The trio turned on their tactical flashlights attached to their firearms and began to make their way along the platform, where flickering light bulbs emitted a fluorescent glow, and everywhere else was shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
"Wow... it’s so new."
KIKI illuminated her surroundings with the flashlight as she walked, remarking, "It looks like it was only recently completed."
"This Underground City is still unfinished, probably not even 1/5 complete," Lin Xian whispered. "It was a project backed by the might of the Federation, but it couldn’t save even a million people..."
"There’s more than one Underground City, though. Despite the Federation Government having collapsed, there must be even larger ones out there, but their status is anyone’s guess."
Lin Xian, who was leading the way, suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Building and KIKI immediately tensed up.
Lin Xian lifted his flashlight and shone it on a pillar not far from the edge of the platform. There, a man in work clothes stood with his back to them, slowly twitching.
The man slowly turned around as the flashlight caught his attention, causing a slight change in the trio’s expressions.
His face was utterly rotted and mutated, not resembling a human shape but rather sprouted flesh-like tentacles with a tooth-filled orifice in the middle, blood-red and terrifying to behold.
"What... what is this? A Zombie?" KIKI exclaimed in surprise.
"Definitely not human."
The human-shaped monster made bizarre maggot-like noises, with blood-flesh tentacles on its face trembling. Upon noticing Lin Xian and the others, it let out a piercing scream.
Then, it ran towards them at high speed.
Its pace was not that of the shambling Zombies, but more like that of an athlete—incredibly fast and overwhelmingly forceful.
"Take action!" Lin Xian immediately shouted.
As they were unsure of the nature of the creature, Lin Xian took no chances, and all three of them fired simultaneously, pouring out heavy gunfire.
Several bullets hit its body, causing flesh and blood to spray. The creature staggered under the impact but didn’t seem to be killed outright; instead, it rushed forward even faster.
Noticing something was amiss, the group fired another salvo, aiming at the fleshy tentacles and orifice on the Zombie’s face. The horrific head was quickly splattered, and only then did the creature fall to the ground. Even after it collapsed, the blood-flesh tentacles on the man’s face continued to twitch for a quite long time before finally becoming still.
"Something’s wrong with this thing, it’s not a normal Zombie, everyone be careful."
Lin Xian was inwardly alarmed; all three of them were Superpower Users armed with firearms, yet the mutated Zombie they had encountered exhibited a resilience far more robust than the ordinary Zombies they had encountered before, and it was also unnaturally fast.
"So disgusting, why is it so hard to kill?" KIKI frowned.
"Could it be an Abnormal Body?" Building spoke up at this point.
Lin Xian’s flashlight revealed no black miasma fluctuations on the dead Zombie, just a bloody corpse, causing him to frown involuntarily, "It shouldn’t be..."
He glanced at the time—it was only 18:02. Although it wasn’t dark yet, after their encounter in North Bay, he knew some things weren’t necessarily only emerging in the dark but also in specific places.
Like here in the Underground City, enshrouded in perpetual darkness, the situation might not be much better than in the dead of night.
"Don’t let your guard down, let’s move on."
Lin Xian tensed his nerves as the group quickened their pace, soon reaching a large elevator entrance via a ground conveyor belt. Before they could approach, the control platform next to the elevator lit up.
A woman’s face appeared on the screen, dressed in a scientific research uniform, with a pair of glasses, and a professional demeanor—she seemed to be just over thirty years old.
"Mr. Lin, hello. We’re going to open the elevator for you now."
"You’re Ding Junyi, the one who just contacted me?" Lin Xian asked.
Lin Xian nodded. In the frame, apart from Ding Junyi, two other women and a man stood behind her—all dressed like scientists. Seeing this, Lin Xian felt a sigh of relief inside.
"Be careful," Ding Junyi said through the screen. "The monitors show that there’s water in the elevator and there might be unknown creatures. Step back."
"What kind of unknown creature?" KIKI curiously stepped back two paces.
Lin Xian gestured for everyone to step back.
"Stand to the sides."
The sound of the elevator descending filled the air.
Instantly, Lin Xian and the others stepped back, watching the numbers on the screen and slowly raising their weapons.
[The elevator has arrived, Floor 65: Level 4 Freight Rail Terminal Station Platform]
A mechanical female voice announced, and the large elevator doors slowly part, separating upwards and downwards.
In an instant, a room-sized elevator interior appeared, and at the same time, a surge of yellowish, foul-smelling water over a meter deep rushed out with a loud splash, forcing Lin Xian and the others to retreat repeatedly.
With quick eyes and hands, Lin Xian immediately saw disturbing objects moving in the murky water and shouted to the others, "There’s something in the water!"
Bang bang bang bang! Bang bang bang bang!
Three guns immediately opened fire, and several black objects moving in the water were splattered with blood, the water rapidly receding to reveal the writhing abominations: multi-legged creatures with black carapaces, four or five in total. These monsters were submerged, clinging to several highly decayed and swollen corpses, seemingly some kind of parasitic lifeform.
"Disgusting!" KIKI exclaimed.
"Don’t let your guard down, kill them first!" Lin Xian yelled.
Thanks to Ding Junyi’s warning, Lin Xian and the others were prepared ahead of time, and the monsters were just washed out by the water when they were barraged, the metal jet streams ripping them to shreds.
The continuous gunfire echoed throughout the vast platform, apparently attracting the attention of many creatures. Lin Xian heard it and immediately called out,
"Get on the elevator!"
KIKI and Building rushed in, followed swiftly by Lin, as the elevator doors quickly closed.
"Damn, there are still a lot of monsters around here. What about Sister Chen and the others?" As the elevator doors closed off the darkness of the platform outside, KIKI asked with some concern.
"No problem, they’re safer than us," Lin Xian said with conviction.
The armor of the Infinity was impenetrable, even capable of withstanding the touch of an Atmospheric Jellyfish’s tentacles. Moreover, Teacher Chen and Sha Sha had plenty of weapons on board to defend themselves, so Lin Xian felt quite confident about that.
As the elevator doors shut, the group stood on the wet floor, and a great lifting force came through, the elevator rapidly ascending towards the upper floors.
"When you come out of the elevator, you’ll be in K2 zone. There are many monsters outside the passage, and the ground between K2 and D23 has water accumulation. This is the map; the terrain is a bit complicated and will take some detours. Some of the communication systems are damaged, so I can’t provide guidance all the way, and you have to be especially cautious when passing through F5 D6 areas - those are the floor elevators and staircase passages, the most heavily infected areas. Originally, the escape exits were there, but now they’re definitely blocked. The power supply and surveillance systems are also cut off."