Chapter 998

"Give it some effort!"

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

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

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

Temporarily safe.

"Fuck!"

Ma Liang had already stood up; that action clearly didn't consume much of her physical strength.

She dusted off the dust on her body:

"We have to go 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 great; I play the violin, and 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 Liang didn't respond to this, just waited 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 illusions.

"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 Liang said again.

Adam focused for a moment, his gaze lingering on an object hidden in a corner outside 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 out.

"Try this."

A fire axe.

……

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

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

Carnivorous fingers were everywhere, and flesh and blood tissues like red fungal mats crawled all over the building surface, 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.

The scene in front of him was as horrific as a slaughterhouse.

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

"Crack—crack—"

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

"It's just like crazy..."

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

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

"Hmm?"

With a "crack," the axe fell again.

"When that mass of things passed through the hall just now, did you mention the word 'digitization'?" Ma Liang asked.

"……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 a finger'."

Ma Liang smiled while speaking; although Adam could only judge by the sound, the smile in her words was clearly distinguishable.

"Crack!"

"That's really nice."

"What?"

"Which violin piece are you referring to?"

"Oh, 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, there were other works, but that one is my favorite; I always start tasting it from there."

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 Liang spent a moment imagining this scene.

"Bach. Can you play Bach?"

"Just give me a violin."

Ma Liang thought for a moment, nodded with a smile, and continued her wood-chopping work.

……

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

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."

And another noun was repeatedly mentioned, which seemed to be a tape brand—"Magic Sound."

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

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

Ma Liang looked around, confirmed that 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 starting from an adjacent city and are expected to arrive in a few hours."

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

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

He found a place to stand by the fence, leaned on the edge, bearing the heavy sleepiness that kept surging, pressed his bleeding sole, and then was startled.

"God! I have a performance tonight!"

"Relax, the most difficult time has passed," 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 Liang chose silence.

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

"Have you seen worse than this?"

Ma Liang still remained silent.

"What exactly is this? What happened here?"

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

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

"'Containment Object-4051'!"

"This is the number of 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 under people's perception."

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

"This situation may have lasted for decades, and there will be commissioners to dig deep into the truth behind the entire event."

Adam tried to digest and understand this concept:

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

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

She understood the origin of this statement.

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

In those books, "fnord" was a trigger word that seemed meaningless and invisible, but could trigger a hypnotic effect once noticed.