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 faint, thin red edge at its corner.

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

Visibly, nearly everyone's chest was heaving violently.

Several hours without food or water, combined with prolonged walking broken only by brief rests, had clearly taken a severe toll on human stamina.

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

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

Though he too was breathing heavily, Li Qingzhi was clearly in much better shape. He was about to suggest resting where they were and adjusting their condition first.

He could see clearly that amid the relatively "low" houses and ruins around them, only the enormous shadow of the building before them loomed heavily overhead. Yet only upon approaching did they discover that its broad, connected walls were also covered in mottled grime and dark streaks left by rainwater.

Wild grass and vines had pushed through cracks in the pavement, climbing all over the outer walls of the building's lower floors.

There seemed to be no trace of human activity here...

But they absolutely could not let their guard down.

After all, by now everyone could clearly see that between the storefront doors at the base of the building, beneath an English sign obscured by grime, what should have been heavy doors made of reinforced transparent glass had been reduced to twisted metal frames and a few sharp fragments still hanging within them.

Even the mechanical lock that should have been exceptionally sturdy bore old, deeply unnatural marks of having been forcibly twisted out of shape by violence.

And after such a long time, large patches of rust had gradually crept over the "wounds" in the stainless steel through wind and rain. Fine moss had even rooted itself in every crevice.

That was enough to make their hearts pound.

After all, the storefront before them stood half-open, and the old marks on the doors and lock made it obvious that they had once been brutally destroyed. Yet the building's interior was dark and secluded, and no one knew what lay inside...

With the inside of the building even darker than the street outside, no one dared enter lightly.

Relatively speaking, the rule of "fearing the dark" was information deeply written into the essence of most living things.

Yet someone seemed unable to fully appreciate Li Qingzhi's hesitation.

After glancing back at the dim glow in the distance, which was about to sink into the night, the young man—whose breathing had also grown somewhat weary from the long walk—suddenly adjusted his glasses and stared carefully at the horizon for a while.

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

His movements were steady and smooth, completely unaffected by the tired, puzzled gazes behind him.

The backpack zipper made a crisp rasp in the silence. Someone flipped open the flap and reached a hand precisely inside—

Accompanied by several dull metallic clanks.

Three heavy metal baseball bats were pulled out one by one.

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

He had no idea whether they were shocked by the scavenger's impressive haul, or by the fact that he had carried several obviously heavy objects through the final stretch of the journey.

The bats were thick and sturdy, their grips wrapped in heavily worn black anti-slip tape. The edges had somehow grown moldy frays, giving off the rough feel of something left unused for far too long.

Yet their owner did not seem particularly satisfied with them.

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

He casually handed one baseball bat to Old Li nearby, kept one for himself, and, seeing that one remained as "surplus," some people in the back seemed tempted to step forward and say something.

Unexpectedly, the young man took the initiative to toss the remaining metal baseball bat to the elderly white man in the crowd, whose smell of alcohol had nearly faded away.

The old man instinctively caught the object flying toward him.

Looking at the bat in his hands, the elderly man—already showing his age, with thick body hair, an uneven gray-white beard, broad shoulders and back, and the faint outline of a once-powerful frame—looked at the other man in surprise. He did not say much, merely thanking him between breaths.

Without paying any more attention to him, the young man closed the backpack, picked up the baseball bat on the ground, and acted as though he had merely completed some perfectly natural preparatory step.

Throughout the entire process, the face behind the black-rimmed glasses had not changed expression at all. Only the lenses reflected the violently broken doors, calm enough to be strangely reassuring, yet faintly frightening as well.

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

Stepping onto the stairs first, he calmly turned his head and 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 small fruit knife he had found in who-knew-which room and stuffed into his pocket. His expression shifted uncertainly.

"Let's go! We're heading inside first!"

He quickly gave the order.

Now walking at the very front of the group, Li Yun adapted to the metal bat he had just 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 structural strength and general standards far beyond those of the ordinary three- or five-story residences by the street.

Even on the damp lower level, aside from mold spots and vines spreading across the uneven walls, the building did not show much obvious structural damage. Its walls remained thick, and its pillars had not collapsed.

That was good.

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

In the first-floor lobby, which had not been divided into many separate spaces, the elevator doors not far from the entrance had also warped. The hollow metal doors, clearly struck by some immense force, had been bent inward at their center by nearly half.

Who knew what had happened back then to produce the kind of result one would expect from a battering ram.

Li Yun peered through the twisted gap in the metal. Within the dark, deep elevator shaft, there seemed to be filthy traces inside the car, so soiled that their original form could no longer be made out. They spread from the floor to the side walls, with several half-withered vines climbing among them.

Of course, with all related facilities long abandoned, no one would be stupid enough to force their way in and test out a modern high-speed service to the upper floors.

There was nothing worth paying attention to.

Instead, the sign leading to the underground parking garage caught his eye. A large glowing sign reading "Parking" hung over a deep descending passageway. From the sensation against his skin, the airflow between inside and outside mainly passed through this nearly lightless "opening" and the lobby entrance.

After examining it closely for a few moments, Li Yun reached his hand into the darkness without concern, pulled the two loose passage doors back into place and shut them, 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 settled, could no longer clearly make out the details of his movements.

As soon as the doors closed, the feeling of wind constantly blowing through the lobby seemed to weaken immediately.

Yet Li Qingzhi's gaze was still drifting toward the passage doors that had just been blocked off. More precisely, he was staring at the chain atop them, long enough to stretch across two or three people.

Li Yun knew what he was thinking at a glance. He waved a hand before him. "All right, Old Li, stop staring. Let it stay locked. That chain isn't as useful as the thing in your hand."

"You haven't even used it, so how do you know it's no good..."

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

At that moment, the middle-aged white man following behind, who had also received a metal baseball bat earlier, suddenly said something seemingly out of nowhere. "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 making communication effortless, 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 them nodded approvingly. "This friend is right. Old Li, you should know that baseball bats' supposed standing in the sporting world is not worth mentioning compared to their true standing among cold weapons."

Li Qingzhi merely rolled his eyes, though no one could really see it.

For some reason, before this young man who was suspected of being a Main God user, he could never put on the imposing air of a guide and leader. At this point, it even seemed as though leadership of this temporary team was about to change hands...

It was all because he lacked education!

Ignoring the veteran, who was secretly hardening his resolve to study harder after getting out of here, the young man turned around. With a baseball bat in one hand and the other casually tucked into his sleeve, 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. We should head up and take a look first."

Even now, the young man who had spoken was still walking ahead.

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

It was fucking dark!

Even with the Psychokinesis enhancement, which allowed him to faintly assist his vision in darkness through a bit of mental sensing, his scalp still prickled when he truly entered the deep stairwell.

At the end of the day, he had only experienced one mission world. He had only been a Main God user for a few days, spending his time browsing various exchanges on the platform and trying to communicate with others for information. His mentality had not changed much; he was still an ordinary person.

This enhancement could indeed alter a person's life and spiritual level, but it did not greatly affect one's specific thoughts or understanding.

By now, Old Li had no choice but to admit that this was truly terrifying!

He endured the slick, faintly soft sensation 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 with him, he would never have dared enter a place like this—so horrifying it almost triggered claustrophobia!

At this moment, even the sound of everyone breathing in the stairwell felt strangely reassuring.

On the other hand, the guy slowly walking at the front would occasionally scrape his baseball bat against the wall, producing a bang or a scrape that made everyone's hearts jump.

"Brother, what are you tapping for? That sound is creepy!"

"Nothing. Just tapping around..."

The stairwell's long reverberations and the blurred, overlapping echo of human voices soon faded away.

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

Things only revealed their value through contrast.

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

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

He had not noticed it earlier, but now that he had just emerged from the even darker stairwell, with the rapid adjustment in brightness, he could indeed clearly feel it—

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

Curious, the veteran walked to the window and cautiously poked his head out for a look.

There did not seem to be any change on the street outside. It was the same as when they had entered...

No! Something was wrong!

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

He instinctively looked up.

At that moment, as streams of clouds surged across the high sky, amid countless spreading black lines, a red shadow that had only begun to reveal a few hints of itself, not yet truly clear, flickered in and out behind the haze...

His mouth fell open without him realizing it.

Within seconds, his shocked expression froze. His face rapidly began to stiffen, and thick drops of saliva slid uncontrollably from the corner of the witness's mouth!

"Fuck!"

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

An intense stab of pain suddenly shot through his brow. His body tilted outward in a difficult, stiff posture, and Old Li practically toppled headfirst into a small puddle by the window.

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

At that moment, he could not care about the strong sour stench on the other man's body, whose source he did not want to think about. Leaning on him to steady himself, Li Qingzhi slowly got back on his feet.

He did not even pay attention to the cold voice that abruptly rang in his ear, informing him that [partial information about this world's setting had been acquired; Exploration Score +2].

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

Only one person ignored all of it.

After a brief glance, Li Yun closed his eyes again.

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

To the sparse howls in the distance, ones ordinary people could not catch, filled with savagery, madness, and intense pain.

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