225: Faceless Guide

Chapter 225: The Faceless Guide. An ancient, rust-covered bronze door had been jarred open, leaving a narrow gap.

A cold, eerie wind seeped through the crack, chilling one to the bone.

"What is this?"

Ninth Master leaned in to take a look and shrunk back. "This doesn't look like a proper exit. It looks more like... an ancient tomb?"

"This isn't an ancient tomb."

Chen Mo walked to the door and reached out to touch the heavy bronze. "This is an air-raid shelter entrance from the Old Era. Wang Daoming built his Sanatorium right on top of it."

"How do you know?" Su Qingxue asked.

"Because I saw it just now in that heart's memories."

Chen Mo pointed to his head. "It was alive, remember? When I pulled it out, it spat some things into my brain."

He gave the bronze door a forceful push.

A heavy grinding sound echoed as the gap widened, just enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

"Wang Daoming wasn't just creating people."

Chen Mo stared into the darkness behind the door. "He was also digging for something. Something more dangerous than that 'hell engine' is buried down here."

"More dangerous than a nuclear bomb?" Ninth Master swallowed hard.

"A nuclear bomb can only kill people."

Chen Mo slipped through the gap. "That thing can bring people back to life. But in this world, some things are better off dead than alive."

"Like what?"

"Like me, right now."

Chen Mo's figure vanished into the darkness.

Su Qingxue and Ninth Master exchanged a look. Having no choice, they followed him inside.

Beyond the door lay a long, narrow corridor.

Faded murals lined the walls on both sides. They didn't depict gods or demons, but strange geometric patterns and celestial charts.

An indescribable scent permeated the air.

It smelled like moldy books mixed with the ashy scent of burnt incense.

"Wait."

After walking for about a few hundred meters, Chen Mo suddenly stopped.

He crouched down and picked something up from the ground.

It was an empty tin can.

The label hadn't completely rotted away; the production date was faintly visible: Year 2024.

"Why is there a tin can here?" Ninth Master was shocked. "Isn't this air-raid shelter from the Old Era?"

"Someone has lived here."

Chen Mo looked ahead.

At the end of the corridor, there were actually the ashes of a campfire.

Beside the ashes, three sleeping bags were neatly arranged.

But the sleeping bags were empty.

Only on the middle sleeping bag lay a thick notebook.

Chen Mo walked over and picked up the notebook.

Its cover was black cowhide, embossed with a stamped emblem.

It was an Ouroboros.

"This is..." Su Qingxue's expression changed when she saw the emblem. "This is the mark of the 'Observers.' That mysterious organization rumored to have recorded the entire process of the world's collapse?"

Chen Mo flipped to the first page.

The handwriting was scrawled, as if written in a hurry.

[Observation Log: Day 743]

[We have found the 'Source.' It is not dead; it is sleeping. That madman Wang Daoming wants to wake it. We must stop him, even if we have to use that method...]

The text on this page ended there.

Because the next page had been torn out.

"Which method?" Ninth Master leaned in. "This is such a cliffhanger."

Chen Mo flipped forward.

The next few dozen pages were all blank.

Until the very last page.

There were no words on that page, only a hand-drawn map.

In the center of the map was a large red X.

And at the location of the red X, three words were written:

[Tomb of the Living Dead]

"We are here right now."

Chen Mo pointed at the red X. "This isn't an exit. This is the destination."

Whoosh—

A sudden cold wind blew from the depths of the corridor.

The campfire ashes on the ground were blown into a swirling dance.

The moment the ashes rose, Chen Mo snapped his head up.

He saw it.

At the dark corner ahead, a person was standing.

The person wore an outdoor jacket identical to the three empty sleeping bags, with their back to them, holding an unlit hurricane lamp.

"Hey!"

Ninth Master saw it too and instinctively shouted, "Is that a person or a ghost up there?"

The person didn't turn around.

But they raised the hurricane lamp and gave it two gentle shakes.

Creak.

The lamp made a rusty sound.

Immediately after, the person's head suddenly rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees at an extremely eerie angle.

The face turned toward them.

It was a face without features.

The entire face was as smooth as a sheet of white paper, except for where the mouth should have been, where a question mark had been drawn in black ink.

"?"

"Run!"

Without hesitation, Chen Mo turned and pushed Su Qingxue and Ninth Master to run back.

For he saw that behind the Faceless Man, countless pairs of green eyes were lighting up in dense clusters.

Those were the "things" that should have been blown to ashes in the operating room above.

They weren't dead.

They were down here, waiting for a meal... the way back was truly cut off.

Several tons of boulders had completely blocked the bronze door, and even the gap that they had squeezed through was gone.

"Fuck! I knew it wouldn't be this easy!"

Ninth Master kicked a rock and turned to fire a shot.

Bang!

The buckshot exploded into a fan-shaped net of fire in the narrow corridor, riddling the two leading green-eyed monsters with holes.

By the light of the muzzle flash, Chen Mo saw the true forms of these things.

They weren't human at all.

They weren't even corpses.

They were monsters forcibly stitched together from various biological limbs; some had human torsos with four dog legs attached, while others had heads sewn directly onto their chests, green saliva dripping from their mouths.

"This is Wang Daoming's 'waste disposal plant'."

The glock in Su Qingxue's hand fired in rapid succession, each shot precisely hitting the monsters' joints. "The failed experiments from the operating room were all tossed down here."

"So much waste? Just how many sins did that old geezer commit?"

Ninth Master cursed as he retreated, the barrel of his shotgun glowing red. "I'm running out of ammo! Chen Mo, think of something!"

Chen Mo said nothing.

He didn't have a gun.

He had long since lost the revolver from earlier.

But in his hand was a piece of rebar he'd grabbed from the rubble, with a chunk of concrete still attached to the end, looking like a crude warhammer.

"Move."

Chen Mo pushed Ninth Master aside and, holding the rebar in one hand, walked toward the surging tide of monsters.

A six-armed monster lunged from the wall, aiming straight for Chen Mo's face.

Whoosh—

The rebar swung with a vicious wind.

Splat!

Like a baseball bat hitting a rotten tomato, the monster's upper body exploded, foul blood splattering across the celestial charts on the wall.

Chen Mo didn't stop.

He was like a bulldozer; with every swing of his arm, another monster was turned into pulp.

That pure, violent aesthetic made Ninth Master swallow hard behind him.

"Is this guy... even more fierce than before?" Ninth Master whispered.

"The Inhibitors in his body have worn off."

Su Qingxue quickly swapped magazines. "Right now, he's just a beast in human skin."

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