"Huff——"
Old Du ran all the way into the performing hall. An overwhelming sense of pressure closely followed him. A huge and invisible beast ferociously slammed into the door of the hall. The doors and windows instantly shattered but just as Old Du had said, the "Elephant" could not enter the building.
"Roar——"
"Roar——"
It continued to howl outside the building, but did not change its animal cries. It seemed only the roar of a beast could express its inner fury.
However, Old Du didn't care. After he had entered the building, he relaxed completely, took off the backpack from his back, leaned against the wall and panted heavily. It was clear that the maneuvering had exhausted him greatly.
Having witnessed Old Du hold back the "Elephant" all the way, it was clear that the animal trap was not something conventional. A beast trap, the size of a dinner plate, was actually able to trap a building-sized intangible monster for almost three seconds.
Steam-like white fog radiated from his body as if he had just been running his body in overdrive. His body temperature was higher than normal, so he simply removed his upper garment, revealing his robust upper body. His muscles were not huge, neither were his body lines very prominent, but Yu Liang knew that those people working out in the gym would easily be beaten to tears by Old Du.
Old Du's body was full of wounds. Knife wounds and a kind of circular wounds arranged on his bronze skin, possessed a strange, fierce beauty.
"Are these gunshot wounds?" Xiao Zhize looked at the round wounds and exclaimed in shock, "Do the other tourists have guns?"
"No," Old Du said, "The 'breaking' character charm can only do this much. It can't kill me, but there are always idiots who want to try it."
Yu Liang remembered what Old Du had said, that the effect range of the character charm was five steps, and it needed to lock onto the target with the eyes. If one failed to kill him within five steps, those idiots would obviously face consequences.
However, Old Du's wounds were also unexpected. It seemed that Old Du didn't have any defensive charms, so he would still be hurt when facing attacks.
Are defensive characters rare?
"Thank you," Yu Liang thanked him. With Old Du holding back, he and Xiao Zhize had managed to enter the performing hall safely.
"No problem," Old Du shook his head, "It was just consuming some materials."
"Metal spoons? There should be some for sale in the shop, I can help you replenish it," Xiao Zhize immediately followed up. By now he had learned to be smarter and didn't ask Old Du about the origin of the beast trap.
Old Du shook his head: "No need, I have prepared plenty."
He glanced at the two, seemingly knowing what they were thinking. He didn't hide anything, and simply said, "You must have noticed the 'non-mutated' sign behind your job on the main page."
"Yes," Xiao Zhize nodded, "My job is a financial analyst."
"Upon the completion of some special ghost talks, your job will mutate, granting you some special abilities, but generally not more than three," Old Du continued, "My job is a hunter, so I can make beast traps."
"Is that so?" Xiao Zhize fell into deep thought, and soon gave a bitter smile. "Forget it, I don't think it's going to be any use even if my job undergoes mutation."
He himself felt that even if his job mutated it might not be necessarily useful, thus he was not interested in this extra adventure.
"Give it a try if you have a chance, job mutation is just the first step to gaining a firm foothold here." Old Du just gave a hint, but he still had some things he didn't reveal.
In the whole zoo, there were no more than five people with mutated jobs, because most of the tourists would die in the first week. The incessant ghost talks would make them too tired to run, leaving them no time to explore the zoo, let alone getting the opportunity for mutation.
Is it right?
What Old Du said also confirmed Yu Liang's previous guess. His thinking was different from Xiao Zhize's - he believed that no matter what, he would strive to acquire a mutated job.
He could roughly guess what abilities the mutated job of a hunter had given Old Du. The first was physique, and the addition was definitely not low, after all, the "howling cold" state of Lv Xing was still suppressed by Old Du; the second was the beast trap just now; the third must be that mysterious blade technique.
"Old Du, that 'Elephant' just now, was it carrying any ghost stories?" Xiao Zhize asked. The thought of the invisible monster gave him chills. If it wasn't for Old Du's timely holdback just now, both he and Yu Liang would have been finished.
Old Du shook his head, "I'm not sure. Nobody has ever triggered it. Based on my experience, only beneficial ghost tales are this difficult to trigger. But for us, it's like a natural disaster that we must avoid immediately when encountered. If there are no buildings nearby, then you just have to consider yourself unlucky."
He thought for a moment, "Some people have come into contact with it before, but their descriptions are inconsistent. Some say it's soft while others say it's hard. We can only conclude that touch is not the trigger for this ghost tale."
This statement made Yu Liang pause slightly, quickly connecting these clues in his mind.
Indescribable.
Elephant.
Constantly changing.
Almost in an instant, Yu Liang thought of an ancient text.
Blind men touching the elephant, each describing it differently.
Some who touched the tusks say that the elephant was like a lotus root. Some who touched the ears say it was like a winnowing basket; those who touched the head claimed it was like a rock; the one who touched the trunk said it was like a pole; the one who touched the foot said it was like a tree; the one who touched the back likened it to a bed; the one who touched the belly compared it to a jar; and the one who touched the tail said it was like a rope.
"I think I can guess what its original form is." Yu Liang's voice was somewhat uncertain, but he had already confirmed the answer in his heart.
The two of Old Du looked at him, and he voiced his thoughts, "Blind men touching an elephant, it has to be an elephant."
This wasn't hard to guess. With all the information Old Du had, many people could have a moment of insight and guess correctly, only, the tourists here aren't like Old Du. They barely have the luxury to even stay alive, let alone collect this much information.
("Indeed, if you think about it carefully, we are like the blind men. That's why the 'elephant' we see changes according to our observation," Xiao Zhize said, following Yu Liang's reminder, the scattered memory surged up in his mind.
Old Du asked, "Blind men touching an elephant? I don't remember this clearly, what's it about?"
"The general idea is that several blind men who have never seen an elephant before go to touch it. Some only touch the tusks, others only touch the ears, so their perception of what an elephant is differs completely," Yu Liang explained simply.
"Is that so? Just this seems hard to exploit." Old Du slowed down, deep in thought. He pondered for a while, but couldn't make any connection to any key points, so he let it go.
He glanced at the entrance of the performance hall, then added, "This thing doesn't seem to have left yet. Let's just stay in this performance hall for now."
"Okay." Yu Liang agreed. They had been staying in the lobby ever since. He looked around. The hall was very empty, with only a few empty rows of seats. Not far away, there was a mobile blackboard with a few chalk words written on it. A female employee was near the front desk, but it looked as if she could never finish her work on the computer. She hadn't lifted her head to look at them until now.
While he considered asking some questions about the performance hall at the front desk, keeping the basic rule that special employees might carry ghost tales, Yu Liang didn't move towards the front desk but instead walked towards the little blackboard.
"No display today. Visitors are requested to enter the exhibition hall following the left path," was written on the small blackboard, and not far away from the blackboard was the circular exhibition hall. The hall contained several commemorative exhibits, with photos and descriptions hanging on the walls. From here, you could see three paths connected to the exhibition hall, each leading to a different place.
Old Du walked up from behind, stood in front of the blackboard for a while, then flipped it over to reveal the back of the blackboard dirty with chalk and dust.
"Animal cannibalism performance," six simple words with some childish drawings of cartoon animal figures, including a tiger holding a human head in its mouth, the human face smiling brightly, as well as wolves and lions tearing apart a human body, their faces stained with red blood. They had all been transformed into theatrical clown faces.
"What is this..." Xiao Zhize was stunned by the scene, his face instantly turning pale. The images on the blackboard carried a childish innocence of playing house, but the horror and weirdness within were not concealed in the slightest.
Old Du thought for a while, "It might be a preview of the daily exhibit, we shouldn't come near the performance hall in the next few days."
Meanwhile, Yu Liang moved closer to the blackboard, carefully examining the red imprints on it.
It wasn't chalk, but paint, indestructible paint, which meant that the information on the back of the blackboard wouldn't be easily altered again.
There weren't any preview dates on it either. Compared to a daily exhibit preview, he thought it was more likely to be a permanent program of the nighttime exhibit.
The night show?