Players, Please Board the Train

Jiangjiang was not at all surprised that he had gone to find the other children from the welfare home. She smiled enigmatically and said, "Why don't you think about why she needed psychological counseling in the first place?"

"You're saying she has a mental illness." Xu Huo did not doubt his own judgment for a moment. "But even if she has delusions, the fact that she happened to imagine Shang Shuming as a doctor can't be a complete coincidence."

"As you said, Shang Shuming was merely a sponsor of the welfare home. He wouldn't have had many opportunities to visit, so logically, he shouldn't have had deep contact with the children there."

"I've met Peng Ya. She's a normal person."

"Perhaps it's precisely because she's normal that she was abandoned."

He paused, his gaze sharp as he looked at Jiangjiang. "Were you abandoned too?"

"That shouldn't be the case. The Octagonal Gallery item fits your characteristics perfectly. Even if it wasn't specially crafted for you, someone must have gone to great lengths to find it. An Artificer even died in the process. The person who trained you valued you greatly."

"With such deep affection and loyalty, they most likely wouldn't simply abandon you over a personality flaw... Unless they died?"

Jiangjiang's expression darkened slightly. "I did foresee my own death, but it won't necessarily be today."

Along with her item, a semi-transparent square frame resembling a picture frame appeared, restricting his movements from a distance. At the same time, one of the gallery corridors expanded around Xu Huo, gradually pulling him deeper into the gallery, while the Mutated Animals in the frames lining both sides began to come back to life.

Xu Huo was constrained by the item. Though he couldn't move his body, his limbs could still shift slightly. He smashed a bottle of "Intoxicatingly Good Stuff" on the ground, and the boiling stench immediately drove back the few Mutants that had closed in. One of them even hunched over and vomited, though what came out wasn't undigested remains like corpses, but rather watery green grass.

Of course, not all Mutants were highly sensitive to smells, but that brief moment was enough to cancel out a large portion of the item's effect duration. Combined with "Progress Bar Disappearance," Xu Huo regained his mobility after repelling the first wave of Mutants. He carved a bloody path through the clustered monsters and returned to the central junction of the gallery, but Jiangjiang was already gone. And the moment he stepped into the junction, the eight gallery corridors began to twist and rotate!

Xu Huo experienced for the first time the side effect of having too good eyesight. In just a few seconds, he was severely affected, even feeling dizzy, unable to look directly at his surroundings. He simply closed his eyes.

Sensing his environment, he turned and stepped into one of the gallery corridors.

After cutting down a few Mutants that lunged at him, he suddenly felt a strange force appear right in front of him. His reflex sent him dodging to the side, but a sharp claw tore open his left shoulder!

Xu Huo snapped his eyes open and saw a Mutant standing right in front of him. He swung his blade and cut it in half, but though the corpse on the ground retained the form of a fierce beast, what spilled from its belly was nothing but flowers and plants.

"So not all the Mutants in these paintings are real."

At that moment, the gallery underwent a transformation. The original wall coverings were replaced by black-and-white checkered squares, the entire corridor was covered by a massive static screen, and the path ahead and behind completely vanished, leaving only endless darkness.

Xu Huo opened a door in the wall. When he stepped out, he found himself standing at a high vantage point. He jumped down and landed back in the gallery, but this was no longer the gallery he had been in. Looking back, the place he had jumped from was nothing more than a painting flickering like a static screen.

In other words, he had come out of a painting.

Switching to the "Crimson Sword," Xu Huo opened a second door, but again he emerged from a painting. Its content had changed to a wall with a black-and-white checkered painting hanging on it.

Pushing open the third door, the painting's content had been further supplemented with the scene from just moments ago.

Like a painting that could be infinitely magnified, the gallery and the paintings cycled endlessly.

It was as if the place was telling the trapped person: every time you find an exit, the trap deepens.

But Xu Huo only stood still for two seconds before continuing to open doors. He didn't stop until he had opened over a dozen doors, not because an exit had appeared or because he had found Jiangjiang, but because a black frame had appeared before him.

His Mental World also had frame symbols. Clearly, the Octagonal Gallery was not an ordinary venue item. It also possessed mental interference. Being inside it, Xu Huo would certainly be suppressed, making it difficult to open his Mental World, let alone materialize it outward.

But having found the frame, he had already succeeded.

Raising his hand, a door appeared before Xu Huo. He pushed it open and walked down along the moving spiral staircase. Before long, Jiangjiang's figure appeared on the stairs.

Seeing him, Jiangjiang couldn't hide her surprise. "I didn't expect you had undergone Super Evolution!"

The staircase kept moving. Xu Huo seemed to be descending, yet also seemed not to be moving at all, but the staircase delivered him right in front of Jiangjiang. He raised his hand slightly, and the two of them shifted from the steps into the book tower.

The book tower stretched upward almost endlessly, its size beyond imagination. Jiangjiang swept her gaze over it briefly, and actual admiration flickered in her eyes. Then she drew a semi-transparent frame in the air and slipped into it.

Unfortunately, the next second she emerged from the opposite side of the same floor of the book tower.

From far away, Xu Huo waved at her.

Jiangjiang tried again, but still failed. She seemed to want to summon the Octagonal Gallery again, but the venue item couldn't break through this Mental World. Or rather, the item had already been deployed, but she was trapped and cut off from the outside.

Spotting the round table at the bottom, she quickly jumped down and swung her Paintbrush at the materialized items on the table. But the item didn't destroy the materialized items as she had hoped. Instead, the black fragment on the table rapidly liquefied, instantly wrapping around her hand and dragging her entire body toward the tabletop.

Jiangjiang was definitely not Xu Huo's equal in mental power evolution, so she couldn't handle it with the same ease as Bai Kou had. Panicking for a moment, she slapped her waist, and a visible shockwave burst outward. Not only did it repel the black substance wrapping around her, it even blasted pixelated dents into the interior of the book tower!

Though everything restored itself the next second, Xu Huo inevitably took the impact. He grabbed the railing as blood trickled from his nose.

"Opening the door is indeed quite risky." Wiping away the blood, he hid the round table and used the staircase to send Jiangjiang up, tossing her into one of the rooms in the book tower.

Every floor of the book tower was a larger ring wrapped around a smaller one, layer upon layer, and it wasn't the core of the entire Mental World. Even if she started demolishing things inside, Xu Huo wouldn't be too affected. But before their next conversation, it was best to wear down her energy first.

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