Chapter 17 What Are You Doing?
“I didn't do anything.”

Chai Chai narrowed her eyes, her tone still light and breezy. “I'm pondering some world problems that have plagued me for years.

Like, is an oyster still an oyster after it's cooked?

If someone commits suicide, does the world have one more suicidal person or one less?

When Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei were in the Peach Garden, did they have to kowtow to the statue of Lord Guan before swearing brotherhood?

I think if I crack these world puzzles, the Nobel Prize won't be far away.”

At this moment, she had replaced Li Ang's identity, inheriting all of Li Ang's interpersonal relationships (though there were only a few contacts), and also inheriting Li Ang's speaking style and vocabulary habits.

According to the analysis of the Cerebrate's think tank, the degree of similarity in a short period of time can reach more than 90%, which is completely enough to deal with most situations.

“...”

Wang Congshan's voice on the other end of the phone was silent for a moment.

“What's wrong?”

Miss Chai's brow furrowed instantly. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“No,”

Wang Congshan took a breath, her voice sounding a little low. “It's just that recently, I've been feeling a little down...

Could you come out and have a meal with me?”

————

Far away in the script mission, Li Ang was unaware of what was happening in the real world.

The moment the weightlessness brought by stepping into the halo disappeared,

He immediately unleashed the Swamp Divinity and Mind Power, sweeping out in all directions to map the terrain and detect potential hostility.

No suspicious targets were found...

Li Ang opened his eyes. The subtle shift in his center of gravity, conveyed by his body's senses, reminded him that he should be standing on the ground.

Where is this...

He was currently in a metal container.

The container was narrow and cramped, shaped like a human figure.

The inner wall was inlaid with a large number of dense metal spikes, positioned precisely at the eyes, shoulders, arms, thighs, and other locations.

An Iron Maiden?

Li Ang frowned slightly. The Iron Maiden was a torture device used in medieval Europe, consisting of hinges, nails, and two door panels, capable of holding a person and resembling a mummy sarcophagus.

When used, the executioner would lock the victim inside the Iron Maiden and close the two door panels, causing numerous nails to pierce the victim's body, causing continuous harm and terror to achieve the purpose of interrogation or torture.

Li Ang didn't know what material this Iron Maiden was made of, but the nails inside were able to pierce through the Dragon Head White Coat and into the Mirage Dragon Crimson Mane Outerwear.

The Mirage Dragon Crimson Mane Outerwear had a very high absorption efficiency for energy attribute attacks and could also absorb kinetic energy impacts. However, since it was hand-woven by Li Ang, there were narrow gaps between each strand of Crimson Mane.

The spikes on the inner wall of this Iron Maiden were slender and sharp, like yarn needles piercing through a sweater. Some of them had already pierced into the Mirage Dragon Crimson Mane Outerwear.

If Li Ang's skin and muscles couldn't automatically change shape, actively contracting inward by an inch or two, he would have been riddled with holes by now.

These nails, will they actively extend forward?

Li Ang frowned. To enhance the torture effect, real Iron Maidens had movable iron nails installed on various parts of the inside, which could change the piercing position and force, prolonging the victim's pain.

At this moment, the spikes on the inner wall of the Iron Maiden he was in were slowly and steadily extending inward, without any intention of stopping.

Fully automatic torture device? Or is this being controlled from the outside?

Various possibilities intertwined in Li Ang's mind.

His lowered palm slightly opened, and massive amounts of vine fibers were released from the tips of his ten fingers.

First, they wrapped around his body to prevent him from being pierced by the nails,

Then, they rapidly proliferated, weaving and crisscrossing through the gaps between the spikes, filling the entire torture device.

Crack—

The massive vines gathered immense strength, supporting outward.

Accompanied by the grating sound of metal bolts turning, the two door panels of the metal torture device were forcibly pushed open a gap.

“Hoo…”

Amidst the wildly dancing vines, Li Ang slowly climbed out of the metal torture device, casually patted his body, and the holes on the outside of the Dragon Head White Coat instantly returned to their original state.

“The Crimson Mane Outerwear is still a bit lacking in defensive performance against this kind of purely physical, sharp piercing damage…”

He sighed. Underneath the white coat, the skin that had automatically evolved into pore-like depressions (to prevent being pierced by the spikes) gradually returned to normal,

No longer resembling a strawberry that could cause trypophobia sufferers to scream.

“Where are the others…”

Li Ang stood in place and looked around.

This was roughly a large, dimly lit, square room, with a large number of identical Iron Maidens placed on the ground.

All the torture devices were neatly arranged like chess pieces on a chessboard.

Some were tightly closed,

While others were open, revealing their hollow insides.

With the help of the Night Vision Amplification spell and his biologically modified eyeballs, Li Ang could clearly see that many of the open torture devices had long-dried black bloodstains,

With withered, shriveled bits of flesh remaining on the tips of the spikes.

There were also large pools of dried bloodstains on the floor of the hall.

What is this, a place dedicated to storing torture devices?

Li Ang frowned slightly. After stepping into the halo, he was directly teleported into a torture device.

The large-scale detection of Mind Power didn't detect any intelligent creatures like him in this room either.

In other words, the halo teleportation array teleported everyone to different locations.

“Strange, is the purpose of the halo teleportation to kill the players? Or is this a part of the trial? But putting so many coffin torture devices here doesn't seem to fit the definition of 'Holy Mountain'…”

Li Ang was muttering to himself when suddenly, a chaotic, gender-indistinct sound, yet revealing an air of solemn, sacred aura, rang out in his ears.

【Seek... the path... to ascend, complete... your... trial】

The sound seemed to have some connection issues, intermittent, but it was definitely not a movement fabricated by spiritual energy or other power systems.

A path to ascend?

Li Ang looked around the room. There was no obvious trapdoor on the ceiling, but there was a door at the end of the room that looked like it could be opened.

Li Ang didn't rush to leave. Instead, he picked up the Lightning Eleven walkie-talkie given to him by Hohenheim and pressed the button. “Hello? Hello? This is Li Risheng, can you hear me?”

The walkie-talkie crackled with static. After a moment, Ding Zhensi's voice rang out on the channel, “Yes.”

Being able to hear each other meant that the straight-line distance between them was less than ten kilometers.

Li Ang was certain and asked, “Did you hear the prompt just now? Where are you now?”

“I heard the prompt just now too. It told us to find a path to ascend. That shouldn't be a system prompt, but some kind of mechanism that was automatically triggered in this area.

I'm now, cough, in a closed room with a large number of stone statues of human figures. These statues might be to commemorate the brave men who came to the Holy Mountain in the past…”

Ding Zhensi said, “Some of them have been destroyed. There are four hundred and seventy-seven of them left.

Wait, the statues of that team of brave men from the murals we saw in the underground palace are also here, placed at the very front of all the statues.

There are also statues of them in the middle of the statue square…”

“Wait, I'll talk about it later. Someone's coming.”

Li Ang's ears twitched. He pressed the walkie-talkie's off button and silently flashed into a half-open torture device, shrinking his body and hiding.

Tap, tap, tap.

An orange light lit up at the end of the room.

Strange footsteps sounded,

Like someone wearing a pair of extremely large boots, soaked in water, stepping on a marble floor, giving a sticky, dragging visual sensation.

The room was still dim. With the help of the Night Vision Amplification spell, Li Ang could clearly see,

A pair of strong, thick legs slowly stepped out from the end of the room, flashing out of the blind spot of the torture device and appearing in Li Ang's field of vision.

This visitor looked very… bizarre.

Its lower body had two legs comparable to a muscular man,

The legs weren't wearing pants or shoes, but were inlaid with a large number of sharp, thin metal sheets, deeply embedded in the skin and muscles, forming brownish-yellow scabs of pus and blood at the wounds.

Some of the scabs had fallen off, and pus and blood were sliding down, which was unsettling to look at.

Its feet were covered with octopus-like suckers, which secreted a viscous and constantly emitting irritating transparent liquid.

When it stepped on the ground, it made a "zi" sound.

And its upper body was even more grotesque.

It was basically a spherical aggregate of human arms, nearly two meters in diameter.

The arms came from various sources, with different skin tones and shapes. One green arm was so strong that it was comparable to an industrial crane arm,

Appearing to originate from different hosts.

More than a dozen arms extended from both sides of the spherical aggregate, holding different things,

Including but not limited to a particularly old and tattered kerosene lamp, a slightly rusty sword, a flintlock gun, a set of tools for imprisoning criminals (handcuffs, shackles, etc.)…

Most notably, among the green, strong arms, was a dark key chain,

With dozens of keys hanging from it.

As this unique-looking creature walked, it made a tinkling sound like a wind chime.

Did this thing run out of the Silent Hill set?

Li Ang hid in the Iron Maiden torture device. The vines extending from his fingertips held him firmly in place, preventing him from coming into contact with the spikes inside the torture device.

The spikes on the inside of these open torture devices wouldn't actively extend like the previous one.

But one thing was the same.

The tips of all the spikes were coated with some kind of mineral powder…

Li Ang silently raised his arm and gently touched the spikes through the Mirage Dragon Crimson Mane Outerwear.

The powdery substance at the tip of the spike began to absorb energy at a slow rate after coming into contact with the skin of his fingertip.

So that's how it is.

Li Ang's heart stirred. If an ordinary brave man was teleported in and pierced by the spikes, the energy in their body would be slowly absorbed by these mineral powders.

If they were weaker, they might not even be able to break free from the torture device and would be directly trapped and killed in the Iron Maiden—the bloody torture devices in the room silently proved this point.

But, why is that?

Is the meaning of the halo teleportation to harm the brave men? Or is the entire Holy Mountain trial a lie…

Li Ang's eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at the deformed creature.

It was holding a kerosene lamp and walking seemingly aimlessly in the room.

After walking a certain distance, it seemed to suddenly remember something and took a tattered mop from one of its arms.

It dipped it in the viscous liquid from its feet and started mopping the ground with dried bloodstains.

The bloodstains on the ground had been left over from who knows what era and were firmly attached to the surface. The tattered mop couldn't clean them at all and only made them dirtier.

But the deformed creature seemed oblivious and silently mopped the floor.

After about three minutes, the deformed creature slowly put away the mop, as if it was slow to react, and carried the mop on its shoulder (that is, above the spherical aggregate of arms), heading towards the Iron Maiden torture device that Li Ang had escaped from earlier.

It stopped in front of the torture device, reached out its arm,

And gently touched the torture device that was open a crack, but had no bloodstains inside.

A gurgling sound that might have been "confusion" sounded from the spherical aggregate.

After pausing for a few seconds, it slowly turned around and walked towards the end of the room.

In another Iron Maiden torture device, Li Ang, who had been observing the deformed creature's behavior pattern, narrowed his eyes.

Although that monster wasn't very intelligent and looked particularly clumsy and slow, it should be a servant or a servant of this area.

Responsible for cleaning the area, imprisoning the prisoners who appeared in the Iron Maiden, and using the handcuffs and shackles it carried to imprison the prisoners in another location.

Interesting.

Li Ang quietly flashed out of the torture device, and his figure, hidden in the darkness, stepped on the invisible steps formed by the Soaring Cloud Steps, suspended above all the Iron Maiden torture devices,

Approaching the wall,

Keeping a distance, he hung behind the deformed creature, tracking it.

He wanted to see what other behavioral patterns this creature would have.

The deformed creature didn't know that there was a tracker behind it. It silently walked out of the room, through a dimly lit corridor, and came to another spacious room.

The entire building that Li Ang was in, as it stood, was somewhat similar to a large-scale castle.

The new room that the deformed creature had arrived at should be the castle's dining room, with a long wooden dining table in the middle.

The deformed creature took a pile of potato-like fruits from a cabinet next to the dining room, casually washed them with the constantly dripping water pipe on the dining room wall,

Then returned to the dining table, cut open the fruits with a rusty sword, and began to eat.

After finishing eating, it even cleaned the sword and the plates it had used, stood up in a swaying manner, and continued to the next room covered in dirt and planted with some kind of crop, starting to water and cultivate.

“…”

Li Ang watched the slow-moving deformed monster, frowned slightly, and finally stopped hiding.

Casually letting go of the vines that were clinging to the ceiling, he fell from the air and landed in front of the deformed monster that was irrigating the farmland.