Chapter 213: The Passage Beneath the Elevator Shaft
Zheng Liang had a moment of instant fury, but quickly suppressed his emotions and wisely shut his mouth.
Xu Huo didn't look at him again. His gaze drifted further away, landing on Dai Wenqian not far off, watching the number above his head jump from "5" to "7," then to "8," before falling back to "6." It bounced like that twice more before finally stabilizing at "5."
"Have something to eat." Kang Hong brought over half a bag of compressed biscuits and half a bottle of water. "This is already the third day."
"Everyone else is out of food?" Xu Huo took them.
"The man-eating flowers came so suddenly, there was no time to grab anything," Kang Hong said. "But luckily, the instance ends tomorrow."
Xu Huo glanced at the man-eating flowers blocking the outer wall. "Once the flowers retreat, we can go back to the seventh floor to find food."
Kang Hong quickly waved his hands. "I'd rather go hungry than face those man-eating flowers again."
"I want to go take a look." Jiang Yihua walked over. "If you're going down, count me in."
Xu Huo saw Dazhi slumped weakly against the wall, so he handed the food and water to her instead. "Your capsules aren't working?"
"He's already taken one." Jiang Yihua only took the biscuits. "Thank you."
Gu Yu, seeing Xu Huo give his food to someone else, pulled out a chocolate bar from her own pocket and handed it to him.
Xu Huo broke off a piece, tossed it into his mouth, and found a spot to catch up on sleep.
It wasn't until six in the evening that he stood up again.
The window was still blocked by man-eating flowers. The heavy fog, combined with the limited light source already reduced, left the thirteenth floor dim. The people inside the building were all drowsy from hunger and exhaustion.
Catching a faint, almost imperceptible fragrance in the air, he woke Jiang Yihua and the others.
"What's wrong?" Gu Yu snapped awake instantly, warily scanning her surroundings.
"Nothing. You were just sleeping too deeply," Xu Huo said.
Hearing the noise, Zheng Liang and the others opened their eyes. Dai Wenqian frowned. "The mutant plants on the thirteenth floor are a bit strange."
"It just has a sedative effect." Wei Bin, unable to rest due to pain, took a deep breath. "It's not too harmful to humans."
Kang Hong rubbed his face. "It's almost dark. If we keep sleeping like this, we might be poisoned to death without even knowing it."
"We should just wake everyone up," Jiang Yihua suggested.
The group woke those nearest to them, who then woke others.
"Why haven't these man-eating flowers retracted?" Zheng Liang walked near the window. "Do those things just stick their tongues out and never pull them back in?"
Xu Huo picked up a piece of glass and poked it at the vine of a man-eating flower. Zheng Liang immediately rushed over to stop him, but Xu Huo simply blocked him with one hand and still jabbed the glass shard at the vine. The vine outside showed no reaction.
"They've calmed down," Dai Wenqian said from a few meters away. "In this state, the seventh floor should be fine, as long as we don't deliberately provoke the vines."
"You two really have nerves of steel," Zheng Liang gritted his teeth. "What if you wake them up and they spray poison powder?"
"Don't worry. Nothing happened before, and the chances of them spraying poison now are very slim." Xu Huo said flatly, then turned and walked toward the elevator.
Dai Wenqian followed a step behind.
"You're really going?" Zheng Liang trailed after them. "There's no need to take such a risk right now. Even if the thirteenth floor becomes unlivable after ten at night, we can just hide in the elevator shaft."
But the two ignored him, directly opening the elevator doors. Below, everything was calm.
Xu Huo first lowered himself down using a vine rope, then cautiously opened the elevator doors on the seventh floor. Peering through the gap, he saw that the man-eating flowers hadn't filled the entire floor as he had imagined. A large number of blooms and vines were drooping toward the center of the building, seemingly having fallen into a deep sleep.
He entered first, followed by Dai Wenqian, Jiang Yihua, and Gu Yu.
Jiang Yihua was looking for food. Although the bottled water had all been crushed, the broken biscuits and snacks were still edible. She quickly gathered them up, then spotted the overturned cart nearby. Turning back to Xu Huo, she said, "Most of the flowers you brought out are dead."
Most had been crushed, and a few pots had been corroded away.
Xu Huo walked over and dug out the small purple flower buried in the soil. The other flowers were mostly broken, but this one, buried in the dirt, was still relatively intact.
He cleaned off the flower, scooped up a handful of soil, and picked up a plastic bag to replant it.
Watching his actions, Jiang Yihua couldn't help but say, "This flower is really strange. Its roots are actually red."
Xu Huo looked up at her. "Take the food upstairs first, and bring the flower up with you."
Jiang Yihua nodded and left with the items.
Xu Huo walked over to Gu Yu.
She and Dai Wenqian were examining the vines. Unlike the vines seen from outside the thirteenth floor, the vines on the seventh floor were bulging with pus-filled lumps the size of a human head.
"It doesn't look like they're digesting corpses." Dai Wenqian crouched down and pulled out a knife, but before he could touch the vine, a white pus lump suddenly burst open, and something shot out from inside!
Dai Wenqian swung his blade but cut through empty air. His other hand immediately came up to shield his face. A sharp pain shot through his palm as he grabbed whatever it was and flung it away. When the thing hit the ground, he saw it was a gray flesh worm, as thick as an adult's forearm and about the length of a palm, writhing continuously.
Xu Huo sliced it in half, but instead of dying, the two severed pieces scurried rapidly in opposite directions.
Gu Yu was startled. She swung the metal table leg she was holding and smashed the worm crawling toward her into a pulp. But when she looked up, she saw the two men beside her staring expressionlessly at the other half of the worm as it crawled toward the elevator.
"Where's it going?" Dai Wenqian watched the worm's antennae twitch, as if it were trying to get its bearings.
"You don't actually think a worm has thoughts, do you?" Gu Yu looked at him in shock, but then noticed the pus lumps on the vines beginning to squirm one after another. She quickly said, "Let's go!"
The three of them swiftly left the seventh floor. But once back on the thirteenth, Xu Huo stopped Gu Yu, who was about to hurriedly close the doors, and looked down into the elevator shaft.
They hadn't closed the seventh-floor doors when they came up. A massive number of worms were crawling out from inside, moving down the elevator shaft all the way to the bottom. There, they burrowed beneath the dead man-eating flowers and gradually disappeared.
"There's a passage beneath the elevator shaft." Xu Huo and Dai Wenqian said almost simultaneously.
The two exchanged a glance. Xu Huo manipulated his strings to intercept a flesh worm from below, while Dai Wenqian returned to the floor, climbed up to the glass room, and started dismantling the fan over the ventilation shaft.
Dai Wenqian pulled out a small fan cylinder, looked it over, and said, "Independently wired. There should be a main junction inside."
"But the wires aren't long enough," Dai Wenqian added. "We'll need to pull a few wires from the office floors."
Xu Huo brought the flesh worm up, covered it with a flowerpot, and said casually, "As long as we can get it connected to power."