Chapter 88: Triangle

The monkey demon leapt up, caught the falling rider, and gently set him on the ground.

Su Jie immediately rushed forward, administering an injection and activating a healing skill, while the rider himself pushed up his face shield and swallowed a treatment potion issued by the Thousand Throats Beast Guild (not a healing potion).

Li Cheng took electrical tape from his backpack slot, wrapping it in loop after loop around the maze box until it nearly formed a ball, then exhaled in relief and turned toward Felix Taylor.

Or rather, what had once been Felix Taylor.

The Shape, from the 1982 Hollywood classic of the same name, is an alien entity capable of infecting and parasitizing living organisms, gradually eroding and replacing them. Once replacement is complete, the Shape perfectly inherits the host’s memories and intelligence, mimicking their behavior.

In its non-human form, Taylor’s limbs crawled along the ground, his two lobes of brain straining to press together, attempting to fuse.

Seeing Li Cheng approach, he mumbled, “Sorry for hiding this from you—I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know. Otherwise, you’d already be dead.”

Li Cheng waved his hand dismissively and called out to the rider, “Rider, can you still walk?”

“Cough, cough—I think so.” The rider, still smoking from his skin, sat on the ground with his back against the control console, coughing up blood foam.

“Forget it, stay lying down. It’s still a ways to the main control room—I’ll go with Su Jie to open the gate. You and Taylor’s daughter stay here and monitor the feeds. Guide us via radio.”

Li Cheng assessed the rider’s injuries and knew his lung bullae had ruptured; further exertion could cause circulatory failure and cardiac arrest. He immediately decided, moved him onto a stool, and handed him a radio.

The rider nodded. “Alright, then I’ll send Fireball Mouse and Pichu with you.”

Li Cheng shook his head. “No need for Fireball Mouse. Let Walk Grass and Pichu come with us.”

The rider paused, then understood instantly—the Shape looked terrifying, but was fundamentally a soft carbon-based lifeform, easily destroyed by fire. Leaving Fireball Mouse behind protected him and prevented Taylor from betraying them.

Beside him, Su Jie deployed two automated machine gun turrets, one on each side, directly facing the command center’s entrance. They would automatically fire if any monster breached the door.

After finishing these preparations, Su Jie turned and said, “Ready. We can go.”

“Wait a moment—there’s one last thing.”

Li Cheng tapped the control panel several times, activating the bunker’s broadcast system for certain zones, cleared his throat, and spoke into the mic in a low tone: “Wibbly-wobbly, wibbly-wobbly?”

“Don’t buy the iPhone 15, save a few thousand, then use that saved money to buy the iPhone 15—it’s like getting a free iPhone 15.”

“To be honest, everyone who gets it gets it; those who don’t won’t understand even if I explain, so better not to say. Don’t ask me what’s going on—the stakes are too high, and telling you won’t benefit you.”

Amid his companions’ blank, confused stares, Li Cheng sounded like a machine spouting nonsense, delivering a long stream of incomprehensible words.

But the effect was immediate: some wandering monsters blocking the path to the main control room, hearing the distant broadcast noise, shifted toward the source. Their density dropped sharply.

It actually worked?

The rider and Su Jie stared wide-eyed; even Taylor’s daughter, lying on the ground, was half-awakened by the noise—then she saw the Shape wearing Taylor’s face and fainted again.

“That’s enough.” Li Cheng released the mic, replicated the method used to sever the bunker supervisor’s hands, called to Su Jie, and rushed out of the command center with Walk Grass and Pichu, mounted the off-road motorcycle, and sped toward the main control room located higher up in the bunker.

This path was relatively wide and straight, requiring few turns or slowdowns. Li Cheng gripped the handlebars with one hand, drew his shotgun, and held it like the Governor from The Terminator.

Su Jie was still recalling the scene in the command center, hesitating: “Mr. Chu really is kind.”

More than ten hours had passed since the disaster; there might still be ordinary survivors in the bunker, hiding somewhere like Taylor’s daughter.

If one followed Li Cheng’s plan of “activating the broadcast to lure monsters away,” a darker interpretation would be to impersonate the bunker supervisor, telling survivors about a so-called “safe zone” to lure them out of hiding.

Use these ordinary people as bait to draw the monsters away.

The original “Chu Xuan” character wouldn’t have hesitated to do it.

“Kindness is merely a relative concept, existing only within social context and norms. Xiao Honglü, you’re using imprecise terminology.”

Li Cheng spoke without turning, blasting apart zombies and other low-level monsters along the way.

In a killing ground where one must do anything to grow stronger—or die—maintaining kindness requires more courage, ability, and perseverance than succumbing to depravity.

For instance, the famed [Evil Scientist Alliance] guild, whose creed is to analyze supernatural elements through scientific rationality, willing to use any means to obtain truth.

Their actions include, but are not limited to: mass-sacrificing ordinary people in script worlds to evil deities for wisdom blessings;

Provoking wars within script worlds to harvest soul fragments;

Using soul contracts as bait to summon demons from hell, then breaking the contracts and mobbing the demons to place mental control collars on them;

Capturing stinking goblins from other worlds, using biotech to transform them into handsome men and beautiful women, then running nightclubs and lounges in the slums to earn game currency;

Their bottom line is no bottom line. Executing them all might kill some innocents, but executing every other one would still leave plenty of fugitives.

All national governments, including the Special Affairs Bureau, detest this guild—but have never mustered the resolve to eradicate it. Aside from the fact they rarely carry out terrorist attacks on Earth, maintaining some baseline restraint, they are simply too powerful—even superpowers hesitate to act.

Completely abandoning humanity and even the human body, absolute ruthlessness equals absolute progress speed.

In a certain sense, Li Cheng himself is now walking farther and farther down the path of ceasing to be human.

Hmm, come to think of it, that beautiful older sister who greeted me at the hair salon on my first visit to the slums—could she have been a goblin modified by the Evil Scientist Alliance?

“Watch out! There’s a monster to the right of the corridor, twenty meters ahead!”

The rider’s voice over the radio interrupted Li Cheng’s scattered thoughts. Three human heads rolled out from the right side of the cross-shaped corridor, tumbling on the ground.

The three heads belonged to Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Michael Myers from Halloween.

Three of cinema’s most infamous killers had been simply beheaded and discarded on the floor—Jason might not be dead, given his infinite resurrection.

The one who threw out the three heads was a towering humanoid, nearly two and a half meters tall. He wore a filthy white butcher’s apron, wielded a blade as thick as a door, and had no human head on his shoulders—instead, a metallic pyramid-shaped object. He stepped slowly from the corner and stood in the center of the cross-shaped corridor.

It was the iconic monster from the video game Silent Hill: Pyramid Head, symbolizing pure power and brutality.

Hanging from his body were numerous internal organs and limbs torn from zombies, Shibianti , zombies, and mutants.

Clearly, Pyramid Head had single-handedly wiped out every monster—including the three infamous killers—and stood as the last survivor.

Hum—

It lifted the massive cleaver, heavier than a man, as easily as raising a feather, pointing it at Li Cheng and Su Jie.

(End of Chapter)