The underground morgue of the Sunken Society has many levels, which together form an inverted pyramid.
The upper floors are fully equipped with all kinds of surveillance equipment. Rows of metal doors are embedded in the light gray walls, and cameras flicker in the dark corners. Various railing doors divide the corridor into sections, and the scene is full of technology.
But Minister Zou had no time to appreciate it.
He used his face to brush open doors one after another, turning back and forth in the well-shaped corridors. The scenes around him were almost identical, as if endless, making people dizzy.
Behind each door is a room, and each room is filled with mutated corpses. Since I got in touch with Mr. Qiu's gang, they have been doing experiments on the source of evil power pollution over the years.
When Minister Zou thought of the key word "Mr. Qiu", he felt a sharp pain in his head.
Not long ago, Wei Huaqian contacted him specifically.
Mr. Qiu brought them a lot of trouble, and the effect was quite significant. The Shian League was forced to be interrupted, Fu Xingchuan was kicked out, and the famous partner of Haigu was disbanded. Shian's Haigu branch was in chaos for a while, which was convenient for them to act.
Wei Huaqian specifically emphasized that at this critical juncture, the Sinking Society headquarters must not make any mistakes.
It's difficult.
"Turn left after exiting the elevator, go straight at the first intersection, turn right at the second intersection, turn left at the third intersection... go through ten intersections, the fourth door, and go down the stairs..."
He opened one of the plain metal doors and stepped into the hidden elevator. Perhaps a century had passed before the elevator door slowly opened, and an almost identical scene appeared before Minister Zou again.
The corridors here are low and oppressive like tomb passages. There is also good news. The area is extremely quiet, and there are no warning signs of magic, big or small - it can be seen that no one has used magic here recently.
A faint sound suddenly hit his eardrum. From some distant corner, there came a series of soft sounds of leather shoes hitting the floor.
Finally, Minister Zou reached the deepest point.
Zhang Wei must have drunk too much last night and was not sober, so he took the wrong route. He just needed to look for it along the way. Even if he could take a step back, as long as it was confirmed that the body Zhong Cheng mentioned was normal, it didn't matter if the boy died.
Minister Zou felt relieved. He swallowed and walked towards the morgue where Zhong Cheng was.
In the silent and gloomy underground, even the sound of blood flowing through the head was particularly clear. The criss-cross corridors around him were still endless, leading to darkness in all directions.
Unless Charon returns to normal.
Thinking of this, Minister Zou adjusted his breathing for a while, and the sweat on his forehead thinned a little.
Minister Zou was too angry to speak, and he kept muttering about the road leading to the deepest part of the underground morgue. The surroundings were so quiet that it made him uncomfortable, and his heartbeat could not help but get faster and faster.
"Zhang Wei?" He called in a neither loud nor low voice.
Tick, tick, tick.
Zhang Wei is a bad boy who never gets his clothes clean, but he loves to act pretentiously. He wears leather shoes every time he goes to the morgue. Besides, a pile of naked corpses or a powerful ghost can't make such a sound.
It was important to find someone, so he should not let his imagination run wild. This was the safest branch of the Sunken Society, and its location was extremely special, so it was impossible for outsiders to break in.
There are no electronic equipment in the deep layers, so we have to rely on our legs to get through the rest of the journey.
If there really is a hell in this world, it would probably look like this.
Minister Zou was so distracted that he almost lost his way. He immediately broke out in a cold sweat and pressed his temples vigorously.
He walked quickly through empty corridors, searching for the staircase behind the door. About an hour later, there was still no sign of Zhang Wei.
As expected, they were just lost. Minister Zou couldn't help but stop and felt happy.
Minister Zou sighed deeply and walked into the dark corridor. Without all kinds of machinery, it was silent here, with only the cold light on beside him.
The owner of the footsteps walked further and further away, as if he hadn't heard them.
Tick, tick, tick.
"Hey, this kid is looking for death." Minister Zou's teeth itched, "Zhang—"
Halfway through shouting, he suddenly shut up and his scalp felt numb.
Something is wrong.
Deep inside the morgue, it was a taboo to walk around randomly. Even if Zhang Wei was drunk, he would not have gone to such a straightforward death. And... And the sound of those footsteps was too regular, not like the sound that the careless Zhang Wei could make.
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of footsteps lingered nearby, sometimes far away, sometimes close, with a rhythm as precise as the hands of a clock.
Is that really Zhang Wei
What exactly is that
Minister Zou felt a chill on his back, and his forehead, which had just been calmed for a while, was covered with sweat again. There was no way to communicate in the deep of the morgue, so he should either... or return the same way and report the situation.
He didn't want to know what made the sound, nor did he dare to confirm the condition of the body that Zhong Cheng mentioned. Those footsteps seemed to step on his brain nerves, and Minister Zou didn't want to stay here for another half a second.
Although he is not a practitioner, he is well aware of the dangers of "curiosity" in the metaphysical world. Minister Zou turned around with a slight trembling, and raised his steps quietly -
The footsteps nearby stopped instantly, and the surroundings became as quiet as a vacuum.
Minister Zou's breathing almost stopped. He froze in place, not daring to breathe, wishing his heart would stop beating.
Tick, tick, tick!
Without warning, footsteps approached this direction rapidly. They kept a creepy rhythm, as fast as a death sentence at midnight.
Minister Zou swallowed a terrified scream and scrambled towards the exit. The identical corridors were like a maze, and the extreme tension and fear almost made him vomit on the spot.
The lights above the corridor flickered on and off, forming a series of afterimages in his blurred vision.
Ta-da! The footsteps were getting faster and faster, and closer and closer. Minister Zou almost cried, and he rushed forward regardless, as if his intestines were filled with ice cubes.
We must flee, we must...
Wait, which intersection has he reached now
Minister Zou gasped loudly, his mind in a mess. Seeing another corner ahead, he had to slow down.
Being caught up by those strange steps might kill you, but getting lost in the deepest part of the underground morgue would definitely kill you. Minister Zou wiped the sweat off his face, mustered up his courage, and slowly turned around.
Behind him was the corner he had just run past. At the corner of the wall, something white protruded from the edge. Minister Zou wiped the sweat from his eyes and narrowed his eyes—
It's not a "bulge" at all.
Someone was hiding behind him at the intersection of the corridor, with only half of his pale face showing, and one eye looking over. The exposed eyebrows and eyes looked very familiar, it was the missing Zhang Wei.
But if it were Zhang Wei, he would have come running up to him, shouting for help.
Minister Zou's legs went limp and he almost fell to the ground.
"You...what are you?"
The face didn't answer, and didn't even blink. The slightly dilated pupil slowly moved down, glancing from top to bottom at Minister Zou. However, the action was a bit too strong. The man's head didn't move, but his eyeballs rolled down, revealing a lot of white above the pupil.
The next moment, it slowly retracted its head behind the wall.
Minister Zou also shrank in the same place for a long time, but after five or six minutes, there was no movement at the corner of the corridor.
Ten minutes later, Minister Zou dragged his urine-soaked pants and moved towards the corner with a fearless attitude.
In the corner of the corridor, there was only a pair of taken-off leather shoes.
That thing is now walking on the balls of its feet.
That thing could be anywhere now.
Minister Zou only felt a buzzing in his ears. He whimpered in fear and staggered back to find the way he came.
A few hundred meters away, Zhong Cheng said he was hiding at the top of the corridor, almost encouragingly listening to Minister Zou's movements. He had finally waited for a living person, and he didn't want this guide to run away by himself.
After a brief exploration, Zhong Cheng said he was certain that he could not leave here completely on his own.
After obtaining the skull and walking out of the morgue, he chose a direction and explored carefully along the way.
At first, he took a conservative route, always circling back to the front of the familiar morgue.
So Zhong Cheng said he changed his strategy. He began to remember and follow the elimination method one by one. This strange "wall-breaking" process was not long. In theory, he could try out a correct path.
However, things did not go as planned.
After three or four hours, Zhong Cheng said they stopped at the "end of the corridor."
This corridor was cut off like a knife, and the gap faced the bottomless darkness. There were no guardrails or sealed windows on the edge. Zhong Cheng said that he stood at the end of this dead end and turned his neck with difficulty.
He saw the Infinite.
On all sides of this square cliff, countless corridors and cutouts are squeezed together like a regular honeycomb. Whether looking up or down, everything is endless. What's worse is that the layout of each corridor cutout is exactly the same, even the cracks in the details are exactly the same. The whole space looks like it has been madly copied and pasted thousands of times by a modeler.
This is not a magic trick, nor is it some architectural miracle.
It is a space distortion that is more exaggerated and cruel than the corpse cage.
The Shenming Society built its base in a space full of distortions, no wonder it was able to survive for so long under Shi An's nose. If I continue to try in this rigid way, I'm afraid I won't be able to figure it out until I retire.
"Come on, hold on."
Zhong Cheng stared at Minister Zou's exhausted back and cheered him on in the shadows with an expressionless face.
"I have to get out of here."
"What did you say?" Fu Xingchuan's voice rose half an octave into the microphone.
"I said, I want to see a corpse cage." Yin Ren leaned against the balcony, looking at the sparse stars in the morning. "I don't have many things related to 'the other shore', this is one of them."
Fu Xingchuan: "No, that thing—"
"I won't take it for nothing. When this matter is completely settled, I can take off my hair, flesh, eyes... whatever you want for you to study." Yin Ren stroked a small protruding thread on the sweater, "Don't be stressed, I can grow more."
On the other side of the phone, Fu Xingchuan lay back on the pillow. He wiped his face fiercely: "It's not about this problem. If you put the name of Zhong Yi on it, the ancestors can give you a dozen corpse cages. But to stably control the corpse cages, the descendants of the Fu family must be present."
"I really want to help, but everyone is focused on chasing the sniper, so I can't help keep an eye on him."
After all, Fu Wuya had perfected the art of corpse cage in order to protect the bloodline of the Fu family. In that era when evil things were rampant, Fu Wuya had indeed left enough room for retreat.
Yin Ren said nothing.
"Come to think of it, why are you suddenly so interested in the other side?" Fu Xingchuan simply sat up and stretched his neck.
"Zhong Cheng said that he had investigated the most affected places nearby, and he has never stopped investigating the gods' descents." Yin Ren said, "I asked someone to look up Aunt Tao's information."
Fu Xingchuan then recalled for two seconds.
Tao Lan, formerly the head nurse of Haigu People's Hospital.
Many years ago, a huge bankruptcy occurred in Haigu People's Hospital, and Tao Lan lost her only daughter because of the bankruptcy. She investigated frantically by herself and was subsequently recruited by Zhian. Later, because she helped solve the bankruptcy problem in the Municipal People's Hospital, she was funded by the Fu family and transferred to the Yandu branch with Fu Tianyi.
A simple and sad life.
According to Lu Xiaohe, there are only two types of people in Zhian's scientific field - those who are extremely eager for money and power, or those who want to know the truth about the death of someone close to them. Tao Lan is the latter.
"Hiss... According to what you said, the sniper is quite concerned about the other side." Fu Xingchuan quickly came to his senses.
"Yes, but I want to be clear that this is all just speculation on my part."
When talking about snipers, Yin Ren's voice became slightly chilly.
"I'm a little interested in the technique of opening up space in the corpse cage... If I can actively throw out the bait, maybe I can catch something."
"Aren't snipers good for luring and killing people?"
(End of this chapter)