It was as if a camera in Ling Mo’s mind shifted focus. His attention instantly moved away from the blood-soaked, chaotic room to the staff canteen. There, his Zombie Puppet was sprinting forward, weaving through the narrow spaces between tables and chairs.
“Huff… huff…”
Light, rapid breathing accompanied the shaky vision of the Zombie Puppet, but its gaze remained locked firmly on a window at the far end of the canteen-where the scream had originated. The glass around the window was splattered with dark brown blood. Near the small window was a pile of rusty trays and food so rotten it had turned black with mold. From the Zombie Puppet’s perspective, there was no way to see clearly inside. However, the faint outline of a human figure could be discerned, faintly moving.
“Yalin!”
As soon as the Zombie Puppet reached the side door, it shoved it open.
The kitchen behind the door was dark and cluttered, strewn with abandoned pots and pans, along with unstable stainless-steel shelves. A long table stretched through the middle of the room, piled high with an assortment of random objects. But the most visually jarring sight was a corpse hanging directly above the table. This corpse had clearly undergone some kind of special embalming process. Its face, though eerily well-preserved, displayed a clear expression of anguished suffering. The tattered clothing it wore had decayed and discolored over time, but the apron draped over it made its role unmistakable.
It was the chef’s corpse. Curiously, Fang Ying had never mentioned him before.
Looking past the lifeless legs dangling motionlessly above the ground, Ling Mo caught sight of another figure.
Li Yalin… She stood with her back to Ling Mo, her gaze fixed intently on a window further away.
The window was fitted with slatted blinds on the inside and reinforced by protective bars on the outside. However, there was a vent left open near the top. The exhaust fan had been removed, leaving behind an empty, gaping hole.
“Yalin?” Ling Mo let out a sigh of relief before a trace of doubt flickered across his face.
What’s there to scream about? A corpse hanging there shouldn’t shock her, right? Even if the kitchen had been decorated as a cannibal feast, it shouldn’t have elicited this kind of reaction from her. Frankly, she’d be more likely to exclaim “Wow” than scream “Ah”…
Before Ling Mo could voice his question, Li Yalin raised her hand and pointed toward the vent, saying, “I saw a pair of eyes in there.”
“What?” Ling Mo froze in surprise.
Eyes? But doesn’t the vent lead directly to the outside of the building? Could it have been a zombie?
“I can sense that a Senior Zombie has died here. There’s a faint scent of blood lingering,” Li Yalin murmured. “But the ones outside won’t notice so quickly. Besides, isn’t this building still extremely dangerous? They wouldn’t approach carelessly…”
Ling Mo paused for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “That’s true…”
He looked up toward the ceiling, a frown forming on his face.
The constant feeling of being watched by the building still lingered, oppressive and unshakable.
The gestation pods that had lost control after Fang Ying’s death likely had become even more Frenzied as a result.
Not to mention the combat abilities of Xiong Ji and Pa Ji, who were arguably the next most formidable after Fang Ying. As for Huahua, her speed was impressive, but her lack of Intelligence made her easy to predict. Ever since Ling Mo’s Zombie Puppet had taken cover in the warehouse, there had been no further sign of her… 𝙧åＮ𝙤ꞖÈᶊ
“And also, those eyes… they must’ve belonged to a human,” Li Yalin added.
Ling Mo’s eyes widened instantly. He strode over to the vent in a few quick steps and grabbed the fan still dangling there.
At first glance, the fan appeared to be very old. Layers of dust coated both the interior and exterior, along with a thick layer of grease. However, after paying closer attention, Ling Mo quickly noticed something unusual. The wires connected to the back of the fan had several spots of wear, marked with strange, irregular scuffs. He pinched one of the wires between his fingers and noticed it left an imprint almost identical to the existing marks.
“This was dismantled by someone…” Ling Mo muttered as he inspected every wire thoroughly. He then flipped the fan over to examine the back and edges, and eventually drew in a sharp breath. “And not just once… This fan has been tampered with multiple times.” He glanced up at the vent and said, “Someone has been coming through here often.”
As he spoke, he reached up and ran his hand along the surface of the vent. After rubbing his fingers together, he remarked, “Just as I thought. There’s hardly any dust here, which means someone’s been here within the past month. Yalin!” He turned and called out.
Li Yalin understood instantly. She approached the vent, leapt lightly into the air, and agilely hung onto the frame with a quick stab of her Snake Kiss blade into the window crevice. Ling Mo’s vision immediately shifted, and the entire vent came into view.
From this angle, he could also glimpse the outside more clearly. However, neither the bushes nearby nor the open space below revealed any sign of a figure. It seemed that whoever had been secretly watching from this spot had already fled, likely frightened off by Li Yalin’s earlier shout…
“Someone could fit through here,” Li Yalin said as she leaned the upper half of her body into the vent.
“Probably only children or women,” Ling Mo replied.
“You could squeeze through as well if you really tried,” Li Yalin remarked. She tested the opening twice, carefully maneuvering her arms and then reached outside to feel around. “There are a lot of scratch marks here,” she added.
“Got it. Come down,” Ling Mo said, looking up at her.
It was entirely possible that when Li Yalin spotted the individual, they had just been trying to crawl in through the vent…
“Why would someone come back to such a dangerous place over and over? Did they see you?” Ling Mo asked.
Li Yalin landed on the ground silently and shook her head. “No. The room was too dark. When I saw their eyes, I didn’t know what to do, so I just shouted. That should’ve startled them, and they backed away immediately.”
“I see…”
At that moment, a loud BANG erupted from outside the canteen.
Ling Mo immediately ran to the side door and spotted the main entrance, which had been barricaded with tables and chairs. The door was shaking violently, the crashing sounds echoing through the space. Not only was the door groaning under the assault, but the chairs bracing it were beginning to issue a painful, teeth-grinding creak. Pieces of them bent and warped perceptibly as the force intensified.
Before long, a gap started to form in the middle of the door. Through it, the grotesque head of a gestation pod forced its way in.
The bloated, pale face stared directly at Ling Mo from across the room. Its skeletal, boneless arms snaked through the opening like Tentacles, gripping the edges of the doorway and pulling outward with unnatural strength.
“Hissss!”
Shrill hissing erupted from outside the door, growing louder and more chaotic. Just from the sound alone, one could imagine the swarm of gestation pods pressing insistently against the other side in a horrifying, writhing mass.
“They’re fast!” Ling Mo remarked, surprised.
Li Yalin leaned forward to peer around him, taking a quick look. “And quite angry, it seems,” she commented flatly.
“So Fang Ying’s death really triggered them…” Ling Mo muttered, furrowing his brow. “No matter what, we need to deal with them first. As for the humans…”
If those Survivors had managed to get so close to the Rosen Company building, they certainly wouldn’t have ignored its surroundings. It was very likely that their presence here had already been expected, perhaps even monitored by the other party…
If they were just ordinary Survivors, Ling Mo wouldn’t have paid them much mind. But the fact that they had their sights so specifically set on the Rosen Company was suspicious. There had to be a hidden secret within this building, and it surely wasn’t the experimental equipment…
But if that were the case, what could the secret actually be?
At that moment, Ling Mo’s attention shifted back for the first time to the small two-story building…
As Ling Mo gradually relaxed his mental focus, his main body began to experience a rather peculiar sensation… It felt as though his entire sensory system was slowly surfacing from underwater. The first to return was the sense of touch throughout his limbs, followed by hearing and smell, and finally vision. The experience was akin to temporarily sealing away his existence only to let it slowly emerge once again.
However, the moment Ling Mo opened his eyes, an intense wave of dizziness hit him.
As he braced himself against his knees to stand up, his body swayed noticeably.
Yuwen Xuan was quick to react, rushing over and catching him before he could stumble. Meanwhile, Mu Chen, who was still crouched by the window, muttered in a low and bewildered voice, “It moved! It moved!”
“What moved?” Ling Mo asked, shaking his head to clear the fog as he spoke.
Though he had only been silent for about half an hour, his voice sounded noticeably hoarse to him.
No question about it-the aftereffects of mental exhaustion…
Yuwen Xuan leaned in, speaking in a hushed tone, “Glad you’re awake. Got something interesting to show you…”