Chapter 197: Return to the Twelfth Floor
Xu Huo had already pried the elevator doors open with his sword. Gripping the lower edge of the elevator door, he turned back and slashed apart the lunging man-eating flower, then said to Da Zhi and the others, "Go up!"
The black panther formed from the card moved nimbly across the four walls of the elevator shaft, occasionally using the man-eating flower's attacks to keep itself from falling. Hearing Xu Huo's words, Da Zhi quickly knocked away the man-eating flower in front of him and directed the black panther up to the twelfth floor.
As soon as Da Zhi and Jiang Yihua went up, the black panther reverted to its card state. The two of them reached out and pulled Xu Huo up. The three of them crouched by the elevator doors, halting their movements. After Xu Huo used the Bull Shield to block two attacks from the man-eating flower, the flower, having lost its target, slowly retracted back down the elevator shaft.
Jiang Yihua looked at Xu Huo, but Xu Huo was staring at several pipes on the wall beside the elevator doors.
Jiang Yihua worried that staying too long would attract more mutants, but she didn't dare speak, only desperately signaling him with her eyes.
After a few seconds, Xu Huo withdrew his gaze, turned his head to look at the twelfth floor, which was filled with a rotting smell, and took his first step.
"Be careful," he mouthed to the two beside him.
Jiang Yihua and Da Zhi nodded gravely, on high alert, watching in different directions.
After confirming there was no danger, Xu Huo walked over to where he had left the spider and the phone. The spider sealed with tape was still struggling vigorously. He checked the phone and confirmed that in the two hours since everyone had gone down from the twelfth floor, nothing had happened on this floor.
"What does this mean?" Jiang Yihua asked in a low voice.
"Sealed floors can have two types of danger," Xu Huo explained. "First, poison gas might appear on the floor, indiscriminately killing everyone. Second, mutants might emerge from channels we don't know about."
"So this spider didn't die, meaning there's no poison gas on the twelfth floor." Jiang Yihua suddenly understood.
This was merely a backup measure. The main point was that Xu Huo hadn't found any hidden door devices on the window edges, and he couldn't gauge the technological level of this instance, so he had to take the risk with this method.
"The traces on the twelfth floor were probably made by mutant animals," Da Zhi added. "But there are no ventilation ducts here, so the mutant animals must have come in through the windows."
"Not necessarily." Xu Huo had barely finished speaking when an elevator door in front suddenly slid open on both sides. Before the three could react, a shadow flashed out from the elevator shaft and appeared before them in the blink of an eye!
Xu Huo instinctively raised his shield in front of him, but was thrown back by a strange force, sliding several meters. Before he could steady himself, he saw a cold light flash in the air—it looked like a long blade!
"Watch out!" Da Zhi's roar rang out, and then the black panther lunged from the side, biting onto whatever was in front of him and crashing to the ground!
After being tripped up, Xu Huo saw that the thing attacking him was a gray mantis as tall as a half-grown person. Its pair of sickle-shaped raptorial legs gleamed with a metallic luster, easily scratching marks into the ground, as if it had already evolved into a sharp weapon!
"Bang!" One of its forelegs stabbed into the ground. It kicked off the black panther pinning it down, then struck twice, cleaving the black panther into three pieces!
The black panther reverted to a card, but the giant mantis didn't stop its attack. It shook its body, spread its wings, and lunged at Da Zhi!
Xu Huo flung his shield to knock it away, then raised his sword to follow up. However, the giant mantis was incredibly fast. Not only did his sword miss, but the mantis also closed in on him!
Jiang Yihua picked up the Bull Shield nearby and threw it to Xu Huo, saying, "Should we go back to the eleventh floor!"
Xu Huo raised his sword to block the two giant sickles, barely pushing the giant mantis back, then stopped the two from climbing through the window to the eleventh floor. "Don't go that way..."
"Bang!" The mantis kicked him again!
Xu Huo flew backward with the momentum, caught up to Jiang Yihua and the others, and bumped them away from the window, saying, "Going down can only be through the elevator!"
Jiang Yihua didn't understand his reasoning, but by the time she missed this opportunity, the giant mantis was already upon them. Her stamina was far inferior to the other two, and she almost instinctively conjured a flower, opening her mouth to say, "Sir, would you like to buy a flower?"
Unexpectedly, the mantis's sickle leg, which was about to strike her, actually stopped!
Jiang Yihua didn't dare look at the blade-like thing hovering by her waist. She swallowed and said, "Sir, would you like to buy a flower..."
But the mantis, tilting its head to look at her, only paused for a moment before its sickle leg moved again. Yet in that brief instant, Xu Huo appeared beside Jiang Yihua, swung his longsword, and cut the giant mantis in half!
Dark brown bodily fluids splattered out. The giant mantis fell to the ground but wasn't dead yet. Its two sickle legs scraped against the floor, slowly dragging itself toward Jiang Yihua.
Jiang Yihua gasped, grabbed a nearby chair, and smashed it repeatedly over the mantis's head until it was completely crushed!
Only when the upper half of the giant mantis was unrecognizable did she stop, asking uncertainly, "It won't move again, will it?"
"It won't." Xu Huo glanced at her, then cut off the two sickle legs, handing one to her first. "This is more useful than a prop."
Jiang Yihua took it with lingering fear, watching as he crouched down and pulled out a plastic bag from who-knows-where to pack up the giant mantis's body. She couldn't help turning her head away and asking, "By the way, why didn't you let us go down through the window just now..."
Before she could finish, a banging sound suddenly came from one of the elevator shafts!
"Go!" Xu Huo grabbed his things and sprinted toward the elevator shaft they had come from.
Da Zhi followed and helped him pull open the elevator door, which had been left slightly ajar. Xu Huo went in and thrust the Crimson Sword into the wall. The three of them, one holding onto the other, hung in the elevator shaft. Hearing the loud noises coming from the corner of the twelfth floor, Xu Huo quickly pulled the elevator door shut!
The elevator door greatly muffled the sounds from the twelfth floor, but Jiang Yihua's voice trembled slightly as she said, "It really seems like we can only follow the elevator. Otherwise, we'll end up as food for the mutant animals!"
"Why isn't the man-eating flower below making any noise?" Da Zhi, at the bottom, was more afraid of the man-eating flower jumping up than the mutants on the twelfth floor.
"It should be dead." Xu Huo had checked when he entered the elevator shaft. The flower pot of the man-eating flower he had cut in half was cracked, and the stems inside had gone soft, lacking enough spring to reach above the tenth floor.
He lifted Jiang Yihua up a bit with one hand and said to her, "Go up to the thirteenth floor."
Jiang Yihua looked at him like he was crazy. "The twelfth floor is this dangerous. We should go back immediately!"
"The twelfth floor has mutant animals, but the thirteenth floor is different from the other floors. If there's any place in this building to hide, the thirteenth floor is probably the most suitable."