After passing through the office area, Shen Ge and Fang Yaori once again arrived at the very spacious monitoring room, which contained no less than a thousand surveillance screens.
“Gulp.”
Just then, a strange sound caught Shen Ge’s attention.
But this time, it wasn’t the eerie’s characteristic swallowing noise—it came from Fang Yaori’s stomach. Shen Ge initially worried that his Weirdo cells were acting up again, but Fang Yaori said somewhat embarrassedly, “Sorry, Detective Shen. I haven’t eaten anything all night, my stomach just… acted up.”
It had indeed been an entire night since Shen Ge first met Fang Yaori. Plus, Fang Yaori had just completed his heterization, so feeling hungry wasn’t surprising.
As for Shen Ge, although he had eaten with Fang Mingyue before being pulled into the dream world—and had surprisingly consumed ten portions of food—his stomach felt like a bottomless pit ever since that strange “hunger” sensation appeared in his body.
“Let’s head upstairs. There’s a dining room up there,” Shen Ge said, motioning for Fang Yaori to follow. They exited through the small door in the monitoring room, crossed the long corridor, and entered the stairwell.
“Dining room?” Fang Yaori was bewildered, wondering how Shen Ge knew this place so well.
But when he followed Shen Ge up to the second floor, Fang Yaori froze. The corridors on the left and right of the stairwell each led to a different dining room. The eerie part was that he felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he had been here himself before.
While Fang Yaori hesitated, Shen Ge had already walked over to a set of double doors. The style of this door was somewhat similar to the office area on the first floor, looking like an “organ” of a Weirdo.
With practiced ease, Shen Ge used his Eerie-Exterminating Revolver to blow off the lock on the left double door. When he pushed the door open, it was pitch black inside.
Fang Yaori stood behind Shen Ge, watching him shine his flashlight inside. The dining room was spacious and in disarray, with tables and chairs knocked over everywhere. There were many skeletal remains scattered about, and the entire space reeked of a pungent stench.
Suddenly, Fang Yaori froze, then said, “Detective Shen, isn’t this the restaurant of the Jingyan Grand Hotel? I—I’ve been here before!”
“You know this place?” Shen Ge asked.
Fang Yaori quickly nodded: “Jingyan is the biggest and most prestigious hotel in the capital. Foreign dignitaries are usually entertained here. Several state banquets have been held… ahem. Back in the day, the wealthy young men in the capital would compete to see who could book one of their luxury private rooms. I came here once with my grandfather.”
“Tsk, it’s like that obligatory fancy restaurant in every urban fantasy novel,” Shen Ge remarked jokingly.
Fang Yaori clearly remembered how he and Shen Ge had navigated through the city to reach this spire. Confused, he said, “But… isn’t the Jingyan Grand Hotel located in the eastern district? How did it end up in the city center? And it shouldn’t be on the second floor either.”
Hearing this, Shen Ge found it strange too. He had felt the same way when he went to the high-rise building in the doomsday Rong City. That place seemed like countless buildings “stitched” together.
But that explanation didn’t quite hold up. The Shelter Plan aimed to build humanity’s last fortress, so it naturally prioritized survival facilities. A luxurious restaurant like this shouldn’t exist here.
As he pondered this, a rustling sound came from the corners of the room, seemingly coming from behind the food service counters.
Fang Yaori jumped in fright, hiding behind Shen Ge. Shen Ge facepalmed, realizing he had only focused on the monsters gathered downstairs and forgotten that there were also monsters here.
“Look at you. Didn’t you kill quite a few parasitized hosts on the way here? How are you still getting scared?” Shen Ge teased with a hint of disdain.
Fang Yaori gave an embarrassed smile. After all, he was a self-taught anti-eerie fighter, and today was his first real combat experience with Shen Ge. Clearly, his mindset wasn’t stable enough yet.
Shen Ge walked toward the counter. In the corner, a few parasitized hosts with flesh-eating flower heads were gnawing on the corpses of their dead kin.
Shen Ge extended his left arm, and his rotting blood tentacles snaked along it. The tip wrapped around his butcher knife, and with a few swift swish swish cuts, he decapitated the parasitized ones.
Then, he pulled over a nearby chair, sat down, and took out cooking pots, bowls, utensils, drinking water, and two cartons of instant noodles from his Bloodhide Backpack. It looked like he was about to cook a meal.
Fang Yaori: ?
?
???
Fang Yaori was dumbfounded. What kind of act was this?
One moment he was chopping up monsters with a cleaver, the next he was preparing to cook?
Wait!
“De-De-De-De-Detective Shen, a-a-a-a-are you planning to eat those things?” Fang Yaori looked at the bloody monster corpses in the corner illuminated by the flashlight and felt his stomach churn.
Shen Ge said, “Do you have such a heavy taste?”
!
You’re the one with the heavy taste, alright!
Fang Yaori asked in confusion, “Then what are you doing?”
“Aren’t you hungry? Do you want some instant noodles?” Shen Ge brought over a rack from behind the counter, set up the pot he brought, poured in drinking water, and started boiling the noodles.
“…”
So it was just instant noodles.
Seeing this, Fang Yaori almost cried. If you’re just making instant noodles, please don’t put on the act of Hannibal Lecter preparing a “delicacy of the tongue,” okay?
Putting aside this misunderstanding, Fang Yaori was actually quite touched. Shen Ge had prepared instant noodles for him right after he mentioned being hungry.
“Uh, thanks,” Fang Yaori said, instinctively sitting down across from Shen Ge.
Shen Ge put a full ten packs of noodles into the pot, stirred them with his chopsticks, looked at the empty pot in front of Fang Yaori, and asked puzzledly, “Make your own if you want to eat. What are you waiting for?”
???
“Uh, Detective Shen, you’re having… ten packs?” Fang Yaori was stunned. From what Shen Ge said, it seemed he hadn’t planned on sharing.
“These are for me.”
“…”
Fang Yaori didn’t know how to respond. He mechanically started opening his own instant noodles to cook. For the next half hour, he remained in a state of shock.
Because Shen Ge wasn’t eating instant noodles by the “pack”—he was eating them by the carton. He devoured two entire cartons of instant noodles, not including the luncheon meat, ham sausages, and other canned ingredients.
With an appetite like that, no one would believe he was human!
Half an hour later, several empty instant noodle cartons sat behind Shen Ge. At 24 packs per carton, he had eaten over a hundred packs by himself.
“Limited conditions here. I’ll just settle for being sixty percent full,” Shen Ge said, wiping his mouth and picking up a bottle of water to drink.
“…” Fang Yaori looked at the two empty instant noodle bags in front of him and silently finished the last few mouthfuls from his own pot.
“Alright, fed and watered. Time to go meet an ‘old friend,'” Shen Ge said, standing up and stretching. He called for Fang Yaori to follow him through the dining hall towards the stairwell.
“Old friend?” Fang Yaori asked, puzzled.
Shen Ge said, “Oh, it’s a Weirdo with a very high appearance rate.”
“Huh?”
As he spoke, Shen Ge kicked open the stairwell door. Behind the door, on the stairwell landing, was a Weirdo with a flesh-eating flower blooming from its body—the “old friend” he was referring to.
This was the flesh-eating flower female Weirdo that always appeared on the stairwells of both the doomsday Rong City high-rise and the doomsday capital spire.
Fang Yaori swallowed hard, not daring to breathe loudly for fear of attracting the female Weirdo’s attention.
“Step back,” Shen Ge said. He then stomped his foot, and propelled by his Eerie Skin Boots, shot forward like a cannonball. Just as he approached the female Weirdo, he activated his Still Eerie Domain.
Bullet Time!
Fang Yaori only saw a blur. The next moment, Shen Ge was in front of the female Weirdo, and several sprays of blood burst from her body.
In the blink of an eye, the female Weirdo had been dismembered into chunks by Shen Ge.
Seeing the head of the female Weirdo roll to his feet with a gurgle, Fang Yaori’s legs went weak with fear. But then, he exclaimed in surprise, “Hey, she, she, she—isn’t that Tian Anxiu?”
“You know her?” Shen Ge turned to look at Fang Yaori and asked.
Fang Yaori nodded: “Tian Anxiu was a member of Sister Liu’s team. Oh, Sister Liu I’m talking about is Liu Jiayi. She had a good relationship with our Fang family. She used to be an anti-eerie agent in the capital. I heard she got transferred to Rong City. Detective Shen, you should know her, right?”
Shen Ge nodded. “Go on.”
“Ah? There’s not much to it… When I first graduated from university, Sister Liu used to visit our house often, and Tian Anxiu always came along. Then, uh, well, we were together for a while. Later… uh, but I heard she got promoted after Sister Liu was transferred. How did she end up becoming a Weirdo?”
Shen Ge pondered what Fang Yaori said. He had some thoughts but didn’t share them with Fang Yaori. Instead, he said, “This is an eerie space. What you see could be an illusion, or perhaps a future doomsday… The real Tian Anxiu should still be alive.”
He paused, then asked, “Are you still in touch with Tian Anxiu now?”
“We are, but it’s mostly just… taking care of physical needs,” Fang Yaori said awkwardly.
“…”
Shen Ge wanted to say “cool,” but decided to keep it to himself. He resolved to use Fang Yaori to look into Tian Anxiu after they got out.
“Let’s go. Further up, we should be able to get out,” Shen Ge said.
Fang Yaori’s eyes lit up with joy. “Really?”
“Yes, but I’ll need you to help me with some things…”
“As long as I can get out of this godforsaken place, just tell me what you need, Detective Shen. If I so much as frown, you can have my name backwards.”
“…”
Seeing Fang Yaori’s solemn vow, Shen Ge felt a bit uneasy. Honestly, he felt this guy was even less reliable than Hu Tinglan.
But regardless, the “exit” was up ahead, and he might actually need Fang Yaori’s help.
Shen Ge briefly described to Fang Yaori the scenarios that might occur when they approached the room suspected to be the exit, repeatedly emphasizing how he should handle it.
Fang Yaori listened nervously, feeling that escaping the eerie space depended on him. The pressure felt immense!
“Detective Shen, c-can I do it?” Fang Yaori hesitated.
Shen Ge raised his hand and patted Fang Yaori on the shoulder. “You’re one of the outstanding younger generation of the Fang family. The only one above you is your sister. The future of the Fang family rests on your shoulders. Trust me, you can do it!”
To hype Fang Yaori up, Shen Ge said this with a very disingenuous tone.
But surprisingly, it worked incredibly well. Fang Yaori pounded his chest with pride. “Detective Shen, you actually trust me this much? Don’t worry, even if I have to die, I will definitely accomplish what you’ve asked!”
For a moment, Shen Ge almost imagined hearing a ding sound effect, like a system notification that his favorability with Fang Yaori had reached “worship” level.
Arriving at the floor with the eerie room, Shen Ge had Fang Yaori wait at the stairwell while he approached the black door himself.
When he was less than five meters from the door, the familiar, overwhelming sense of fear washed over him again.
Click.
Click.
His consciousness began to blur. His hand moved uncontrollably towards the doorknob. With the sound of the doorknob turning, it felt like an invisible hand was squeezing his heart, suppressing its beat and amplifying his fear.
Creak—
The door slowly opened with a piercing screech.
Inside the room, fleshy, foam-like fat covered every surface. The entire room was filled with eyes, all staring fixedly at Shen Ge in the doorway.
His consciousness was fading, consumed by the ever-growing fear. As the line “Found you” echoed in his mind, he began walking into the room.
Fang Yaori, hiding at the end of the corridor, saw exactly what Shen Ge had predicted: he was walking into the room, unable to control his own movements.
Instinctively wanting to follow Shen Ge’s plan and help, Fang Yaori found his body frozen. It felt like an unseen hand was gripping him tightly, magnifying his own terror!
“Ah—”
“Ah!!!”
Fang Yaori clutched his head, screaming in agony. Then, Shen Ge’s encouraging words echoed in his mind. He bit down hard on his tongue, the taste of blood filling his mouth.
“I’m a man of the Fang family! How can I be scared by something like this!” Fang Yaori roared. In that instant, it seemed to activate his Weirdo cells, stimulating his body’s cells. He turned into a hundred-meter sprinter, charging towards the black room.
Bang!
Fang Yaori slammed into Shen Ge, shoving him away from the door. Then, pulling out several eerie energy flashbang grenades from his coat, he pulled the pins and threw them into the room.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The eerie energy flashbangs exploded inside the room. But instead of releasing a blinding white light, they emitted an intense blood-red flash!
Next, Fang Yaori pulled out a megaphone clipped to his belt. Shen Ge had instructed him that if he got controlled after opening the door, he needed to, first, throw eerie energy flashbangs, and second, use the megaphone to create noise to wake him up.
Create noise…
Create noise!
Fang Yaori held the megaphone, Shen Ge’s instruction to “create noise” echoing in his mind. His brain froze, unsure how to make noise. Suddenly remembering his tone-deafness, he immediately started belting out at the top of his lungs: “This feeling’s so cool! Cool cool cool cool!”
This ghostly, wailing, demonic voice, accompanied by the “melting” eyeballs in the room illuminated by the eerie energy flashbang’s intense light, was strangely fitting.
Fang Yaori had done as Shen Ge asked. But once the intense red light faded, the fatty flesh surged like a tide towards the doorway. Thousands of eyes squeezed together, a horrifying sight!
Just as he was about to be engulfed by the surging flesh, a voice like heaven reached Fang Yaori’s ears. A figure charged into the room—
“Hundredfold Strength Amplification!”
Boom!
This time, Shen Ge’s hundredfold power punch slammed directly into the mound of flesh.
“Heh, no matter how strong the mental attack is, it seems it can’t stand up to a magical sound assault!”
