eerie, fluorescent trail across the pile of pale, shattered bones.
He wanted to crawl to the young man's feet. He wanted to stretch out his right hand and grab his pant leg.
He wanted to tell him in the most intense, frantic way possible: There is no answer here! The middle entrance is a dead end! That light guiding you to the truth is a fucking bait! Take Simon and Alvin and get out of here! Even if you have to swim to the port outside, absolutely do not step into this quagmire!
However, when he exerted every ounce of his strength to finally drag his body out of the fog and tremblingly reached his right hand forward...
He suddenly saw what he looked like at this very moment, reflected in the faint glow off the bones on the ground.
Ryan froze completely.
His mind went completely blank, a bone-chilling cold spreading from the depths of his soul.
How could he still be considered a "human" now?
Most of the skin on his face had peeled away, and his muscles had taken on a bizarre, semi-transparent, waxy texture due to the overloaded evaporation of the extraordinary glow. Because the 【Lantern】 aspect in his body had completely spiraled out of control, countless pale, sharp, mutated bone spikes were violently and randomly jutting out of his ribs, shoulders, and spine in all directions.
The most terrifying part was his left eye. The gray eyeball that originally belonged to a human had completely melted. In its place was a mass of extraordinary anomaly that squirmed frantically inside his eye socket, constantly spilling out blinding white light.
What he looked like now, no matter which occult sect's grimoire it was referenced in, had only one most standard, indisputable designation—
【Aberration】.
A dangerous monster that had completely lost control after peering into taboos, stripped of the laws of human existence, and radiating high-intensity occult pollution...
“No... it's not like this... I am you... I am you... Go quickly... Go... Quick...”
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