Chapter Six: Prohibition

Lu Yuanming kicked the monster's corpse away from the opening, then carefully climbed out.

The area around him was quiet. Apart from some indistinct noises in the distance, the rooftop and the floors below were utterly silent.

Clearly, more than ten days had passed, and the monsters had moved on.

The monster he'd killed had already begun to rot. Much of its hindquarters had been gnawed away, exposing black innards and bones in several places. It looked even more grotesque and horrifying now, and the room was filled with a pungent stench of decay.

Lu Yuanming soon left the room, checking his body as he went.

His body had been badly damaged, and he'd been on the verge of death, yet it had completely healed. His legs and arms were unscathed, and even the cuts where the rebar had pierced him had closed up entirely.

"Is it because I returned to my body?"

Lu Yuanming murmured under his breath. He couldn't be sure whether crossing over was what had healed him, or whether his physical body had somehow healed his soul.

Whatever the reason, it was a tremendous stroke of luck.

Next, Lu Yuanming explored the floor with extreme caution, steering clear of the damaged walls and gaping windows so he wouldn't be seen from outside.

The monsters had exceptionally keen eyesight. They'd spotted the three of them on the rooftop from the ground floor. Lu Yuanming had no idea how many monsters there were in this afterlife, or whether they could see him from an enormous distance. To avoid any mishaps, he had no choice but to stay as hidden as possible.

When he'd first arrived in this afterlife, monsters had chased him while he was still on the rooftop, so he hadn't had a chance to explore the building. As he made his way through the floors now, Lu Yuanming found that the building had probably been an office block. The scraps of paper on the floor showed vague traces of business charts and the like, but they were of little use.

There was also some damaged furniture. Among it, Lu Yuanming found a pen, a phone power bank, a nail clipper, cosmetics, and various odds and ends. Most of them were broken. The more technologically advanced an item was, the worse its condition. The phone power bank, for example, was completely wrecked, while things like the nail clipper were still usable.

Carefully peering outside through the windows and holes in the walls, Lu Yuanming spotted several New York City landmarks. But they were all badly damaged, as if they'd been through a war. Some had collapsed, others were in ruins; almost none of the buildings were intact.

Why was the afterlife a ruined New York City?

Who had built this city in the afterlife?

Had it been recreated to match the Living World exactly?

And why was it in ruins? Had a war really taken place?

These questions baffled Lu Yuanming.

As he explored, Lu Yuanming confirmed again and again that he really had grown stronger.

Judging by the force he could summon with his hands and how fast he could run, he'd become sturdier, stronger, and faster. He hadn't reached an absurd level, but the improvement in his strength and speed was unmistakable. In just over ten days, he'd gone from a feeble addict to the level of a brawny man who exercised regularly.

After testing himself several times, Lu Yuanming was certain that his strengthened soul was no illusion.

That meant the White Light Particles released when he killed monsters really could strengthen his soul!

But that also meant he had to attack and kill monsters to get more White Light Particles. That was a gamble with his life.

As time passed, Lu Yuanming reached the middle floors of the building after more than ten hours of exploration. Afraid there might be monsters lurking inside, he'd searched every floor with extreme care, which naturally made his progress very slow. Then, in the middle section, he found the remains of Black and White Two Fools.

The two bodies were long past recognizable. Their flesh, organs, and bones had all been devoured by the monsters, leaving only a little blood and a few bone fragments to show that they'd once been human.

When Lu Yuanming saw the remains of Black and White Two Fools, he felt no satisfaction at having avenged himself. He was only terrified, trembling all over and wanting to throw up.

It took him a long while to overcome his nausea and fear enough to search the floor carefully, especially the area around the two sets of remains. Sure enough, he found the White Police Officer's pistol!

When he found it, Lu Yuanming's heart raced so hard he nearly fainted. He gripped the pistol tightly. Only after a long while did he remember what to do. He cautiously aimed the muzzle ahead, then checked the pistol's magazine.

This was the first time in Lu Yuanming's life he'd ever handled a gun. The guns he'd used in military training didn't count. You couldn't just handle those as you pleased; they'd simply be put on the ground for you to crawl over and fire one shot. He didn't know how to load or unload bullets, or how to remove or insert a magazine.

This was the first time Lu Yuanming had touched a gun in his life. He copied the way he remembered seeing the White Police Officer remove the magazine, checking the grip at the rear of the gun. Sure enough, he managed to take the magazine out.

"Please, let there be one or two bullets left. Just one or two..."

As Lu Yuanming murmured, he looked inside the magazine. What he saw made him freeze.

It was missing only three bullets!

How was that possible?!

Lu Yuanming fell into deep thought.

It was something he couldn't make sense of.

For the moment, Lu Yuanming even forgot the fear he'd felt at the sight of the two bodies. He began examining the floor.

The remains of Black and White Two Fools had been torn apart, but their positions gave a rough idea of where they'd died: in the middle of this floor, in a spacious hall with excellent visibility, where monsters would have been unlikely to ambush them from either side.

Judging by how fast the monsters had run, the White Police Officer should've had time to empty the pistol into them as soon as he spotted them. The monsters were nowhere near fast enough to reach him in that time.

So why had he used only three bullets?

Lu Yuanming couldn't figure it out. He even tried to reenact the White Police Officer's actions in the middle of the hall.

See a monster. Raise the pistol. Pull the trigger. Bang, the first shot. Bang, the second. Bang, the third...

No!

Lu Yuanming suddenly snapped back to his senses. Going by his reenactment, the White Police Officer should've emptied the entire magazine. Something else must have happened, making him fire only three shots. Could the Black Homeless Man have betrayed him again?

No, that didn't make sense either. From what Lu Yuanming knew about the United States, racial divisions between white and Black people were extremely severe, to the point of tearing American society apart. Gender divisions were just as bad. The White Police Officer couldn't have failed to guard against the Black Homeless Man after seeing him betray him. The positions of their remains proved it: the Black Homeless Man's remains were at least five meters away from the White Police Officer's.

So Lu Yuanming guessed something else must have happened. The White Police Officer had pulled the trigger three times, then given up shooting...

"The pistol didn't work?!"

Lu Yuanming reached that conclusion.

In the scene he'd imagined, the only reason the White Police Officer would've been alarmed was if the pistol had failed to fire, or if its shots had had no effect. That would explain why he tried a second time, then a third, only to get the same result. After that, his reaction would've been to run in a panic, not to stay where he was and keep shooting. After three failures in a row, no one would try a fourth time in a life-or-death situation.

When Lu Yuanming realized that might be what had happened, his heart sank.

Guns were humanity's most powerful modern weapons. Leaving aside vehicles and strategic weapons, they were the most practical weapons available to an individual, and a symbol of humanity's dominance over every other creature on Earth.

If guns were useless, whether because they couldn't cause damage or because their bullets couldn't even fire, humanity's military might would be thrown back hundreds of years, from the Firearm Era to the Cold Weapon Era. For people facing hordes of monsters in the afterlife, that would be the worst possible news.

Lu Yuanming didn't dare waste any time. He immediately pried a bullet out of the magazine, then, following what he'd seen in TV shows and movies, carefully braced a Stone Chip against the bullet's extractor groove and pressed down hard on the rim, exposing the gunpowder inside.

Then Lu Yuanming was stunned.

After the bullet was opened, the gunpowder poured out and quickly turned to sand in front of his eyes. It really was just like the gravel and sand scattered across the floor. Lu Yuanming would swear that it had changed: the instant it spilled out, it was still gunpowder, but as he watched, it turned into sand.

The bullets were useless!

Firearms had been prohibited!

At last, the afterlife revealed its grotesque nature to Lu Yuanming.

A grotesque absurdity beyond the bounds of science!