112: Chapter 112 There must be something under the roof

The thick wooden door of the Council Main House had been barred shut for an entire day.

The door wedges were hammered tight from the inside. The side window's wooden boards left only a two-finger-wide gap. A bronze bell hung on the window frame, its cord threaded through the ceiling beams down to the Old Steward's hand.

After Jiang Ming cleared away the corpses and monster limbs from the Front Field, the outside became so quiet it felt as if the entire Front Field was dead.

The people inside the room, on the other hand, grew even more terrified.

The Old Steward spread the last few writeable cloth strips on the table. The black blood burns on the back of the Clerk's hand had already turned black, forcing him to hold the charcoal pencil with his left hand.

The surviving leader of the pro-war faction leaned against the inside of the doorframe, shattered armor fragments from yesterday's Sewn-Face Hound bite still embedded in his shoulder guard.

Two stewards from the conservative faction sat opposite the table; one of them was the very man who had held up the list and locked the Outer Ring people outside.

Xu Baiheng sat at the end of the table, his back pressed against the load-bearing pillar that Jiang Ming had touched.

They were discussing whether to revoke Lin Qiu's authority over the Pharmacy—the Pharmacy had taken in too many black-blood infected, and someone had already proposed that she only take in the mildly injured.

Jiang Ming was waiting for all of them to gather.

Now that everyone was present, all four corners of the table were occupied, and the weight of the chair legs pressing against the floorboards was evenly distributed.

His thin tendrils had been clinging to the underside of the Council Main House floorboards since last night, creeping in along the moisture vents. There were seven in total, each only as thick as a finger, forming a web along the grain beneath the old pine boards.

The fleshy wood tumor beneath the table—transferred from the door hinge's blood membrane—had expanded to the size of a fist, wrapped right in the center of the tendril web and flattened against the bottom of the floorboards.

He moved the floorboards first.

The floorboard under the front-left corner of the table suddenly thrust upward.

It wasn't a vibration; it was a violent shove upward.

As the wooden board tore free from the mortise and tenon joints, it produced a screech like nails being yanked out. The table tilted, the order strips spread across it slid toward the edge, and ink spilled from an overturned stone inkstone, drenching the cloth.

The Old Steward lunged forward to grab the cloth strips. Just as his fingers pressed against the corner of one, the floorboard under the back-right corner of the table was also forced upward, tilting the entire conference table to the left.

The stewards all scrambled up and backed away as chairs overturned.

Xu Baiheng shot up from the pillar, pushing himself away from the table and stepping back toward the small rear door instead.

"Stay away from the table!"

A deep, muffled, wet tearing sound echoed from inside the beam.

The section of the side beam that had been contaminated by the Sewn-Face Hound's black blood—yesterday, when its neck was impaled outside the window, spraying black blood through the gap and onto the beam, hyphae had long since seeped into the wood fibers along with the blood—now split open from the inside out.

It wasn't the crisp snap of dry wood splitting, but the squelching tear of wet flesh bursting through wood fibers, as if a fist were thrusting outward from within the wood.

The bell cord slipped off the fractured beam, and the bronze bell fell onto the table, ringing wildly. The spare bell on the window frame was yanked loose as well, both sets bouncing hysterically across the tabletop.

Answering bells rang out simultaneously from the direction of the Clean Water Medicine House and Cangju Mansion—but the rhythm they heard was completely wrong.

"Protect the order register!"

The Old Steward scrambled against the tilted table, reaching out to snatch the scattered cloth strips.

Looking back from near the small rear door, Xu Baiheng saw something moving beneath the table.

The floorboard directly under the table was forced open and shattered from below, exposing a dark red, pulsating fleshy wood tumor writhing out from the crack.

The center of the tumor caved inward as fungal hyphae pumped air up from beneath the floor, opening a vocalizing cavity in the core of the growth.

Using his own voice at a low, measured volume directly beneath the tilted conference table, Jiang Ming asked, "Still having your meeting?"

The Old Steward's face was less than a palm's width from the tabletop; hearing these words, his entire body froze.

It hadn't come from outside the window, nor leaked through the door cracks—it came from right beneath the table he was lying on, from inside the wood, spoken by the mouth of a pulsating, living creature.

Then, fine roots burst out from under the table, coiling around his ankles and yanking him downward.

He vanished from the edge of the table, his head slamming into the rim with a dull thud before he was dragged beneath.

Fresh blood gushed out from the gaps in the table, streaming down the sloped surface.

The pro-war leader drew his blade and hacked down at the table.

The blade cleaved through the tabletop and severed the thin tendrils wrapped around the steward's legs, but the fleshy tumor beneath sprouted even more roots, looping around the back of the blade to lash around his wrist.

He released his grip on the sword and stumbled backward, tripped up by a chair that one of his own men had knocked over.

A Root Spike hidden in the side of the beam shot out from the wood fibers, piercing his shoulder guard and pinning him straight to the window frame.

Splintered wood and the window frame flew outward together, and he tumbled backward onto the steps.

Xu Baiheng didn't try to save the order register.

He snatched a half-charred logbook from the edge of the tilted table, tore the oilcloth pouch containing the system fragment box from the Clerk's hands, and dragged the Clerk by his collar toward the small rear door.

"Forget the cloth strips, run!"

His voice cracked violently as he spoke, but his hands didn't pause; he shoved the fragment box into the Clerk's arms and gave him a push.

The two squeezed through the small rear door, which slammed shut behind them.

The two conservative stewards were grabbed around the calves by fine roots at the same time and dragged under the table. Their screams were cut abruptly short, drowned out by the wet, sticky squelching of the re-expanding wood tumor.

Two guards charged in from the doorway to pull them out, only to be swept off their feet by a third wave of thin roots bursting through the floor. The oil lamps flickered out.

Jiang Ming dragged everything from the council table beneath the floor.

The order cloth strips were soaked through with blood, the bronze bell was enveloped by fungal hyphae and dragged into the tumor's crevices, and the fragment of the core list, along with the bronze ink seal on the table, was pulled deep into the mud layer by fine roots.

After devouring the stewards and guards, he obtained new information: the final voting rule of the Central District—any abandonment of supplies required one vote from each of the three houses.

Population density of Cangju Mansion—nearly forty people were crammed into the communal sleeping area, and three violent brawls over food had already erupted in the dark corner behind the grain sacks.

Emergency escape route of the Clean Water Medicine House—Lin Qiu had hidden a trapdoor leading down to an old filter tank beneath the medicine rack on the back wall, which connected to a narrow maintenance passage beside the well cluster.

The Council Main House had partially collapsed.

The window frame on the side wall tumbled outward along with a section of splintered boards. The roof beam tilted but remained unbroken, while the load-bearing pillar held the armor fragments left on the wood splinter when the pro-war leader was impaled.

As for the dead—half of the Old Steward's body was dragged out from under the table by thin roots; the command flag lay fallen in a pool of blood, and the order cloth strips had been soaked into dark red rags.

Any lingering sense of sanctity around the Central District's remaining command hierarchy was utterly destroyed.

Those cloth strips and bronze bells were now smeared with the high-ranking leaders' own blood, sprawling across the steps for all to gawk at.

Xu Baiheng retreated to the doorway of the Clean Water Medicine House with the Clerk, pausing in his tracks.

Looking down, he saw that the few drops of blood Lin Qiu had left on the Pharmacy threshold yesterday were turning black.

It wasn't the black of dried blood—it was still wet and black, with extremely fine dark-red fungal hyphae wriggling out from the gaps in the wood fibers around the edges.

He raised his head to look at the Pharmacy.

The doors were tightly shut, the gaps stuffed full of blood-stained rags.

Inside remained the last few barrels of clean water and over a dozen black-blood infected.

And the bloodstain on the threshold was gently pulsating.