"Creak, creak."
Strange creaking sounds came from an abandoned house by the roadside.
As if someone were walking across its long-neglected floorboards.
In the dim yellow light, a shadow swayed inside the room.
"Let's see what I got today."
A muttering voice drifted out through the "doorway" where no door stood.
The sparse insect calls around the house fell silent at once.
This was the house K had broken into that evening.
But the scene on the first floor was completely different from what K had seen.
There was indeed no furniture.
But corpses were embedded everywhere—in the walls, the ceiling, even the corners!
Half of each corpse was inside the walls, and half outside!
Black mushrooms grew on the corpses.
Yet beneath the light, they gleamed in every color.
A riot of colors, all black!
Some corpses bore two or three mushrooms, each about the size of a baby's fist. Others were covered in mushrooms as large as an adult's palm.
A layer of spores hung around the mushrooms.
They bobbed up and down in midair.
The slightest movement of air sent them drifting.
At first glance, they looked like dust.
"Did they make it outside?"
The person in the house glanced around, but the corpse that should have been there was nowhere to be seen.
He was a pale-faced man, as white as someone who'd been soaking in water for three days and nights. He carried a kerosene lamp.
He headed outside.
It didn't matter if the corpse had made it out. He'd left a little something outside, too.
Anyone coming out of the house would collapse before they could even reach the concrete road just ten meters away.
"Hm?"
But things hadn't gone as he'd expected.
There was no one outside the house.
The corpse that should have been lying there was nowhere to be seen.
The White-Faced Man strode over and examined the place where the yellow earth met the road.
A hidden trap lay beneath the soft soil.
Anyone carrying spores who came near would set off a chain reaction.
The special Corpse Mushrooms underground would release a deadly poisonous fog, killing the carrier.
That was how it was supposed to go!
It had never failed him all these years.
But this time...
The White-Faced Man crouched and touched the ground.
Instead of soft earth, he felt ground as hard as stone.
A closer look revealed that the section where he'd laid his trap was lower than the surrounding ground.
As if a road roller had crushed it!
Forget releasing poisonous fog—
The Corpse Mushrooms inside, and even the "petri dishes," had probably all been mashed into a pulp!
A crushing loss!
"Who did this?!"
A low growl came through clenched teeth.
"Master."
Li Shufen stood behind Tang Luo, still holding a bloodied broom in one hand. Her powerful arm held K upright, keeping him from collapsing.
"Hm?" Tang Luo had seen injustice and casually stomped on it, but didn't turn around.
"Are we staying here for the night?" Li Shufen asked.
A bus full of corpses was parked right beside them.
Just thinking about it gave her the creeps.
"Yeah, it's the mission." Tang Luo spoke casually as he headed for the gate.
Mi Ke hurried after him.
"Go over there and close the gate," Tang Luo said, pointing to the other side.
"Huh?"
Mi Ke paused. Why did they need to close the gate?
It wasn't as if she were Chris.
"If there's danger outside, closing the gate might hold it off a little," Tang Luo explained.
"What if the danger's inside?" Mi Ke couldn't help asking.
There was a bus full of corpses, and some kind of Corpse Controller, too.
Could the corpses reanimate?
Could zombies show up?
"Our mission is to stay here for the night," Tang Luo said. "Now that we're here, we obviously can't leave. Otherwise, we'll most likely fail the mission."
"We've come this far. It'd be a shame to fail now."
"Sometimes you have to be a little ruthless with yourself. Cut off your escape route, and you can only push forward."
"Got it, got it."
Mi Ke stuck out her tongue and ran to the other side to push the gate shut.
The iron gate was a little lighter than she'd expected.
With a few clanks, the Terminal Station's gate swung shut, and she slid the bolt into place.
As for locking it, she'd pass.
It was enough to keep anything outside from pushing its way in.
If the danger really came from inside the Terminal Station, they'd still need to run.
The living couldn't let a mission trap them into dying, could they?
Once the gate was closed, Tang Luo picked up Omen and headed for the little room nearby.
Once Omen was taken out in a mission world, it couldn't be put away again.
The little room's door was unlocked. When they turned on the light, they saw an old bunk bed like the ones in dormitories.
The lower bunk had a wooden board covered with newspaper and a quilt.
The upper bunk didn't even have a board.
There were two chairs.
A table stood where someone sitting behind it could look straight out the window.
The gate was visible from there.
There was a fan, an electric kettle, and a few disposable cups.
A typical gatehouse, a typical guard room.
A clock hung on the wall.
It wasn't broken. It was still ticking.
It showed 7:13.
There were 10 hours and 47 minutes left until six in the morning, when the mission would be complete.
Beneath the clock, several nails held the bus keys.
Auntie Shufen helped K onto the bed.
She took a disposable cup and went outside to draw some water from the tap.
"Here, here. Have a drink."
She held the cup to K's mouth.
K took it instinctively and drank a couple of mouthfuls, then suddenly stopped. "Where'd this water come from?"
"There's a tap outside. I got it from there," Auntie Shufen said. "A strong young man like you'll be fine drinking tap water. A little dirt never hurt anyone."
K abruptly threw the cup out of his hand and roared, "Are you crazy?!"
Drinking tap water was usually fine.
But what kind of place was this? A mission world!
Who knew if there was something wrong with the water?
What if it killed him?
After shouting, K collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the mottled ceiling.
I'm a veteran, damn it. I'm going to get killed by some newbie auntie.
"If you don't want it, then don't drink it. Young people these days have such tempers," Auntie Shufen muttered. She turned to Tang Luo with an ingratiating smile. "Master, I wasn't talking about you."
Tang Luo set Omen down on the table and sat in a chair. He gave a slight nod, unbothered.
Auntie Shufen plopped down by K's legs.
The wooden bed creaked.
K reluctantly shuffled farther in, unwilling to have any more contact with the auntie.
What he needed most right now was rest.
After resting for an hour or so, he might recover.
Mi Ke had planned to get some water to rinse her mouth and get rid of the unpleasant feeling in it.
But after seeing K's extreme reaction, she abandoned the idea. She pulled over a chair and sat carefully beside Tang Luo.
She had clearly decided he was her only source of support.
As for the other veteran...best not to mention him.
Tick, tick, tick.
Only the second hand's steady movement broke the silence.
Time passed, second by second.
Soon, it was midnight.
K had already slept and woken once. He still felt weak, and his arms and legs were a little shaky.
But at least he wasn't as bad as before, when he could barely stand.
His skill had long since cooled down, and he was ready to fight again.
Mi Ke was asleep with her head on the table.
Her makeup couldn't hide her weariness.
Auntie Shufen, on the other hand, was full of energy. She looked around and occasionally got up to stretch her legs.
Tang Luo sat with his eyes closed, like an old monk in meditation.
This mission world had a little more vital energy than the previous World of the Dead.
It was enough for Tang Luo to meditate and tend to his injuries.
"Knock, knock, knock!"
A muffled knocking came from outside the iron gate.
K sprang up and stood in the middle of the room.
Mi Ke was sleeping soundly and didn't wake.
Auntie Shufen grabbed her broom and stood ready for battle, practically shouting, "Come and meet your death!"
"Knock, knock, knock!"
"Knock, knock, knock!"
The knocking continued without pause, once every second.
Tang Luo finally opened his eyes, picked up Omen from the table, and headed straight for the gate.
"What are you doing?" K asked.
"Going to see who it is," Tang Luo replied.
If it was a bad person, he could punish evil and do good, earning merit.
So how could he tell if they were bad?
Easy. Anyone who attacked Master Xuanzang was definitely bad.
"We need to buy time," K said.
There wasn't much point in looking.
Whoever was knocking outside was either an ordinary villager or a dangerous enemy.
The former could be ignored.
As for the latter, they should stall for as long as possible—preferably another six hours, until six in the morning. Then everyone would be happy.
"We can still take a look."
Tang Luo walked past K.
"Damn it," K muttered. He went to the window and watched Tang Luo approach the iron gate.
Tang Luo opened a small hatch near the top.
As mentioned before, the hinged iron gate looked like a castle gate. It had a little hatch, too, through which someone could show their face and open it from the inside.
So they could see what was happening outside.
"Bang!"
The impact grew louder.
Tang Luo saw a face wedged in the small window, its mouth opening and closing as it strained frantically to push forward.
It was as if it wanted to shove its entire body through the little window—or perhaps enter the Terminal Station through it.
Its eyes were completely white, without pupils.
Its bluish-green face was covered in livor mortis.
Its frenzied movements made it look like a rabid dog.
Tang Luo could even hear its fingernails scraping across the iron door.
It was enough to give anyone goosebumps.
"Another corpse. There's definitely a Corpse Controller here too!"
The distance was short, and the moonlight was bright. K, who was inside the room, could also make out the face at the small window.
At the same time, he saw something else.
The monk Xuanzang took two steps back and raised the black revolver in his hand, aiming it at the corpse's head.
In the moonlight, a monk dressed in an ornate robe of mostly white held a firearm as exquisite as a work of art.
He aimed it at someone's head.
The scene struck an eerie balance between incongruity and harmony.
"You—"
"Bang!"
The gunshot cut K off.
The head disappeared from the small window, but the corpse didn't fall. It kept clawing at the iron door.
A hand reached in through the small window as well.
"What are you doing!"
K ran out.
In the silence of the night, the gunshot
was practically a signal flare, announcing their presence to the entire village.
And no one had any idea what dangers lurked in Fengmen Village.
"The corpses probably won't stop moving unless the Corpse Controller dies," Tang Luo said. "So shooting them in the head won't work. You can break their limbs to keep them from getting close."
"Them?"
Auntie Shufen and Mi Ke, who had also run out, didn't understand what Tang Luo meant by them.
"I mean them."
Tang Luo said.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A barrage of impacts suddenly rang out against the door.
A head replaced the hand reaching through the small window, roaring soundlessly at Tang Luo and the others.
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