Alomitsu

Chapter 22: Studio City (8)

The weakness of my arms made me want to bury my body in the water. I was so tired. My physical strength and energy was exhausted in a short period of time. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep.

Death was behind me. This was not just a peaceful sleep, but a possible reincarnated mouse without any sense of touch. It would no longer be me. I dared not continue to imagine being pierced by the seeds.

My arms were trembling. If my arms could not move me, what could I rely on? My tongue? My abdominal muscles?

This was completely impossible. I was still within the scope of human beings, and even more on the basic restrictions that nature had given to the human body.

When I turned my head and saw the seeds wafting towards me, my mind almost lost the ability to analyze and judge normally. I always thought that there were no other people alive. Like a hypnotized human, my entire mind was full of indescribable fear.

The stream reflected the radiance scattered by the “fluorescent grass”. This light did not guide me towards the right path. More specifically, this was the darkness hidden in the light.

Loose drinkers often said that “Beautiful mushrooms are deadly.”

(Note: The loose drinker applies to the Norse mythology of the 1-2 centuries AD. It comes from the dwarves who are addicted to alcohol and talk nonsense, also known as the hobbit.)

This was extremely correct and very appropriate to my current situation. The beautiful light would bring my death.

The capillaries in my nasal cavity were ruptured, and they were evenly distributed in the papilla of my nasal cavity. They were too dry. Lack of water could  cause the capillaries to rupture and bleed.

Tick!

The fallen blood spread in the stream, but it wouldn’t be long before it got washed away by the stream.

Obviously, when I crawled in the stream with my only remaining energy, I looked like an undeveloped amphibian. My whole body was full of water, but my nose felt dry. It was so hot and painful when air was stuffed into my nasal cavity, which was not scientific at all.

A child floated faster than I crawled. There were adult rats everywhere on the shore. They had grown from young rats to adult rats, and they were rubbing their teeth on the shore.

Their blood-red eyes were staring at me, wishing to eat me to the bone. I didn’t know why they didn’t jump into the stream and eat me. That would be much better than screaming on the shore.

From the corner of my eye, I looked at the floating seeds behind me from time to time. It was half a meter above my back. They were gradually falling. They wanted to use me as the soil for their roots!

In a panic, I grabbed the pebbles in the stream and smashed them at the seeds. The stones passed through their flying fluff. They had no effect and accelerated the speed of its landing towards me instead.

Getting closer and closer, what should I do? My eyeballs were trembling because of excessive tension. My nerves were excessively tensioned and my brain stem and anterior lobes were disturbed.

Puff~

I fell into the stream, the water flowed into my trachea, and I coughed violently. I only dared to put my head out of the water.

At this time, I saw that there was a blue eyeball in the middle of the seed. I didn’t think it was a bear’s eyeball, but more like a human eyeball. It was hidden in the middle of the seed and was looking at me.

In a rush, I grasped the touch of the cowhide scroll from my belt. I spread the cowhide scroll to the fallen seeds, and these seeds fluttered into the cowhide scroll.

The black seed rhizomes spread instantly on the cowhide scroll. The roots of these seeds began to split, revealing oval mouths, and neat teeth quickly snapped together.

The sound of “tatata~” kept coming from under the paper. They were looking for muscle tissue. They thought that if they got into the skin, they could parasitize its flesh. They were wrong. They got into the cowhide scroll and not me.

These open oval mouths were less than five centimeters away from me. If my speed was slower, they would bite my flesh.

Puff!

I threw the cowhide scroll on top of the stream, and the stream carried these unheard seeds down the river. I watched them disappear before my eyes. My back was cold, and my fear made me feel at a loss.

What reminded me were the mice on the shore. They made a sharp cry. How great did they want to eat me? They bit their forearms crazily and hungrily, exposing their pink bones. I was so scared that I hurriedly got into the middle of the stream and moved on.

Going up further, the number of “fluorescent grass” became less and less, and the surrounding scenery gradually dimmed. Here, no mouse could be seen.

The thick poisonous arrow trees around appeared in my field of vision. When I climbed here, the blood in my nasal cavity began to drip more, and they rippled around the stream like light rain.

“Poison arrowwood! There are so many poison arrowwood!” I looked at these trees with a pale face. Their fruits rotted and shed black liquid, and the air was full of the smell of rotten fish.

(Note: Poison arrowwood has strong toxicity, and its fruit is also toxic. It often grows in tropical rainforests)

I took a deep breath and crawled in the stream. As I went up, the stream became deeper and deeper. This could be called a branch of the river, and it reached the point where I could swim. My movements were like dog-planing, but they were not, because I could only use one leg. I swung my forearms and went through the water. I tried not to let myself breathe more air. The air here was filled with purple poison. Breathing the air here for too long would poison and kill me.

Soon, I broke through the poisonous mist, and the warm blood flowing in my nose gradually decreased and stopped. Fortunately, I left faster.

I arrived at a dark place. I was swimming in the water, not daring to deviate from my direction and just kept moving forward.

Shek Pik!

I was blocked by a huge stone wall . I couldn’t see what happened in the dark, but I felt the hard and wet stone. It told me that the road had come to an end.

Tension spread in my heart. Could it be that the place I came to desperately was a dead end? I didn’t dare to swim back. There were cannibalistic mice and parasitic seeds, but now, besides the sound of me sliding on the water, there was boundless silence and darkness.

Except for the occasional sound of water drops falling on the surface of the water, which made my ears prick, there was complete silence. I was at a loss. Where should I go?

There was a wave of water, which made my floating body rise and fall. My swinging arms began to slow down, and my forehead was faintly sweaty.

No one knew better than me that there was only me in this lake, and it was impossible for the calm water to make waves without a word.

I held my breath, and my one leg swinging under the water was softer and more careful.

Everyone had seen such a scene before. When the wind blew over the water surface, ripples would appear. Yes, at this moment, I felt the water flow under the water surface. Maybe some kind of creature was swimming underneath, and it pushed the water like the wind. Based on my judgment, it was possible that a school of fish was swimming.

I counted in my mind, one second, ten seconds, twenty seconds, one hundred seconds.

The lake was still surprisingly quiet. There were no more waves, and the movement of the water below was quiet, as if nothing had happened.

At this time, I shook my lower arm again. With this sway, the stalactites on my head shone with a faint white light.

Only then did I see clearly where I was. This was a magnificent dilapidated gate, but it was too old. I couldn’t even guess when it was built. It was very likely that it was built a thousand years ago.

The walls were engraved with various murals that had lost their color. The murals were inscribed with the invasion of time and nature, and each mural had cracks.

Here, the vines that originally grew in the soil survived tenaciously in the cracks of the murals. They were the size of an adult’s arm. They occupied this ancient masterpiece of a building and were entangled together.

I raised my head and looked at the magnificent ruins, hoping that they would guide me to the place where Rui was located. When the waves of the lake surged again, my undulating body following the waves made me notice how I should pay attention to the place.

The stalactite was the focus of attention. It took more than ten thousand years to form a stalactite, but this building was absolutely impossible to last ten thousand years. The person who built this gate deliberately built the building here?

Except for that, I really couldn’t find the reason why they carved this underwater cave.

They polished the surrounding stone walls with ancient stone tools. The only thing that was not polished was the stalactites. But why didn’t they polish the stalactites into the arch shape of the door?

Is it because this stalactite emits light naturally?

Glow? Glow…

Thinking of this, my slightly swinging leg stopped swinging, and I carefully watched the light reflected by the stalactite. It was like a mirror.

I saw it so deeply that even my soul saw it.

There was a black-gray fish head with bulging bumps all over its head. Its eyes were bloated and white. Its front half of the back was covered with arm-thick vine remnants. The light came from the dead branches on its back. It leaned back and hid its lower body in the deep, dark lake.

My body was only the size of its head!!!

In the stalactite’s reflection, it stopped under me quietly. The only thing moving was the circular ripples that I made on the surface of the water.