Mist (Web Novel CN)-Chapter 24: Chapter 24

Ouroboros

Chapter 24

One floor.

Two floors.

It was just a short distance of going down two floors, it was clearly very close, but it became a path to survival that almost seemed unreachable.

The respite from their future selves seemed to have given them a chance to breathe.

Time seemed to have slowed down. The wave of zombies resurrected, the building gradually restored itself and the giant spider appeared hanging from a thick spider thread. At this very moment, all the changes that happened were processed in slow motion as a result of heightened senses and pumping adrenaline.

Ji Yushi supported himself using his purple hand and followed the teammate in front to jump down when he suddenly found the floor below him gone.

“Thud!”

As soon as his feet landed, seven or eight pairs of pale hands stretched out from the sides. He looked up and saw several distorted faces with grey eyes and drooling mouths rushing towards him.

“Bang, bang, bang——-”

The teammates behind him fired rapidly and a gap suddenly opened before him.

“There is a gate here!” Tang Qi shouted. His gun continued to fire rapidly. The giant spider that was injured by the gunshots staggered and knocked down a bunch of the zombies.

“Quick!”

Zhou Mingxuan cursed. Together with Song Qinglan, they leaned back.

The half-open gate only allowed for them to squeeze through.

After everyone went through the gate, Duan Wen quickly went and pushed the hydraulic level, “Broken! Fuck!”

The gate couldn’t be closed. Zombies madly drilled in.

But at any rate, it was better than having no place to hide. Everyone continued to shoot while retreating. Their goal was the next floor down.

“Slap!!” The road ahead was blocked.

An unknown object had fallen from the sky, blocking their way.

It wasn’t a zombie and it also wasn’t a giant spider. Its slimy body was covered in mucous and it curled up painfully on the ground as if it were a person.

“Chun’er!!”

Duan Wen recognised him first and rushed forward to help him.

“How is he?!”

“Take him along! We have to go!”

Zombies filed in from the gate that couldn’t be closed, and new zombies were constantly emerging from all directions on this floor.

“Boom! Boom!” The gate made a loud noise and the number of zombies suddenly reduced a little. It was the giant spider ramming itself against the gate. Cracks had appeared on the walls on both sides of the gate, and it looked like it was on the verge of crumbing under the pressure!

Together with Duan Wen, Ji Yushi knelt down and supported Li Chun up.

Li Chun’s entire body was covered in mucous, including his nose and mouth, making it hard for him to breathe. He looked like he was about to suffocate. The mucous was extremely slimy and sticky, Duan Wen tried several times but couldn’t get it off. He was so anxious, his eyes were red, “What to do?!”

The situation was critical. Ji Yushi threw down his gun and used both hands to pry open Li Chun’s mouth, “Hold him down!”

Duan Wen looked at Ji Yushi who was still extremely calm despite the purple arm and bleeding abdomen and watched him grab the mucous layer and, with blue veins on the back of his hand looking like it was about to burst, he cut out a small hole in Li Chun’s mouth.

Air instantly poured into the throat and then into the lungs. Li Chun couldn’t help but stiffen and then start to gasp for air.

In just those few seconds, there was a deafening ‘clang’. The giant spider had already broken through the gate and rushed in together with the wave of zombies!

The giant spider was in front and all around them were zombies.

They have seemed to reach a new crisis.

Everyone froze for a moment.

Even with the existence of a time anchor and the fact that they could be resurrected after death, they were still humans made up of blood and flesh. An unstoppable hero suddenly arriving to save the day like the movies didn’t happen, they only had themselves to rely on.

The bombs they had brought along were almost all used up. The assistance from ‘Team 6’ just now seemed to be a reminder to them of how important it was for them to be well equipped.

But the next second.

Song Qinglan suddenly spoke, “Team B is here.”

Everyone heard another voice in the public channel. It was their own voice, “Hold it up!!”

“Hold it!!”

“Ten minutes, I’m coming!!”

“Boom——–!!”

The sound of the spacecar could be heard through the communicator.

Team B was rushing over to them with great force and great speed!

The spirits of everyone were lifted, “Kill!!”

Replacing the despair from earlier, a fire of hope rekindled in everyone’s heart. Even when faced with such a dire situation, they will open a bloody path up!

The giant spider was at the forefront and was knocked to the ground by Song Qinglan’s energy cannon and its juices splattered all over.

This attack was very emboldening. Song Qinglan had no scruples, “Go!!”

More and more giant spiders appeared. Large and small, it was as if they had smashed open a spider’s nest.

Song Qinglan heard Ji Yushi yell, “Down there, at nine o’clock. The fastest way to the control centre!!”

The base was too large, and the internal passages were also very complicated.

The so-called go down two floors and follow the path for half a circle, if it was a normal person, they would have already lost their way amidst such a fierce battle and chaos, but it wasn’t the case for Ji Yushi.

Relying on his strong sense of direction and memory, he managed to perfectly distinguish the right direction.

“Roger.” Song Qinglan carried Shen Mian and fired another shot in the direction pointed out by Ji Yushi.

The entire floor shook.

This time, he had blown a large hole on the floor!!

The grappling hook made its appearance and Tang Qi and Tang Le went down the rope first. Zhou Mingxuan shot down a few zombies and followed and then Ji Yushi and Duan Wen quickly secured Li Chun and went down as well.

Wind whistled past their ears.

As they slid down at a high speed, zombies that chased after them fell down the hole endlessly.

Unlike those crazed zombies, the giant spiders stopped before the hole and no longer chased after them. It was as if the place below was a forbidden zone for them.

The corridor on the lower level was bright, quiet and completely empty.

The ceiling was too high, and the ventilation pipes above criss-crossed through the entire building, forming a system of its own.

Everyone in the squad followed the zipline and stopped on a thick ventilation pipe that was more than ten metres away from the floor above. There was also another twenty or thirty metres below them so even if there were zombies, it was impossible for them to climb up.

They all untied themselves and there was a look of relief on everyone’s faces.

Song Qinglan’s eyes quickly swept over them, making sure that everyone was still intact.

Tang Qi and Tang Le inspected the surrounding area while Duan Wen and Zhou Mingxuan helped dig away the mucous on Li Chun’s body.

Ji Yushi sat on the side catching his breath.

The white T-shirt on his body had long lost its original colour and his face was unnaturally red. Under his short sleeves, one arm was purple and red, a sharp contrast to the other.

On their way here, Ji Yushi had sustained the most injuries in the team.

What’s more, he was also originally wounded.

“How are you?!” Song Qinglan knelt down and asked.

Seeing the concern in his eyes, Ji Yushi didn’t hold back, “Help me, take out the painkiller. The wound, opened.”

Ji Yushi’s spoke unevenly, and his lips were pale from enduring the pain.

His tone and words were less distant than before. It was like it was his first time allowing the other person to get close to him.

Song Qinglan asked, “Where’s the medicine?”

Ji Yushi gestured sideways, “Pocket.”

His purple arm was trembling, and his other hand was covering his abdomen. It seemed that he couldn’t free his own hands to grab it.

Song Qinglan did as he was told and reached into his pant pocket.

In front of everyone, this slightly intimate action was no longer strange. No one was in the mood to tease them anymore, but at such a moment, at a moment where their lives were hanging from a thread, Song Qinglan suddenly felt his heart turn hot. The reason for it was unclear.

The small bottle of painkiller was taken out.

Ji Yushi raised his head, “Feed me.”

It could be seen that Ji Yushi wasn’t thinking about whether that act was appropriate. Because his hands were still covered in the mucous from Li Chun’s body, the fact that he hadn’t vomited was already pretty good. It was absolutely impossible for him to use those hands to take out the medicine from the bottle and eat it.

Song Qinglan took out a pill and stuffed it into his mouth.

Ji Yushi vaguely mumbled, “Thank you.”

When his fingers touched those hot lips, Song Qinglan asked, “You have a fever?”

As he said this, he reached to touch Ji Yushi’s forehead.

It was hot to touch. Ji Yushi really had a fever.

But Ji Yushi wasn’t concerned. This place didn’t have water and, perhaps because he wanted to make the painkiller work faster, he chewed the bitter pill with a frown, “It may be an infection. We’ll worry about it later.”

The two talked for less than a minute and during this time, Li Chun woke up.

Duan Wen shouted, “Cap Song!!”

Li Chun was already able to sit up on his own. The mucous on his face was cleaned up and only his body was still slimy. His entire person was still in a state of shock and unable to form coherent words.

Everyone surrounded Li Chun.

“Chun’er, you’re amazing. You’re very fortunate to still be alive!”

“How did you fall back down again? Seeing you swept away, I almost gave you a memorial service on the spot!”

“Tell this brother about your heroic acts!”

Li Chun immediately started to cry with an ugly expression, “I was eaten, and then, and then I didn’t want to die, so I stabbed everywhere with a knife…..I think I was spat back out…..waaaaahhhh.”

Then that mucous……..

Everyone: “………”

Bleurgh.

“To eat you and then spit you back out, how big is that thing? What kind of thing is it?!”

Zhao Mingxuan looked up. Those giant spiders were still wandering around the hole, as if they were reluctant to let their prey go but also as if they were afraid of something.

At this moment, the pipe where they were taking a breather on started to shake violently.

When they were above, they had seen such a sound coming from the vents. It meant that that thing was coming!

“Gecko, mouse, cockroach, snake.” Ji Yushi stood up. His face was still covered in cold sweat but now was not to time to worry about it, “These things like to go through vents. I just don’t know if it’s one of them…..or a mixture.”

Mi-mixture?

Everyone was shocked.

This means that in this base, everything could be mutated?!

Ji Yushi spoke very quickly, “If I am not mistaken, the energy supply point for Golden Crow No.2 is below the control centre. The closer you are to that place, the stranger the sights you will see. Golden Crow No.1 only provided the basic energy supply, and after Golden Crow No.2’s establishment and the energy source was doubled, energy consumption doubled as well. They had no choice but to obtain more energy from the universe so the radiation and subsequent mutation is far worse on this end.”

Humans turned into zombies that no longer had the ability to think for themselves and only knew to eat.

Animals and insects underwent various changes.

This colony named PU-31 had completely collapsed.

There was no command centre for the Tianqiong system in this era. That cold system had hijacked this group of guardians and the aim of this mission was very clear.

Turn off the energy transmitters, let all the energy be released at once and let everything within range be sucked into the empty void.

Once all the energy transmitters are turned off, PU-31 would lose all its energy and no longer be able to sustain itself. In the end, it would be sucked into the crevice of the universe and disappear completely.

The crevice between parallel universes created PU-31.

And it will be the one to destroy PU-31.

When Ji Yushi finished saying this, the pipe shook violently again. The vibration had reached their feet. Everyone had a look of horror, “Let’s move!”

“Boom!”

Not far away, a ventilation duct broke open and a ‘tongue’ about three or four metres shot out towards them.

The ‘tongue’ retracted itself again amidst the gunfire.

The grappling hook was only twenty metres long. If they wanted to go down from here, they would still be a few metres away from the ground. It wasn’t long enough.

Song Qinglan looked around, “There is a maintenance ladder ahead!”

Sure enough, several metres away against the curved wall of this base was a maintenance ladder.

The pipe shook violently. The thing inside went back and forth and its ‘tongue’ shot out from another nearby place to attack! This time, everyone saw it clearly. That ‘tongue’ really made it hard for them to distinguish what animal it was. There were some suckers on the back, but the front was like a normal tongue and there was also a small fork on the tip of it. They couldn’t tell if it was a gecko or a snake.

Everyone sprinted over as fast as they could.

They headed straight for the ladder and slid all the way down. No one paid any attention to the pain on their palms.

It may have been a long time since it had eaten something so fresh. That ‘tongue’ that Li Chun had escaped from seemed very irritated and continued to wave around from inside the pipe. With a ‘crash’, the pipe about thirty or forty metres long broke off and collapsed onto the ground.

Song Qinglan got onto the maintenance ladder last. He only had time to see a slimy and fleshy mass appear from the pipe on the ground. It was an extremely disgusting sight.

Following this loud noise, the zombies that no longer fell through the hole above them reappeared.

These zombies originally couldn’t find their directions and were wandering about aimlessly but after being attracted over by the sound, they started falling through the hole in the ceiling like dumplings.

The lower ground was lively. That ‘tongue’ swung about furiously, trying to get rid of the bothersome zombies, but those zombies didn’t feel any pain. Many of them even had broken bones from the fall but even if they only had an upper body left, they still desperately crawled towards the moving ‘tongue’.

The ‘tongue’ was surrounded. The zombies which didn’t care about their life or death surrounded it and started tearing into the ‘tongue’, forcing it to retreat back into the pipe.

The giant spiders couldn’t hold back anymore.

They crawled down along the walls, also wanting to get a piece of the pie.

The giant spiders were afraid of the ‘tongue’ and the ‘tongue’ was afraid of the zombies. With the three of them in the same place, they no longer cared about their fears.

For the living, this was hell!

“Ji Yushi!”

Song Qinglan’s roar from behind reached his ears. Ji Yushi turned back and saw a large mouth appear behind him. The top closed down and the bottom closed up, it was about to bite off his head in one go.

“Move aside!”

Someone suddenly appeared on a spider’s back. It was also Song Qinglan!!

The man’s face was serious, and his eyes were indescribably cold. At this critical moment, he shoved a bomb into that spider’s mouth.

Instantly knowing what he needed to do, Ji Yushi rolled away. The other person also slipped off the spider’s back.

“Boom!”. The sound was deafening. The spider’s innards flew everywhere and its body was blown to pieces.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

Many gunshots sounded. Several familiar figures hung from the hole in the ceiling. One after another, they occupied the advantageous position of being on higher ground and shot at the zombies and spiders below.

There was a total of six people there. Team B was here!

With their fighting power instantly doubled, the situation was reversed!

The two Song Qinglan’s were exactly the same. They didn’t need to communicate at all and turned their heads back at the same time and yelled, “To the control room!!”

Ji Yushi ran to the control room. As he shot down the zombies, he saw his other self.

They were both running through the gunpower smoke.

It was like looking in a mirror.

JI Yushi saw his other self’s expression suddenly change, “Behind!!”

Accompanying this reminder, the other party threw the gun in his hand over!

The small Diamond Bird was silvery white all over.

It drew an arc in the air and fell into Ji Yushi’s hands.

Without even stopping to think, Ji Yushi caught the gun thrown over by his other self with his left hand, turned his head and saw that the ‘tongue’ and popped out of the pipe again. This time it had split into two and it flew towards him like a snake!

Ji Yushi held a Diamond Bird in each hand and shot with perfect accuracy. He was a perfect double gun wielder. Firing the two guns at the same time, he very easily shot a section off the two ‘tongues’.

Immediately afterwards, he continued running and threw the gun back.

The other Ji Yushi was similarly calm. He continued to run after receiving his gun.

One bent down and slid over the pipe on the ground that was blocking his way.

One jumped and landed on the shoulder of a zombie. With a twist of his legs, his perfect Jiu-Jitsu skill broke the zombie’s neck in an instant.

Without needing to say anything, the Ji Yushi wearing a black combat uniform and the Ji Yushi wearing a white T-shirt looked like twins.

With thirteen members of the Tianqiong seventh squad, they were currently in their best condition to fight.