Maze Exploration

The corridor was not long, only a little over ten meters, but around the corners were more similar corridors. The corners at its two ends turned in different directions, one to the left and the other to the right.

Lin Ye strode around several corners and found more similar corridors of varying lengths ahead. Some ended in junctions branching off in different directions.

This was a maze with no end in sight.

If this maze could accommodate ten billion people at once, Lin Ye could not imagine how complicated it was.

But that had little to do with Lin Ye. He did not need to escape the maze, only find some supplies he needed.

Half an hour later, Lin Ye had explored nine Red Rooms and found only a few Red Coins, one Red Key, and some usable odds and ends. He had not found a single treasure chest mentioned in the system information.

After exploring a few more rooms, Lin Ye suddenly discovered a locked room.

Its door was identical to the others, except for an additional red lock.

The lock was close in color to the door. Had Lin Ye not been checking each room individually, he might well have missed this one.

Lin Ye knocked on the door, but there was still no sound inside. This place was like a silent ruin; nothing except Lin Ye made a sound.

After examining the keyhole, Lin Ye first took a piece of wire he had found in a pile of trash from his pocket, inserted it into the keyhole, and tried to pick the lock.

A minute passed, but Lin Ye still could not force the lock open. It did not seem to be an ordinary mechanical lock.

He opened the door with the Red Key, which vanished once the door opened. The room inside was the same size as the others, but instead of trash covering the floor, it was filled with shelves.

This seemed to be a storeroom.

Lin Ye entered and inspected the shelves. Most were empty, but he still found a few items left behind.

Two bottles of red liquid, a metal pendant, and seven stiff cards.

The liquid was in glass bottles with sealed caps, each holding around 400 milliliters.

The pendant was a silver cross of equal length and width that could be worn around the neck.

One side of each stiff card was dark red, while the other bore intricate patterns similar to those on the Red Coins. There were three different patterns among the seven cards.

Lin Ye packed these things into the backpack he had found earlier in a trash pile. Although he did not know what they were for, he would take them for now.

Just as Lin Ye put on the backpack and prepared to leave, he suddenly heard footsteps.

The footsteps came from the end of the corridor, not the direction he had come from.

They were very faint. Fortunately, it was quiet enough here for him to notice the other party in advance.

Lin Ye gently eased the door shut, leaving only a crack through which he could watch the corridor outside.

Soon, the footsteps approached the room, and a figure passed the doorway.

It was a blood-red, shriveled corpse. Half its head was already gone, and the remaining portion of its brain had dried out. It was hard to say what kept it moving.

After the corpse passed the door, Lin Ye gauged the distance, pulled the door open, and fired a shot at the remaining half of the Blood Corpse's head.

Bang!

The gunshot echoed through the corridor. The bullet struck the Blood Corpse squarely in the head, knocking it to the ground.

This was Lin Ye's first time firing a gun, yet he found the sensation very familiar, as though he had often fired guns before.

Suppressing that feeling, Lin Ye did not approach. Instead, he watched the corpse on the floor warily. Half its head had already been missing, and he was not sure whether the other half was a weak point.

At first, the corpse did not react, but two seconds later, it suddenly began convulsing violently, like a patient having an epileptic seizure.

Soon, blood-colored fleshy limbs sprouted from the Blood Corpse's back. They propped up its body like spider legs as its abdomen split open. Its shriveled flesh and organs burst with vitality once more, growing out of its abdomen like a blooming flower and forming new structures.

Lin Ye fired three shots in succession at the corpse, hitting its chest cavity, lower left abdomen, and lower right abdomen. Each shot struck a different spot.

Bang, bang, bang!

He did not believe this monster had no weaknesses. He simply had not found them yet.

The monster launched itself off the floor like a frog, then sprang off the ceiling toward Lin Ye. In just two leaps, it covered seven or eight meters.

Lin Ye calmly took a large step back, then emptied his magazine into the monster as it lunged in front of him.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

At this range, what mattered was not accuracy, but firepower!

With the magazine empty, Lin Ye let go of the handgun, anticipated the monster's second lunge and sidestepped it, drawing the dagger at his waist in the same motion.

The monster failed to stop its second lunge in time and tumbled and scrambled into the end of the corridor. After struggling for a while, it stopped moving altogether.

It seemed it was not immune to bullets either.

Lin Ye stood calmly where he was, guarding against the monster playing dead. Throughout the entire encounter, he had made no unnecessary movements and experienced little emotional fluctuation.

After all, compared with the simulator missions, a corpse that could hop around was relatively easy to deal with.

Only after several minutes did Lin Ye approach the monster's corpse.

By then, the corpse had completely lost its human shape. Apart from a few scattered parts, it was difficult to make out any human traces.

Lin Ye drew his dagger and began dissecting the corpse.

The corpse's various tissues and structures were all jumbled together. At first, Lin Ye considered how this thing had moved, but he gradually gave up thinking about that and began studying the various strange tissue structures on the monster.

Ten minutes later, Lin Ye put away his dagger in satisfaction and continued exploring.

On the monster, Lin Ye found a key ring holding five completely identical Red Keys. These keys seemed to be merely tokens for opening doors, with little connection to the locks themselves.

After that, Lin Ye stopped opening rooms without locks. After all, most contained nothing but trash, and even when they yielded something, it was only a coin or two, or a key.

And it had taken nine rooms to yield a single key.

He needed to find a treasure chest as soon as possible and check what materials were required to upgrade the Shelter.

Lin Ye strode down corridor after corridor, twirling the empty handgun in his hand. When he had fired it earlier, he had felt extremely familiar with it, as though he had used it for over a decade.

This was most likely residual experience from simulating Kenneth. After all, Lin Ye had never touched a handgun before, so there was no way he could have been so skilled with one.

Kenneth, as Class-D Personnel, was different. There had to be a reason he had become Class-D Personnel; it would hardly make sense if he did not have a few special skills.

Soon, Lin Ye found a locked red door. There was no sound inside after he knocked. Consuming one key, Lin Ye entered the room.

The room had the same interior layout as the others, except there was no trash, and a red wooden chest stood in its center.

The chest was unlocked. Lin Ye cautiously lifted its lid with his dagger, then quickly retreated.

Contrary to what he had imagined, there were no dangerous objects inside the chest, nor did a Blood Corpse leap out.