"Where do the endless stairs lead?"
Zhu Yan muttered under his breath.
In an instant, a familiar dizziness swept over him.
When he opened his eyes again, everything around him had changed completely.
He was now standing on a soft, spongy step. In the dim light, the step had a blackish-red, fleshy texture.
Zhu Yan looked around.
Every part of this place was made of that blackish-red flesh—from the winding spiral staircase that stretched endlessly up and down, to the walls on both sides, and even to the railings that writhed like worms.
The air was thick with a strange, sweet smell—a mix of blood and toffee.
"Ugh." Zhu Yan spat in disgust.
Luckily, since the Night Game probably hadn't ended yet, there were no monsters.
But he still had to hurry—an abomination could pop up at any moment, and the air itself might be toxic.
Zhu Yan quickly pulled a dozen or so bodies from his ring, piling them haphazardly on the staircase. Then he dumped the leftover bones from the calico cat on top of them.
"Enjoy your meal," he said to the air. "I'm just a responsible keeper. Later, bye—if I stay too long here, I'll get poisoned."
Honestly, Zhu Yan didn't even know who he was saying that to.
But he had to spout some nonsense—otherwise, staying in a place like this dungeon would really drive him crazy.
"So, where do the endless stairs lead?"
He asked casually, but all he got in response was another wave of dizziness.
It felt like the building's "core" had spat him out like a foreign object. When Zhu Yan returned to the hallway, it took several seconds for that spinning feeling to fade.
"Congratulations, dear Henry." A woman's voice rang in his ear, rising and falling with intensity. "You have completed the basic mission of this Henry."
"However, we still hope you can overachieve by a little."
He would.
Zhu Yan answered in his mind.
Now that he knew the core's entry and exit commands, even just strolling up a few floors to collect bodies from the Night Game would bring in a fat haul.
"Good luck to you, Henry." The woman's voice left a flat, perfunctory sentence and disappeared.
Zhu Yan hurried into the empty room 508 and closed the door from inside. Once he was sure it provided some soundproofing, he carefully dialed the red telephone.
"Hello, abomination." The Doppelganger's stiff voice came through. "Did your Night Game end? Did you eat well?"
The last sentence came with a snorting, slobbering sound that made Zhu Yan's brows furrow.
"I want to go to Hambone's Curiosity Shop," Zhu Yan said in a low, flat voice. "Tell me the floor change command."
"Oh, there." The Doppelganger's voice paused stiffly, full of mechanical schadenfreude.
"The situation there is pretty brutal. Are you sure?"
Oh?
So the Doppelganger used the word "brutal."
Looking at it from an abomination's perspective, Zhu Yan guessed that didn't mean "the human players are being beaten back."
"What do you mean by brutal?"
The Doppelganger let out a hollow laugh.
"You don't know yet? The game on that floor is about fighting the zombie virus."
"Oh, it's an easy game. One human player led a group and practically killed all the ordinary zombies all by themselves."
"He even managed to get the core's entry and exit command. If not for the rules, they would have already escaped the game."
A human player?
Zhu Yan suddenly remembered a name.
Shen Zichen, a Xishan University student who had mentioned something about Ambone's Curiosity Shop in the freshman group.
Could it be him?
"It's supposedly in the final stage now," the Doppelganger continued, faking excitement. "Zombies obviously evolve too. Hmm, my friend, they're uglier than our Doppelgangers. Are you sure you want to put your nose through that?"
Evolved—did that mean those "elite zombie" types that popped up in movies or games?
The Doppelganger's words sparked Zhu Yan's curiosity.
He opened the Xishan University freshman group, which he hadn't checked in a while, and found that thousands of new messages had piled up overnight.
"Wait," Zhu Yan said offhandedly to the Doppelganger on the other end of the line.
He scrolled quickly through the screen, skimming the messages for the gist of it.
Most of it was pleas for help, along with people mentioning Guan En's replies, but none of that mattered much.
Zhu Yan speed-read down the page until he finally found the messages from the player named Shen Zichen.
Unlike Yang Zhanbai, this guy hadn't set up a separate group. He was trying to organize the players on his floor—six floors?—to kill the roommates who had already turned into zombies.
The response seemed spotty. Not many people were on board, and some outright said they couldn't bring themselves to do it.
But the information lined up.
Chances were good that this was indeed the leader in that floor's game.
Zhu Yan said to the Doppelganger on the phone, "I'll go take a look. Tell me the floor password. What is it?"
"Carrion Carnival." The Doppelganger chuckled. "Heh heh. Hope you get to see the abomination's revenge. Good luck."
Zhu Yan hung up.
Whether the abominations got revenge or not held no interest for him, but he might be able to use the identity "Tracy Zeto" to earn some goodwill among the players.
He searched directly through Shen Zichen's personal chat history and saw that his last two messages were from two minutes ago.
"Everyone, try to stay hidden in my dorm. Don't make any noise."
"The dorm walls aren't reinforced, but the door can hold up against a 13-scale attack. Except in desperate times, don't open it. I've also installed a camera watching the surroundings. Don't panic yet."
Oh, the walls weren't reinforced.
Zhu Yan remembered those 900 spine coins he'd paid and felt a little less envious.
He put away the Dragon's Fangs coin, deciding to go there first as a player.
The difficulty of each floor's game was different, likely based on the players' peak prestige within that floor, following Habit's Garden's humane principle.
But since Zhu Yan's player level was way higher than these players' combat potential, coming as a player probably wouldn't be a problem.
There was also a camera in Shen Zichen's dorm. If it caught sight of the Dragon's Fangs coin, it would be hard to explain.
Zhu Yan took a deep breath and announced the floor transfer command clearly and carefully.
"Carrion Carnival!"
The very next moment, a powerful smell of rotten corpses punched into his nose.
Zhu Yan wasn't even steady on his feet before he nearly threw up.
He quickly raised his left sleeve to cover his mouth and nose, gripping an octuple battle axe in his right hand. When he looked up, a rotting face stared right back at him!
Its skin had rotted off over most of its face. Its eyelids were gone, and rotten green flesh—exposed yellow fatty tissue, along with strands of long black hair—hung beneath its two bulging, glassy eyes.
Its lips had also rotted away completely, leaving two rows of teeth fully exposed, as if it were grinning at Zhu Yan.
“Holy shit!” Zhu Yan’s hand reacted faster than his brain.
His mind was still frozen stiff, but the military knife had already swung through the air, and with a swish, it chopped off the head!
ng to die together with you." Lin Xuan is dead, his body thrown into the river by his scumbag lover and her accomplice. She, the president of the Su Group, is decisive, ruthless, and ice-cold. For three days and three nights, she had his body fished out of the river, and without hesitation, she kissed the bloated corpse of Lin Xuan. She laid down beside him in a cold coffin, their fingers intertwined, a smile lingering on her lips as she closed her eyes. The noble and cold-hearted woman, only bending for one man—Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan, with his golden finger, is reborn and returns to the day of his wedding to the treacherous woman. Su Qiang comes to steal the bride. Lin Xuan's eyes light up, eager to pledge his loyalty on the spot, but instead, her kiss transfers a glass of drugged wine into his mouth, causing him to pass out... 【Male Protagonist with Single Female Lead】【Yandere Tycoon】【Action-Packed】【True vs. Fake Heir】
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ine. During your journey, you save an abandoned baby girl and become her elder brother】 【You rely on each other, becoming each other's support】 【At the end of the simulation, you shield the now-grown girl with your life, sacrificing yourself to block numerous demonic cultivators. You die, and the light in the girl's eyes fades】 …… 【Second Simulation: You are transported to a world where steam and magic coexist】 【You immerse yourself in the study of magic, obsessed with its research. One day, while out, you encounter a half-blooded demon girl wandering the streets. You take her in as your student】 【You teach the demoness what it means to be human, show her the beauty of the world, and nurture her into a miracle that surpasses even the gods】 【At the end of the simulation, you die of old age in front of the nearly immortal demoness due to your mortal lifespan】 …… One simulation after another, one encounter after another. Xu Xi suddenly felt something was off: "Wait, you said you're coming to the real world to find me?"
