The Heart of Darkness

The forty-second chapter: The Heart of Darkness

Humans were the most complex creatures in the world!

Sometimes, they could give their lives for a complete stranger. Other times, they could kill their own family for a small gain.

At least, even Li Wei still hadn't figured out human nature. But that didn't stop him from making judgments.

The scene on the monitor left everyone in the room dumbfounded. Li Wei, however, showed no great surprise, because he had predicted this outcome from the start.

Zheng Yutong reacted the most. She stared at the monitor, fists clenched tight, as if that was the only way to ease her anger. The other newcomers looked horrified and shaken.

The scene transmitted by the monitor was a blood-soaked tableau. When Shao Yang, veteran number 114, led the newcomers who had followed him to the eleventh floor, he suddenly raised a hand and drew two rapiers. Then came a slaughter worthy of hell.

With a physique four times stronger than an ordinary person's, he easily wielded the sharp rapiers and pierced the newcomers' throats. In a single exchange, seven or eight people died by his sword.

That was only the beginning. The newcomers came to their senses and tried to fight back, only to discover that their bodies were no longer under their control. This was the restriction imposed by the Slave Scroll: anyone who signed their name on it couldn't disobey the captain's orders or attack him. Otherwise, their body would freeze for five seconds.

Those five seconds cost more than a hundred people their lives. In less than three minutes, Shao Yang had killed them all. Blood and severed limbs covered the entire eleventh floor. Various Skill Books floated above the corpses, all bought with the newcomers' accumulated points. Now they had all fallen into Shao Yang's hands. On top of that, more than a hundred Guardians floated above the bodies. With their owners dead, the Yellow Papers were now free, and Shao Yang gathered them all up as well.

Silence!

Both inside and outside the monitor, there was utter silence. Li Wei stepped in front of the monitor at just the right moment, blocking the screen with his body.

"Did you see that? That man's a madman! You're lucky you chose us instead of him. Otherwise, by now..." He pointed at the monitor, making his meaning clear. Then he continued, "Now we have another threat. That madman is clearly much more dangerous than the zombies. From now on, don't have anything to do with him unless absolutely necessary. Understood?"

The newcomers nodded blankly. Zheng Yutong knew Li Wei was using this opportunity to teach them a lesson, but she had plenty of questions.

She pulled Li Wei aside, smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead, and asked softly, "You knew this would happen?"

Li Wei gave a noncommittal nod.

"Then why didn't you stop that madman? He's a beast! He even killed underage children!" Zheng Yutong was clearly furious.

"I can only make predictions about things that haven't happened yet. Don't worry. Even if we don't go looking for him, that madman will come after us!" Li Wei's words clearly startled Zheng Yutong.

Without giving her a chance to ask anything, Li Wei continued, "Do you know that killing other Reincarnators like us makes their Guardians and learned Skill Books drop?"

Zheng Yutong shook her head in confusion. Li Wei felt relieved. Although this woman was strong, she was still kind at heart. Judging from the fact that she didn't know about this, Zheng Yutong had never killed a Reincarnator.

Li Wei took a little time to explain what dropped when a Reincarnator was killed. Zheng Yutong was startled to learn that killing someone could earn those rewards. She was especially shocked when she heard that fusing with someone else's Guardian could increase all four attributes. She hurriedly said, "So that madman has more than a hundred Yellow Papers now. If he fuses with them, wouldn't that mean...?"

Li Wei knew what she was worried about. It was something he was worried about too. After fusing with Guo Jian's Yellow Paper Guardian, all four of his attributes had increased by five points. If that was anything to go by, Shao Yang was practically invincible by now.

Even if his strength hadn't increased to such an absurd degree, it had certainly gone up. They'd better avoid him as much as possible from now on!

Once he had made up his mind, Li Wei switched the monitor to another floor. There, a dozen or so Reincarnators wielding firearms stood not far from five zombies that were feeding.

Perhaps some survivors who had originally been hiding in the building had run into those zombies while looking for food. Now they had met a tragic end. The monitor had no sound, but Li Wei could almost hear the sharp teeth tearing into flesh.

Thankfully, this was a virtual world. If the T-Virus existed in the real world, it would be an absolute disaster.

At last, the group of players on the monitor encountered the zombies. The few people leading them had some experience. They called out to their teammates while firing at the zombies.

They were using AK47 rifles bought on Shadow Street. These weapons had all been brought to Shadow Street from the real world through various channels. It was one way to earn points. Li Wei had no such connections. Otherwise, he could have spent a few hundred points on gold in Shadow Street, traded it for weapons in the real world, then brought them back and sold them for dozens of times what he'd paid.

Of course, Li Wei earned more with his Art of Stacking than those arms dealers did.

The AK47s roared, and bullets rained down on the zombies, spraying blood and chunks of flesh everywhere. One zombie's arm was even blown to pieces by the whistling bullets, but the zombies showed no fear of death and kept advancing.

These newcomers clearly hadn't learned Precision or Firearms Mastery, and they panicked when faced with zombies that wouldn't die. One of them failed to notice a zombie that had been shot in half. It bit down hard on his ankle, tearing away a large patch of flesh that was clearly visible on the monitor.

The man nearly died of pain. He lowered his gun and blasted the zombie that had ambushed him into a lump of meat. But the deadly T-Virus had already spread through his bloodstream.

He wasn't the only one who was wounded. The zombies' bodies were very fragile, but their teeth and nails were exceptionally sharp. Even the slightest break in the skin was enough to infect someone.

In the end, the five zombies couldn't withstand the power of the firearms. They all turned into heaps of rotten flesh and stopped moving. Li Wei switched off the monitor.

He had noticed that several of the women in the room, including Zheng Yutong, looked ready to throw up. It was no wonder. The thought of people downstairs being bitten to death, even eaten as food, would upset anyone.

As for those who had been bitten, who knew what they would turn into!

"This is enough information for us!" Li Wei rummaged through all the drawers and cabinets in the monitoring room and found a few things: a notebook, a map, and several walkie-talkies.

Li Wei opened the notebook and began to sketch. Based on what he had just seen on the monitor and the map, he drew a route, marking a few notable landmarks along the way. Zheng Yutong and the newcomers gathered around to look, but they were all confused. They couldn't figure out what Li Wei was planning.

"Pack your gear and get ready to move. We'll take the elevator straight to the underground parking lot!" Li Wei stuffed a pile of things into his storage space, grabbed a rifle, and led the way out.

"The elevator? The underground parking lot?" The newcomers looked at one another, wide-eyed. They were all rather doubtful about Li Wei's plan.

"Hey, I think this guy might just be pretending to stay calm. Everyone knows you shouldn't take the elevator during a disaster. And the underground parking lot only has one exit, so we'll still have to face a horde of zombies. Or is he planning to find a car and drive out? I really don't get what he's thinking!" Perhaps because he now had a weapon in his hands, one newcomer felt bolder than before. He spoke quietly to the person beside him.

"Yeah. I hope we haven't picked the wrong person to follow. At least we've got weapons now. If we really run into danger, we can leave on our own!" another person whispered.

Walking ahead of them, Li Wei curled the corner of his mouth. Did they think he couldn't hear them?

What a bunch of clueless newcomers. This wasn't an earthquake, a tsunami, or a flash flood. It was a man-made disaster, so the basic infrastructure would remain intact. The building had its own independent power system. Compared to running into a zombie that could appear at any moment in a narrow stairwell, it was better to take the safe and convenient elevator straight to their destination.

As for why he had chosen the underground parking lot, Li Wei had his reasons.

Find a car?

Only an idiot would do that. From what he'd just seen on the monitor, the zombies' eyesight had deteriorated badly, but their hearing and sense of smell had grown much sharper. Just imagine a bunch of idiots with guns driving away in a roaring car. Would the zombies let them go?

With hundreds of thousands of zombies packed all around them, even an armored car wouldn't make it out. Li Wei had chosen the underground parking lot because he'd found an exit route on the map in the security office.

Once they found that passage, they could leave without anyone noticing. Li Wei wasn't about to tell them that, especially not the newcomers, whom he still didn't know well.

Li Wei pressed the elevator button and heard it start moving. As expected, the elevators in the building were still working normally. Soon, it reached the twenty-third floor. When the doors opened, Li Wei scanned the interior first. Seeing nothing unusual, he led everyone inside.

He pressed the button for the B1 floor, and the elevator began its rapid descent. It took only a dozen seconds for them to reach the first basement level. When the doors opened, no one had expected them to reach the underground parking lot so smoothly.

Zheng Yutong was the first to step out. She held the Uzi Submachine Gun that had been enhanced by Stacking and looked every bit the heroine. According to her, once she made it through this mission, her rating would reach B rank. That was a major milestone.

"Something's there!" Zheng Yutong signaled for them to stop.

After half an hour of training from the middle-aged man, the newcomers had learned to hold their guns in something resembling proper form. They crouched down, though it was still easy to see that their hands were trembling.

Li Wei looked out across the pitch-black underground parking lot. Soon, his gaze landed on a shadow.

The shadow flashed past, like an optical illusion, but Li Wei knew it wasn't. There really was something lurking in the darkness.

One minute, then two!

Time passed slowly, and so did the cold sweat on everyone's foreheads. Even the clueless newcomers could sense the terrifying killing intent in the darkness. It was like standing in front of a pack of predators. This was an instinct shared by all living creatures.

At last, one of the newcomers couldn't take the pressure anymore and pulled the trigger.

(Third update today. Writing is hard work. I looked at the comments, and the posts reporting bugs were as numerous as hairs on an ox. An Hei was ashamed and said again: I'm sorry, everyone. Although I haven't replied to some posts, I've recorded all the bugs you've found. I won't change the chapters that have already been published unless necessary. I'll just fix the major bugs gradually in the chapters to come... As for minor bugs that don't affect reading, I promise to make fewer of them in the future. As always, thank you for your support!)