As this eerie voice echoed all around, the gunfire in the hallway seemed to become less frequent, and the sounds of fighting gradually grew quieter.
Yang Yuxin, holding her paranormal pistol, cautiously approached the doorway. She poked her head out to take a look. The hallway was still dimly lit, but the surrounding doors were all tightly shut, and those “Mirror People” had disappeared as well.
Yang Yuxin didn’t let her guard down. She knew a weird attack couldn’t just suddenly stop; this felt more like the calm before a storm.
She told Yun’er to be careful and protect Cheng Shengnan, while she herself took a fist-sized, round “floor-sweeping robot” out of her duffel bag and placed it at the door.
This was a device developed by the Rong City branch – an AI-powered paranormal energy detector. It could autonomously find weak spots in a paranormal space, reducing the chances of paranormal agents getting lost inside.
After the “floor-sweeping robot” entered the hallway, it spun around in place first. Then, with a series of “beep beep beep” sounds, it turned and headed down the corridor to the left.
“Follow it,” Yang Yuxin said after confirming it was safe. She had Yun’er protect Cheng Shengnan and follow her.
Although the words from that voice back in the room were kind of thought-provoking, Yang Yuxin felt that now wasn’t the time to let the enemy lead them by the nose.
Besides, she had been keeping a close eye on Cheng Shengnan and Yun’er’s movements. There was no way the enemy could have quietly replaced them with Mirror People without her noticing.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Just then, a sound of something lightly tapping against the wall came from the hallway behind Cheng Shengnan. Yun’er immediately spun around, ready to strike.
“Wait!” Yang Yuxin raised her hand to signal them to be quiet. She made a hushing gesture, then pressed her palm down to tell them to stay put.
Then, Yang Yuxin walked over behind Cheng Shengnan, pulled a grenade out of her backpack, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the hallway.
But as this special paranormal grenade bounced off the ground, the floor suddenly split open. A mouth over a meter wide opened up and swallowed the grenade in one gulp.
Boom!
The grenade exploded underground. The three people standing not far away could all feel the floor beneath them tremble slightly.
“What… is that?” Yun’er was stunned when she saw the dark shadow.
Yang Yuxin said, “It’s blood vessels spreading out from the room. It’s just that the hallway lighting is dim, so it’s all hidden in the shadows.”
While standing at the doorway observing the paranormal energy detector, Yang Yuxin had noticed something off in the shadows based on the energy fluctuation patterns. So, she had kept her guard up. She hadn’t expected there to actually be a big guy hiding in there.
“Be careful. Try to stay away from the shadows,” Yang Yuxin said.
Yang Yuxin and Yun’er protected Cheng Shengnan as they moved forward, one in front and one behind. Yang Yuxin’s combat boots made soft sounds on the floor. Suddenly, the floor cracked open again. That bloody mouth reappeared, lunging to swallow Yang Yuxin.
Luckily, Yang Yuxin was prepared. From the moment she heard the sound, she was on alert for changes in the floor. As soon as the bloody mouth appeared, she lunged forward to avoid being swallowed, and at the same time, tossed two paranormal grenades into the mouth.
Yun’er reacted quickly too. She grabbed Cheng Shengnan, pulled her close, pushed off the ground, and immediately dodged the bloody mouth.
Boom!
The next second, the exploding firelight illuminated the area below the bloody mouth. But it looked like a bottomless dry well – you couldn’t see the end, and there was nothing special about it.
Strangely, after being blown up by the paranormal grenades, that huge bloody mouth seemed to quiet down and didn’t attack again.
“Come here, quick!” Cheng Shengnan and Yun’er heard Yang Yuxin call out.
“Wait!”
“That wasn’t me talking.”
Just as they were about to move, they heard Yang Yuxin urgently stop them. She was waving one hand at them, clearly trying to tell them that she wasn’t the one who had spoken.
Seeing Yang Yuxin’s gesture, Cheng Shengnan and Yun’er immediately stopped. The next second, Yang Yuxin heard Cheng Shengnan and Yun’er calling out to her as well.
Yang Yuxin took a larger paranormal grenade out of her backpack and tossed it into the bloody mouth. But as the mouth swallowed the grenade, the entire floor shook violently. Then, a human face appeared on the floorboards – twisted and hideous.
That eerie face controlled the bloody mouth, splitting it in two. The two halves lunged to bite Yang Yuxin on the left and Cheng Shengnan on the right.
Both Yang Yuxin and Yun’er reacted very quickly. Yang Yuxin used her paranormal energy saber, and Yun’er used her monster sharp claws. They both attacked the monster on the floor at the same time. With a squelch, the monster embedded in the floor was slashed, creating bloody wounds. Thick, black, sticky stuff gushed out with a splat, splat, splat.
The ghostly face became even more twisted and hideous. It let out a piercing shriek. The sound seemed to be a mix of the three people’s voices, slowly morphing into that initial, spine-chilling, hoarse, suppressed voice that echoed in the hallway, hurting their ears.
Yang Yuxin was about to press her advantage with her saber when she noticed something surging in the black liquid oozing from the ghostly face wall near her feet. She stepped back to look and realized it wasn’t black liquid at all. It was thumb-sized black worms, all squirming together. It just looked like flowing liquid!
And it wasn’t just on the floor. Those still-wriggling black blood vessels on the walls were also packed with disgusting, terrifying black worms.
But in the one or two seconds that Yang Yuxin was stunned, the ghostly face had already shrunk back into the ground. The bloody mouth instantly closed up and disappeared without a trace, leaving only a floor covered in black bugs.
Yang Yuxin poked the floor with her paranormal energy saber. The floor was completely undamaged, but the eerie figure was gone without a trace.
“Weird things… can run away?” Yun’er said, a bit confused.
Yang Yuxin said, “Usually, in a situation like this, it’s not a weird phenomenon. It’s a monster that has merged with the paranormal space, or rather, with this hotel building.”
Cheng Shengnan agreed, “That’s right. I’ve seen similar fused monsters in the monster files that Shen Ge recorded. Apart from their bodies being fused with the hotel building, their abilities are also incredibly strange. For example, the shadows just now, the bloody mouths on the floor, the parasitic-type weird phenomena on the walls…”
Cheng Shengnan roughly explained the characteristics of fused monsters and then continued, “According to several fused monster files that Shen Ge submitted, we should be trapped in a paranormal space controlled by a fused monster. Usually, this kind of space is more likely to be located in the monster’s abdomen.”
“The best way to escape is to find the fused monster’s ‘heart’ and destroy it. Then the paranormal space can be broken.”
As the number one “armchair strategist” at the Rong City branch, Cheng Shengnan’s knowledge of weird phenomena and monster information was even more professional than those researchers in the research department who dissected weird things every day. After her explanation, Yang Yuxin quickly determined their action plan: find the fused monster’s heart.
The three of them walked down the hallway. The further they went, the dimmer the lights became, slowly turning a dark red. At the same time, the shadows in the corners on both sides widened. Black worms crawled on the walls – it was disgusting.
At the end of the hallway, the three suddenly felt an immense pressure. The pitch-black corridor was like a terrifying beast opening its mouth at you. Take one more step forward, and you’d be swallowed into the belly of this giant monster.
Click.
Click.
Yang Yuxin and Cheng Shengnan turned on their flashlights almost simultaneously and tried to shine them into the pitch-black hallway. But the new type of paranormal flashlight, which could normally illuminate twenty meters or so, seemed to be suddenly “blocked” at a distance of about three to five meters.
Even stranger, when they took a step forward while holding the flashlight, the light didn’t extend any further. It was as if that point was a barrier cutting off the light source.
“Wait a second, something’s not right,” Yang Yuxin said. She signaled for the other two to step back and continued to control the paranormal detection robot to move forward into the darkness.
Beep, beep, beep.
After the floor-sweeping robot entered the darkness, the controller on Yang Yuxin’s wrist soon started flashing a red light, and the flashing became faster and faster.
“The paranormal energy intensity is over three digits. That’s strange. It looks like it shouldn’t be above Tier 3, but a fused monster like this should be at least Tier 4 or 5, right?” Yang Yuxin said, puzzled.
Cheng Shengnan thought for a moment and said, “Large fused monsters usually have parasitic-type weird things inside them acting as ‘antibodies,’ responsible for killing intruders like us. The paranormal energy detector is likely picking up the intensity of those parasitic weird things, not the fused monster itself.”
As soon as Cheng Shengnan finished speaking, the information displayed on Yang Yuxin’s detector changed again. The quantity changed from “1” to “2,” confirming Cheng Shengnan’s guess.
After waiting another two minutes, the red light on the detector turned green, and the flashing frequency slowed down.
“Found it. This way!” Yang Yuxin moved forward carefully according to the route map drawn by the paranormal energy detector. Cheng Shengnan and Yun’er followed closely behind.
The three walked cautiously for a distance. After passing through that completely dark section, they arrived in a dark red passageway. The doors on both sides of the passage were slightly ajar. From inside, they could faintly hear the weird, characteristic sound of swallowing.
Although they knew there were weird things in the rooms, just leaving them alone wasn’t safe either. What if these monsters came out while they were ahead? Being caught between a front and rear attack would only increase the danger.
After thinking for a bit, Yang Yuxin decided to eliminate these potential threats first. So, she signaled the other two to wait by the wall while she carefully slipped into a room.
Yang Yuxin lightened her steps as she approached the door and slowly pushed it open. The ordinary room was coated in an eerie red glow.
Although the red light was terrifying, it was just bright enough to see. It felt exactly like the lighting used intentionally in horror movies to create atmosphere.
Low, oppressive.
Yang Yuxin walked through a two-meter-long entrance hall, deliberately slowing her pace. She faintly heard a sticky, squelching sound with each step.
She instinctively shone her flashlight at her feet. The room was covered in a dark red, blood-like sticky substance. Stepping on it made that disgusting sound.
Going further in, the entire room seemed layered with a disgusting film of fatty grease. A monster, half-human, half-spider, was pouncing on that grease, frantically devouring it.
“Paranormal energy intensity, Level 3.”
A Tier 3 monster. This wasn’t too difficult for Yang Yuxin to handle now. Overall, a monster’s actual strength is actually one tier lower than a weird phenomenon’s. Plus, a monster’s body is mainly human, so it has more weak points. Most importantly, destroying its heart definitely kills it.
Yang Yuxin hid in the entrance hall and observed the spider monster. She used a scanner to determine the position of its heart, to see if it had shifted due to mutation.
This kind of situation had happened before. Paranormal agents would subconsciously assume the monster was still human and attack its left chest, only to find the monster’s heart in its “throat” or even in the middle of its intestines.
Therefore, the Special Strategy Department developed a device to detect a monster’s “heart” position. Although it only works on monsters below Tier 4, that was enough to handle most situations.
Dee.
The detector scanned a “heart” response on the spider monster’s left waist. Yang Yuxin didn’t hesitate for a second. She raised her silenced paranormal submachine gun, aimed at the spider monster’s heart, and let loose a burst of fire. Flesh and blood splattered everywhere.
Gurgle.
Gurgle!
The spider monster rolled to the side, trying to use the furniture and bloody flesh in the room to dodge the paranormal bullets. But Yang Yuxin wasn’t about to give it a chance to react. After suppressing it with firepower, she closed the distance. Then, she launched her paranormal energy saber, plunging it directly into the spider monster’s chest.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
The spider monster’s body suddenly exploded. Its head, body, limbs… each piece grew its own spider legs, turning into independent spider monsters that lunged at Yang Yuxin.
Yang Yuxin casually tossed a Molotov cocktail into the room. With a bang, a ball of fire erupted, instantly igniting the rotting flesh that looked like fat grease in the room. The fire spread quickly.
Yang Yuxin fought while retreating. She emptied a magazine, blasting two parasitic spiders. Just as she was reloading, a parasitized host pounced on her.
She raised her left arm. A black, rotting-flesh-like substance gathered on her hand, then exploded outward like a hedgehog with countless spikes, impaling the ghost spider.
After killing the spider monster, Yang Yuxin left the room and went to the next one. They cleared out spider monsters like this all the way to the end.
Strangely, at the end of the hallway, there was no room and no stairwell leading up or down. There was just a pitch-black wall.
Yang Yuxin poked the wall with her paranormal energy saber, trying to find a hidden mechanism. But aside from the wall being black, it was no different from any ordinary stone wall.
“Don’t you two think… the temperature here is really low?” Cheng Shengnan suddenly asked. She felt that just standing next to this wall, an inexplicable chill enveloped her whole body. She shivered uncontrollably and unconsciously moved closer to Yun’er.
Yang Yuxin and Yun’er looked at each other and both shook their heads. They felt perfectly normal. But judging by Cheng Shengnan’s reaction, she wasn’t joking.
Yang Yuxin suddenly thought of something. She raised her hand and patted her arm. The paranormal skin suit attached to her arm immediately began to retract, revealing her pale arm.
“The temperature is really low here. That’s strange. The paranormal skin suit only has defensive functions; it doesn’t provide insulation. So why can’t I feel the cold when I’m wearing it?” Yang Yuxin asked, confused.
But even stranger: Yang Yuxin couldn’t feel the low temperature while wearing the skin suit, but Yun’er, who didn’t have a suit, why couldn’t she feel the cold?
“Paranormal energy!” Cheng Shengnan reacted the fastest and immediately caught onto the problem.
Just then, the wall emitted a weird, characteristic swallowing sound. Then, the entire wall transformed into a giant, ghostly face. It roared at the three of them, its expression hideous.
