Inside the Building

The sky had clearly begun to darken.

The last sliver of gray-blue light among the clouds struggled as it slowly sank beneath the already blurred horizon, accompanied by a dim, thin rim of red at its edge.

As the group dragged their increasingly heavy legs through the wild grass overrunning the streets along the main road, hurrying onward, they finally arrived before a nearby building they had chosen.

Almost visibly, everyone's chests were heaving violently now.

Several hours without food or water, coupled with prolonged walking broken only by brief rests, had clearly taken an enormous toll on human stamina.

The white vapor they exhaled in great gulps quickly dissipated into the twilight, which already carried a trace of chill.

Among the newcomers, several people—including the Middle Eastern man and the South Asian teenager—had faces flushed purplish-red and were gasping badly.

Though he too was panting without pause, Li Qingzhi was clearly in much better condition. He was about to suggest resting in place for a while and recovering before they continued.

He could see clearly enough that amid the relatively "low" houses and ruins around them, only the massive shadow of the building before them loomed heavily overhead. Yet only upon drawing close did they discover that its broad, continuous walls were also covered in mottled layers of grime and dark streaks carved out by rain.

Wild grass and vines had sprouted from cracks in the pavement and climbed all over the lower exterior walls.

There did not seem to be any signs of human activity here...

But they absolutely could not let down their guard.

After all, by now everyone could clearly see that the heavy front doors at the building's base—beneath a sign whose English name was obscured by filth and apparently made of reinforced transparent glass—had been reduced to nothing but twisted metal frames and a few sharp fragments hanging between them.

Even the mechanical lock, which should have been exceptionally sturdy, bore old, deeply unnatural traces of having been forcibly twisted and deformed by violence.

And after so much time, large patches of rust had gradually crept across the "wounds" in the stainless steel through wind and rain. Fine moss had even rooted itself in every tiny crevice.

That was enough to make anyone uneasy.

The front entrance before them stood half open, and the old marks on the lock clearly showed it had been wantonly smashed apart with brute force. Yet the building's interior was dark and deep, and no one knew what might be inside...

With the interior even darker than the street outside, no one dared step in lightly.

Compared to most other rules, "fear of darkness" was information deeply written into the essence of most living things.

However, someone did not seem particularly understanding of Li Qingzhi's hesitation.

He looked back at the dim light in the distance, which was about to sink into the night. The young man, whose breathing had also grown somewhat weary after the long walk, suddenly adjusted his glasses and stared intently at the horizon for a while.

When he came back to himself, he swiftly crouched down and deftly removed the long backpack still covered in quite a bit of ash from his shoulder.

His movements were steady and fluid, utterly unaffected by the weary and puzzled gazes behind him.

The zipper gave a sharp rasp in the silence as he lifted the flap and precisely reached inside—

Accompanied by several dull metallic clanks.

One by one, three heavy metal baseball bats were pulled out.

Li Qingzhi even heard someone behind him suck in a breath.

He did not know whether they were astonished by the scavenger's incredible haul or shaken by the fact that the man had carried several obviously weighty objects through the final stretch.

The bats were thick and sturdy, their grips wrapped in heavily worn black anti-slip tape. Moldy fraying had appeared along the edges at some point, giving them the rough, neglected feel of something unused for a long time.

Yet the man did not seem particularly satisfied with them.

"Quit staring. They're hollow, not that heavy."

He casually handed one bat to "Old Li" nearby and kept one for himself. Seeing that one remained as "surplus," some of the people behind them seemed tempted and stepped forward as if to say something.

Unexpectedly, the young man took the remaining metal baseball bat and tossed it to the elderly white man in the crowd, whose alcoholic smell had nearly faded away.

The old man instinctively caught the object flying toward him.

Looking at the bat in his hand, the old man—already showing his age, thick-haired, with a patchy gray-white beard, yet still broad in the shoulders and back, faintly revealing the frame of a once-powerful build—gave the young man a startled look. He said nothing more, merely thanked him between breaths.

Without paying further attention, the young man closed his backpack, picked up the bat on the ground, and acted as though he had merely completed some perfectly routine preparation.

Throughout it all, the face behind the black-rimmed glasses showed no change in expression. Only the broken doorway reflected in his lenses, his calm somehow reassuring yet faintly unsettling.

"Old Li, let's go. If we don't get in now, it'll be completely dark soon."

He was the first to step onto the stairs, turning his head slightly as he called out.

He was surprisingly polite!

Li Qingzhi looked at the metal bat in his hand, longer than his arm and obviously far more useful than the little fruit knife in his pocket, which he had found in some unknown room. His expression shifted uncertainly.

"Let's go! We'll head inside first!"

He quickly gave the order.

Now at the very front of the group, Li Yun adjusted to the metal bat he had only recently acquired while looking around at the building's interior.

This standard commercial tower, which appeared to be at least thirty or forty stories tall from outside, had clearly been built to strength and comprehensive standards that ordinary three- to five-story residential buildings along the street could not compare with.

Even on the damp lower floor, aside from mold and vines clinging everywhere and nearly covering the uneven walls, the building showed little obvious structural damage. Its walls remained thick, and its pillars had not collapsed.

That was good.

Only the faint stench of decay in the air was genuinely unsettling.

In the spacious first-floor lobby, which had not been divided into many separate areas, the elevator doors not far inside the entrance had also been twisted out of shape. The two hollow metal doors, clearly struck by immense force, had been bent inward nearly halfway at their center.

Who knew what had happened then to produce an impact like a battering ram?

Li Yun peered through the twisted gap in the metal doors. Inside the dark, deep elevator shaft, there seemed to be filthy traces in the car, so dirty their original form could no longer be distinguished. They stretched from the floor to the side walls, where several half-withered vines had also climbed.

Of course, with the facilities long abandoned, no one would be stupid enough to force their way inside and test out the modern convenience of a direct ride to the upper floors.

There was nothing worth paying attention to.

Instead, a large glowing sign reading "Parking" hung above a deep downward passage leading to the underground garage. From the sensation on his skin, the crossflow of air inside and outside mainly passed through this nearly lightless "opening" and the lobby entrance.

After examining it for a moment, Li Yun reached into the darkness without hesitation, pulled the two slack passage doors back into place, then picked up the broken chain coiled like a snake on the floor beside them and wrapped it around the doors several times.

In the increasingly dim interior, the others, whose breathing had gradually steadied, could no longer clearly see the details of his movements.

Once the doors were shut, the constant sensation of wind blowing through the lobby immediately seemed to weaken.

Yet Li Qingzhi's gaze was still drifting toward the passage doors Li Yun had just blocked off—or, more precisely, toward the chain stretched across them, long enough for two or three people.

One look told Li Yun exactly what he was thinking. He waved a hand in front of him. "All right, Old Li, stop looking. Leave it locked. That chain isn't nearly as useful as what you've got in your hand."

"You haven't even used it. How do you know it isn't useful...?"

He clearly did not agree, but Old Li's muttering grew quieter and quieter as he reluctantly pulled his eyes away from the long chain.

At that moment, the middle-aged white man walking behind them, who had also received a metal baseball bat earlier, suddenly spoke without any apparent lead-in. "Sir, he's right. You should know that Russia sells five hundred thousand baseball bats a year, but only three baseballs."

Clearly, even with the Main God's translation function allowing everyone to communicate without issue, the veteran—who had never encountered the sport of baseball in his life—completely failed to understand what the man meant.

The young man before him nodded approvingly instead. "Our friend is right. Old Li, you should know that baseball bats' status in the world of sports is not worth mentioning compared to their true standing among cold weapons."

Hearing that, Li Qingzhi merely rolled his eyes where no one could see.

For some reason, before this young man who was presumably a Main God user, he could never put on the imposing air of the group's guide and spokesman. By now, it looked as if even the leadership of this temporary team was about to change hands...

It was all because he lacked education!

Ignoring the veteran, who was silently swearing to study harder after they got out, the young man turned around. He held the baseball bat in one hand and casually tucked the other into his sleeve as he looked toward the stairwell at the far end of the lobby.

"Let's go. There probably isn't much left on these lower floors. Let's head up and take a look first."

Even now, the young man who spoke was still walking in front.

In the dark stairwell, Li Qingzhi swore he had never missed his phone's flashlight function—or one of those old-fashioned flashlights—so badly!

It was fucking dark!

Even with the Psychokinesis enhancement, which allowed him to vaguely use a trace of mental perception to assist his vision in the dark, his scalp still went numb when he truly entered the deep darkness of the stairwell.

In the end, he had only experienced one mission world. He had been a Main God user for just a few days, spending every day browsing the platform for different exchanges and trying to gather information from others. Mentally, he was still an ordinary person with little real change.

The enhancement he had exchanged for could certainly alter a person's life and spiritual level, but it did not have much to do with one's actual thoughts and understanding.

At this point, Old Li had to admit it.

This was truly terrifying!

He endured the sticky softness beneath his feet, not knowing whether he was stepping on moss or something else. If there had not been a group of people barely climbing upward together, he would never have dared enter a place like this, enough to trigger claustrophobia!

Right now, even the sound of everyone breathing in the stairwell was strangely reassuring.

The guy slowly walking at the very front, on the other hand, occasionally scraped his baseball bat against the wall with a bang or a scrape, making everyone's hearts tremble.

"Brother, what are you knocking on? That sound's creepy!"

"Nothing. Just knocking around..."

The stairwell's long echoes and overlapping, indistinct voices soon faded away.

After only ten or twenty seconds of climbing, when they emerged from the stairwell and once again felt the faint light filtering in through the windows, it suddenly seemed incredibly bright.

Things only showed their value through comparison.

But wasn't the light... a little red?

Li Qingzhi rubbed his eyes hard, thinking he had seen wrong.

He had not noticed before, but having just emerged from the even darker stairwell, along with the rapid change in visual brightness, he could clearly sense it—

The dim light outside seemed to have turned a little redder?

Curious, the veteran walked to the window and cautiously leaned out for a look.

The street outside did not seem to have changed much from when they came in...

No! Something was wrong!

It did not seem to be an illusion. As some subtle change occurred, he vaguely sensed that the red in the ambient light had become a little more "obvious"!

He instinctively looked up.

At that moment, amid the surging clouds high above, between countless thin black streaks stretching far into the distance, a red shadow that had only begun to reveal itself, not yet truly clear, flickered faintly behind the haze...

His mouth fell open without him noticing.

Within mere seconds, his astonished expression froze. As his face rapidly began to stiffen, thick saliva slid uncontrollably from the corner of the witness's mouth!

"Fuck!"

A thick, garbled syllable was forced out as though from the phlegm-choked throat of someone gravely ill!

An intense stabbing pain suddenly pierced his brow. His body tilted outward in a rigid, awkward posture, and Old Li practically flipped over into the small puddle by the window.

The Indian man behind him rushed over almost immediately, trying to support this "noble person."

At this moment, he could not spare any thought for the thick sour stench on the other man, whose source he did not want to contemplate. Leaning against him to steady himself, Li Qingzhi slowly regained his footing.

He did not even pay attention to the cold voice that suddenly sounded beside his ear, informing him: [Partial relevant worldview information acquired. Exploration Score increased by two.]

Everyone could see that as two thin yet impossible-to-ignore streams of blood ran from Li Qingzhi's nose, even his shoulders began to tremble faintly.

Only one person ignored it all.

After a brief glance, Li Yun closed his eyes once more.

Standing in the shadows near the window, he listened with an expressionless face—

To the sparse howls in the distance, difficult for ordinary people to catch, filled with savage, frenzied agony.

There were even several closer human voices mixed in, carrying the same flavor of madness...