Burning, burning

Two buses had collided at the intersection, their bodies crushed and warped, covered in blackened scorch marks.

Around those two buses, cars, ambulances, and police vehicles had gathered like sharks drawn to the scent of blood, crushing and piling against one another in layer upon layer to form an enormous steel ruin.

"So there really was no escaping it..."

Su Wu dropped the phone in his hand. It landed faceup on the headless corpse at his feet, its screen constantly filling with new messages.

"Little Tiger invites you to join the Boyu No. 3 Work Group."

"Wang Zhiyou invites you..."

"Huang Zhicheng invites you..."

The phone belonged to the headless corpse on the ground,

yet now it kept displaying group invitations addressed to Su Wu's social media account.

He had never met the person lying at his feet, yet that person had logged into his social media account.

The cause could not be blamed on advanced technology such as a "virus" or an "account-stealing Trojan." Rather, the Trapped Corpse Fiend possessed precisely this ability.

It used one phone after another as surveillance cameras, closely monitoring Su Wu's movements.

If Su Wu had been in some uninhabited wilderness, this uncanny ability of the Trapped Corpse Fiend would have been completely useless.

But he happened to be in a bustling urban area.

People were everywhere.

In a city where almost everyone carried a phone, escaping the Trapped Corpse Fiend's surveillance was utterly impossible!

Jiang Yingying noticed the messages on the phone as well. She immediately realized that the steel ruin blocking their path was probably an outward manifestation of the supernatural entity that had been pursuing Su Wu all along.

"Are we still going forward?" she asked anxiously.

Su Wu smiled, turned to look behind them, and said, "Do you think we have any way back?"

Gray mist clustered around the black Cruze behind them. Only its front end, with its headlights lit, remained clearly visible; the rest of its body had already been swallowed by the mist.

Only moments earlier, the road behind them had still been lit by streetlights, without the slightest trace of mist.

An enormous change had taken place in mere moments.

It was undoubtedly telling the two of them that there was no turning back.

"Let's keep going."

Looking at Jiang Yingying's faintly trembling shoulders, Su Wu sighed. "Just think of this as a game."

He said the same thing he had said when he met Jiang Yingying in the previous simulation.

Jiang Yingying looked up at him, then lowered her head and cradled Emergency Can. She followed behind Su Wu in small steps, reaching out with one little hand to clutch the hem of his clothes.

The two of them threaded their way through the wrecked cars, climbing over them.

After seven or eight minutes, they finally made it over the steel ruin spanning the road.

But getting past the ruin did not mean they were safe.

On the contrary, the game had only just begun.

Gray mist lingered all around.

Streetlights stretched straight ahead along both sides of the road, their dim yellow glow making the mist look even hazier.

An icy wind skimmed their skin.

Its howling sounded like ghosts weeping.

As a gust of that chilling wind swept past, the candle in Su Wu's hand suddenly burned away by a third.

Everything was exactly as it had been when he first entered the area shrouded by the Trapped Corpse Fiend.

Without the slightest hesitation, he set the case on his back down on the ground, took out all the candles, and lit them one by one.

Then he handed several to Jiang Yingying and told her, "Take these candles and walk forward. Every three to five steps, set one on the ground."

A single candle could only illuminate an area extending three to five steps around it.

If they linked the candle flames into a line and walked within their light, any Trapped Corpses pursuing them into the illuminated area would be frozen in place.

"All right." Jiang Yingying knew Su Wu's candles possessed a miraculous power. Holding them, she immediately followed his instructions and walked straight ahead.

Every three to five steps, she set a candle on the ground.

Behind her, Su Wu carried the remaining candles, replacing those that rapidly burned out under the chilling wind.

That wind pursued people rather than sweeping across the entire area.

Thus, as long as Su Wu followed behind Jiang Yingying and replenished the flames, the candles would afterward return to burning normally instead of burning out at an accelerated rate.

One candle after another formed a straight line.

Their orange flames resisted the encroaching gray mist, illuminating the area three to five steps around them along the way.

Ahead, the Trapped Corpse named Wang Zhiyou emerged from the gray mist. His blood-red eye fixed on Su Wu, who had moved ahead of Jiang Yingying, and he demanded shrilly, "Why didn't you come to work?!"

Half of Wang Zhiyou's head had caved in, and he had only one foot left to support him.

Yet he still walked steadily.

Seeing that horrific corpse approaching, Jiang Yingying stopped in fright. She hugged Emergency Can tight, at a complete loss.

Clang-clang-clang-clang-

At that moment, Su Wu seized the Imperial Bell hanging from his neck with his left hand and shook it hard.

Amid the ringing of the Imperial Bell, Wang Zhiyou abruptly slowed, like a robot with rusted joints.

"Ignore him! Keep moving forward!"

He shouted to Jiang Yingying behind him.

At the same time, he strode forward.

His shout snapped Jiang Yingying out of her daze. She hurried after him, taking turns with him to keep placing candles along the street.

The line of candlelight kept extending forward,

while Trapped Corpses continued emerging from the gray mist, rushing toward Su Wu and Jiang Yingying.

"Why didn't you come to work?"

"Why didn't you come to work?"

The voices of men and women merged into a surging tide, pounding relentlessly at Su Wu and the other person's minds.

The last candle was set down on the street.

Ahead, the streetlights still formed a long line stretching onward without end.

The key to escaping the area shrouded by the Trapped Corpse Fiend wasn't how far we walked—so was the key still... these Trapped Corpses?

Su Wu turned to look back the way they had come.

Mutilated, shattered corpses had already packed the road behind them so tightly that nothing could get through.

They walked in all manner of bizarre postures,

and whenever they entered the candlelight one after another, the candles burned faster, consuming themselves completely within two or three seconds.

The candle flames went out in succession, from far to near.

The Trapped Corpses slowly closed the distance to Su Wu and Jiang Yingying.

The dense mass of Trapped Corpses, reeking of rot and scorched flesh, was now less than ten meters from Su Wu and the other person.

Jiang Yingying pressed close to Su Wu and asked in a trembling voice, "Are we going to die here?"

Su Wu looked down at her pale little face. He hesitated for an instant.

Then he shook his head. "No."

"We won't die here."

Clang-clang-clang-clang!

The Imperial Bell rang out!

The Trapped Corpses shed their ruined limbs, and some even shattered completely under the influence of the bell,

but their broken flesh and chunks of corpses piled together again into malformed "people." Wearing faces without a trace of damage, they rose once more, joined the tide of corpses, and advanced toward Su Wu.

Black clouds bore down on the city, threatening to crush it!

Crack, crack!

Sounds like flesh and tendons tearing came from within Su Wu's body,

and a pitch-black arm grew out beneath his right armpit.