36: Chapter 36 Basic Swordsmanship LV3

A few simple words, yet in this instant, they ignited everyone's fighting spirit.

Just as they were about to reach the fire door, the faint sounds of intense chaos and miserable screams echoed from the stairwell.

"Run! There are monsters!"

"Help! I'm going to die!"

"Ah!!!"

The fire door was flung open with a crash, and several disheveled figures rushed in, wailing like ghosts and howling like wolves. The Horse-faced Youth and the Long-haired youth were running at the very front.

As soon as the Long-haired youth entered, he spotted Chu Xuan and the others walking over. When he saw that Chu Xuan was covered in blood, especially with gauze wrapped around his chest, his initially wary expression immediately turned into one of extreme arrogance and rage.

"It's all your fault, you sons of bitches! You insisted on leading us upstairs! Why didn't you tell us there were so many monsters in the stairwell? I almost died because of you!"

"It's clearly not four o'clock yet, so why did all the lights go out? Was it your doing?!"

"And Lin Tong, if you hadn't taken away the black jade, how could we have followed you up here? This is all your responsibility!" the Horse-faced Youth followed up with a roar.

"If we had just stayed behind the door on the eighth floor like before, why would so many people have to die like this?"

Behind these two, many more people from the eighth floor filed in, crowding the fire door until it was completely blocked. Further back, the sounds of shrill screams and curses continued.

"Change to another door!"

Chu Xuan made an immediate decision, leading the group behind him forward toward another fire door not far away.

"Hey! You're not allowed to leave! You caused the deaths of so many of us, and you think you can just walk away without giving us an explanation?" The Long-haired youth immediately blocked the way, a water pipe clutched in his hand.

"Lin Tong, someone like you doesn't deserve to keep the black jade at all!" The Horse-faced Youth and the others also prepared to step forward and block them.

"Move!" Chu Xuan's pace didn't slow down in the slightest as he checked the time prompt on the System page again.

[3:52:15]

"You want to leave? Fine, but make Lin Tong hand over the black jade first!" the Long-haired youth roared, eyes wide as he blocked the path.

"You guys go first, I'll handle this!"

Lin Tong was incredibly furious, picking up his pace while clutching his butterfly knife.

Chu Xuan was even faster. His cold eyes stared at the Long-haired youth blocking the way as he spoke again.

"Move!"

The Long-haired youth's expression flickered with wariness, but when he realized that the people from the eighth floor had gathered around him, his courage surged. He sneered, "I already said, hand over the black jade..."

Hum—

The iron sword hummed, and blood gushed out like a fountain!

A head flew high into the air.

Chu Xuan didn't stop for a moment, walking past the corpse before it even hit the ground. He gave his long sword a sharp flick, and the scarlet liquid sprayed along the blade, leaving a trail of blood on the floor.

The crowd blocking the way dispersed in an uproar.

Even the people following Chu Xuan were somewhat horrified, because the Long-haired youth did not turn into a monster after falling. This almost shattered the invisible shackles that had long existed in everyone's hearts.

"Move!"

Spitting out a single cold word, Chu Xuan led the group directly through the other fire door into the stairwell, leaving the Horse-faced Youth and the others behind, staring at the fallen corpse in terror and shock, dumbfounded.

"Run! There are monsters up there!"

As soon as Chu Xuan entered the stairwell, he saw two people tumbling and crawling down from above. After getting up, they ran toward the lower floors, crying for their parents.

Looking up, he saw a monster gnawing on a corpse at the landing. Its broad claws were also pinning down a living person, who was screaming shrilly but could not break free.

As the light from the high-intensity flashlight in Chu Xuan's hand swept over it, the monster instantly turned into an afterimage and vanished.

"These are all people from the eighth floor. How did they end up running up here on their own?!" Lin Tong said in disbelief.

"Save... save me..." The person on the landing who wasn't dead yet wailed in pain, looking at Chu Xuan below with a pleading gaze. A bloody hole had appeared in his abdomen, and his intestines were even faintly visible inside.

Chu Xuan didn't stop. He stepped over the person and continued racing toward the tenth floor, with the others following closely behind.

Entering the tenth floor, the light swept through the darkness. The floor was covered in corpses—some human, some monster.

Chu Xuan's heart tightened, but he ultimately stepped inside.

"Slow down, be careful in case there's an ambush here like on the ninth floor..." Lin Tong reminded him as he followed beside Chu Xuan, but before he could finish his sentence, he froze.

Not just Lin Tong, but everyone, including Chu Xuan. As they all entered the floor and reached the corridor, they all looked to the right in sheer horror.

Deep in the corridor to the right, over twenty meters away, numerous tall monsters with greenish-black rotting skin were pouncing, biting, and slamming against a crystal-like transparent wall.

The crystal wall was pale blue, looking like some kind of high-tech product.

With every impact from the monsters, the pale blue crystal wall would flicker and shake violently, its color fading. It looked like it wouldn't be long before the crystal wall could no longer hold up.

The monsters were crowded together, making it impossible to see exactly how many there were, but there were at least twenty.

When the high-intensity flashlight's beam hit them, most of them turned into human forms, but their positions didn't change much; it seemed they had been right there all along.

Due to their large numbers, some monsters on the innermost side couldn't be reached by the light. They remained in their monster forms, continuing to slam against the crystal wall.

Through the gaps between the monsters, one could faintly see that there seemed to be people behind the crystal wall.

"Qin Qing!"

Chu Xuan shouted in a deep voice.

The numerous monsters all turned their heads. Under the high-intensity flashlight, although they maintained human forms, their bared teeth and hideous faces could no longer be called human. However, they didn't attack; they simply continued slamming into the crystal wall.

"Don't come over!"

A cold voice rang out, seemingly directly in his mind. Chu Xuan immediately determined that this was the same voice he had heard on the ninth floor.

"What do we do?" Tang Zheng turned and asked, seemingly having not heard the voice.

"Kill our way through!"

Chu Xuan's eyes were already bloodshot.

"Then let's hurry!" Tang Zheng shook the flashlight in his hand, which was already dimming, and threw it away. "Mine's out of batteries. Yours is probably about the same, right?"

Chu Xuan glanced at the multi-functional high-intensity flashlight in his hand, which showed only half a bar of power left, and then handed it to Xu Zhiyou.

"Keep us illuminated!"

As he spoke, Chu Xuan took two long-handled fluorescent lamps with decent power from the crowd and handed one to Tang Zheng.

While the high-intensity flashlight's beam could cover a large area from a distance, with people's shadows in the way, it was inevitable that some monsters would remain in werewolf form.

"Be careful. The monsters can't touch the lights, but they can grab and break the poles. That's what happened on the ninth floor."

Tang Zheng took the long-handled fluorescent lamp in his left hand, his Tang sword in his right pointing diagonally at the ground. He grinned and said, "Let's give it our all. Don't worry too much!"

"I'll take the lead."

Chu Xuan didn't refuse Tang Zheng's help.

Taking a deep breath, Chu Xuan stepped forward. By now, the numbness and pain in his right hand had recovered quite a bit, so he switched the eight-sided han sword back to his right hand.

"Don't seek death, leave quickly!" the cold voice rang out again, tinged with a hint of anger. "Go to the rooftop, that's the way to survive!"

Chu Xuan didn't stop, and his pace grew faster and faster.

Leave?

There were only seven minutes left; he had no way to retreat!

If he couldn't even deal with these weaklings in human form, how could he face the Night Demon itself?

All feelings of hesitation and fear had long been suppressed deep in his heart, replaced by an intense desire to survive.

Having fought his way from the first floor to here, he could only move forward.

There was no turning back!

—System, convert all spirituality value into skill points. Go all-in on Basic Swordsmanship!

With a single thought, 40 points of spirituality value were instantly converted. Adding the 1 remaining skill point from before, he now had a total of 5 skill points.

[You have used 1 skill point. Your Basic Swordsmanship Rank has increased to LV2 (Proficient).]

[You have used 2 skill points. Your Basic Swordsmanship Rank has increased to LV3 (Expert).]

[Remaining skill points: 2]