mesbooks Chapter 60 You Entered the Labyrinth
Chapter 60 You Entered the Labyrinth
Time passed second by second.
Lin Mo suddenly realized something terrifying: his fingers were numb, and soon the numbness spread throughout his body.
Even his consciousness began to blur.
Not only him, but his other colleagues who were hiding here were the same.
Some were already unconscious on the ground, unaware of their surroundings.
By the time Lin Mo realized that the problem was with the air in the room, it was too late.
The air, like an invisible hand, gripped his throat and pressed down on his chest.
This made it increasingly difficult for him to breathe; each inhale felt like inhaling a soaked cotton ball.
Lin Mo wanted to stand up, to walk to the door, to open it for some fresh air, but his limbs felt as heavy as lead and he couldn't move.
Chen Jie, who was in the corner, had already fallen to the ground. Xu Bing seemed to want to stand up as well, but he quickly lay back down.
Someone was panting, but Lin Mo no longer had the strength to look.
Because after a few seconds, all sound disappeared.
Lin Mo didn't know when she lost consciousness.
All he knew was that when he opened his eyes again, the emergency light above his head was no longer working.
The room was pitch black; you couldn't see anything.
The air was still murky, but it felt a bit better than before.
He struggled to sit up, his head throbbing and his throat dry and sore.
Lin Mo began to grope around on the ground, touching the cold tiles, an overturned plastic cup, and a person's shoe.
Following the sensation, he found a woman. Lin Mo nudged her shoulder, and she let out a muffled groan; she was still alive.
"Wake up." Lin Mo's voice was hoarse, unlike his own: "Wake up, everyone."
A series of rustling sounds came from the surroundings.
Some people turned over, some coughed, and some groaned softly.
Wang Zhen's voice rang out first, thick with a nasal tone: "What time is it? Why is your phone dead?"
No one could answer him.
Everyone else's phones were dead, there were no windows in the room, and the emergency lights were off. They had no idea if it was day or night, how long they had been asleep, or what was happening outside.
"Water..." Zhang Lei's voice was very soft, as if she had used up her last bit of strength: "Is there any water?"
Lin Mo groped his way to his feet in the darkness.
His legs were trembling, and his knees were sore, but he could still hold on.
I remember there was a sink in the corner of the lounge next door, and a water dispenser next to the sink.
Lin Mo, supporting himself against the wall, moved over step by step.
His fingers touched the plastic casing of the water dispenser; it was empty. He bent down and opened the cabinet below, which contained several jugs of spare drinking water and half a case of unused bottled water.
"There's water." Lin Mo's voice came from the darkness, and the group breathed a sigh of relief.
He took a bottle of water, unscrewed one, and took a few sips.
It felt like I had been brought back to life.
I've never felt so blissful as the water flowed down my throat.
Having regained some of his strength, Lin Mo carried the bottles of water over and handed one to each person in the room.
Soon, the room was filled with the sound of people drinking water.
Some people even choked because they were in such a hurry, and started coughing violently.
After finishing the water, silence returned to the room.
Lin Mo asked everyone how it was going, and everyone responded.
But no one spoke after that, because no one knew what to say.
Fear was like a thick blanket, pressing down on them, making it hard to breathe.
They didn't know if there were any monsters outside, whether they could get out alive, or what the world had become.
But they were very hungry, each of them was dizzy and their stomachs were churning with acid.
In the darkness, the rumbling of stomachs rose and fell, sounding particularly jarring in the quiet room.
"We can't wait any longer," Wang Zhen's voice came from the darkness, hoarse and weary. "We're running out of water and food. If we keep waiting like this, we'll definitely starve to death."
silence.
"Going out might mean dying," Xu Bing said.
This is also true.
"That's better than waiting to die here." Wang Zhen's voice rose a little, but quickly fell back down: "Someone has to... go out and see if there are any survivors.
No one refuted it, and no one agreed.
Because who went out?
This is a problem.
The silence lasted for a long time before Hu Zhigang spoke first: "Damn it, at worst... it's just death."
His voice was trembling, but there was a sense of resignation in his words.
"I'll go too!" Lin Mo said, and Xu Bing chimed in, saying, "Let's go together."
The group began rummaging around the room, looking for something they could use as a weapon.
A mop handle, a rusty wrench, and an iron pipe removed from the wall.
Holding the iron pipe, Lin Mo felt a strange sense of security.
The three men were together: Lin Mo, Hu Zhigang, and Xu Bing.
Wang Zhen said he wanted to stay and take care of Chen Jie and Zhang Lei.
Everyone knew that Manager Wang was afraid, but no one dared to say it out loud.
The three walked to the door, and Lin Mo pressed his ear against the door panel.
There was no sound outside the door, only deathly silence.
Wang Zhen carefully unlocked the door and pushed it open a crack.
The corridor was dark; the emergency lights were off, and only the faint green glow of the emergency exit sign in the distance illuminated the darkness. The light was so dim that visibility was only a few meters.
Lin Mo walked in front, an iron pipe held horizontally across his chest. Hu Zhigang followed behind, gripping the mop handle tightly. Xu Bing brought up the rear, the handle of his wrench already soaked with sweat.
The corridor was unusually quiet.
There was blood on the ground, dark red, dried like a winding snake, stretching forward along the corridor.
There were claw marks, dents from impacts, and black slime left by some unknown substance on the wall.
But there was no body.
There wasn't a single body.
There was only bloodstains, dense footprints, and those chilling marks.
The three people followed the trail of blood, passed through a fire door, and went through a passage that had been half-collapsed by something. At the end of the passage, the walls that should have been made of concrete and white latex paint were gone, replaced by a black, rough rock that looked like it had been burned by a high temperature.
The surface of the rock is carved with intricate patterns, within which a faint dark red light flows, like the veins of something.
The three of them stopped at the same time.
"What is that?" Xu Bing's voice trembled, sounding particularly loud in the quiet corridor.
No one answered, because nobody knew.
Lin Mo gripped the iron pipe tightly and walked towards the wall.
As he got closer, he realized that it wasn't a wall, but a passageway.
The entrance to the passage seemed to have been forcibly torn open by something. The original concrete walls rolled up to both sides, and steel bars protruded from the broken ends, revealing the dark road behind, whose destination was unknown.
Lin Mo turned around and glanced at Hu Zhigang and Xu Bing.
The two people's faces were not clearly visible in the dim light, but he could see the fear and confusion in their eyes.
There are no roads in other directions.
You can only get through here.
"Let's go in and take a look." Lin Mo's voice was very soft, as if afraid of disturbing something.
Hu Zhigang seemed to want to say something, but his lips moved a few times without making a sound. Xu Bing stood still, as if hesitating whether to follow.
Lin Mo took a deep breath and took the first step.
When his foot landed, he felt the texture of the ground change.
It's no longer the smoothness and coldness of ceramic tiles, but the hardness and roughness of stone slabs.
He looked down and saw that he was standing on a gray-black stone slab with fine lines on it, as if it had been carved by something. He looked up and found himself standing in the passageway.
The passageway is very high, at least three meters high.
The walls were made of black rock, with an uneven surface but a polished sheen.
The patterns carved on the walls were denser and more intricate than those seen at the entrance. The patterns meandered and twisted, like some kind of ancient script, with a dark red light flowing within them, alternating between light and shadow.
The air has changed too.
It was no longer a putrid or musty smell, but an indescribable odor.
Dry, cold, with a faint rusty smell.
Lin Mo continued walking forward.
The footsteps behind him told him that Hu Zhigang and Xu Bing had caught up.
The three people walked slowly through the passage, one in front of the other.
After walking about ten steps, Lin Mo suddenly stopped.
Because a screen of light suddenly appeared in his field of vision.
It's a single line of text.
It floated in the air, emitting a faint blue light.
[Hint: You have entered a maze]