Chapter 609

"Give it some effort!"

Ma Ma Liang encouraged, dragged Adam over the edge, and pulled him to the corridor on the floor above.

When passing the edge, Adam's ribs were severely grazed; although the metal edge didn't cause him a wound, it still hurt him terribly.

He supported himself on all fours, eyes filled with tears.

Temporarily safe.

"Fuck!"

Ma Ma Liang had already stood up; that movement clearly hadn't consumed much of her physical strength.

She dusted off the dirt on her body:

"We have to get to the roof; we can send a signal there."

Adam: "Do you exercise often? Just to survive in this kind of living hell?"

"Yes."

"That's nice. I play the violin; the requirements for physical fitness aren't high. At least not for work."

"You previously claimed to be a health inspector for the county; it seems you were lying entirely, right?"

Ma Ma Liang didn't respond to this, just waiting patiently for Adam to calm down, based on professional habit.

"Today is really terrible," Adam shook his head; he felt his skin twitching, and his mind was filled with grotesque and bizarre hallucinations.

"Did you hurt your brain?"

He regained his breathing rhythm and stood up shakily.

To maintain balance, he simply took off his other shoe and threw it into the elevator shaft.

"We have to go to the roof," Ma Ma Liang said again.

Adam focused for a moment, his gaze lingering on an object hidden in a corner outside Ma Ma Liang's line of sight.

"Wait, let me see..." he reached over with effort—it was a conspicuous red sign, from which he took something.

"Try this."

A fire axe.

……

Ma Ma Liang opened a path with the axe blade, hacking through thorns and thistles all the way, struggling forward on the staircase blocked by fleshy obstacles.

Although the infected bodies on the stairs were motionless, they exuded a suffocating, greedy aura.

Flesh-eating fingers were everywhere, and flesh tissues like red fungal mats crawled over the entire surface of the building, forming new tissues in the cavities and growing bones.

Adam followed closely behind, maintaining a cautious distance of three steps.

This was both to avoid the sharp, swinging axe shadow and to avoid facing the cruel scene of flesh and blood flying everywhere.

The scene before him was as horrific as a slaughterhouse.

However, Ma Ma Liang stood firm; she slashed and cut calmly and orderly until the waterfall of blood rolled down the stairs like a flood, soaking her shoes and socks.

"Crack—crack—"

Listening to the sound of bone-shaving, smelling the thick scent like a sea of blood, and watching the severed fingers washed down by the bloody water, Adam trembled all over.

"It's just like being crazy..."

Adam finally accepted that everything before him was not a nightmare, but a reality like an abyss.

"What are you saying there?" Ma Ma Liang asked suddenly.

"Hmm?"

With a "crack," the axe fell again.

"When you were passing through that mass of stuff just now, did you mention the word 'digitization'?" Ma Ma Liang pursued.

"……Hmm."

Adam seemed to be switching thinking channels, gradually waking up, "That's right, but that's the ancient meaning of the word—"

"'Digit' originally means finger, so 'digitization' actually means the state of 'becoming fingers'."

Ma Ma Liang smiled as she spoke; although Adam could only judge by the sound, the smile in her words was clearly discernible.

"Crack!"

"That's really nice."

"What?"

"Which violin piece are you referring to?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Which one from last night—actually the night before last—concert are you interested in? That concert performed Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, of course, and several other works, but that one is my favorite; I always start tasting it from there."

Ma Ma Liang stopped the axe in her hand, turned to face him, and looked straight into his eyes, "That piece is a nightmare for me."

Adam responded generously: "Indeed, this piece is quite challenging."

"No, I don't mean it was played badly, but that it's hard to listen to."

"I can play any piece you like for you," Adam stated.

Ma Ma Liang spent a moment imagining this scene.

"Bach. Can you play Bach?"

"Just give me a violin."

Ma Ma Liang thought for another moment; she smiled and nodded, continuing her wood-chopping work.

……

They climbed to the roof, and the radio could finally come in handy.

Ma Ma Liang spat out a series of professional terms quickly, mixed with content that Adam couldn't fully understand.

Among them, Adam caught his own name, a word juxtaposed with "danger."

Another noun was mentioned repeatedly, seeming to be a tape brand—"Magic Sound."

At this moment, a faint dawn had already appeared on the horizon, and dawn was about to arrive.

That hazy red glow announced that the sun was about to break through the dawn. .

Ma Ma Liang looked around, confirmed there were no other passages for evacuation, and could only pin her hopes on the arrival of a helicopter.

"Support is on the way; they are departing from a neighboring city and are expected to take several hours to arrive."

"They will bring disinfection equipment, antibiotics, warm blankets, complicated and lengthy report forms, and of course, most importantly—coffee."

Hearing there would be coffee, Adam let out a lazy laugh, expressing his anticipation.

He found a place to stand by the railing, leaned against the edge, bearing the heavy, surging sleepiness, pressed the sole of his foot that was still bleeding, and then was startled.

"God! I have a performance tonight!"

"Relax, the most difficult time has passed," Ma Ma Liang comforted him.

"As a civilian, your performance is quite excellent. There are many situations worse than this."

"Worse than this?" Adam asked.

Ma Ma Liang chose silence.

Adam cast his gaze toward the hell they had just escaped from; that tightly closed fire door and everything behind it were still vivid in his mind.

"Have you seen worse than this?"

Ma Ma Liang still remained silent.

"What exactly is this? What happened here?"

Ma Ma Liang didn't respond immediately; she paced slowly on the roof, looking into the distance, immersed in the magnificent scene of the sun gradually leaping out of the horizon.

Then, Ma Ma Liang turned to look at Adam and told him the truth:

"'Containment-4051'!"

"This is the number for this infection; its inherent nature makes it almost impossible for intelligent creatures to perceive it."

"It's not simple invisibility, but some kind of psychological camouflage mechanism. Information about it is blocked by invisible forces and suppressed beneath people's perception."

"Every day people pass by this building, but they don't see what's blocking the windows, nor do they realize what's propping the door open."

"This situation may have been going on for decades, and there will be commissioners digging deep into the truth behind the entire event."

Adam tried to digest and understand this concept:

"So, it's like the 'fnord' effect?"

Ma Ma Liang was slightly startled, her thoughts instantly returning to the past.

She understood the origin of this statement.

Before she joined the Foundation, that is, a few years ago when she was young, she had read books describing this peculiar phenomenon.

In those books, "fnord" was a seemingly meaningless, invisible trigger word that could induce a hypnotic effect once noticed.