Squeak, squeak.
A weird squeak came from the abandoned house by the road.
It seemed that someone was stepping on the floor in disrepair.
The light was yellow and dim. Figures moved about the room.
“Let me see, what have we got today?”
The self-talking voice came through the solid door.
Suddenly, the sparse sound of insects disappeared completely.
This was the house that K had broken into in the evening. However, the scene on the first floor inside was very different from what K had seen.
There was no furniture, but instead corpses attached to the walls, the ceiling, and even the corners!
Half of them were inside the wall and the other half outside the wall!!
Also, black mushrooms were growing on the bodies.
Under the illumination of the lights, many colors were reflected.
A colorful brightness on top of the black!
Some corpses had two or three mushrooms growing on them, the size of a baby’s fist, while others had mushrooms over the size of an adult’s palm.
A layer of spores was visible around the mushrooms. It floated up and down in mid-air. Every bit of airflow would make them sway.
At first glance, it looked like dust.
“Gone outside?”
The people in the house looked around casually but did not see the bodies that should have appeared.
There was a man with a face so pale as though he had been soaked in water for three days and three nights.
He carried a kerosene lamp and walked outside.
It didn’t matter that he ran outside, he had left a bit of something outside as well. He would fall down right after he exited the house before he even stepped onto the cement road less than ten meters away.
“Eh?”
Yet the situation was beyond what he expected. There was not a soul outside the house nor a corpse, which should have been lying down properly in his imagination.
The pale-faced man walked rapidly and looked at the place where the muddy yellow earth connected to the road.
Underneath this soft earth were land mines. Anyone who carried spores would trigger a chain reaction if they came close.
The special corpse-mushrooms underground would release fatal poisonous mist, killing the carrier immediately.
This was how it was supposed to go!
There had never been a mistake in all these years.
But this time…
The pale man crouched down and touched the ground with his hands.
What he felt was not the soft soil, but solid ground.
A closer look revealed that this part, the part where he had planted the trap, was a bit lower than the surroundings. It was like it had been pressed hard by a pavement roller!
Not to mention releasing poisonous mist, even the corpse mushrooms inside along with the petri dish would probably have been smashed up!
This was a huge loss!
“Who is it!?”
The low roar came out from in between his teeth.
“Master.”
Li Shufen stood behind Tang Luo. She was holding a bloody broom in one hand, while her other strong hand was holding K’s arm, keeping him from falling down out of weakness.
“Huh?” Tang Luo, who casually stepped a little with his feet upon seeing injustice on the road, didn’t look back.
“We’re staying the night here?” asked Li Shufen.
A bus full of dead people was right by their side. It felt scary even to think about it.
“Yeap. It’s a mission.” Tang Luo’s tone was relaxed as he walked towards the gate.
Mico followed up fast.
“Go over there and close the door.” Tang Luo pointed to the other side.
“Huh?” Mico was stunned. Why did they have to close the door?
“If there’s danger outside, closing the door can help to keep it out a little,” explained Tang Luo.
Mico couldn’t help but ask, “What if there’s danger inside?”
‘It’s a bus full of corpses, a corpse transporter, and such. Could some change happen to the corpses? Could there be zombies?’
“Our mission is to stay overnight here,” said Tang Luo, “Since we’re here, we surely can’t go out anymore. There’s a high possibility that we’ll fail the mission. We’ve worked hard until this point. It’d be a shame for the mission to fail. Sometimes one can be a bit harder on oneself, cutting off the way of retreat, in order to keep going forward.”
“I get it, I get it.”
Mico stuck out her tongue a little, ran to the other side, and pushed the door.
The iron door was a bit lighter than she imagined. With some sounds, the door to the final station was closed and bolted.
As for locking, never mind about that. It was enough that someone out there couldn’t push it open.
If danger really came from inside the terminal, they still had to run for their lives.
How could a living person get themself stuck in one place and killed for a mission?
After closing the door, Tang Luo walked toward the small house beside them, holding Ill Omens.
After Ill Omens was taken out in the mission world, it couldn’t be put back anymore.
The cottage’s door was not locked. After turning on the light, one could see an aged bunk bed, the kind used in dormitories. The lower bunk had wooden planks, laid-out newspapers, and a quilt. The upper bunk didn’t even have the plank.
There were two chairs and a table. One faced right at the window when sitting behind the table. The iron door could be seen from there.
There was an electric fan, an electric kettle for boiling water, and several disposable cups.
It was a typical guard room.
There was a clock hanging on the wall.
It wasn’t broken, it was still working.
The time display was 07:13 p.m.
They had 10 hours and 47 minutes before 06:00 a.m. to complete the mission.
A few nails were nailed under the clock, with the car keys hanging on it.
Aunt Shufen helped K to the bed. She took a disposable cup and filled it with a little water from the tap outside the door.
“Come on, come on, drink the water.”
She placed the cup against K’s mouth.
K grabbed it instinctively and took a few sips. Suddenly, he stopped. “Where did the water come from?”
“There’s a tap outside, I got it from there,” said Auntie Shufen. “A young lad can drink some tap water. It’s okay, you won’t get sick.”
K threw away the cup wildly and roared, “You’re sick!”
“It’s okay to drink a bit of tap water in ordinary days. But where is this? The mission world! God only knows if there’s something wrong with the water here. What if I die from drinking it?”
After the roar, K lay in bed weakly, looking up at the mottled ceiling.
‘I, a proper veteran, feel like I’m going to die from the mistake of a new newbie aunty.’
“Don’t drink it then. Young people nowadays have such a big temper,” mumbled Auntie Shufen.
Then, she looked at Tang Luo, fawning. “Master, I wasn’t talking about you.”
Tang Luo casually put Ill Omens down on the table, sat down on the chair, and nodded slightly, not minding it.
Auntie Shufen sat down right beside K’s legs.
The plank bed made a squeak.
K reluctantly moved a little, unwilling to have any further contact with this aunty.
What he needed most now was rest. He could only possibly recover with several hours’ rest.
At first, Mico wanted to get some water to gargle and get rid of the uncomfortable feeling in her mouth. Nevertheless, K’s outburst forced her to give up on that idea. She pulled her chair and sat down cautiously near Tang Luo.
Apparently, she counted on him as the only one to rely on.
As for the other veteran… Let’s not talk about him.
Tik. Tak. Tik. Tak.
There was only the sound of the clock’s second hand moving constantly.
Time passed by minute by minute.
Soon, it was midnight.
K had already slept for some time and woken up, though he still felt a bit weak, and his hands and feet were a bit numb.
At least, he no longer felt that even standing was difficult. His skill had cooled down long ago, and he had strength for a battle again.
Mico was already asleep on the table. The makeup did not cover her exhaustion.
Aunt Shufen was actually full of spirit. She looked left and right, occasionally getting up and moving around a little.
Tang Luo’s eyes were shut, looking like a meditating old monk. The aura of this mission world was even more abundant than the previous world of the dead.
It similarly met the requirement for Tang Luo to mobilize breathing techniques to heal his injuries.
Thud, thud, thud!
Dull knocks came from outside the iron door.
K jumped up and stood in the room.
Mico was fast asleep, not awaken.
Auntie Shufen grabbed her broom, carried it up, and looked prepared for a fight.
Thud, thud, thud!
Thud, thud, thud!
The knock on the door continued, once every second.
Finally, Tang Luo opened his eyes, picked up Ill Omens from the table, and walked directly out of the door.
“What are you doing?” asked K.
“Going to see who it is,” said Tang Luo.
If it was a bad guy, he could punish evil and gain merits from it.
Then how was he to judge whether or not it was a bad guy? It was very simple. Whoever that attacked Master Xuanzang was sure to be a bad guy.
“We need to buy time,” said K.
Actually, there was not much point at looking. Whoever was knocking outside should either be ordinary villagers or dangerous enemies.
The former did not matter, of course. As for the latter, they should naturally delay the encounter as long as possible. The best would be to drag for six hours until 6 in the morning, and all would be well.
“I can still take a look.”
Tang Luo walked past K.
“Damn it!” K cursed softly and walked to the window to watch Tang Luo walking to the iron door.
Tang Luo opened the small window on top.
The iron door was like a castle gate, and it also had this kind of small window that opened from the inside and allowed someone to show their face in order to see the situation outside.
Bang!
The sound of the impact was clear and audible.
Tang Luo saw that a face was just stuck in the small window, the mouth opened and closed, as he frantically moved forward.
It was like he wanted to stuff himself entirely into this small window, or through the small window into the terminal.
The eyes were completely white, with no pupils. The iron-like cyan-colored face was covered with rigor mortis. Its crazy gestures made it look like a mad dog.
Tang Luo could even hear the sound of its nails scratching on the iron door.
It easily gave people goosebumps.
“A corpse again, there must be a corpse transporter too!”
Not far away, the moonlight was bright and clear. K in the room also clearly saw the face that appeared in the small window.
At the same time, he also saw Tang Luo retreating two steps, raising the black revolver in his hand, and pointing it to the corpse’s head.
Under the moonlight, the monk dressed in a magnificent white robe held a gun as elaborate as an artwork, pointing it to a head.
It gave one a strange sense of misalignment combined with harmony.
“You—”
Bang!
The gunshot interrupted K’s words.
The head disappeared from the small window, but the body did not fall down and continued to hold onto the iron door.
There was also a hand reaching in through the small window.
“What are you doing!”
K ran out.
In such a silent night, gunshots were equivalent to declaring their presence to the whole village, like a signal light. None of them knew what danger lay in Feng Village.
“If the corpse transporter doesn’t die, I don’t think the corpses will stop moving,” said Tang Luo. “So headshots are useless. You can break their limbs to prevent them from approaching.”
“They?”
Auntie Shufen and Mico, who also ran out, didn’t understand what Tang Luo meant by them.
“Them,” replied Tang Luo.
Thud, thud, thud!
Numerous banging sounds echoed from the door.
A head replaced the hand reaching through the small window, making a silent growl at Tang Luo and the others.