Chapter 48 (1/2)

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!”