Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Inside Longguo’s livestream:
“Holy shit! Why does that elephant look like that? I’m about to piss myself.”
“That’s horrifying. I’ve got goosebumps everywhere. And why is Su Chen frozen? The exit is right in front of him. Why won’t he leave?”
“It’s over. He’s been targeted. Look at his face, holy shit, it’s covered in eyes! A ghost!”
The livestream angle shifted, bringing Su Chen’s face onto the screen.
Longguo’s viewers recoiled in terror.
Dense clusters of eyes covered his face.
Apart from Su Chen’s own tightly closed eyes, all the others rolled and shifted, staring fixedly at everything around him.
The image was almost too much to bear.
Many viewers with trypophobia fainted from fright.
“What’s happening? What the hell is happening? Is the Horror World targeting Longguo? Other people grow four eyes when they’re watched, but ours gets a whole face full?”
“This isn’t Su Chen’s fault! The Horror World is blatantly cheating. He already closed his eyes, and it forced him to watch anyway.”
After watching for so long and discussing among themselves, the viewers had roughly grasped some of the Horror World’s underlying logic.
They understood what was happening to Su Chen.
It was an impossible situation.
No matter what he did, he could not avoid cognitive contamination.
They could only place their hopes in the firmness of his perception.
They hoped it could withstand this wave of mental contamination.
But there was something they did not know.
“It” had first contaminated Su Chen’s memory of elephants.
He could no longer hold firm to his own perception.
Su Chen was desperately searching for a solution.
But under “Its” gaze, his mind worked extremely slowly.
Strange thoughts continually surfaced and obstructed his reasoning.
In this state, Su Chen could only mechanically recite every rule.
He hoped the words he had memorized would reveal some clue and offer a way out of this predicament.
He soon reached Rule Four of the Visitor Rules.
[If the elephants you see look different from what you know elephants to be, do not panic. Open your eyes wide and tell yourself that seeing is believing. (The final sentence was printed in blue.)]
Su Chen trembled, and a chill rose inside him.
The original rule must have described what a real elephant looked like, reinforcing visitors’ perception against contamination.
But “It” had distorted the rule.
“It” had prepared in advance, leaving him no way to live.
Su Chen was not someone who accepted fate, however, and his save point gave him confidence.
He continued reciting.
Soon he reached Rule Three of the Employee Rules.
[If, while inspecting the Elephant Enclosure, you notice that the elephants you observe differ drastically from the elephants depicted on the sign, stop observing them. Repeatedly tell yourself that the real elephants are the creatures shown on the sign, not what you see before you.]
Su Chen paused.
His muddled mind finally caught hold of a lifeline.
Right, the sign! The sign showed what a real elephant looked like. He could survive by using it to reinforce his perception!
Su Chen hurriedly opened his own eyes and searched his surroundings.
He soon found a metal sign bearing the words “Elephant Enclosure.”
Joy crossed his face as he focused on it.
The next instant, his body shook and a chill ran from his head to his feet.
The elephant pictured on the sign also had rabbit ears.
Su Chen was completely lost.
Had he remembered incorrectly? Did elephants truly look like this?
Why else would the sign depict one this way?
Perhaps this really was what an elephant looked like, and his previous memory was only contamination and confusion.
Su Chen’s perception gradually shifted toward the rabbit-eared elephant.
Then he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue.
The sharp pain cleared his mind for an instant.
No, that’s wrong! “It” distorted the sign! That’s why the Employee Rules weren’t altered. “It” no longer cared!
Once he understood, Su Chen despaired.
This Horror World was utterly treacherous.
It had produced an impossible situation.
He could stubbornly reject the elephants before him even though he no longer remembered the real thing.
But doing so would mean openly defying “It” beneath “Its” gaze.
When “It” watched someone, their perception had to align with “Its” for the attention to pass.
Their disagreement now concerned the elephant itself.
If Su Chen submitted, he knew he would certainly be finished.
He would become either an elephant or a rabbit.
Yet stubborn resistance was no solution.
“It” would keep watching, slowly contaminating his perception.
Strange thoughts were also constantly rising in his mind.
At any moment, they could drag him beyond recovery.
“This is so fucking unfair!”
Those were the last words Su Chen could manage.
His thoughts grew increasingly muddled and his perception began to collapse.
At the final instant before confusion swallowed him completely, he saw the lettering on the distant sign change.
It now read “Goat Enclosure.”
Wasn’t there no Goat Enclosure on the map? Or am I seeing the Otherworld?
Su Chen asked the question within his mind.
Then his entire consciousness sank into chaos.