The road to the upper levels was paved with vomit.
"Bleurgh..." Scarface Captain Buck braced himself against the wall and dry-heaved up another mouthful of acid.
His face was deathly pale, his eyes unfocused. Nothing remained of his fierce gangster demeanor.
And he was not the only one. The other two lackeys were in even worse shape.
One had tears and snot streaming down his face, while the other was trembling with every step.
That was more like it.
To survive amid the poisonous fog and evil spirits, they had no choice but to stay within three meters of Li Wei.
It was like tying three people allergic to ultraviolet light to a moving UV lamp.
Li Wei's Soulless Stance tortured their nervous systems every second.
"M-Master..." Buck panted, his voice weak. "H-How much longer? I feel like my soul is being sanded down..."
"If you don't want to die, shut up and keep moving." Li Wei's voice came through the dog mask, cold and muffled.
In truth, he was not feeling much better himself.
The wound on his leg was inflamed, and his strength was nearly exhausted.
But he had to maintain an unfathomable air.
At last, the fog ahead gradually began to thin.
A massive industrial blast door, covered in graffiti and rust, came into view.
A faded double-headed eagle emblem was printed beside it. This was the entrance to the freight elevator leading upward.
"We made it! Praise the Emperor, we made it!" The skinny lackey was so excited that he nearly dropped to his knees as he staggered toward the control panel.
He was a part-time Wire Jack—a Bottom Hive term for a lousy hacker. Holding a data cable, he tried to connect it to the door lock.
"Machine Spirit... great Machine Spirit..." The skinny man shakily plugged in the connector, muttering an incoherent prayer. "Forgive your servant... please open the door..."
The control panel flashed red several times and let out a rejecting beep.
A line of red Gothic appeared on the screen:
[Access Denied: Level Two authorization or sacred code required]
"It won't open?" Buck panicked and kicked the skinny man in the ass. "Didn't you brag that you could crack every civilian lock? Open it, now! The ghosts are catching up!"
"I can't, Boss!" the skinny man wailed. "Th-This Machine Spirit is too stubborn! It's rejecting me! It needs incense and higher prayers!"
At that moment, that spine-chilling howl came again from the fog behind them.
The shadows were closing in.
"Move." Li Wei stepped forward and shoved aside the useless fool who only knew how to pray.
He glanced at the control panel.
The construction was primitive—crude, even.
That was the hallmark of Warhammer technology: it looked advanced on the outside, but inside were antique circuits from thousands of years ago.
Li Wei did not try to crack the code—he did not understand Gothic programming.
But he understood circuits.
This door was locked by an electromagnetic valve.
As long as the electromagnet lost power or short-circuited, the lock bolt would pop open automatically.
He pulled out the tactical knife he had taken from that corpse earlier and pried open the maintenance cover beneath the control panel. A tangle of brightly colored wires was exposed.
"What are you doing?!" the skinny man shrieked. "You can't cut the wires! That's blasphemy! You'll anger the Machine Spirit and make it explode!"
Li Wei ignored him.
Drawing on his middle-school physics knowledge, he quickly found the thick red wire connected to the power unit.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, he brought the knife down.
Sizzle!
Sparks flew everywhere.
Click—rumble... The heavy blast door let out a hissing sigh as the hydraulic lock disengaged.
The doors slowly slid apart, revealing the spacious freight elevator car beyond.
"..." The skinny man gaped, forcibly swallowing the word "blasphemy."
Buck and the other lackey were equally dumbfounded.
No prayers, no ritual, just... cutting a wire?
"Get in." Li Wei sheathed his knife and entered the elevator first.
"Or do you want to stay outside and become ghost food?"
The three came to their senses and scrambled into the elevator.
Li Wei pressed the close button. As the heavy iron doors shut, the suffocating toxic fog and wailing ghosts were finally sealed outside.
The world went quiet.
The elevator rumbled as it began to rise.
Within that cramped, enclosed metal box, the atmosphere began to change subtly.
The crisis was over.
The external threat that had forced Buck and the others to cling to Li Wei had vanished.
Li Wei leaned against the elevator corner, still holding the Autogun, but he could feel those three gazes changing from "reverence" back into their familiar "greed."
People were like that.
When death was chasing them, they could worship a lifeline as a god.
Once they were safe, they would complain that the lifeline pricked their hands.
Buck straightened up and wiped the acid from the corner of his mouth.
He realized that as the elevator ascended, the nausea that made him want to vomit was still there, but it seemed... bearable? Or perhaps his fear of Li Wei had weakened with the disappearance of the evil spirits.
He looked at the brand-new Autogun in Li Wei's hands, then at Li Wei's injured leg, still seeping blood.
A cripple.
A skinny, nauseating freak.
Why did he get the best gun?
Buck signaled to his two subordinates.
The two understood and slowly spread out to either side, faintly surrounding Li Wei in the corner.
"Master." Buck spoke, his tone stripped of its earlier respect and carrying a hint of amused savagery. "Now that we're out of danger, shouldn't we settle some accounts?"
Li Wei did not even raise his eyes. "What accounts?"
"We paid for directions." Buck rubbed the hilt of the knife at his waist and stepped closer. "But you took my best gun. That's robbery."
"So?"
"So give me back the gun." Buck held out his hand, exposing a mouthful of rotten teeth. "And hand over that treasure of yours that makes machines obey you." He thought Li Wei had some kind of talisman. "For saving us, I'll let you crawl out of this elevator alive."
The skinny man perked up as well, shouting with borrowed courage, "That's right! Hand it over! A heretic like you doesn't know how to honor the Machine Spirit. It's wasted in your hands!"
The knife was finally bared.
Li Wei had expected this.
In the Bottom Hive, betrayal was as natural as breathing.
Li Wei slowly raised his head and looked through the lenses of his gas mask at the three idiots who did not know they were about to die.
He did not raise his gun.
At such close range, if he opened fire and the three rushed him together, a cripple like him would surely be stabbed to death in the melee.
But he had a stronger weapon.
"Do you think..." Li Wei's voice was soft, yet it carried a strange resonance, "that in this sealed metal box, you are really the ones surrounding me?"
Buck froze for a moment. "Enough bullshit! Get him!"
Just as the two lackeys prepared to pounce.
Li Wei suddenly tore off his gas mask.
He drew a deep breath of the murky air, then—
He completely released the suppression on his psychic threshold.
Until now, he had instinctively restrained his aura so these people would not actually be sickened to death.
But now, inside this sealed elevator of less than five square meters, he unleashed the soul-black-hole of a Pariah at full force.
Boom! There was no actual sound, but in the minds of Buck and the other two, it was as if a psychic nuclear bomb had exploded.
That nauseating sensation intensified tenfold, a hundredfold in an instant!
If it had been motion sickness before, now it was like their brains had been thrown into a blender and violently churned.
"Argh!!" The thug charging in front screamed, clutching his head with both hands as he dropped straight to his knees.
He felt his soul being devoured by some cold Void, and the overwhelming vertigo instantly robbed him of his balance.
"Bleurgh—!!" He opened his mouth. This time, he vomited not only acid, but streaks of blood.
The skinny man had it even worse. His eyes rolled back on the spot, and he collapsed limply like a noodle, foaming at the mouth and convulsing.
His willpower was too weak. The terrifying soulless oppression knocked him unconscious outright.
Buck was the only one still standing.
But he looked worse than a corpse.
He clutched the elevator handrail with both hands, veins bulging, while blood streamed uncontrollably from his nose.
He stared in terror at Li Wei in the corner, as if he were seeing a demonic god crawling out of the Warp.
"Y-You... what did you do..." Buck's teeth chattered, every word seeming to squeeze out of his lungs.
Li Wei remained against the corner, not even changing his posture.
He merely looked at Buck coldly, his gaze terrifyingly calm.
"I did nothing," Li Wei said softly. "I merely exist. And creatures with souls like you cannot endure my existence."
He took a step forward.
That simple step felt to Buck like Death itself pressing against his face.
"D-Don't come any closer..." Buck cried out in terror. The shudder from the depths of his soul made him unable to grip his knife, and it clattered to the floor.
Li Wei picked up the knife.
He walked over to Buck, who was already kneeling, and tapped the cold flat of the blade against his sweat- and blood-covered face.
"You want the gun?" Li Wei pressed the muzzle of the Autogun against Buck's forehead. "Do you still want it now?"
Buck broke down.
Before absolute physical suppression and spiritual terror, gangster pride was all worthless shit.
"I don't want it! Master, I don't want it! I was wrong! Don't kill me!" He frantically kowtowed, not caring in the slightest that he was smashing his head into vomit.
Ding.
The elevator's arrival chime sounded at the top level.
The crisp sound was especially piercing in the dead-silent car.
The doors opened.
Outside was a transfer station at the lowest level of the Upper Hive. Noisy voices and the roar of machinery flooded in.
Li Wei put away the gun and hung the gas mask back at his waist.
Without even looking at the three men sprawled 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." After walking several steps, Li Wei tossed back a sentence without turning around. "If I hear even half a word about myself... I'll find you, no matter where you are."
Inside the elevator, Buck lay limp on the floor, watching Li Wei's retreating back. There was no greed left in his eyes, only bone-deep fear.
At last, he understood something: in this hellish Hive City, the most terrifying things were not the snarling monsters. They were ordinary people like this—people who seemed easy to crush at will, yet could pulverize your soul in an instant.
After leaving the transfer station, Li Wei found an empty corner and slid down the wall to sit.
His hands were trembling slightly.
That full-power release had left even him drained and with a pounding headache.
Putting on a fierce front... how many more times can I pull that off? Li Wei gave a bitter smile.
He touched the USB drive in his pocket.
He needed to get rid of this hot potato as soon as possible.
And in this massive Hive City, only one kind of person would dare buy secrets leaked from the Inquisition—heretics, or guild bosses even greedier than heretics.
Li Wei looked up at the steel dome above, which still blocked out the sky.
"Come on."
"Let me see just how dark this world can get."
Before you continue