Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore
Fake Exit
Lou Jingmo took out her weapon.
Since there was no way to harmoniously coexist, then they could only eliminate the existence that caused this situation to appear.
A white ring of light rippled to her side at the same time, making her five viscera and six bowels1 feel as if they had received a violent impact, churning up inside her body. Lou Jingmo’s brow wrinkled, and a fishy sweetness surged up her throat. She did not mind it, swallowed the blood back, and with nimble skill, rushed towards the door-blocking Huo Dongdong.
“Activate your little brain melon2 and think properly about where the exit is!” After instructing Shang Zhou, Shen Maomao also went up, holding a dagger.
She lightly leaped and jumped onto Huo Dongdong’s back, one foot heavily stepping on a face in the very center of a flower stamen.
That face emitted a scream, using a mouthful of shark-like triangular teeth to bite her shoe sole.
She bent her waist and stabbed the dagger into its temple, then pulled it out again, and stabbed it in again. Her movements were clean, ruthless, and fierce, and her expression, when looked at, was unexpectedly quite similar to Lou Jingmo’s.
Unfortunately, no matter what she did, Huo Dongdong from beginning to end did not move its body, nor did it give her a single glance, continuously battling Lou Jingmo with single-minded focus.
In the process of the fight, Lou Jingmo gradually discovered something—Huo Dongdong seemed to continuously want to push her into that beam of light.
What consequences would there be from entering that beam of light? If the white light cannot teleport, then where did Xing Tian’s party and Heng Chuan all go, who came in before?
Time passed little by little, and the white ball of light was also unceasingly releasing rings of light visible to the naked eye, impacting the people inside the door. But the Huo Dongdong and Shen Maomao outside the door were completely without awareness; obviously, the range of this thing only reached the doorway.
Huo Dongdong was already covered all over with cuts and bruises3. Although Lou Jingmo did not eat a loss4 at its hands, her state at this moment was also not good enough to go anywhere. She turned her head and glanced at the ball of light, discovering that the thing had long ago, unknowingly, grown bigger by several circles. Inside the light, there seemed to be several blurry black shadows, looking especially like several people with their bodies curled up.
What to do?
At this kind of time, what should she do?
Lou Jingmo’s brain was operating at high speed, thinking of various kinds of feasible methods, only to have them be vetoed by her one by one, then re-thinking.
Shen Maomao on Huo Dongdong’s back was unceasingly poking the flower stamens. Poking one face to death would cause one flesh flower to wither. While poking and poking, she saw that crow that Huo Dongdong had swallowed down in front of their faces, and also the sorrow-faced Boss Huo who could only shed tears.
Her hand was trembling a little, but she still steadily sent the dagger into that face’s eye, clean and neat, one knife ends life, not letting him receive much suffering.
Following the withering of all the flesh flowers, Huo Dongdong’s body size shrank by half5, and the crack in the door became a little bigger, but it was still not enough to let a person squeeze through.
Shen Maomao also became a little anxious. She could tell that Lou Jingmo’s state inside was not right, but did not know what on earth to do that would be good. She rapidly flipped through her own item inventory, using the attack-type items on its body no-brain-ly6, but the effect she reaped was tiny in its tininess7.
She again looked towards her own card. Feilika8 could freeze everything, but if she were to freeze Huo Dongdong, Lou Jingmo on the contrary would be even more unable to come out. Obviously, it was not at all suitable to be used here.
Just when the three people were all wringing dry their brain juice9 to think of a method, a burst of bell chimes suddenly came from the distant horizon.
The bell chimes were ringing slowly. Shen Maomao looked at her wristwatch; the time had already reached eleven o’clock.
At eleven o’clock in the night of the sixth day, not only had they not found the exit, but on the contrary, they were still trapped here, unable to leave.
A wave of despair surged up in her heart. She did not know what she herself could still do for Lou Jingmo.
The ball of light inside the door grew bigger and bigger, and Lou Jingmo’s range of movement also grew smaller and smaller. She stood at the wall’s edge, holding onto the surrounding wall. This was an angle that could not be seen from the outside, so she could allow the fresh blood to flow downwards along the corner of her mouth.
Fifteen seconds later, in the instant after all eleven bell chimes had rung out, the exit’s main gate suddenly began to close.
Shen Maomao was stunned for a moment, and immediately pounced up.
The Huo Dongdong at the doorway also acted at the same time, forcefully stuffing itself in from inside the door frame.
The door crack grew smaller and smaller. Shen Maomao finally stuffed her right hand in before the door completely closed, and was then deathly clamped by the door.
She was so pained that her body produced a burst of unconscious spasms. In just a few short seconds, she bit her lower lip until it was stained with blood spots, and desperately held on without crying out.
The Lou Jingmo inside the door made no sound, while she had already heard the sound of her bones breaking.
Shang Zhou was one step late. He shockingly grasped her wrist and pulled her hand outwards: “Are you crazy? You don’t want your hand anymore?!”
A burst of a teeth-souring10 “kachak” sound rang out. Shen Maomao’s already clamp-deformed palm was yanked out. Within just a few short seconds, the entire palm along with the wrist had all become a black-purple color.
She was so pained that tears flowed continuously, and that hand’s arm trembled unceasingly. She immediately rushed back in front of the door again, using her shoulder to ram towards the main gate, but the main gate was as solid as a rock, not moving a single thread.
Biting her teeth, she called out with difficulty: “Lou-jie—!”
Shang Zhou said: “Don’t bother with her anymore, there’s not enough time. If the exit is not outside, then it can only be at the center. The game misled us, playing with all of us between the thigh and palm11, making us continuously believe that the outside was the exit. Actually, this was wrong from the very beginning…”
After the bell chimes rang out, he seemed to have completely recovered his memory, sorting out the matters in just a few short seconds.
However, right now Shen Maomao was already in no mood to care about this.
The degree of danger inside was apparent and easy to see. Maybe Lou Jingmo had also recovered her memory, but no matter how formidable she was, she was also only a person. How could she possibly escape from the current perilous situation?
Shang Zhou said to her again: “Let’s go quickly, okay. Xiao Lou knows too many things, the game can no longer tolerate her. Based on our current selves, we still do not have the means to resist the creator’s will, but maybe she can do it. So you should now think of a way to escape from the instance, don’t let it be that in the end she is fine, and you on the contrary failed to get out.”
Hearing the words, Shen Maomao, biting her teeth, used her left hand to support herself to stand up, then deathly gripped the upper part of her own right arm, and said: “Go!”
Shang Zhou asked: “How do we go? How can we leave the maze?”
Shen Maomao’s voice was somewhat trembling: “Go touch that door, close your eyes and think ‘I want to go back’.”
This was the method in her memory, but she did not know at all if this kind of method was still useful now.
The two people placed their hands on the door, and according to what she said, silently recited these four characters in their hearts.
Just as they finished reciting, a series of noisy sounds burst into their ears.
Shen Maomao opened her eyes and saw a crowd of humans surrounding the two of them, their faces full of curiosity and vigilance.
She quickly sized up the surrounding environment and discovered they were now located at the entrance of the maze small town.
The moon in the sky had already been restored to a normal yellow-white color. Outside the small town, coming and going, were all pedestrians dragging family and carrying mouths12. It was very difficult to distinguish whether they were all people or ghosts.
Seeing they had opened their eyes, one man among them asked: “Are you people or ghosts? Why would you suddenly appear here?”
Shang Zhou said: “We are people, we have an urgent matter and need to return to the city center. Trouble everyone to let us pass a bit, let us pass a bit…”
The man said: “The city center, the set has become disordered13, what are you all still going back for? Everyone is fleeing towards the maze, you know!”
Shang Zhou casually made up a reason: “We have relatives still inside, we’re in a hurry to rush back to save him.”
Upon hearing they were in a hurry, the several people blocking the road hurriedly made way, and also forgot to continue investigating the reason they had suddenly appeared on the street.
A nearby woman threw over a bunch of keys: “My car key is in there, it’s that red one parked at the entrance. You all take it to drive, I suppose. Anyway, I won’t be using it anymore… uhm, if you all know how to drive a car.”
Shang Zhou took the keys, hurriedly said thanks, and supporting the deathly pale-complexioned Shen Maomao, walked towards the outside of the entrance.
The woman’s car was very conspicuous, because in this row of cars outside, there was only just this one red one. The two people walked directly over. Shang Zhou used the car key to unlock it, first stuffed Shen Maomao into the front passenger seat and fastened her seatbelt, then pulled open the driver’s door himself.
Shen Maomao said: “There is something behind.”
Shang Zhou said: “Don’t care about it, there’s not enough time… If it dares to do a thing, then I’ll directly kill it.” After speaking, he stepped on the accelerator with one foot and rushed out, the speed heading straight for one hundred twenty.
The late-night road was empty of a single person14. In order to conserve electricity, the streetlights on both sides were not powered on. At this time, the road was lacquer-black, and one could only see nearby things clearly.
Shen Maomao huddled in the front passenger seat, so pained that her forehead was continuously beaded with cold sweat, but she was still always paying attention to the black shadow on the back seat. That shadow was lying on the driver’s seat backrest, its claws wriggling and about to move15, and seemed to be thinking about how it could make them have their car destroyed and people dead16.
Suddenly, the car’s front flashing lights flickered two times, and afterwards were abruptly extinguished. A woman wearing a red dress appeared in front of the car, standing quietly. Under the moonlight, one could clearly see under her dress—she did not have legs.
Shang Zhou’s eyes were sharp. He stepped the accelerator to the bottom. The car emitted a humming sound, and with a “boom” sound, crashed into it, directly knocking that figure flying out eight or nine meters, then ran over the corpse and sped away.
The ghost in the back cowered underneath the seat, and never again dared to come out.
The flashing lights lit up again. The car, carrying two people and one ghost, headed straight for the city center.
In the sky above the city center, there were helicopters patrolling in flight. Several huge-bodied monsters were wandering between the buildings, from time to time grabbing a handful of disorderly seven, messy eight17 things and stuffing them into their mouths.
Shen Maomao heard them unceasingly clamoring “So hungry… So hungry…”, obviously it was the same kind of situation as with Huo Dongdong.
At this time, the time was eleven-thirty. There was still half an hour from the seventh day.
Shen Maomao’s worry, what was left was not much; what was even more was a kind of sorrow that was hard to describe in words.
The reason why she agreed to go with Shang Zhou was because she thought of the contract between her and Lou Jingmo.
If Lou Jingmo had an accident, the person who would die would only be her.
Right now she was still not dead, which represented that Lou Jingmo was still alive. But in order to ensure the contract was valid, she must stay inside the game as much as possible, in order to ensure for the ten thousand to one.
Shang Zhou directly drove the car up the front stairs of the city center’s official building, then with one pull, pulled open the car door, got out to pull Shen Maomao’s side: “Are you okay?”
Shen Maomao, gripping her arm, stood her body straight: “Go.”
The two people lifted their legs and rushed into the building.
Now was precisely a chaotic time. The guards from the past were unexpectedly all not present. The building’s interior was a scene of wolves’ bedding18. It was as if it had experienced a robbers’ ransacking. On the ground, there were also several corpses lying horizontal seven, vertical eight19.
Shang Zhou, while running, said: “The exit is definitely in their laboratory. Looking at it from this instance’s background, I’m afraid human body experiments are already things that can be moved out into the open, so the laboratory definitely will not be particularly hidden!”
Shen Maomao: “Then let’s go, go downstairs!”
The author has something to say:
Little Ancestor and Huo Dongdong are not the same, you see. Although both involve children and experiments, Little Ancestor had already mutated, and the scientific research personnel wanted to save them. Huo Dongdong was a normal child, pulled by the officials to do human experiments. The two have no relation, hahaha.
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