1: Chapter 1 Infinite Tower

The scorching sun roasted the earth like a furnace, and hot winds swept by, carrying massive amounts of yellow sand that poured into people's mouths and noses, feeling as if a handful of burning charcoal had been shoved in.

"Hurry up, everyone! Once you enter the building, you'll get one energy block a day. Do a good job for me and don't pull any tricks. As long as you can survive, you can stay in the Shelter."

The fully armed men formed a sharp contrast with the emaciated, mummy-like refugees in the team.

It seemed that if the sun were just a bit hotter, these hundred or so ragged refugees would be cured into preserved meat, forever becoming statues in front of the building.

Wang Ting walked slowly behind the beggar-like group, his emaciated body swaying unsteadily, exuding a sense of weakness. His burning throat felt as if it were about to smoke, and he knew his throat must be so dry it was covered in bloodshot veins.

He held a rusty sickle in his hand, and the refugees before and after him were much the same, each holding a sickle of varying sizes.

Wang Ting raised his head to look at the building standing like a tombstone right in the middle of the Shelter before him.

Two stories high, its walls were mottled and dilapidated. The reinforced concrete walls were exposed outside, exuding a cold, ghastly paleness. There was not a single window, nor any ventilation holes, only a pitch-black gate connecting to a long staircase.

This building shouldn't be here.

This was his first thought upon seeing the building, feeling as out of place as a dead body appearing in a pile of living people.

The pitch-black staircase entrance seemed capable of swallowing people; in fact, the Guard Team members standing by the staircase were the most numerous.

Everything exuded an eerie feeling.

"I want to survive!"

Wang Ting took a deep breath. Having stayed in this Shelter resembling a gobi desert wasteland for three days, the broken mud walls, stacked scrapped cars, and houses built from sheet metal or adobe completely shattered his illusions.

"I just wanted to pass the graduate entrance exams, but I never planned on coming to a ghost place like this."

"Mad Max or Fallout 4?"

It was probably even crazier than these two ghost places. Old Wang had said that there were farmland and Scarecrows inside the building, and these were enough to feed everyone in the Shelter.

There was actually farmland inside a Floor World, and it could feed so many people—how absurd was that?

Old Wang was also a refugee who had picked up the 'sick' Wang Ting in the outer gobi desert.

According to him, if not for him, Wang Ting would probably have been cured into jerky before long, or perhaps eaten by the monsters in the gobi desert.

Wang Ting stumbled and wandered for a day and a night, following the sparse crowd, and finally hid in this Shelter.

The Shelter had no surplus food and did not support idlers. Old Wang died of illness on the second night.

The skin-and-bones, icy corpse was thrown outside the Shelter like a dead dog. After a night passed, not even a single hand was left behind.

Chill enveloping his body, Wang Ting snapped back from his memories and tightened his grip on the sickle in his hand, which struggled even to cut grass.

"Don't run around after going inside."

A rough warning sounded by his ear. That person was holding a weapon 70% similar to an AK rifle, wearing a slovenly canvas jacket, with sunken eyes and a fierce look.

Wang Ting lowered his gaze slightly and walked past that person. From the corner of his eye, he looked at the refugee in front of him, his pupils contracting sharply involuntarily.

"Gone?!"

After walking up the stairs, the person in front hadn't taken many steps before their figure disappeared under his gaze.

"Hurry up!"

Wang Ting was pushed, his weak body stumbling. Steadying himself against the wall, he walked up the steps.

The coldness of the wall came through his palm, and the sound of footsteps walking on the steps seemed swallowed up by the building.

A strange feeling enveloped Wang Ting's heart. After taking a few steps, his vision suddenly went black, and then a burst of dazzling light flooded his eyes.

A wisp of mixed plant and soil scent brushed past the tip of his nose. He opened his eyes, but his pupils contracted sharply, revealing an expression of disbelief.

Fields stretched out in endless rows, and the wheat was golden.

It felt as if he had traveled through time again in an instant, but beside the fields, tall, rusted barbed wire fences with faintly visible darkened bloodstains and scratch marks instantly pulled Wang Ting's thoughts back to reality.

There must be danger here.

Three days were not enough for Wang Ting to understand this world too much, but there was one thing he knew: the root of everything was buildings similar to this one.

A building that seemed not to belong to this world; every single floor was a Floor World.

"Including this batch, there are a total of three hundred refugees. The number is enough."

Fan Da glanced over, counted the number of people, and then waved his hand. The subordinates behind him strode forward.

"Groups of twenty, follow me to the barn. We'll start harvesting wheat at night."

Why harvest wheat at night instead of in broad daylight?

Wang Ting grew more and more puzzled in his heart. Looking beside the barbed wire fence, every twenty to thirty meters there was a wooden watchtower, and on each watchtower stood fully armed members. The defense of a farm was actually on par with the outer Shelter.

In the middle of the farm were several simple barns built of wooden boards. On the east side, there were a few wooden houses, which looked like the living quarters of those guards.

Wang Ting and a dozen or so refugees around him were driven to the middle barn. They opened the door and walked in, and a sour, stinky smell mixed with sweat made him frown directly.

A batch of people had already entered the barn earlier, about thirty or so. Some were lying down, some were standing, all in ragged clothes and no better off than them.

The sound of pattering footsteps came, and three gun-toting men walked outside the barn door. The sallow-faced man in the middle said, "Remember this well; I'll only say it once. If you can't remember it and die, don't blame me."

His tone was icy. Those who were still lying down also hurriedly got up and tightened their bodies.

Wang Ting noticed that quite a few people only showed fear, but didn't seem very curious about what he was going to say, as if they already knew what the guards were going to say.

"This Floor World is called Scarecrow Farm, belonging to a habitable floor. There is no sun, but there is water, land, and light to grow crops. Your job is to plant crops and harvest crops. The rule of this Floor World is that along with the planting of crops, Scarecrows will be born, especially during harvest time. Starting tonight until the harvest ends, if a Scarecrow appears, report it immediately, do not run around causing chaos, and then..."

He paused slightly, his gaze sweeping across the crowd: "Save your own lives."

The guards withdrew from the barn, the heavy door closed, and immediately the barn fell into silence.

"That sounds nice, isn't it just for hunting Scarecrows?"

An imperceptible cold snort sounded. The expressions of those who heard it changed slightly, but none of them said anything more.

Each found a spot, huddled up, and closed their eyes to rest.

One energy block a day. If they completed the harvest, they could also get twenty jin of wheat and a large jar of water, which was already much better than those refugees.

But this was exchanged with their lives.

If they didn't rest up enough, there might really be danger at night.

Wang Ting just listened, capturing every fragment of information he heard as much as possible, as these pieces of information concerned his own life and death.

"You just wandered into this Shelter recently, right?"

A short-haired man in his thirties cautiously leaned over.

Wang Ting tightened his grip on the sickle in his hand. That person immediately glanced at it warily and shrank back half a step.

"My name is Yang Qi, you can just call me Old Yang. In this Floor World, as long as you are in the fields, you might attract the attack of a Scarecrow. Without people looking out for each other, you won't even know how you died."

"Are they holding guns to fend off those monsters?"

Wang Ting remained calm, showing a bit of curiosity, but the sickle in his hand showed no sign of being put down.

"Yes, generally speaking, those Scarecrows run over from the outer wilderness like wild dogs. But they can also pop out suddenly like ghosts, appearing right behind you."

Yang Qi grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth that exuded a foul stench.

In the apocalypse, very few people could have a good set of teeth; just staying alive wasn't easy.

"The guy in my group, in order to earn a bit more food, didn't notice the appearance of a Scarecrow at all. I just heard a snap, and his head was plucked off by the Scarecrow, with blood staining everywhere."

"What do Scarecrows look like?"

Wang Ting was silent for a long time. He knew there were monsters in this world, but facing monsters for real was a first.

"Taller than a person, covered all over in straw, wearing a human face, with a split mouth... Anyway, how about you team up with me and we watch each other's backs?"

Yang Qi's eyes flashed with hope. Wang Ting stared into his eyes without the slightest fear or hesitation: "Go find someone else."

Soon, the other party's gaze shifted a few times before restoring a smile: "Then I'll look around some more."

Yang Qi shrunk his body to make himself look a bit leaner.

Ill-intentioned.

Watching him lean over to another newly arrived refugee and smile ingratiatingly with the exact same expression, this thought popped into Wang Ting's mind.

You don't need to run faster than the bear; you just need to run faster than your teammate.

There is no such thing as unreasoned kindness. That Yang Qi didn't look for people who had worked on the farm before, but instead approached Wang Ting; that in itself was a problem.

Besides, one energy block a day—although this thing had no nutrition and was synthesized from the hardest-to-swallow food and unknown proteins.

But compared to not having anything to eat, this was far too precious.

If someone died, who should get their belongings went without saying.

Without a team, Wang Ting would still be alone during the harvest, which in itself was a trouble.

"The Guard Team wants to hunt Scarecrows. Harvesting at night would make it even harder to spot those monsters... Harvesting around the watchtowers or following behind others would at least let you run faster."

[Monster Collector activated]

[Current recorded monsters: 0. Please start recording as soon as possible.]

Phantom images suddenly emerged before his eyes, and Wang Ting finally broke into a smile, feeling like he had surfaced from the suffocating bottom of a lake, instantly feeling immensely relieved.

It felt as if celestial music was ringing in his ears, reminding him that his golden finger had arrived!