Dead Man's Bunker

What piled up here was not trash, but once-living people—along with failed servitor products like the one just now.

They layered and stacked, covering the entire bottom of the pit like mud.

Hiss—boom!

The sound of metal being melted through by high heat came from overhead.

Those three Skitarii Automata did not give up the chase just because Li Wei fell down.

Quite the contrary, they were using Melta Cutters to violently dismantle that thin maintenance hatch cover.

Sparks fell like rain, igniting the dry, rotting clothes around them.

Li Wei ignored the piercing pain shooting from his thigh, crawling through the pile of corpses using his hands and feet.

The Las Pistol in his hand felt as heavy as scrap iron right now—against that kind of heavy armor unit, this gadget was too low-powered even to polish the target.

Calm down... Li Wei, calm down! he forced himself to think while panting.

Despite saying that, when the first automaton jumped into the bottom of the pit with a loud crash, Li Wei's sanity almost snapped.

Thud!

The heavy steel body landed, shaking the entire waste chute.

That automaton stood a full two and a half meters tall, its sole directly crushing the sternum of a mummified corpse.

Its head—that cold metal skull—swiveled left and right, its red electronic eyes projecting a fan-shaped scanning laser.

"Target lost. Initiating thermal imaging search." That emotionless synthetic voice echoed in the narrow space.

Li Wei's heart shrank violently.

Thermal imaging!

In this cold, damp place full of corpses, a living person like him, covered in sweat and with blood boiling, stood out in thermal imaging vision like a searchlight in the night!

The automaton's head turned sharply to the left—straight toward the corner where Li Wei was hiding.

It raised the rotary cannon on its left arm, the humming sound of the motor preheating ringing out.

He was dead.

Li Wei's mind went blank.

No, there was still one way. That was a crazy idea he had seen in movies.

Li Wei clenched his teeth tightly, even biting through his lip.

He abruptly grabbed a corpse beside him—it seemed to be a worker wearing heavy overalls, the body already stiff and cold.

Without the slightest hesitation, enduring the nauseating feel and that sickening wave of corpse stench rushing straight to his skull, Li Wei squeezed right between two stacked corpses.

He covered himself with that cold corpse like a blanket, leaving only an extremely tiny gap to breathe and observe.

He was gambling.

Gambling that the low temperature of this corpse could mask his body heat.

Gambling that the killing machine's logic circuits only possessed "slaughter" and lacked the intelligence to "distinguish a sandwich structure."

Dada-dada-dada-da!!!

The rotary cannon opened fire.

Bullets swept across Li Wei's previous location like a storm, sending flesh chunks flying and sparks splashing wildly against the walls.

That row of bullet holes was less than half a meter away from Li Wei's current hiding spot.

Pebbles and shell casings even bounced onto his face, burning him so badly he wanted to scream, but he bit down hard on the back of his hand.

The automaton's electronic eyes swept over the pile of corpses where Li Wei hid.

The red laser beam lingered for two whole seconds on the face of the corpse covering Li Wei.

Those two seconds felt longer than a century to Li Wei.

In his heart, he begged every god in the heavens and that damn Emperor as well.

"No body heat signal detected."

"Continuing search."

The automaton turned around, taking heavy strides toward the other end of the tunnel, where a drainage outlet led to the sewers.

Li Wei was utterly exhausted, panting heavily beneath that cold corpse.

He won the gamble.

However, before he could even let out a breath of relief, Inquisitor Gregor's voice suddenly came through his earpiece.

"Void-1, are you still alive?"

Li Wei tremblingly pressed his earpiece, his voice dropping extremely low: "Sir... if you mean not being beaten into a sieve, I'm alive. But I'm buried in a pile of dead bodies right now, and there's an iron hunk taking a stroll right next to me!"

"Good." Gregor's voice lacked a trace of comfort, replaced instead by a sense of urgency. "Data transmission is complete. But I triggered the area's bottom-tier defense protocols, and more automata are awakening."

"W-what?!" Li Wei almost jumped up. "Then hurry up and save me! Or throw a rope down!"

"The evacuation route has been sealed. We are forcing a breakout." The Inquisitor spoke at a rapid pace. "Listen, I left a gift in that console's data-slate. It's a Logic Virus Bomb."

Li Wei widened his eyes: "Virus... bomb?"

"In ten seconds, that data-slate will overload and detonate. Though not overwhelmingly powerful, it will suffice to destroy the console and the main load-bearing pillar above."

Li Wei looked at the cut-open hole above his head, through which he could see the console—still with the data-slate plugged in—flashing with ominous red light.

"Wait! I'm right below it! Are you trying to bury me too?!" Li Wei roared in a breakdown.

"The explosion will cause the upper level to collapse. According to the architectural blueprint, the collapse will crush the floor of the waste chute where you are located," Gregor said coldly. "If you're lucky, you'll fall into the lower sewage disposal system; that's the only exit leading to the Bottom Hive."

"If you're unlucky... then your sacrifice will be remembered by the Emperor."

"Countdown starting. Five, four..."

"You bastard!!" Li Wei cursed furiously, but he knew yelling was useless.

He glanced at the automaton still searching nearby, then at the console about to explode overhead.

This was no multiple-choice question.

Staying put meant death, getting blown up meant death, and falling down and crashing meant death.

"Three... two..."

Li Wei shoved the corpse off himself, using every ounce of his strength to roll toward the very center of the waste chute—the spot that looked structurally weakest and piled highest with corpses.

"One."

Boom!!!!

The world above collapsed.

The huge explosion instantly deafened Li Wei's ears.

He saw the console transform into a dazzling fireball, followed immediately by tons of concrete, steel beams, and those automata that hadn't yet climbed down, crashing down like the heavens splitting and the earth tearing apart.

The floor beneath Li Wei—the long-since rusted metal mesh—finally failed to bear the weight under the immense impact.

Creak—snap!

The floor fractured.

Li Wei, along with hundreds of corpses and that bewildered automaton, plunged into the deeper, darker underworld amidst a sky full of smoke, dust, and rubble.

A sense of weightlessness enveloped him.

In the final second before his consciousness plunged into darkness, only one thought crossed Li Wei's mind: If I somehow survive this, I swear I'm going to gouge that Inquisitor's bionic eye out and use it as a lightbulb!

Darkness.

Endless darkness.

He knew not how much time passed.

Li Wei was shocked awake by the cold.

Piercing chill, accompanied by the sound of some liquid flowing.

He moved his fingers, the touch slippery and viscous.

An indescribable stench pierced his nose—a hundred times thicker than the previous corpse stench, it was the smell of mixed industrial waste, excrement, and rotting organic matter.

Li Wei sat up abruptly, a violent fit of coughing forcing the dirty water from his lungs.

His whole body ached as if falling apart, especially the wound on his thigh, which had turned pale from soaking in the filthy water.

He was not dead yet.

He looked around, discovering he lay by the side of a massive underground river.

The river did not flow with water, but with pitch-black, oil-slicked sewage.

This was deeper within the Underhive, perhaps even the fringes of the Bottom Hive.

"Cough, cough... Damn Inquisitor..." Li Wei patted his body.

The Las Pistol was still there, though soaked in sewage, unsure whether it would still work.

The communicator the soldier had given him had shattered into slag.

His sole illumination tool—the tactical flashlight—flickered dim and bright now, as if about to extinguish at any moment.

He was now completely and utterly alone.

No reinforcements, no guidance, not even knowing where he was.

Above him lay thousands of meters of Hive City architecture, and all around him was a dark jungle filled with mutated creatures and desperate outlaws.

Yet Li Wei suddenly smiled. Though it looked uglier than crying.

That Inquisitor thought of him as expendable material, to be discarded after use.

Yet he had survived.

Furthermore, since that Inquisitor wanted that data so badly he would even blow this place up...

Li Wei reached his hand into his inner pocket.

The "data-slate" bearing the golden double-headed eagle emblem rested quietly in his palm.

At the very last moment before the explosion, before rolling off the floor, Li Wei had instinctively caught this object falling from above.

He struggled to his feet, using his broken laser gun as a crutch, and limped into the depths of the darkness.