Duan Ming's heart jolted.
He hurried to the window and stuck his head out.
His window faced row after row of towering apartment buildings.
It was dark on the ground, and he couldn't see a thing.
But once again, he heard Zhao Jie shouting.
At the same time, someone else let out a piercing scream.
There was also the sound of something tearing and biting into flesh.
In an instant, the hairs all over Duan Ming's body stood on end.
He immediately turned and looked at a knife hanging on the wall.
Go?
Or stay?
He had only known the fatty for a week; they could hardly be considered close!
Even if the two of them were friends now, they had only become friends ten or so minutes ago.
He still didn't know what was happening outside.
If someone was being robbed, it couldn't have sounded like that.
If demonic creatures had invaded, he didn't know how strong they were. Going out there might just mean handing over his life!
Yeah, he wasn't going!
At a time like this, it was best to stay put in his room.
If there were demonic creatures, the people from the City Protection Bureau should hurry over to deal with them soon.
It was better to leave this sort of thing to the professionals.
He wasn't an idiot.
In his dreams, he could take on hundreds of demonic creatures single-handedly without breaking a sweat.
But that was a dream, and this was fucking reality!
But he was the one who had told Zhao Jie to take the little alleys through the residential area.
If he hadn't said that, Zhao Jie wouldn't have taken this route, and he might not have gotten into trouble.
Listening to another scream from outside, he couldn't tell whose it was.
Duan Ming looked at the plastic bottle on the table.
"Fuck!"
He snatched a knife off the wall.
The knife looked a lot like the one he used in his dreams.
He had seen it by chance and bought it for his collection.
Its blade was straight and as long as a sword. It had been sharpened, but it had never tasted blood.
Click!
Third Uncle, who had also faintly heard the commotion, pushed open the door to Duan Ming's room.
The room was empty, with no one inside. Only the window was open.
"Where is he?!"
Third Uncle's pupils abruptly contracted.
At that moment, Duan Ming was tense to the extreme.
Although he had seen every kind of situation in his dreams,
this was his first time encountering an emergency like this, and he couldn't help getting nervous.
He thought he was being a fucking idiot, jumping out of the second-floor window on an impulse.
But no matter what, Zhao Jie had taken this path because of what he had said.
He had to go and see, no matter what.
If he could save Zhao Jie, all the better.
If he couldn't, he would run!
He wasn't an idiot who would throw his own life away knowing he couldn't save him.
Duan Ming ran into an alley and kept heading toward Zhao Jie's cries.
"Zhao Jie!"
He shouted.
Suddenly, the scene that appeared before him struck deep into his nerves.
Blood was still running down the wall.
On the ground lay a corpse that was no longer recognizable as human.
Even though he had seen scenes like this a thousand times in his dreams,
seeing one in reality for the first time still made Duan Ming's skin crawl.
"Duan Ming, what are you doing here?!"
Apparently hearing Duan Ming's voice, Zhao Jie shouted back from a distance, panting heavily.
Following the direction of his voice, Duan Ming drew his knife, tossed away the sheath, and charged over.
His own breathing grew heavier and heavier.
"Zhao Jie!"
Duan Ming kept shouting to pinpoint Zhao Jie's location.
"Duan Ming! Run! Run! Don't come over here!"
"That thing... used its feet to cut someone into several pieces! Get out of here! Don't come over!!"
Zhao Jie didn't call for Duan Ming to save him. Instead, he told Duan Ming to run.
Perhaps it was because even if Duan Ming came, he couldn't save him.
Standing at the entrance to an alley, Duan Ming saw another bloody scene.
Judging by the severed limbs on the ground, there were at least two people.
Blood flowed to Duan Ming's feet.
The sight before him assaulted his optic nerves in waves.
He took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the hilt, and charged down the alley to his left, following the sounds.
"Come over here!"
He didn't know where he had found the courage to shout that.
Elsewhere, a young woman in an alley froze on the spot, startled by the voices that had suddenly rung out around her.
Seeing a boy running toward her and a black shadow scuttling rapidly along the wall, her alcohol-numbed senses instantly cleared halfway.
She collapsed onto her backside.
"Run! Don't just sit there, run!"
The boy running toward her shouted as he looked at her.
The woman scrambled across the ground for her life. She was so frightened she couldn't even stand up.
Anyone else might not have been able to match the monster's speed.
But the boy had cultivated Qi, and now he gathered all of it in his legs.
For no other reason than to run for his life!
Whoosh!
The boy ran past her like the wind.
She hadn't had time to get up and could only watch helplessly as the enormous black shadow stepped on her.
One of its sharp feet pierced her body!
Pffft!
"Team E, we've received a report from a citizen. Something's happened in search area 18 near you. Head over and investigate immediately. Team One will be there shortly."
"Roger. We've already heard the commotion and are on our way."
"Remember, trap the demonic creature at all costs. That's a residential area. We absolutely cannot let it hurt any more citizens!"
"Roger."
At the entrance to an alley, Duan Ming held his knife in one hand and listened to the sounds on either side.
"Left!"
He charged to the left without hesitation.
The sound was close, getting closer and closer.
Duan Ming reckoned that he and Zhao Jie were no more than one alley apart now.
"Zhao Jie, stay where you are! I'm coming to you!"
"I can't stop! That thing's chasing me!"
Zhao Jie was already so exhausted he could barely catch his breath, and his shout was slightly hoarse.
"Fuck!"
Duan Ming cursed under his breath.
He set off again, following the direction of the voice.
Finally, at the entrance to an alley ahead, he spotted Zhao Jie.
Zhao Jie was bent over with both hands braced on his knees, gasping for air.
His breathing was ragged. He raised his head slightly and looked at Duan Ming, but couldn't get a word out.
Duan Ming hurried over to him.
Zhao Jie seemed to want to speak, but he was so badly starved of oxygen that he couldn't get a single word out.
The worn-out backpack he had been carrying was gone. His head and forehead were covered in sweat, and his shoes were stained with blood.
Zhao Jie glanced at the knife in Duan Ming's hand, straightened up, and managed a complicated expression with difficulty. "That thing... I lost it."
Duan Ming looked him up and down.
"Let's go!"
But just as the words left his mouth, an enormous black shadow dropped from above and landed behind Zhao Jie.
Before either of them could react-
Squelch!
A sharp black object pierced the boy's body and burst out the other side.
Red blood splattered across the face of the boy holding the knife.
Duan Ming's pupils involuntarily contracted.
Right in front of him was a bloody spider leg that had pierced through Zhao Jie's chest.
It was only a finger's breadth from his own body!
"Zhao Jie."
Duan Ming's brows knitted, his voice somewhat panicked.
Zhao Jie's expression froze.
He slowly lowered his head to look at the sharp object through his body, his face twisted in agony.
"I thought I'd lost it... it hurts..."
The moment he opened his mouth, a large mouthful of blood poured out.
Buzz!
It was as if a small nuclear bomb had exploded inside Duan Ming's head.
The moment Zhao Jie said it hurt, his heart clenched sharply.
Squelch!
The spider leg withdrew.
As if all support had vanished from beneath him, the boy fell into a pool of blood.
Behind Zhao Jie's corpse was a black spider, three meters tall, with eight sharp, enormous legs and a humanlike face with eight eyes.