Xiong Ji, who was lying on the ground, twitched twice more. Li Yalin let out a puzzled “huh,” her large eyes looking down intently.
Ling Mo, while retrieving the mother hive, explained, “This can barely be considered close to the tailbone, and there’s still about a palm’s width of distance. I noticed this spot because it’s the only place on his body that looks flat. I figured the parasite might be hiding here. Look, there’s no muscle bulge here, yet the fabric of his clothes has split along a seam…”
“Oh, I see… But to notice such details in such a tense situation-Ling Mo, you’re really amazing,” Li Yalin replied, rocking back and forth cheerfully as she spoke.
As she talked, she also reached out her hand, grabbed the Iron Pipe in Ling Mo’s hands, and swung herself upward with ease…
“Hiss… hiss…”
By the time a dozen or so gestation pods squeezed through the door crack, the elevator had fallen silent once again, leaving only a massive corpse behind.
Click.
Li Yalin carefully closed the entryway and glanced upward. “This place feels so strange…”
“This is the elevator shaft,” Ling Mo replied, his gaze also traveling upward along the steel cables. Aside from the pitch blackness, there seemed to be nothing else here. Unsurprisingly, Xia Na’s figure was nowhere to be seen.
“And this,” Ling Mo added, pointing to the exit below them, “is technically the maintenance hatch. Judging by its condition, it was likely opened by humans who were trapped inside the elevator. They probably arrived on the first floor only to find it crawling with zombies, so they tried to find another way out… Of course, that’s just my guess, but based on what we see here, it’s probably correct.”
“Why couldn’t it have been the zombies who opened it?” Li Yalin asked softly.
Seeing the curiosity written all over her face, Ling Mo sighed, keeping his focus on their surroundings as he explained, “If it were zombies, they would’ve forced it open violently. There’s no way it would still be in a condition where it could be closed again. Besides, it’s clear that a massacre happened inside the elevator… I’d guess that after those survivors opened the exit, they were killed before they could escape.”
“And then the zombies took over this place?” Li Yalin tilted her head, offering her speculation.
“We don’t know yet, but Xia Na must have found something that led her inside… No other choice, we’ll go up too.” Before moving, Ling Mo tore a strip off Li Yalin’s sleeve and carefully tied it to the bottom of the steel cable. “If Xia Na comes back early, she’ll see this and know to wait for us here.”
“Okay…” Li Yalin nodded and tilted her head upward again.
The cold steel cable stretched taut, forming a straight line that extended endlessly into the pitch-black void.
“Ling Mo,” she suddenly spoke, “I feel like something’s connected to the other end.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Ling Mo said calmly, though his heart skipped a beat at the thought.
The two grabbed hold of the steel cable one after the other and quickly began climbing upward.
As they passed layer upon layer of elevator doors, a peculiar thought crept into Ling Mo’s mind… If someone were standing on the other side of one of these doors, would they feel his gaze as it landed on the doorway?
“Speaking of which, the sense of being watched that I’ve been feeling…”
Just as he was lost in thought, Li Yalin suddenly gasped softly and pointed upward at an angle. “There’s a hole over there!”
Her night vision was clearly much better than that of Ling Mo’s Zombie Puppet. Almost as soon as she spotted it, she pushed off lightly, landing steadily against the wall of the shaft. “I’ll go take a look.”
“Be careful…” Ling Mo quickly climbed upward along the cable, reaching a point parallel to Li Yalin in no time.
Trailing her gaze, Ling Mo finally spotted the dark hole. Its edges were rough, as if it had been clawed out by some type of creature. Beyond the opening, darker shadows were visible, resembling pipes or some sort of conduits.
Li Yalin was already halfway inside the hole. After a brief observation, she pulled her upper body back out and said, “It’s a passage… and I saw a piece of bone in there.”
“…What the hell…”
Ling Mo’s brow twitched, and he couldn’t stop himself from muttering.
The fact that some kind of creature existed in an environment like this-and had even carved out a “tunnel” through the building-was unsettling enough to send chills down his spine. ȑáŊȮʙЁs̈
What’s more, something that could hollow out a passage like this was very likely one of the zombies in the building. There was even a chance that the “other boss” mentioned by zombie Huahua was hiding somewhere within this tunnel system…
“What about the survivors? Could their goal also be this place?”
Ling Mo’s initial shock was soon mingled with a faint, inexplicable feeling.
This time, they might have stumbled upon something significant. The value of the Rosen Company wasn’t just in its equipment-there were secrets hidden here. And as long as those secrets were connected to zombies, they were enough to spark Ling Mo’s intense curiosity.
“But Xia Na didn’t climb in through here,” Li Yalin said, sniffing the air.
“So, there’s another entrance higher up?” Ling Mo raised his head again.
In the dim light, he suddenly had the feeling that this place was like a massive ant hive.
Maybe the zombies outside were nothing more than worker ants guarding the perimeter of this hive… or perhaps they were simply an extension of the worker ants themselves.
“Let’s go higher!” Ling Mo steadied his breathing, grabbed the steel cable again, and resumed climbing.
Even though one of his arms was completely incapacitated, for a zombie, any injury that wasn’t fatal wouldn’t affect its mobility.
Still, he could feel a slight increase in difficulty.
Just as he had suspected earlier, there was some kind of shielding force within the elevator shaft, making it harder for Ling Mo to maintain control over his Zombie Puppet.
Fortunately, at this moment, he only needed to focus on controlling this single Zombie Puppet. With his level of skill, this level of difficulty was still within his tolerance.
“Time keeps slipping by, but the situation here is only getting more complicated…”
At that moment, Ling Mo suddenly received a telepathic signal from Ye Lian.
His main body and Ye Lian were both stationed outside the Rosen Company, which meant they weren’t being affected by what was inside the building. But the abruptness of this signal made Ling Mo’s heart race.
A signal meant… Ye Lian had discovered something.
Switching his perspective, Ling Mo immediately saw the Rosen Company’s exterior through Ye Lian’s eyes.
In a patch of grass, a figure was crouching. The person seemed to be holding something in their hands, peeking out from the foliage and observing the surroundings.
As Ling Mo shifted his focus to this person, the individual suddenly raised an arm and waved it vigorously in the air a couple of times.
“Are they moving now?” Ling Mo’s pupils contracted as he instinctively scanned the surroundings.
The street in front of the company was still swarming with zombies, and not far from the street was the two-story building where Ling Mo’s main body was stationed…
“Not good.” A realization suddenly flashed through Ling Mo’s mind, and his expression immediately darkened.