Infinite Labyrinth

"Looks like I need to pick up the pace."

Death Road could rewind time by at most one hour, and the vial of blood Shangguan Yan had given him also lasted only an hour.

Since he was definitely going to rewind, he might as well apply every buff he could, rather than get caught off guard by something unexpected.

With that in mind, Xia Shou took out the vial and gulped down every last drop.

He tossed the empty vial aside, crossed the living room, and continued following the red line until a door blocked his path.

Because everything was upside down, the top of the door had become a threshold.

Xia Shou raised a leg, stepped onto it, squeezed through the doorway, and jumped down on the other side, entering an enormous space ten times the size of the living room.

Beneath his feet was the ceiling of an office floor. Dozens of energy-saving lights lay in neat rows on the ground, spaced two meters apart, with central air-conditioning vents at regular intervals.

He looked up at a dense grid of cubicles overhead. Every desk held laptops, printers, and documents. Everything was arranged exactly like a real workplace, as though a scene from reality had been perfectly copied into this room.

The only difference was that this place was completely deserted.

Xia Shou turned to look out the office windows, but instead of a cityscape, he saw other spaces in completely different styles.

A casual glance revealed classrooms, restrooms, train stations, cafés...

These spaces, each serving an entirely different purpose, had all gathered here, pieced together without any logic, like scenes in a dream.

Here, climbing through a random window could take him from a European classroom to an Asian library; stepping through a doorway could take him from a shack in a slum to a billionaire's bedroom.

Although Xia Shou had already suspected that the Blood Demon House was much larger inside than it appeared from outside, he had never expected anything this extreme. This place was practically an infinite space!

"Finding that Investigator here is going to be tough. Still, this actually works in our favor. At least paying the hundred-meter price will be easy... Besides, we're not really here to rescue anyone," Xia Shou told Alice.

He lowered his head. At some point, the thickest red line beneath his feet had shifted from the left to the right, and it was still moving at an extremely slow pace.

Xia Shou frowned at the sight.

[Death Road] showed him how dangerous a path was. If the most dangerous destination was a fixed location, then the red line would point toward the boss room. It would not move for no reason.

Yet now, the most dangerous direction was changing on its own.

In other words, the most dangerous thing here was not a fixed location, but something that moved.

It was not a monster that simply stayed in one place, waiting for prey to come knocking. It was a predator that actively tracked its prey, like a hunting spider.

So... could the Blood Demon be at the end of the red line?

But what exactly was the Blood Demon?

Although he had read the information on the Blood Demon House before coming, none of it actually explained what the Blood Demon was.

Ever since Edward, the legendary Investigator, had lost contact inside the Blood Demon House ten years ago, the Containment Bureau had learned nothing more about this anomalous phenomenon.

Although they had named the phenomenon the "Blood Demon House," they actually knew nothing about what lay inside. They had only chosen that name because the house's exterior matched a description in an eerie notebook.

The shitty part was that, although the notebook contained records of the house, its author's deranged writing style and chaotic mix of languages had prevented the Containment Bureau from extracting any further information. All they had managed to conclude was that the house had existed for at least several hundred years, and that it was profoundly evil.

To put it bluntly, the Containment Bureau knew next to nothing about the Blood Demon House.

Still, one other detail was worth noting: ten years ago, the Blood Demon House's Entrance Hall had not been upside down.

As for why it had become this way, nobody knew.

Xia Shou took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts, and focused on the red lines beneath his feet.

His first exploration would be primarily about gathering information.

Whatever happened, it would be best to find that legendary Investigator as soon as possible.

If the man had managed to survive in this strange space for ten years, he must have found a way to stay alive. He might even know a great deal of special information.

With that thought, Xia Shou looked down at his feet again, silently committing the changes in the red lines to memory.

Since Edward had survived this long, he had probably been staying in the safest places. By reversing how he used Death Road, Xia Shou might be able to find him hiding somewhere in here.

And the thinnest red line was the route to the safest location.

"Alice, let's hurry!"

With that, Xia Shou began running across the office ceiling.

The more ground he covered on his first search, the better-not just for gathering information, but for improving his skills as well.

If he encountered more "nourishment" like the corpse in the living room along the way, he would have a better chance against the Blood Demon.

Xia Shou nimbly crossed the office ceiling, awkwardly pulled open a window, and climbed through into the café on the other side.

Although [Death Road] had given him no notification, he knew with remarkable precision that he had already traveled fifty-six meters. He only needed to go a little farther to finish paying the price, and then he would be free.

When he thought about it that way, this skill really was powerful. Compared with the margin for error that rewinding provided, the hundred-meter price was negligible.

As Xia Shou entered the café, scattered drops of blood appeared on the ceiling beneath his feet, trailing behind a load-bearing wall ahead.

Xia Shou followed the scattered bloodstains a few steps around the wall and saw a smooth, fair back, along with the outline of alluring curves.

The girl before him had a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around her left arm and an Odachi nearly two meters long slung horizontally across her backside. She had just taken off her bloodstained top and was picking up a fresh white shirt from the floor, apparently intending to change. As she bent down, she noticed Xia Shou standing nearby. Her gaze swept across his face, but her expression did not change. She continued changing as though no one else were there, as if he were nothing but empty air.

Xia Shou had expected to be berated for peeping, but she showed no reaction at all. She did not even give him a second look, which left him feeling deeply awkward. "Uh... are you with the Containment Bureau too?"

Before he had finished speaking, the girl

froze in the middle of getting dressed.

She jerked her head up and stared at Xia Shou, her eyes wide, looking as though she had seen a ghost.

"You... y-you! You can see me?" she asked excitedly.