“This speed is insane! At this rate, we’ll be caught in no time!” Ling Mo glanced back while fleeing, feeling his hair stand on end. The Monster was chasing him relentlessly, just five meters away, its limbs propelling it forward like a blur. The ominous “rustle” sounds followed swiftly from the darkness.

Fortunately, Black Silk should have had enough time to escape…

Meanwhile, Ling Mo’s main body suddenly picked up speed, calling out to Shiran without looking back, “Follow me, I know roughly where it is.”

Yu Shiran, who had been anxiously searching for directions, exclaimed with relief, “That’s great, but how do you know?” But before Ling Mo could respond, the Zombie little loli’s expression fell, “But Black Silk is still… whimper whimper…”

“That unlucky Black Silk!” Ling Mo cursed under his breath, then said helplessly, “Don’t worry, I found that fool.”

“Whimper whimper… huh?” Yu Shiran looked up, eyes wide, “Really?”

“Really! Though its situation is a bit… never mind, let it tell you itself later.” Ling Mo waved his hand dismissively. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how to explain it to Yu Shiran… he hadn’t figured it out himself!

Luckily, Yu Shiran didn’t seem to dwell on his last remark. Hearing that there was news about Black Silk, she immediately skipped ahead, turning back with a playful grin, “Hehe…”

“What are you giggling about…”

Meanwhile, the flashlight in Ling Mo’s hand continued to flicker across the wall ahead… After about ten seconds, he finally spotted an inconspicuous tunnel entrance halfway up the wall. Seeing those familiar iron fences, Ling Mo breathed a sigh of relief. Although the location was different, these fences were identical to those by the pool.

“Let’s go.” Ling Mo eagerly hoisted himself up.

“Where is this…” Yu Shiran followed him in, curiously looking around. As she spoke, her fingers reached out, scraping off some dried mucus layer from the wall. Once dried, it resembled amber, though less transparent and uneven. She squeezed it hard, turning it into powder, revealing some still sticky parts.

The Zombie loli showed a hint of disgust, but even after shaking her fingers, she couldn’t get rid of it…

“Just as I thought…” Ling Mo also approached the wall for a closer look, “They definitely passed through here.”

“They?” Yu Shiran discreetly wiped the mucus off on Ling Mo’s clothes, asking. But before she finished speaking, she suddenly exclaimed “Ah,” clutching her head and muttering in frustration, “Tch…”

Ling Mo had already moved ahead with the flashlight, “Hurry up.”

This was a relatively low passage, and the further they went, the damper it became.

After walking a short distance, Ling Mo suddenly crouched down and placed the flashlight on the ground.

Under Yu Shiran’s curious gaze, the flashlight rolled with a “thud” and then began to roll deeper into the passage. Ling Mo quickly stopped it and looked up, saying, “This passage slopes downward. The other end must connect to that pool. Let’s hurry!”

However, he also recalled that when Black Silk mentioned this place, it used a rather uncertain adjective: troublesome. This was a troublesome place… If the “troublesome” referred to the monsters in the water, then it might actually be good news for Ling Mo at this moment. But the problem was, Black Silk wasn’t sure, and Ling Mo had no clues either.

Moreover, he didn’t have the time to ponder it now…

After running about thirty meters, a downward staircase suddenly appeared ahead.

The staircase was roughly constructed but very long… When Ling Mo shone the flashlight to observe it, he even felt that it might have been built by those monsters. As for why…

Since even the ability to transform had appeared, building a staircase or two wasn’t something to be surprised about. Perhaps this was also a way for them to mimic humans?

In any case, such a staircase probably wouldn’t appear in a normal sewer… What purpose does it serve!

“So weird,” even Yu Shiran couldn’t help but remark.

“We need to hurry,” Ling Mo calculated the tense time and said.

Yu Shiran nodded first, then looked up at him with a mysterious smile on her lips, “How about… I take you down? Do you like roller coasters?”

“Of course… Ah!”

In the next five seconds… or maybe three, Ling Mo felt like he was silently screaming the whole time. The walls covered in moss and mucus whizzed past less than five centimeters from his face, and when Yu Shiran finally stopped, Ling Mo felt like his insides were about to fly out of his mouth…

“Wow…” Yu Shiran exclaimed, her eyes fixed ahead.

Ling Mo steadied himself against the wall, shaking his head vigorously before quickly peering forward.

Water… At the end of the staircase lay a vast, dark expanse of water. He tried shining his flashlight into the abyss, but it couldn’t reach the other side…

“Xia Na?” Ling Mo called out, but received no reply.

“Sausage…” Yu Shiran suddenly tugged at him, pointing towards the water’s surface not far away, whispering, “Look over there…”

“What is it?” Ling Mo directed his flashlight towards the spot and was immediately startled.

A floating corpse…

To be precise, it was a female “Giant Face,” resembling a corpse. Despite the glaring flashlight beam, it remained motionless…

“No, wait… It seems really dead.” Ling Mo carefully scanned its body with the light… Just below the water’s surface, at its waist and abdomen, there appeared to be a large hole… A piece of membrane floated nearby, but it didn’t detach on its own, nor did it peel away to reveal a new membrane.

“It must be Xia Na and the others…” Those two female zombies were the only ones capable of taking it down… Considering this was a stagnant pool, the corpse likely hadn’t drifted from elsewhere but had been here all along.

“There must be a passage connecting to the pool. I couldn’t see it before because my view was too limited. It’s clear that Xia Na and the others have been here, but not to this staircase, and the monsters rarely use this path.” Ling Mo pointed to the intact moss on the stairs as he spoke, descending the staircase and entering the water.

By the time he reached the bottom, the water was about a meter deep and extremely cold. Ling Mo took a deep breath, then turned to stop Yu Shiran from following him, “It’s only a meter deep, so you should stay here. If I don’t return in thirty seconds, head back to the exit and leave with Yuwen Xuan. I’ll find a way out.”

“Alright…” Yu Shiran nodded, though her expression showed she was eager to follow… But with her height of only 1.2 meters, facing water that deep was indeed a daunting prospect… Imagining just her head above the water? Better to stay put…

Meanwhile, Ling Mo’s figure and the flickering flashlight beam had already disappeared into the dark water… He seemed to be moving quickly to save time. Shortly after he passed, several scattered “Giant Face” corpses surfaced, as if he had stepped on them…

Yu Shiran hugged her knees, sitting on the staircase, her hands cupping her chin as she watched the corpses, softly counting, “One second… two seconds…”

“Huff… huff…”

A few seconds later, Ling Mo glanced back. Behind him, only the rippling water remained, while the stairs and Yu Shiran had completely vanished into the darkness. He took a couple of deep breaths, then turned back with the flashlight, searching the water’s surface.

“What could have prompted Xia Na and the others to leave here before discovering the stairs? Return the way they came? No… if they chose to go back, they would have thoroughly searched this place first, and then they would have found the stairs.” Ling Mo was pondering when he suddenly caught sight of something in the darkness.

He quickly redirected the flashlight beam and waded through the water to get closer. Ling Mo moved swiftly, but the flashlight beam was even faster… before he reached it, he had already seen the “thing”…

It was a door.

Ling Mo never expected to find a rusty, peephole-equipped security door in a sewer pool… this was definitely not something left by humans.

He approached with the flashlight and tentatively grasped the door handle.

Upon touching the cold handle, Ling Mo immediately understood… if he was this surprised, then with the insatiable curiosity of the two zombies, Xia Na and Li Yalin, there was no reason they wouldn’t have gone inside upon seeing this door.

Creak.

Before he could think further, the door had already opened a crack.

The door was only ajar, but pushing it open in the water required quite some effort. Fortunately, Ling Mo’s body had undergone slight mutations; with a muffled grunt, the door silently created a ripple and swung open completely.

“Phew…”

Ling Mo quickly pressed himself against the doorframe and cautiously peered inside. A second later, he glanced back toward the stairs…

“No time.”

Ling Mo thought as he slipped through the door…