There was some sort of gelatinous substance condensed in the carved crevices of the brass doorknob, and just as soon as Logan's palm touched the metal surface of the brass knob, the dark red crystals in those crevices made a fine popping sound.
"Ding bell--"
The trailing sound of the trembling brass bell on the door spewed out wrapped in blood. The moment the doorway opened, dozens of eyeballs glued to their fascia rolled down the doorframe, bouncing on the street-side verdigris floor in a bizarre rhythm.
The interior of the tavern now resembled the stomach pouch of a giant creature, a dark red carpet of flesh covering every inch of the walls, the severed limbs embedded in the gore still twitching as if it were some sort of unfinished sacrificial ritual.
Mina's short buckskin boots kicked against the semi-coagulated plasma, the heels making a toothsome sound as they rubbed against the bone scum.
"Should we now..." Logan had just voiced his inquiry when his lips were covered by a gentle, slender hand.
Under the shocked gazes of several people, a ripple rumbled across the surface of the meat carpet - it was the residual Mirror Threshold digesting the oak bar, and the disintegrated wood fibers were reorganizing themselves into an eerie shape.
Mina's face was heavy, her rather good-looking face frowning.
"Lee, something's not quite right, the Mirror Threshold doesn't seem to have disappeared."
The sunrise rays sprinkled down, still unable to penetrate the layers of cover of the Misty City gas, the sparse crowd around them walked aimlessly on the road, under the shroud of the mist, they could only vaguely see a few silhouettes, the silhouettes walked in strange postures, seemingly staggering like newborn babies.
"Don't touch... " the warning of the man in black, Lee, was interrupted by a sudden tremor. The tiles of the entire street suddenly churned like waves, dark golden goo seeping out of the cracks of the verdant stone, and those liquids condensed into some kind of hieroglyphics in the mist, and Logan was in a trance when he realized that a string of phrases made up of cuneiform characters was burned on his retinas like a branding iron - 'because of you, because of you, it will end'.
Tremors shook the tavern behind them as it was shrouded in mist, eventually until it disappeared, and if it weren't for the blood flowing from the ground, then it would seem as if everything that had just happened was a dream!
"This..."
He was shocked as he slapped Mina, who was shrouded by the mist in front of him, and fixed his eyes on the humanoid that was originally half a meter away, but was now crawling in a reverse-jointed stance against the ground, with his swollen cranium squeezing the mist into a liquid state. "You... You..."
Logan retracted his arm and stumbled toward the ground in a heap, the Companion at his waist as hot as molten lava, inexplicably snapping and crunching as the sound of bullets automatically filling resonated through the empty, silent street.
He raised the pistol tremblingly, the hot body of the gun somehow became cold, the arm of the gun also became easy, everything happened as if naturally.
"Bang!"
The harsh, thick noise of the street slammed into the air, the bullet's trajectory through the fog brought up a spiraling mist of blood, and the massive recoil sent Logan, who had managed to get to his feet, pounding into the ground once more.
The monster moved quickly, dodging the bullet with a mere downward movement.
Even more terrifying was the weapon it held in its hands - the bone spikes drawn from the sarcoma of its own brain, dense with organs that were opening and closing!
Logan was about to continue firing when a sonic boom came from behind him, and some sort of hard object came down hard towards the back of his head.
A handle?
It was the handle of a tanged sword, and the force was so great that it smashed into his head with a dull sound, blackening his eyes slightly.
The monster in front of him leapt high from the ground, that bone spike pointed straight at his brow and did not continue to stab forward.
No, the monster once again transformed back into Mina's appearance.
"You..."
What's going on?
Mina seemed to see his confusion.
"Mirror Threshold is reconstructing reality. " Lee's Tang Blade suddenly beeped, cracks like bronze inscriptions surfacing on the blade, "Rule Three is broken. "
As if to confirm his words, the fog at the end of the street suddenly collapsed into a vortex. Some kind of existence beyond the laws of physics was descending, and Logan felt his pupils begin to flutter on their own, and all vertical objects in his field of vision distorted into monster shapes.
Rule #3 - Only a single domain exists in this place!
"Between weirdnesses, they tend to only kill and devour each other, that's why this rule exists, if this situation occurs, then it means that there exists a hundred times more terrifying than the tavern weirdness just now in this place! The monster that unleashed the Mirror Threshold earlier cannot be said to be just a servant!"
"Then I just..."
"That's right, you were affected by the Mirror Threshold."
Mina said through clenched teeth, her abdomen heaving together as bright red blood continued to trickle down her pale skin.
Looking back, something horribly depressing in the extreme seemed to lurk in the unreadable fog, and countless rustling noises raced through the fog, seeming to follow them firmly.
"Ahem."
Mina finally couldn't hold on and fell heavily to the ground, her pristine white shirt reddened by a bloody stain.
She had been shot!
A pair of scarlet pupils lit up all of a sudden in the thick fog.
"They're coming, the blood will stimulate them, run!"
Logan helped Mina up, wrapping one of her arms around his chest, Lee did the same, and the two of them hitched Mina to their bodies as they kept running towards the open road ahead.
"Run that way!"
Lee pointed ahead to a flickering clean white streetlight, a huge dark mass looming in the light.
"What's that?"
Lee ran ahead and picked up the semi-conscious Mina on his shoulders, while behind him Logan could only prop Mina up by her feet, carrying her like cargo and much faster.
The monster behind them remained at the same distance.
The two were getting closer and closer to the streetlight, and Logan finally saw what the giant thing in front of him was.
A car! A car that was not at all what it should be in this era!
"This ...."
Stabbing pain!
An immense tingling in his head!
Some sort of unspeakable fear inexplicably gripped his mind, but it quickly began to dissipate again!
Something in his head was calling out, but he couldn't remember what it was! Logan felt like his memories were being reorganized. Certain unfamiliar images were forcing their way into his mind: he had held this gun against his temple in front of a Dunhuang mural; he had excavated a Yin Shang sacrificial pit with some sort of ineffable tortoise shell engraved on it ..... Countless memories came like a tidal wave, and strangely enough, he was unable to recall all the details; he could only see a blurred scene, and all his memories were as if they were fictionalized, or, perhaps, it was the effect of the Mirror Threshold.
His body became hot as if he had entered lava, even the temperature of his breath came out a few points of anxiety.
Without time to think, Lee pushed him into the back of the car with Mina.
"Hold on tight! " Lee jerked the steering wheel, the tires scoring a black tire mark on the masonry stone.
A high wall of blood and flesh suddenly rose vertically out of the car's front windshield, its surface studded with thousands of eyeballs. Just at the moment when the car was about to crash, all the pupils turned to the right side at the same time, the wall was actually lifted off like a curtain by an invisible hand, and that Li's Tang sword swung autonomously outside the car!
"Take care of her! We have to get out of here first!"
The engine roared like a beast, and as the car tore through the fog, the street reflected in the rearview mirror began to distort and devour itself, as absurd as a phantasmagoria, but the residual warmth coming from Mina in his hand had to convince him that this was reality! The slabs of lapis lazuli disappeared as if gnawed on by an invisible maw, revealing a dark red carpet of flesh surging beneath. Even more terrifying was the unconscious Mina in the backseat - her wounds were proliferating translucent meridians, and instead of blood, some kind of glittering astral gelatinous substance was flowing through those veins.
Her breath was weak, and after the proliferating substance, her breathing was actually slowly becoming steady.
Looking at the pale face lying in his lap, Logan could do nothing but protect it tightly with his hands.
What should be done now is to escape from here!
In the rearview mirror of the car, the full extent of the city, or rather, the full extent of that thing, could be vaguely seen! The huge body took up almost a fifth of the city!
What the hell is this thing?
Why do I get the feeling that this car doesn't belong in this era?
What the hell is wrong with the world?