Chapter 318: When Darkness Falls, Don't Step Outside! [Happy New Year!]

The bizarre encounters before this, the terrifying "human shadows" that didn't seem alive, and the enormous phantom drifting through the city…

All these strange scenes finally Burst before this "monster cat," which had effortlessly snapped a metal table leg thicker than its own body!

Fear at this moment utterly shattered reason:

"Aaaah— y-you, don't come any closer!!"

"Don't kill me!"

"I want my mommy…"

Overcome by terror, Wang Bo and the others screamed out; all their scheming, all their scrambling for supplies, at this moment were thrown to the back of their minds — they could spare no thought for grabbing anything.

Before this monster cat, no blade could bring even a shred of a sense of security; in panic they scrambled on hands and knees toward the doorway that wasn't yet fully sealed, then crawled out as ugly as a wriggling caterpillar.

Yet this scene that filled Wang Bo and the others with such dread made Zhou Yun, who had witnessed everything from the side, shine with bright eyes.

Hmm?

As if sensing something, Baichuan followed the feeling and looked over, only to see the young man whose gaze was fixed dead on him; the scorching intensity of that look made even Baichuan shiver.

At first Baichuan didn't understand what that gaze meant, until—

After Zhou Yun and his sister who had rushed over finished their work — resealing the doorway outside, moving things, and switching to an intact small room — he finally understood.

Watching Zhou Yun, who sat not far from him, constantly gesturing with several metal table legs, chair legs, and even a wooden table, Baichuan helplessly rolled his eyes.

Not to mention he could understand the other's words; even without understanding, any being with a shred of Spirit and intelligence would have grasped the young man's meaning from those repeatedly demonstrated gestures — it was—

Asking him to use those incomparably Sharp claws to cut these metal table legs, chair legs, and the wooden table into the shapes the other wanted.

And the girl beside him seemed to have only just discovered how amazing her family's Mao Mao was; her eyes sparkled as she stared, seemingly waiting for the cat's earlier performance, and perhaps because the fur felt so pleasant to the touch, she kept wanting to reach out and pet it herself.

Miserable!

At this moment, Baichuan finally realized he seemed to have run into a pair of freak siblings who coveted his body!

At the same time, the sky outside grew darker and darker.

When the last sliver of light could hold on no longer and collapsed, the thick fog began pressing down toward the earth like a canopy, like a hungry Fierce Beast opening its great maw, slowly swallowing whole the city that had nearly lost its electricity.

Night had fallen.

Seeing this, Zhou Yun, who was still busy crafting a handy weapon, grew solemn; abandoning his tools, he stood up at once, swiftly shut the window and drew the curtains, placed some commonly used items beside him, then quickly extinguished the room's faint light, shrouding the entire room in darkness.

"Mimi, it's dark — don't run around, okay?"

During this, Zhou Xiaoxiao directly picked up the cat Baichuan, muttering to him.

She seemed afraid that the cat, having recovered its vigor, would run about as usual and cause trouble.

'Dark? Don't run around?'

Hearing this, Baichuan's golden feline pupils flickered, thoughtful.

Although in his earlier attempts, some of the split bodies that had survived several days hadn't encountered anything special at night,

for this pair of siblings to treat it so seriously couldn't be without reason — especially since they had safely made it through several days.

Then, was it a peculiar accident specific to this place?

Baichuan recalled the scene from when he first descended — a huge crater abruptly caving in on the ground, and a strange Gucheng slowly rising up from beneath the liquid-like earth.

……

Late at night, beside the deeply sleeping siblings, a pair of cat pupils emitting a faint golden glow lit up.

Gently leaping out from the other's embrace, landing soundlessly on the floor, Baichuan glanced around, then quietly made his way to the window, gently pulled back the curtain, and squeezed into the gap between the curtain and the window.

Looking at the tightly locked window, Baichuan didn't try to open it.

He wasn't afraid of death, but he feared dying without value; he only wanted to see what kind of changes the night in this city actually held.

With this thought, he focused his gaze out the window.

At the same time, below.

A scene utterly different from the daytime appeared before Baichuan's eyes.

They were enormous "flesh blobs," "flesh piles"!

"Grrr…"

"Hooaah…"

All sorts of strange sounds kept coming from those bizarre "flesh blobs,"

Baichuan looked closely — how could those be "flesh blobs"!

They were the mindless human shadows that had aimlessly emitted strange noises during the day!

At this moment, under the cover of night and fog, "they" no longer retained human form; under the fog's shroud, their flesh grotesquely bulged all over their bodies, like tumors and swollen lumps.

"They" attacked each other like xenomorphs, tangling together, claws constantly raking each other's bodies, teeth endlessly gnawing each other's flesh, as if harboring an irreconcilable hatred, wishing to drink their blood and devour their meat.

This was no isolated case!

All the "human shadows" had launched attacks on one another; through constant entanglement they formed the enormous "flesh blobs" and "flesh piles" Baichuan had seen at first glance.

Just then, from the darkness, a sneaky human shadow poked its head out from behind a nearby house; in the faint light from some lucky places outside that hadn't yet lost power completely, Baichuan clearly saw it was a somewhat plump middle-aged man wearing a light-blue shirt.

He was drenched in sweat; though he tried to force himself to stay calm, he couldn't conceal the terror within, because a nearly three-meter-tall phantom stood before him, constantly blocking his face and asking: "You saw it, right? Yes! You saw me, right?"

Surely, anyone faced with such a scene couldn't pretend it didn't exist.

Confronted with this, the middle-aged man clutched his fat belly, muttering to himself nonstop — was he telling himself his stomach hurt?

While pretending not to see, he tremblingly peeked out from behind the wall; seeing no "human shadows" tangled nearby, he immediately slipped over.

Baichuan followed the direction he was heading and saw that not far ahead was the nearest small convenience store in the complex.

He was struck by a sudden realization — perhaps in this disaster, not everyone had stocked enough food, and this should be the sixth night since losing contact; the man before him had clearly been unable to bear his hunger any longer.

"Ah!"

A sudden scream rang out from below, jolting Baichuan from his thoughts.

He looked up and saw that the large mass of tangled "flesh blobs" instantly came apart, madly surging toward the source of the scream,

For a moment, the "human tide" surged, the screams growing ever fainter, and the phantom Baichuan had seen earlier nearby was twisting ceaselessly — was it "angry"?

A few breaths later, the screams stopped completely; what stopped along with them was not just the screaming, but the entire "human tide" that had been gathering!

"Sizzle sizzle sizzle…"

One after another, the sounds of bodies being pierced rang out, and black shadows kept shooting through the "human tide," waving about in midair.

Only then did Baichuan realize those weren't black shadows at all — they were tentacles, waving ceaselessly!

A mass of tentacles burst out from the center of the "human tide," skewering countless "human figures" like char siu, and then the "human figures" hanging on the tentacles actually melted like liquid!

In just a few breaths, the "human tide" in that entire area vanished; the mass of tentacles began retracting, slowly transforming into a gaunt young man with a gloomy expression. "He" had filthy clothes all over, a vacant look on his face, ignored the phantom twisting ceaselessly nearby, and headed toward the building — the direction from which he had originally arrived, the same direction the fat middle-aged man had come from.

Wherever he passed, the "human figures" tearing and devouring around him actually rolled aside without realizing it — utterly bizarre!

His aura was extremely similar to that of the "woman" Baichuan and Zhou Yun had killed earlier, as well as the "human figure" exuding a powerful presence seen during the day.

Baichuan withdrew his gaze and looked again at the spot where the gloomy gaunt young man had appeared — a corner of a pale-blue shirt still remained there.

It was obvious; Baichuan only had to think for a moment to know whose cloth that was — it belonged to the fat middle-aged man who had tried to head to the small convenience store earlier!

It seemed that at the very last moment, the fact that he could see the three-meter-tall phantom was finally exposed, and his scream drew the devouring "human figures," who gnawed him down even faster than the phantom could take over.

Watching this scene in the night, Baichuan found that his understanding of this world had grown a little more familiar.

Whether it was the phantoms that still could not interfere with the material real world, or the "human figures" that had already been fully taken over by the phantoms and turned into mindless husks, they all seemed to crave the flesh and blood of the living — the living's flesh and blood seemed capable of causing them to undergo tremendous transformation.

Besides that, under the strange night, those mindless ordinary "human figures" would also devour one another; if one of them finished devouring the rest, would it then become a higher-level "human figure" like the "woman" they had killed earlier?

Or was this one of the reasons such higher-level "human figures" were born?

Then, after a higher-level human figure hunted and devoured enough living flesh and blood, what would happen next?

"Mimi? Mimi? Where did you go?"

From within the darkness, a girl's soft call suddenly came.

Baichuan pulled back his thoughts, leapt down from the windowsill, and looked toward the source of the voice—

At this moment, both the girl and Zhou Yun had woken up and were anxiously searching for his figure.

It seemed the scream from before the fat middle-aged man's death had startled the two of them awake.

That was what Baichuan thought to himself, and he promptly returned inside the room and lay down in a coil.

The nights in this world were far too dangerous — not something he, a little kitty, could go out and explore in his current state.

He had thought the daytime was already dangerous enough; who would have thought the night was even more outrageous!

As he thought, Baichuan slowly drifted off to sleep.

……

"Whoosh—"

At dawn, Baichuan awoke to a faint sliding sound; opening his eyes, he found Zhou Yun carefully pulling aside half the curtain.

What met his eyes was still a dim, oppressive scene, with no trace of sunlight — only a few threads more of light than last night's darkness.

"…The weather's not bad today."

Gazing out the window, Zhou Yun sighed, and Zhou Xiaoxiao beside him nodded in agreement.

'It seems the gloomy weather here is the normal baseline.'

Listening to their exchange, Baichuan slowly summarized to himself.

If gloomy weather was the normal baseline, then today's weather really was decent compared to yesterday, because today there was no fine drizzle.

"Mimi, come eat…"

The girl's call came again from beside him, and Baichuan slowly walked over.

Along the way, he also opened his panel to check the energy column: 0.1

Still 0.1?

Baichuan was stunned, nearly unable to believe his own eyes, and accidentally tripped over himself.

Could it be that the fake good he had pinched had malfunctioned?

It was already 0.1 yesterday — why is it still 0.1 today?

How was he supposed to keep strengthening his other abilities like this?

Where did all the energy digested over the course of last night go?

Thinking of this, Baichuan, as if possessed, looked toward his right paw.

During the night while he slept, he seemed to have faintly sensed a subtle, almost imperceptible warm current flowing toward his right paw.

If anywhere on his body was the prime suspect, it could only be his mutated right paw.

"Clang—"

His muscles twitched slightly, and a sharp black metal claw sprang out.

A full 3 centimeters!

In an instant, Baichuan judged that yesterday his claw had only been close to 3 centimeters long.

In other words, it was this claw that had swallowed up the large amount of energy his whole body had accumulated?

No wonder the claw had grown longer — his right paw had become a little uncoordinated.

Baichuan's gaze turned a little unfriendly. Although this claw was indeed not bad and had helped him a lot in the early stages, that was no reason to quietly steal the energy from his body. It seemed…

"Wow! Mimi, is this your new little claw? So cool!"

At that moment, the girl's exclamation suddenly came, and Baichuan felt his claw being cupped by a pair of small hands, which were now curiously examining it.

"……" Baichuan.

Baichuan stared at this girl, speechless — was he the stealthy beast that made no sound when walking? Or was she?!

In the blink of an eye when his attention wandered, this girl, who had no idea where she'd crept up from, had seized the chance to grab hold of his claw…

"Eek!"

Seeming to sense Baichuan's gaze, the girl felt a little embarrassed looking at the adorable cat head paired with an expressionless face and a speechless dead-fish stare.

She hurriedly let go, knocked on her own little head, stuck out her tongue, pressed her palms together in a cutesy pose, and said.

"Alright, alright, little sister, Mimi, stop messing around, come eat."

Zhou Yun watching this scene from the side also couldn't help but smile knowingly, calling out.

……

After the meal, Zhou Yun began tinkering again with those materials he'd begged Mimi for ages before she finally agreed to cut them. He was preparing to craft three spears combining cutting and piercing functions, as well as a nail gun.

He knew they couldn't stay cooped up in this room forever; food would eventually run out, and the further on, the more unexpected events would arise.

He was the elder brother—if even he gave up, what would become of his little sister? What about their aging mother back in the countryside?

To survive—or even return to their original world—running away wouldn't solve any problem. Only by mustering courage, constantly exploring, escaping this terrifying city, and making contact with outsiders could the truth be obtained.

He refused to believe that in this strange otherworld, the entire world was like this, with humans having no chance of survival whatsoever.

Moreover, based on the information currently obtained, the city he'd transmigrated to was the second one, meaning there could be a third, fourth, or even countless more in the future.

So as long as he became powerful enough in this world, perhaps when his mother's city descended, he could personally rescue her!

As for Zhou Xiaoxiao, seeing her brother working so hard, she sensibly kept lending a hand beside him.

As for Baichuan……

(End of this chapter)