Flash Sale

"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!