St. Mary's Church.
The hidden door beneath the altar was opened, like a gaping mouth.
Beyond the door was a spiral staircase descending into the depths.
Its bottom could not be seen.
Jiang Qiao stood at the entrance, twitching his nose. He caught a faint, strange smell rising with the air, a mixture of disinfectant and rust.
He did not linger.
He stepped onto the stairs and headed downward.
After he had gone only a short distance.
A thick layer of black slime began to appear on the surface of the steps.
It felt soft and fleshy beneath his feet.
Like he was stepping on flesh and tissue.
As he went deeper, strange things began appearing on the walls as well. Countless eyeballs were embedded in the bricks and stones, their pupils narrowed to pinpricks within cloudy vitreous humor.
In a daze.
Jiang Qiao felt that those eyes were watching him.
And the farther down he went.
The more pronounced that feeling became.
But in reality, they were all lifeless objects, specimens treated with a special solution.
Aside from the sensation of being watched.
His footsteps also grew increasingly clear within the spiral stairwell, echoing, twisting, and amplifying again and again, as if many people were walking alongside him.
After descending around sixty steps.
The staircase continued downward, but a platform appeared beside it.
A glass display case stood in the center of the platform, containing a corpse submerged in liquid. Jiang Qiao glanced inside and saw a young man in his twenties, completely naked and floating in pale yellow fluid.
Its eyes were wide open, its pupils dilated.
It was clearly dead.
Yet its mouth opened and closed like a fish's.
As if it were speaking.
Jiang Qiao stared at its lips.
"Help... me..."
"I... can't... get... out..."
A