The corpse, which should have long since rotted, moved with a mix of shambling and determined steps, dragging a leg that was almost severed, extremely slowly but with clear direction, towards the classroom door that was blocked by debris.
It began to use its body and remaining limbs, clumsily yet efficiently, to move aside the heavy tables and broken cabinet panels that blocked the door, little by little.
There was no sound, no roar, only the faint grinding and cracking of bones echoing in the dead silence of the classroom, completely masked by the sound of the wind.
The darkness silently accepted this eerie “scavenger.” A crack leading to a deeper hell was slowly opening.
The same scene was silently unfolding near a large manhole cover on the west side of the fourth floor.
The depths of the shaft, sealed by a heavy metal cover, were not completely silent.
Hair-raising, dense scratching and teeth-grinding gnawing sounds were muffled by thick concrete, reverberating dully underground, like the prelude to a death knell from hell.
Dozens of basketball-sized, spherical objects covered in black viscous liquid clung to the inner walls of the shaft.
These were dark cocoons formed by Scaled Claw Rats, glued together with filth and fur. The cocoons pulsed slightly, and the horror slumbering within was accumulating for the next frenzy under the Blood Moon.
These were the special auras Ling Chen had sensed last time. Without even thinking, such a massive rat swarm must have a Rat King.
Ling Chen’s lips curved slightly, and his mental power materialized into a needle, thrusting it fiercely!
...
At the same time, in the darkness of the underground shaft, invisible mental dust seeped like ghosts into the depths of the shaft’s darkness.
It precisely brushed over the heavy, rusted cover plate at the shaft entrance.
A thick, almost broken iron chain connecting to a large bolt on the inside of the cover, long corroded and precarious, was “gazed” upon by that invisible will in the absolute darkness. The will, like a precise surgical scalpel, concentrated for a thousandth of a second.
Crack.
An extremely faint, yet clear cracking sound echoed beneath the cover. A small section of that iron chain, near the bolt, at a fragile rusted point, broke without warning.
The cover remained motionless. The bolt was still locked. Only the binding chain had quietly broken open a tiny, yet extremely fatal crack.
Ling Chen’s consciousness, like a circling vulture, coldly watched the deliberately concealed rat nest underground.
A massive “trap” composed of putrid flesh and a highly poisonous rat swarm had been precisely pried open by him, creating an imperceptible crack.
His will continued to wander downwards, diving into the ground floor of the teaching building.
There, at the end of the corridor, an inconspicuous heavy metal door was tightly blocked by rebar and a large amount of trash. The door panel was sprayed with a faded sign — “Underground Air-Raid Shelter Entrance.”
A large, old-fashioned padlock covered in verdigris hung in the center of the door panel. The keyhole had long been violently damaged and deformed, and the door panel was also dented inwards, but for some reason, it remained tightly sealed, isolating the unknown aura below.
However, between the lower edge of that heavy door panel and the rough concrete ground, there was a narrow crack, only as thick as a finger.
Cold air, carrying a strong damp, putrid smell, continuously seeped out from that crack as if alive, in wisps.
The moment Ling Chen’s will swept over it, the aura seeping from that crack suddenly produced an extremely brief, almost imperceptible, abnormal fluctuation that no human sense could capture.
It seemed to respond to Ling Chen’s will, like the unconscious pulse of a dormant giant being probed.
In the boundless darkness deep within the crack, something… seemed to have been slightly disturbed.
This huge space was previously taken by Mu Xi for experiments, so it must have already cultivated something monstrous inside, right?
Just this slight fluctuation instantly dyed the surging tide of corpses in the darkness of the teaching building’s ground floor with a deeper ferocity and restlessness, like clear water into which ink had been dropped.
The ghouls lingering in the doorway, gnawing on the remains of their companions, simultaneously stopped their actions. Their rotting heads turned towards the air-raid shelter door, silently opening their drooling mouths.
Ling Chen’s consciousness touched and immediately withdrew from the edge of the crack, as if avoiding an invisible poisonous sting. But he clearly “saw” the highly decomposed and desiccated skeletal remains of several figures dressed in old worker uniforms on the cold ground in front of the crack, as well as several rusted tools scattered beside the skeletons — a nearly broken crowbar and a steel pry bar with a chipped edge.
This underground space was like a giant blind box, awaiting his key.
The busy work in Classroom 3 of Senior Year 3 was nearing its end.
The gaps in the windows and door were almost completely filled with heavy debris, metal, and concrete fragments, and then torn curtain fabric was stuffed in to block out smells and noise. A true steel fortress was forcibly cobbled together in a very short time.
Exhausted to the extreme, the students huddled together, using each other’s body heat to ward off the cold and fear, but their eyes were fixed on the slowly crawling minute hand on their wristwatches. Thirty-seven minutes… Only the last thirty-seven minutes remained until reinforcements arrived!
“Captain Li,” Zhou Xiaoyu’s voice carried a heavily suppressed gasp. She had just finished welding the last steel plate to the top of the reinforcement, “We can hold on! Razor and the others will definitely…”
Her words abruptly ceased.
All the soldiers, including Li Zhenguo, who had maintained a high state of alert, tensed their bodies at the same moment! Their gazes, like sharp swords, pointed uniformly in the same direction—a certain floor downstairs!
Li Mingyu’s Buli (Brute Force) ability was almost instantly triggered by a strong sense of danger, and a subtle dark red glow appeared on his skin.
He heard it! A dull sound! Not the thud of ghouls hitting the wall, but some kind of… ear-splitting scraping sound of a heavy object being forcibly dragged across a concrete floor! Right below them!
“It’s Class Two!” Wu Tao cried out in alarm, his voice sharp and cracking, “Below us… is Senior Year 3, Class Two!”
A cold chill instantly shot up everyone’s spines to their heads! Senior Year 3, Class Two! That bloody slaughterhouse already completely occupied and gnawed clean by ghouls! What else could be there? Besides bone fragments?!
“How is that possible?! Everything downstairs is blocked off! How can ghouls move things?!” Sun Qiang growled, the muscles under his hardened skin tensing.
“Quiet! All personnel, Level One Alert!” Li Zhenguo’s voice was extremely low, yet it was like ice cracking. One hand slammed onto the hilt of the short knife at his waist, and the other made a standard “prepare for enemy contact” tactical gesture. All the soldiers who had been resting with their eyes closed instantly sprang up silently, pressing their bodies against the wall, the cold glint of their gun muzzles or daggers quietly turning towards the door, holding their breath.
The scraping sound was intermittent. One… two… stopped… a long dead silence… then a few more…
As if a clumsy giant was cutting the concrete’s intestines with a rusty blunt instrument.
Every pause was suffocating, every sound like a dull knife cutting into the heart. Time stagnated in extreme tension. Sweat soaked Li Mingyu’s palms, and the steel rod he clutched tightly felt like a red-hot branding iron.
Five minutes… ten minutes…
That blood-freezing scraping sound finally stopped completely, as if it had never occurred.
“Did it leave?” Someone whispered, their voice hoarse and dry.
The tense air hadn’t had time to relax even slightly.
Boom!!!
An extremely dull, colossal roar, as if the heart of the earth had burst open, suddenly erupted from below! The entire classroom floor vibrated distinctly! Dust fluttered down from the blocked windows!
The sound did not come from the floorboards, but from… deep within the wall! It was the horror of a load-bearing wall being violently collapsed by immense internal force!
“What the hell is that?!” Wang Lei exclaimed in horror.
Before anyone could react, an extremely eerie sound descended again. Not scraping, not impact. But… the sound of flowing water? A large amount of liquid being poured… gushing through some newly opened gap!
No… it’s not water!
An indescribable, nauseatingly strong smell of blood mixed with the sickly sweet stench characteristic of rotting organs, like a bursting dam, instantly surged up from the internal ventilation ducts of the teaching building, from tiny cracks in the walls, and even from the seams of the floorboards beneath their feet!
This smell far surpassed any previous ghoul stench! It was concentrated! It was stale! Like opening a slaughterhouse cesspool that had accumulated months of blood and decaying tissue!
Viscous, sickly sweet, with a heavy metallic rust smell and the rank odor of internal organs, it brutally choked everyone’s throats!
“Ugh!” A girl leaning against the wall instantly bent over, dry heaving. Chen Xue held Ling Chen, her face ashen.
“Downstairs… the whole class… blood…” Zhao Xiaowen covered her nose and mouth, too terrified to speak coherently, “Are the bodies… flowing out?!” This terrifying thought almost shattered everyone’s sanity.
Li Zhenguo’s face was ashen, his eyes burning with cold fury and a hint of imperceptible dread.
This was no accident! Ghouls wouldn’t consciously dump filth! This was… deliberate! It was a cruel provocation! A mockery of their “hiding” as living people!
There must be a conscious, high-level entity among the ghouls!
Invisible spider silk vibrated silently in the depths of Ling Chen’s consciousness.
At the classroom door downstairs, which the “scavenger” had laboriously cleared of debris, thick blood plasma continuously gushed out from inside. This already rotten flesh, of course, was inedible, but it instantly ignited the greedy frenzy of all the ghouls in the surrounding darkness, already catalyzed by the Blood Moon.
The silence of the entire teaching building was instantly shattered!
Behind the walls, on the tightly closed stairwell door, there was a sudden, furious, rainstorm-like barrage of impacts and scratching sounds! Roars surged from all sides like a tsunami, assaulting the fragile mental defenses of the temporary fortress!
“Hold them back!” Li Zhenguo’s eyes were bloodshot. He pulled out his tactical short knife and fiercely stabbed it into the reinforced wooden board beside him, shouting hoarsely.
“Guard the door! The windows! They’re going crazy! Only twenty-three minutes left! Twenty-three minutes! Razor Squad will be here!” He roared that life-saving number, injecting one last shot of adrenaline into the desperate soldiers.
At the edge of the dark dome, a hint of cold, pale light appeared. The deepest darkness before dawn was already more than halfway through.