More Terrifying Than Ghosts

The road to the upper levels was paved with vomit.

"Ugh..." Scarface Captain Burke braced himself against the wall and dry-heached acidic bile once more.

His complexion was deathly pale, his gaze scattered, and that fierce gangster demeanor had vanished completely at this moment.

It was not just him; the remaining two lackeys had it even worse.

One already had snot and tears streaming all over his face, while the other was shaking so badly he could barely walk.

That made sense.

To survive surrounded by toxic fog and malignant spirits, they had been forced to stay tightly within a three-meter radius of Li Wei.

This was akin to forcibly strapping three people with severe ultraviolet allergies to a moving UV lamp.

The "Soulless Stance" emanating from Li Wei was torturing their nervous systems with every passing second.

"M-Master..." Burke panted heavily, his voice weak. "H-How much longer? I feel like my soul is being scrubbed with sandpaper..."

"Shut up and keep up if you don't want to die." Li Wei's voice came through his dog mask, sounding cold and muffled.

In truth, his own condition right now was hardly comfortable.

The wound on his leg was festering, and his physical stamina was nearing its limit.

Yet he had to put on an unfathomable, mysterious front.

Finally, the fog ahead gradually thinned.

A massive blast door, covered in graffiti and rust, appeared in their field of vision.

Printed beside the door was a faded two-headed eagle insignia, marking the entrance to the upper-level cargo elevators.

"We're here! Praise the Emperor! We're here!" That skinny lackey was so excited he nearly dropped to his knees, stumbling as he lunged toward the control panel.

He was a part-time "Wire Jack", holding a data cable in his hand as he attempted to interface with the door lock.

"Machine Spirit... Great Machine Spirit..." The skinny man tremblingly plugged the connector in, muttering an unholy mishmash of prayers. "Please forgive your servant... Please open the door..."

The control panel flickered red a few times, emitting a rejecting beep--.

A line of red Gothic text popped up on the screen:

[Access Denied: Level 2 Clearance or Sacred Code Required]

"It won't open?" Burke grew frantic, kicking the skinny man in the backside. "Didn't you brag that you could crack any civilian lock? Hurry up and get it open! The ghosts behind us are about to catch up!"

"I can't, Boss!" the skinny man cried out. "T-This Machine Spirit's temper is too stubborn! It's rejecting me! It requires incense and higher-level prayers!"

At that moment, the bone-chilling roar echoed from the fog behind them once again.

The shadows were closing in.

"Move aside." Li Wei stepped forward and shoved the useless chanter out of the way.

He glanced at the control panel.

The structure was primitive, almost crude.

This was the hallmark of Warhammer technology: it looked like high tech on the outside, but the inside was packed with antique wiring from thousands of years ago.

Li Wei did not bother trying to crack the code—he did not understand Gothic code.

Yet he understood circuitry.

This door was held shut by a solenoid valve.

As long as he cut the power or shorted the electromagnet, the latch would retract automatically.

He pulled out the tactical combat knife he had looted from the dead man earlier and directly pried open the maintenance cover beneath the control panel, revealing a mess of brightly colored wires.

"What are you doing?!" the skinny man screamed. "You can't cut the lines! That's sacrilege! You'll anger the Machine Spirit and cause an explosion!"

Li Wei ignored him.

Relying on his junior high school physics knowledge, he quickly located the thick red wire connected to the power supply unit.

Then, without the slightest hesitation, he brought his hand down and slashed through it.

Zap!

Sparks flew in all directions.

Click--rumble... The heavy blast door emitted a sigh of escaping pressure as its internal hydraulic locks disengaged.

The doors slowly slid apart to both sides, revealing the spacious cargo elevator car within.

"..." The skinny man's jaw dropped, forcing the word "sacrilege" back down his throat.

Burke and the other lackey wore blank, stunned expressions as well.

No prayers, no rituals... he just cut a wire?

"Get in." Li Wei put away his knife and stepped into the elevator first.

"Or would you rather stay outside and be snacks for the ghosts?"

The three snapped out of their stupor and scrambled frantically into the elevator.

Li Wei pressed the close button. As the heavy iron doors sealed shut, the suffocating toxic fog and howling ghouls were finally cut off from the outside.

The world went quiet.

The elevator rumbled and began to ascend.

Inside this cramped, enclosed iron box, the atmosphere began to shift subtly.

The crisis had passed.

The external threat that had forced Burke and the others to cling to Li Wei had vanished.

Li Wei leaned against the corner of the elevator, still holding the assault rifle, but he could feel those three gazes shifting from "awe" back to the familiar "greed."

People were just like this.

When death nipped at their heels, they would worship a straw lifeline as a god.

Once safe, they would complain that the lifeline was too prickly.

Burke straightened up and wiped the acid from the corner of his mouth.

He noticed that as the elevator rose, although the nauseating feeling that made him want to vomit was still there, it seemed... bearable? Or rather, his terror of Li Wei diminished alongside the disappearance of the ghouls.

He glanced at the brand-new assault rifle in Li Wei's hands, then down at Li Wei's limping leg, which was still seeping blood.

A cripple.

A sickly, disgusting freak.

Why should he hold the best gun?

Burke winked at his two subordinates.

The pair understood instantly, slowly spreading out to the sides and vaguely boxing Li Wei into the corner.

"Master." Burke spoke up, his tone devoid of its previous reverence, carrying instead a trace of playful ferocity. "Now that we're out of danger, shouldn't we settle our accounts?"

Li Wei didn't even lift his eyelids. "What accounts?"

"We paid the guide fee." Burke fingered the hilt of his knife, closing in step by step. "But you just took my best gun. That's robbery."

"So?"

"So, give me the gun back." Burke reached out, baring a mouthful of rotten teeth. "And hand over whatever treasure you have that makes machines obey you—(he assumed Li Wei possessed some kind of amulet). Considering you saved us, I'll let you crawl out of this elevator alive."

The skinny man regained his spirit as well, barking in a borrowed authority: "Right! Hand it over! Heretics like you don't know how to appease the Machine Spirit, that thing is wasted on you!"

The dagger was finally revealed from its wrapper.

This was well within Li Wei's expectations.

In the bottom hive, such betrayal was as natural as breathing.

Li Wei slowly raised his head, looking through the lenses of his gas mask at these three courting-death fools.

He did not raise his gun.

At such close range, the moment he opened fire, the three of them would swarm him, and a cripple like him would undoubtedly be hacked to pieces.

Yet he possessed a far more potent weapon.

"Do you think..." Li Wei's voice was very soft, yet it carried a strange resonance, "...that in this sealed iron box, you're really the ones surrounding me?"

Burke froze for a fraction of a second. "Cut the crap! Do it!"

The very instant the two thugs prepared to pounce—

Li Wei violently ripped the gas mask from his face.

He took a deep breath of the turbid air, and then—

completely uncapped the suppression on his spiritual threshold.

Prior to this, he had subconsciously reined in his aura to prevent these few individuals from literally being suffocated to death.

Yet right now, inside this enclosed elevator measuring less than five square meters, he unleashed the soul-black hole of being a "Pariah" at full strength.

Boom! There was no actual sound, but within the minds of Burke and his three companions, it felt as though a spiritual nuclear bomb had detonated.

That nauseating sensation was instantly magnified tenfold, a hundredfold!

If it had felt like motion sickness before, it now felt as though their brains were being churned furiously inside a blender.

"Ugh-ah!!" The thug charging at the front shrieked, clutching his head tightly as he collapsed directly to his knees.

He felt his soul being swallowed by some kind of chilling void, the intense wave of dizziness instantly robbing him of his balance.

"Ugh—!!" He opened his mouth, and what he vomited this time wasn't just acid, but traces of blood.

The skinny man had it even worse, his eyes rolling back on the spot as he slumped like a noodle, vomiting foam and convulsing violently.

His willpower was too weak, and he was knocked unconscious straight away by the terrifying "soulless oppression."

Burke was the only one still standing.

Yet his current appearance was uglier than a corpse's.

He gripped the elevator handrail for dear life, veins bulging on his temples as blood uncontrollably streamed from his nose.

He stared in terror at Li Wei in the corner, as though looking at an evil god crawling straight out of the Warp.

"Y-You... what did you do..." Burke's teeth chattered, every single word squeezed out from his lungs.

Li Wei remained leaning in the corner, his posture unchanged.

He simply gazed coldly at Burke, his expression terrifyingly calm.

"I didn't do anything," Li Wei said softly. "I merely 'exist.' And biological entities with souls like yours simply cannot endure my existence."

He took a single step forward.

To Burke, that simple step felt like the Grim reaper pressing against his face.

"D-Don't come over..." Burke screamed in terror, that soul-deep tremor making him unable to even hold his knife, which clattered to the floor.

Li Wei picked up the blade from the deck.

He walked over to Burke, who was already kneeling on the ground, and patted that face covered in cold sweat and bloody mucus with the cold flat of the blade.

"Want the gun?" Li Wei pressed the muzzle of the assault rifle against Burke's forehead. "Do you still want it now?"

Burke broke down.

In the face of absolute physiological suppression and psychological terror, gang honor was absolute garbage.

"I don't! Master! I don't! I was wrong! Don't kill me!" He kowtowed crazily, not caring in the least that he was bashing his head into the puddle of vomit covering the floor.

Ding.

The chime signaling the elevator's arrival at the top floor rang out.

That crisp sound felt exceptionally grating in the dead-silent car.

The doors opened.

Outside was the transfer station of the upper hive's lower tier; bustling human voices and the roaring of machinery flooded right in.

Li Wei put away his gun and hung the gas mask back at his waist.

Without even sparing a glance at the three men lying on the floor like dead dogs, he straightened his ragged collar, stepped over their bodies, and walked out of the elevator.

"Keep your mouths shut," Li Wei tossed out a sentence a few steps later without looking back. "If even half a word about me reaches my ears... no matter where you are, I will find you."

Inside the elevator, Burke lay limply on the ground, watching Li Wei's receding back. There was not a trace of greed left in his eyes, replaced entirely by bone-deep terror.

He finally understood a single truth: in this hellish hive city, the most terrifying things were not those clawing, howling monsters. It was this sort of "mortal" whom you thought you could knead at will, yet who could crush your soul into dust in a single instant.

Stepping out of the transfer station, Li Wei found a deserted corner and slid down to sit against the wall.

His hands were trembling slightly.

That burst of "full-power release" just now had left him feeling a wave of exhaustion and a splitting headache.

"How many more times... can I play the tiger's majesty with a borrowed fox's skin?" Li Wei forced a bitter smile.

He touched the flash drive hidden inside his tunic.

He needed to unload this hot potato as soon as possible.

And in this massive hive city, only one kind of person dared to accept classified secrets leaked by the Inquisition—heretics, or guild lords far greedier than heretics.

Li Wei raised his head to gaze at the endless iron dome overhead that still blocked out the sky.

"Bring it on."

"Let's see just how dark this world can truly get."