Is It Really That Big?

Jim and his apprentice scrambled to their feet again, still not daring to linger. Screaming, they fled the storage room.

Li Wei hauled Norman up from the floor and shoved him toward David and Ollie. Then he kept swinging the fire axe, severing one tentacle after another. After cutting off the fourth tentacle, the rest all retreated into the white mist.

These severed tentacles were not all that different from normal biological organs. They were just a little strange, nowhere near as grotesque as those Cthulhu-like monsters stuffed full of people.

Shaking the slime off the fire axe, Li Wei waited until no more monsters entered the storage room before closing the rolling shutter.

Seeing the battle finally calm down, David felt fortunate that he had not clashed with Li Wei. The floor struck by the fire axe had cracked open. He could not imagine how much strength it took to achieve that.

Was the gap between people really greater than the gap between people and dogs?

That question began to trouble David...

After taking in the brief yet incredibly intense battle, Ollie got up and went to Norman. He pried apart the tentacles wrapped around him. When the spikes embedded in Norman's flesh were pulled out, Norman let out another series of agonized screams.

"I told you there were monsters outside. Why did you have to go courting death?" Li Wei said indifferently as he watched Norman scream, casually putting the fire axe back into the fire cabinet.

Hearing that after narrowly surviving, Norman burst into tears. He cried out in pain while kicking his legs, trying to get farther away from the rolling shutter that had turned into a gate to hell. He looked just like a frightened rabbit.

A strange smell began spreading through the air, making David, who had been about to help, stop in his tracks with a disgusted expression.

Li Wei took several steps back as well, temporarily shutting off his sense of smell. Slightly repulsed, he said, "Come on, bro!"

Back then, he had not even frowned when blood was drawn or flesh was cut from him. Even when he had been pushed into experiments with barely over a fifty percent survival rate, he had never once shown weakness. Compared to him, this Norman was downright pathetic!

Ollie could not stand the strange smell either. After freeing him from the tentacles, he tossed the seemingly less severely injured Norman aside.

Bang!

The storage room door was pushed open again. A crowd led by Brent, the Black lawyer, and the supermarket manager surged in, wielding all kinds of improvised weapons.

When they saw several enormous tentacles still constantly writhing beneath the lights, everyone wore the same horrified expression as someone who had gotten up to use the bathroom at home, only to find a tiger drinking water in the toilet.

A string of curses and exclamations burst from their mouths. Jim, who had brought everyone back, saw the sections of tentacle still writhing and struggling on the floor, and cold sweat immediately beaded on his forehead.

Suddenly, someone charged at Jim, dragged him aside, and without a word swung a fist at his face.

The fist collided with Jim's cheek, snapping his head to one side. His body staggered sideways several steps, his legs caught on the clutter that the tentacles had thrown into disarray, and he fell into the pile.

"Oh!" The people holding their improvised weapons were startled by the sudden punch and cried out. The attacker was David.

After recovering from the danger, the moment he saw Jim again, David wanted to beat the stuffing out of him to vent his fear—the man who was first-rate at arguing and useless at everything else.

Thinking about how Jim had nearly gotten someone killed, and had even urged the other two to open the rolling shutter despite knowing there might be monsters outside, the rage in David's chest erupted like cola with Mentos dropped into it.

One punch was not enough to vent his anger. He grabbed Jim again, intending to land another hard blow on his face, but the supermarket manager, having come to his senses, stopped him.

"You nearly got Norman killed! You useless coward who only knows how to hide off to the side! Fuck!" Even while being held back, David continued cursing Jim. "If Li Wei hadn't gotten there in time, Norman would have been dragged away by that monster! And you? You just stood there watching!"

His furious words, combined with Norman's unceasing cries and screams, instantly branded Jim as unreliable and someone who harmed his teammates. Almost everyone looked at him with contempt.

"I... I'm sorry..."

Jim, who had been punched, showed no resentment at all. Shame covered his old face as he apologized. Then, together with his equally useless apprentice, he voluntarily took on the task of caring for Norman.

"So these are the monsters... motherfucker, how could something like this exist? Shit!" Brent bypassed the two men making a scene. Compared to David and Jim's mess, he cared more about the monsters before him.

He poked one of the tentacles on the ground with the broom in his hand. After a violent bout of twisting, the tentacle turned into a puddle of transparent, corrosive liquid.

When the liquid touched the ground, it gave off the pungent smell of sulfuric acid eating into stone. Brent and the others who had gathered around out of curiosity hurriedly backed away, afraid of getting any of it on themselves.

Li Wei also stepped back twice, clapped his hands, and prepared to leave.

The supermarket manager had already begun directing the others to clean up the mess. Li Wei could go back to eating his curry.

But David did not want Li Wei to leave so quickly. He took two large steps forward and blocked his way, driven by his sense of crisis. "We need to know more about these monsters! You definitely know something, right? How many more monsters like this are there in the mist? We need to know!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the people gathered in the storage room all turned their eyes toward Li Wei.

After Norman, who had been wailing nonstop, was carried away, the storage room finally quieted down.

With David blocking the way, Li Wei helplessly waved a hand. "I'll deal with it tomorrow. Right now, I want to go back and eat curry. Could you please move aside?"

David and the others were dissatisfied with that answer and wanted to say more, but they heard a voice that felt especially jarring and irritating at that moment.

"The blindest people are not those who cannot see, but those unwilling to look!" Carmody pushed her way out of the crowd, her hands clasped together, wearing an expression of devout holiness.

When she saw the tentacles on the floor that had not completely liquefied, fear flashed across her face. But she quickly adjusted her mindset, looked around at everyone, and pointed at the tentacles. "Open your eyes. Cast aside all rules and regulations. This was written in the book long ago."

With that, Carmody pulled out her Old Testament from her shoulder bag. But the people around her had already scattered, unwilling to listen to the madwoman ramble on to herself.

Li Wei returned to his little cooking station, followed by no fewer than eight people. All of them had a strong sense of danger and were unwilling to sit around waiting to die.

David, Ollie, Brent, Dan, and several other bystanders.

They followed Li Wei all the way to the makeshift cooking station.

"Even if you follow me, I don't know the exact details about those monsters. But I do know they came from the U.S. military base in the mountains. I even caught a glimpse of it yesterday."

Li Wei picked up the plate beside the grill, piled it high with curry, then sat on a box behind him. As he ate, he lectured the people in front of him, who looked like they wanted to speak but were holding back. "I'm telling you, there's food and drinking water here. A few dozen people can last another half month. Do you really have to rush out there and throw your lives away? Even with guns, the monsters outside aren't easy to deal with. Munch..."

"Anyone who goes out has no other possibility but death!"

The group was immediately unconvinced!

Brent tilted his head back, glaring down at Li Wei through his large, broad nostrils. With his hands on his hips, he displayed a physique far larger than Li Wei's. "Oh~ really? Then what makes you think you can solve it? I don't like putting my life in someone else's hands. Maybe someone could, but you? You don't have the right!"

Well, this...

David remembered the scene in the storage room, where Li Wei had swung the fire axe and fought the tentacles. He rubbed his nose, said nothing, and gave Brent a pitying look.

With his strength being questioned, Li Wei's eyes shifted around until he spotted a metal baking tray. He reached out, picked it up, and kneaded it into a lump of high-temperature scrap metal right in front of them.

Brent: ...