"Approved!"
Wang Hai's steady voice came through the earpiece.
Just as Shen Heng was about to start upstairs, Wang Hai suddenly spoke again.
"Wait downstairs first. We'll come down to get you. The Calamity Beast is below us now. If you come straight up, it might attack you!"
"Understood!"
Shen Heng answered and waited where he was.
Before long, Shen Heng heard Wang Hai and the others coming downstairs. This time, they were much louder than before.
Never mind whether there was a Calamity Beast here-even if there was, if he was going to come out, he would have done so on their first two trips. Why wait until now? There was no need for them to muffle their footsteps.
Soon, the sounds of the Calamity Beast going upstairs reached him as well.
Just as before, the two sides never met, and Wang Hai's group made their way down without incident.
Several minutes later, the two groups met.
They looked at one another, their gazes meeting. Without any unnecessary words, they simply gave heavy nods in tacit understanding, then swiftly turned and headed back into the building.
The stairs weren't on the side Shen Heng had been facing at the entrance earlier, but closer to the side of the building.
Once they reached the staircase, they swiftly climbed upward.
The third floor, the fifth, the tenth, the fifteenth, the twentieth...
The Calamity Beast moved again.
Shen Heng, who was second in line, briefly paused and called for Wang Hai ahead of him to stop.
"The Calamity Beast is coming down!"
Han Ling, Wu Cheng, and Wei Leyang hesitated, but once again took up fighting stances.
Shen Heng also moved a little farther from the stairs to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
"Twenty-third floor!"
"Twenty-second!"
"Twenty-first!"
Shen Heng's murmurs reached everyone's ears through their earpieces.
They stared intently at the stairwell.
One second, two seconds, three seconds...
Judging by the Calamity Beast's earlier speed, it took roughly three or four seconds to move up or down a floor. Yet even now, they still hadn't spotted it in the stairwell.
But that was how it had been all along. If it wasn't there, it wasn't there. They had gone back and forth three or four times without seeing the Calamity Beast. Why would adding Shen Heng suddenly let them see it now?... They couldn't help thinking this.
Han Ling instinctively glanced at Shen Heng. Just as she was wondering whether she should tell him not to overthink it, that failing at first was normal, his body abruptly jolted.
Did he... discover something?... Han Ling's eyes widened slightly despite herself, her gaze fixed on Shen Heng.
Shen Heng's eyes were wide open, his gaze riveted on the stairwell.
He finally understood why he had heard the sounds, yet the captain and the others hadn't found the Calamity Beast despite going back and forth several times.
It was because they had all been using human ways of thinking to figure out why they hadn't encountered the Calamity Beast-but they were dealing with a Calamity Beast!
Who said a Calamity Beast had to use the stairs to go up and down?
Shen Heng stood rooted to the spot, staring fixedly at the wall separating the stairwell from the outside.
At that moment, his gaze seemed to pierce the wall and see the Calamity Beast climbing outside. Everything became clear.
The Calamity Beast was climbing directly up and down the outside of the building!!
No wonder he had clearly heard them pass each other earlier, yet they hadn't seen the Calamity Beast. One was outside, the others inside. As long as the Calamity Beast kept quiet enough, of course they couldn't possibly discover it!!
And he had been too far away himself. Without knowing the building's layout, he likewise hadn't realized that a wall separated Wang Hai's group from the Calamity Beast!
No wonder the Calamity Beast moved between floors so quickly. He had thought it was because he was relatively large, but now it was clear-it was entirely because he was traveling in a straight line!
Several thoughts flashed through Shen Heng's mind, and more seemed ready to emerge, but he forcibly pressed them down. Now wasn't the time to think about that. What mattered now was how to deal with this Calamity Beast.
The Calamity Beast was outside the wall. Who could handle it?
The names Wang Hai, Wei Leyang, Wu Cheng, and Han Ling flashed through Shen Heng's mind one by one.
He swiftly turned toward Han Ling, only to find her looking at him too, a trace of confusion in her eyes.
"Han Ling, the Calamity Beast is on the wall outside the stairs! It's climbing up and down the wall!" Shen Heng shouted to her.
At his words, the confusion in Han Ling's eyes over what Shen Heng had discovered swiftly turned to clarity.
She didn't think through as much as Shen Heng had. Only two thoughts flashed through her mind.
One was that this explained why they hadn't seen the Calamity Beast earlier. The other was that the Calamity Beast was outside!
Without needing anyone's orders, Han Ling swiftly straightened, kicked hard against the floor, and shot toward the area beside the stairwell like a bolt of black lightning. The stairwell had no windows, but the space beside it did!
Tap, tap, tap...
Han Ling ran quickly forward.
The building's left side was completely empty, without anything blocking it. Only the poured-concrete ceiling and floor were visible. Who knew what it had originally been designed for?
Han Ling didn't care, though. All she needed was somewhere to shoot from.
Almost at the same instant Han Ling moved, the Calamity Beast clinging to the outer wall began moving rapidly too.
"The Calamity Beast is running upward! Straight upward!" Shen Heng's voice came from behind.
"Got it!" Han Ling said with a grin.
Thud!
With a heavy footfall, Han Ling leaped off the floor.
Her body rotated in midair, face upward and back downward, the ceiling flashing past before her eyes.
In just an instant, her view abruptly brightened.
The bright moon and tall buildings appeared before her.
Along with them appeared a Calamity Beast clinging to the wall, only a few meters away from her.
The Calamity Beast's upper body looked somewhat like a monkey's, and somewhat like a human's, with two withered, skinny claws. It had no lower body, only a thick, long tail in its place. Not a single hair grew on it; its entire body was covered in a layer of grayish-white, wrinkled, dry skin, looking especially terrifying in the moonlight.
So disgusting!
Han Ling silently grumbled to herself.
She sharply bent her legs and planted her feet back on the floor before her body had flown completely beyond the building, halting her outward momentum.
She raised her sniper rifle and aimed!
As if sensing danger, the Calamity Beast, which had been climbing upward without stopping, abruptly turned its head and opened its mouth.
Inside the Calamity Beast's mouth was pitch-black emptiness. There was nothing there, not even structures such as teeth or a tongue. It was like a black hole.
Damn, can it spit something out, or is this a sonic attack?... Han Ling's heart suddenly clenched.
Whatever it was, she would have trouble dealing with it in her current position. More than half her body was outside. If she came under attack, she could easily lose her balance and fall. From this height, according to what the captain had said downstairs, she would be crippled if she didn't die!
But she had no time to consider anything else. She gritted her teeth and swiftly pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
"Roar!"
The gunshot and the piercing, shrill roar rang out almost simultaneously.
Han Ling felt her vision abruptly go black. She vaguely heard the explosion of the bullet hitting its mark and the Calamity Beast's agonized roar, then her body fell limply toward the ground below.