Global Collapse

Chapter 909 "The Role-Playing Diary of a Fat Man"

Without hesitation, Anzhi Tinglan bent down and rolled forward.

If you instinctively turn around at this moment, you'll definitely be met with a ghostly face, and you'll miss the best time to escape. The next second, your neck might be snapped by the ghost behind you.

However, the road ahead was a dead end, and even if An Zhitinglan were given a somersault cloud, she couldn't roll ten thousand miles in one go. She rolled forward with all her might and felt her head.

She had already turned off the flashlight; she knew she was trapped in a dead end, with no way to escape. Even with the flashlight on, there was no way to light her way out. She might as well hope that the ghosts here were night-blind and couldn't find her without light.

She guessed that the thing blowing on the back of her neck and the rustling sound in those caves were the same kind of thing. When she was in the sewers, the things in those caves were attracted by her flashlight beam, which is why she was now betting that if she turned off the flashlight, the thing blowing on her wouldn't be able to see her.

Anzhi Tinglan had no other choice but to resort to this desperate measure. Unexpectedly, the ghost seemed to really have night blindness. After she rolled forward and turned off the flashlight, it didn't move again.

She pressed her ear against the wall behind her to better feel the vibrations from the ground. She could hear the ghost move clearly, unless it was floating.

Anzhi Tinglan tilted her head and pressed her ear against the wall while looking at the spot where she had just been standing. Of course, she couldn't make out anything. The cave was pitch black no matter how she looked at it, and no electric light would suddenly appear out of thin air just because she stared at it.

She couldn't see anything by staring, but she couldn't just close her eyes and give up. She had no choice but to keep her eyes open and fight wits with the unseen ghost. She couldn't move, afraid that her movements would provide the ghost with a navigation target, so she kept one ear pressed against the back wall and her two eyes staring at the direction where the ghost had just been standing on the opposite side of the back wall.

As Anzhi Tinglan was speaking, Gu Mian saw the fat man suddenly walk to the side, lean his back against the wall, and turn his head to the side, his eyes darting towards them.

Gu Mian went up and kicked him: "What are you doing, playing role-playing games?"

The fat man scratched his head sheepishly: "I just wanted to test how difficult this move was, Doctor, you know what..."

As he spoke, he glanced sideways at the opposite side of the wall again: "That's quite an action. Luckily, Miss Anzhitinglan didn't develop a squint, that would have been so unsightly."

Gu Mian ignored the fat man and told An Zhitinglan to continue.

She then continued speaking.

Anzhi Tinglan remained in this position for an unknown amount of time, and then suddenly heard a sound coming from the wall.

That sound was coming from somewhere else. Some night survival guides say that if you get lost in the wilderness, you can lie on the ground and listen to the sounds. The ground can transmit sounds from all directions, and you can hear things that ordinary people can't hear when you lie on the ground.

The same principle applies to listening while pressed against a wall.

She heard a very faint scraping sound coming from the wall. It wasn't coming from her wall itself, but from another wall or the floor. The sound was so faint that you couldn't hear it unless you were very close to the wall.

Anzhi Tinglan initially thought it was a ghost in the darkness finally making a move, but upon closer listening, she realized that the faint sound was not footsteps, but rather like fingernails scratching on the wall.

She didn't know why the ghost wasn't coming to her first, but instead sharpening its claws against the wall, perhaps trying to make them sharper so it would be easier to kill someone later. Thinking of this, An Zhitinglan became restless. She listened intently to the sound of the claws being sharpened against the wall, thinking that as soon as the ghost showed any sign of coming towards her, she would stand up and run away.

There's only one path in the cave, and the only way to escape is to run back the way you came. If you're unlucky, you might just run right into a ghost's arms. Although escaping carries the risk of close contact with a ghost, it's still better than staying here and lying there waiting to be slaughtered.

But after listening for a long time, she heard the ghost still sharpening its claws. No, she heard the sounds in the cave gradually getting louder. Even without pressing her face against the wall, she could hear the ghost making noises. The sound changed from sharpening claws to digging. She could even hear clods of earth falling to the ground.

A ghost is digging a hole? She was a little confused, wondering if she had misheard.

But the increasing sound of clods of earth hitting the ground told her she hadn't misheard; the ghost that had threatened her life had changed careers and was now a tunnel excavator instead of killing people.

Regarding the ghost's sudden change of life goals, Anzhitinglan felt it was inappropriate to offer any comments or suggestions.

She felt that if she didn't seize this great opportunity to slip away, not only would her life goals be ruined, but her entire future would likely come to an abrupt end today.

Thinking of this, An Zhiting straightened up, leaning against the wall. Her legs were numb and she had lost most of her sensation from maintaining the same position for too long. She leaned against the wall for a while, carefully analyzing the direction from which the digging sound was coming.

She heard the sound coming from above the passageway ahead. Was the ghost drilling a hole in the ceiling? Anzhi Tinglan couldn't imagine what the ghost was doing, nor did she have time to imagine it.

After listening for a while, she regained most of the feeling in her legs. Hearing the digging sound coming from the middle, she began to move her body, trying to stay close to the edge of the cave wall. The ghost was so focused on digging that it didn't notice the person secretly moving below.

The operation went smoothly; she easily made her way through the rustling digging sounds, with clods of earth falling from above as she passed the source of the sounds.

After hearing the digging sounds fade into the distance, An Zhitinglan stopped. She remembered the rustling sounds in the sewers; there were many more things in there, and not all of them were necessarily interested in digging. If a few of them were murderers, things would get complicated.

Further ahead lay the sewers, where the group digging the hole behind them seemed much gentler than the others. Anzhi Tinglan had no choice but to stop and consider her next move.

But before she could come to a conclusion, she felt a slight tremor coming from the wall she was leaning against. Before she could react, the tremor suddenly intensified, and the world around her began to spin. Anzhi Tinglan tumbled up and down several times in the cave like she was on a roller coaster. Fortunately, she managed to grab onto a protruding rock to keep her balance.

After finally regaining her balance, she saw a blinding light ahead, which made her eyes hurt.

After rolling around in the cave, An Zhitinglan couldn't tell which direction the light was coming from. She didn't know if the light was coming from the direction of the sewer or from the dead end behind her, but the shape of the light looked like a hole leading outside. It was probably a crack in the ground caused by the tremors.

It was truly a case of heaven never closing off all doors; she was just worrying about how to leave this place. But the tremors beneath her feet hadn't stopped. Instead of moving rashly, Anzhi Tinglan gripped the protruding rock tightly in her hand, lest she let go and roll away somewhere she didn't know.

She quickly noticed something was wrong; she saw her hair rising upwards like helium balloons. When she was in elementary school, she often saw elderly people selling bunches of helium balloons at the school gate, the balloon strings pointing straight upwards just like her hair now.

No, what she thought was above might not actually be above. Anzhi Tinglan felt an inexplicable weight pressing down on her, causing her body to plummet upwards, and if this continued, she would land headfirst.

Anzhi Tinglan quickly realized that the cave she was in might be upside down, and immediately adjusted her posture to land in a normal position before she ran out of strength.

After landing, the tremors around her had almost stopped, and her once-stirred hair finally fell back down her shoulders. Ignoring her disheveled hair, she immediately walked towards the direction from which the light was coming. Upon reaching it, she discovered that the light came from an opening, likely newly formed during the ground tremors.

She came to the cave entrance and looked out, seeing a large expanse of sky and the ground beneath her feet, but the ground looked somewhat blurry, as if it had been pixelated.

Anzhi Tinglan's expression stiffened for a moment before she immediately realized that she had risen into the sky. She immediately thought of the Upside-Down City, thinking that it was probably because the Upside-Down City had been formed here that she, who was underground, had also been lifted into the sky.

This opening was probably formed when the landmass was lifted into the sky, tearing the tunnel in half.

Anzhi Tinglan has never believed in things that are described too beautifully, and the activities of the Upside-Down City are exactly on the list of "too beautiful".

Realizing she was already in the Upside-Down City, Anzhitinglan quickly looked around, wondering if this large-scale event would offer any explanations or quests. After all, previous large-scale events had always had panels displaying explanations to players.

But there was nothing, absolutely nothing.

I wonder if it's because she's currently underground.

The tremor had sent her tumbling twice in the tunnel, making it impossible to tell which end was where the opening had appeared. But this tunnel was dangerous no matter which way she went; one side was a sewer teeming with ghosts, and the other was a dead end with a cave-digging master engineer—who knew if he had a penchant for murder.

If she goes back, she will definitely run into one of them, and Anzhitinglan cannot guarantee that she can escape from those things.

But she couldn't stay in this earthen cave forever. Fortunately, Anzhi Tinglan noticed that the cave she was in wasn't far from the ground above. She stuck her head out and looked up, and saw that the ground was only three or four meters away from the top of her cave.

"You didn't climb up there with your bare hands, did you?" The fat man's untimely voice interrupted the story he was telling.

"Or should we go back and fight ghosts?" An Zhitinglan said calmly, as if climbing three or four meters up from a height of several hundred meters with bare hands was not something worth mentioning.

When Gu Mian heard An Zhi Ting Lan climbing up the edge of the Upside-Down City, she reached out and held down the fat man next to her who was eager to try, to prevent him from putting on a real-life performance like before.

"This is my first time here. I was forced into the sewers as soon as I arrived, so I don't know if those strange buildings on the Upside-Down City are unique to your area or if they were altered by the Upside-Down City." Anzhi Tinglan said, clapping her hands as if brushing off the dust she had left on her hands while climbing the Upside-Down City.

"Strange architectural style?" The fat man was stunned for a moment and turned to look at Gu Mian. "Doctor, is the architectural style here very strange? Are there any strange buildings in Lianhua City?"

Gu Mian shook her head.

Guigu's friend also visited the Upside-Down City, but didn't mention its strange architectural style. Is it only in their Lianhua City area that the Upside-Down City has a strange architectural style?

What do the buildings up there look like?

“Upside down,” Anzhitinglan said softly.

"Upside down?" Gu Mian and the fat man repeated in unison.

"Upside down, when I first climbed onto the ground of the Upside-Down City, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, because everything looked upside down. The buildings were upside down, with the tops on the ground and the bottoms on top. The streetlights were upside down, with the lights on the bottom and the poles on top. I even shook one of the streetlights, and it was quite sturdy even though it was right next to the ground;
"In short, all the buildings I saw up there were upside down, even the trash cans."

Gu Mian and the others couldn't see the buildings on the Upside-Down City from below; they could only see a blurry outline. Little did they know that the buildings on it were all upside down.

"Have you seen any other people up there?" Gu Mian asked.

“As you all know, I don’t really like people,” An Zhitinglan said.

Her indiscriminate killing attitude in the board game certainly proved this statement.

Thinking of An Zhitinglan's performance in the board game, the fat man nodded in agreement with a serious expression: "That's the truth."

"While I was up there, all I wanted was to get back to the ground. I didn't actively look for anyone, and thankfully no one came looking for me. The Upside-Down City was thoughtfully equipped with signs pointing to the station, and those signs were obviously new, probably formed after the Upside-Down City went up into the sky;
"The signs indicate the locations of the stations connecting the Upside-Down City to the surface, but of course, the signs are also upside down, making them a bit difficult to read."

"I quickly followed the signs to the location of the Upside-Down City Station. The station itself was upside down, as were the trains inside. Next to the station was a large sign with notices, and it took me a long time to read it all, craning my neck."
"The message above basically said that the trains that travel to and from the ground only depart on Sunday mornings, and that once people leave on the train, they can never return to the Upside-Down City. The day I went up wasn't a Sunday, so I had to hide in a nearby building and wait for several days until today when the train finally departed. During that time, I didn't see anyone else. I didn't expect to see you all as soon as I came down from the train, even though I didn't see anyone up there."

Gu Mian could already imagine An Zhitinglan's cold expression as she sat in the carriage. Because the carriage was upside down, she could only sit on the ceiling inside. When she landed, the carriage was righted, probably because it had flipped over halfway there.

It's hard to imagine Anzhi Tinglan sitting inside, rolling around with a cold expression.

The coo peeks out, then it runs away!