There was no guardian boss behind the door, only a wider, brighter passage.
"Please follow the directions."
An arrow pointing forward was projected onto the floor.
Every time Qin Ze took a step, the arrow moved forward with him.
It felt a bit like the beginner tutorial at the start of a game.
Following the arrow, Qin Ze soon ventured deep into Shelter No. 10.
Unlike the outside, the facilities in here were clearly much more extensive.
A power plant, a water station, a rest area, a fitness area, a cafeteria, dormitories, and even an enormous swimming pool.
Every facility one might need in daily life was here.
Strangely, however, Qin Ze hadn't seen a single shelter resident along the way.
The vast shelter was silent, with only Qin Ze's rhythmic footsteps breaking the quiet.
"You have arrived at the administrator's office."
As the arrow disappeared, Qin Ze stood before a tightly shut alloy door.
Qin Ze hesitated for a moment before finally raising his hand and knocking.
Knock, knock, knock~
"Hello."
There was no response from inside.
Knock, knock, knock~
"Hello, is anyone there?"
Qin Ze knocked repeatedly for a while, but there wasn't so much as a fart from the office.
"How big-balls! How dare you ignore Brother Ze!"
"Kick the door down."
"This shelter is really strange. We'd better be careful."
"We've come all this way. We have to see what sort of person this administrator is."
After a round of brainstorming with his clones, Qin Ze decided to break in.
He gathered his qi and blood, raised his foot, and delivered a front kick with his left leg.
Duang-
"Ow, damn it!"
Qin Ze grabbed his foot and hopped backward on one leg.
It hurt!
It hurt so much!
The alloy door hadn't budged, and Qin Ze had nearly broken his foot.
After examining the door for a while, Qin Ze noticed a handle on the side.
He gave it a gentle turn.
Click~
The door opened.
Qin Ze froze.
He had ten thousand curses in his heart and didn't know whether to say them.
He pushed the door open, and a wave of stale, decaying air hit him in the face.
The administrator's office was large.
Two of its walls were covered with screens showing every corner of the shelter.
There was a desk in the center of the office, with a corpse reduced to a skeleton slumped over it.
Qin Ze stepped forward and saw a pistol beside the skeleton's right hand and a blackened patch on the right temple of its skull.
Clearly, this person had shot himself.
"Could this guy be the shelter's administrator?"
Qin Ze's suspicion was soon confirmed.
There was a yellowed diary on the desk.
Though no one knew how many years had passed and the diary had begun to oxidize, the writing was still faintly legible.
[February 21, 2053]
[Today was the first day all the residents moved into the shelter. Everyone was depressed, and everyone was lost about the future, myself included as the administrator.]
[To pass the time, I decided to start keeping a diary today.]
[What kind of decent person keeps a diary?]
Qin Ze was certain.
This guy was the administrator.
But why had he killed himself?
And where had all the shelter's residents gone?
Qin Ze continued reading.
[February 25, 2053]
[To lift everyone's spirits, I decided to hold a social party.]
[The shelter was full of handsome men and beautiful women. After all, they had been carefully selected to breed outstanding offspring.]
[Everyone's spirits finally lifted at the party, and their hope for the future was rekindled.]
[March 10, 2053]
[There was a problem with the power generation module. Although the power was out for several hours, thankfully the problem was eventually resolved.]
[The shelter relied on a nuclear reactor for power. According to the plan, it could generate electricity for a hundred years.]
[Please, let nothing go wrong with the reactor. All the crops and vegetables grown without soil depended on the electrical system.]
[March 25, 2053]
[People were growing increasingly restless. Life in the shelter was not as good as imagined. After all, with so little room to move around, it was no different from being in prison.]
[Some residents wanted to go into cryogenic sleep, but unfortunately, Shelter No. 10 had no cryogenic pods.]
[Cryogenic pods consumed too much power, and the shelter's power supply could not sustain them.]
[At today's regular meeting with the administrators of the other nine shelters, I learned some good news: the Abyss had closed, and there would be no more exotic beasts.]
[If the Mutated Ones could disappear along with the exotic beasts, that would be even better.]
Qin Ze spotted a particular term.
Mutated Ones.
They had been specifically distinguished from exotic beasts.
Did it refer to those humanoid exotic beasts outside?
If they weren't exotic beasts, where had the Mutated Ones come from?
[April 13, 2053]
[Terrible news came: Shelter No. 3 had fallen to the Mutated Ones.]
[Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!]
[Damn me!]
[April 27, 2053]
[Shelters No. 1 and No. 5 had also lost contact.]
[Some administrators had begun to question the decision to use shelters. Could we really survive by being turtles hiding in our shells?]
[The administrator of Shelter No. 6 had already contacted Sky Island. He wanted to open the shelter and join the Resistance Army.]
[In the past, I might have tried to persuade him that joining the Resistance Army would only lead to death, but now we were merely clinging to life ourselves.]
Reading this, Qin Ze realized that the administrator had become deeply dejected.
[June 1, 2053]
[Now only Shelter No. 9 could maintain stable contact with me.]
[I had begun telling the residents of Shelter No. 10 only the good news and keeping the bad news from them.]
[I repeatedly told everyone that the shelter was absolutely safe and that the Mutated Ones could not get in.]
[I was deceiving myself...]
[October 15, 2053]
[Shelter No. 9 had fallen too. The Shelter Project was a joke.]
[During my last call with the administrator of Shelter No. 9, I learned that Sky Island had developed humanoid combat weapons and apparently no longer needed living people on the front lines.]
[Should we join them?]
[November 20, 2053]
[After a month of careful consideration, I decided to contact Sky Island.]
[The damned antenna was broken, and someone had to be sent outside to repair it.]
[November 21, 2053]
[The Mutated Ones rushed in when the door was opened. The eastern dormitories had fallen, and four thousand residents who had not escaped in time had died.]
[November 23, 2053]
[The blast doors had sealed off the eastern dormitory area. The Mutated Ones had begun digging tunnels, but luckily I injected corrosive poison into them in time.]
[November 25, 2053]
[The shelter had become an isolated island.]
[December 30, 2053]
[It was over. Everything was over.]
[The rainwater collection system had been destroyed by the Mutated Ones. Only one fate awaited us: death by thirst.]
[January 1, 2054]
[When the roof leaked, it rained all night. The soilless cultivation system had broken down, and we had no food left.]
[January 7, 2054]
[The residents had voluntarily formed an assault team, but they could not even get out of the eastern dormitory area.]
[January 23, 2054]
[All the shelter residents had voted for collective euthanasia.]
[January 24, 2054]
[I personally pressed the switch to release the sleeping gas. The shelter's thirteen thousand residents would die peacefully in their sleep.]
[I often wondered what would have happened if I had never developed the Alpha Reagent.]
[Without the Alpha Reagent, there would have been no Reverse Alpha Reagent, much less any Mutated Ones.]
[But without the Reverse Alpha Reagent, how could the exotic beasts have been dealt with?]
[Perhaps humanity's end was destruction.]