"Damn it!"
Tianyang gripped a nearby shelf, pulling himself up from the ground, and used one foot to jump to the door. He forcefully shut the heavy metal door, barely sealing out the darkness in the corridor and those eerie ghostly flames.
However, a hand reached in between the door and its frame. The metal door couldn't close completely.
"Damn it!"
Tianyang grabbed the dagger and swiftly swung it. The sharp alloy blade cut through the rotting hand as if it were slicing through tofu. He severed more than half of the hand.
With the door finally closed, Tianyang quickly locked it. Outside, the wanderers began pounding continuously on the door, and their oppressive wheezing filled the corridor.
Tianyang then pushed a rusted iron cabinet against the door, effectively blocking it. He carefully maneuvered around the severed hand on the floor.
Finally, he cleaned the dagger, which was stained with the fluids of the wanderers. The yellowing on the blade's metal surface indicated that it had dulled from the corrosive fluids of the wanderers. Nevertheless, he decided to keep it; after all, it was a gift from his mother, and he treasured it dearly. It was the first gift he had received in his life, making it particularly special to him.
Sitting against a shelf on the floor filled with scattered documents, he realized that the recent activities had aggravated his injuries. His thigh was soaked in blood. He quickly grabbed the first-aid kit and opened it, removing a bottle of disinfectant spray.
He sprayed it over the wound, cleansing the area of both blood and contaminants. Then, he used a scalpel and tweezers to extract a bullet from his thigh. Afterward, he sutured the wound, administered a painkiller, and covered it with a hemostatic adhesive tape. Once everything was done, he allowed the tools to scatter on the floor. The sweat was now evident on his face within his helmet.
After a moment's pause, he picked up one of the survival supplies. He inserted it into the extraction port on his protective suit, activated it, and a straw emerged in his helmet.
Tianyang took the straw in his mouth, allowing a high-energy liquid food to flow continuously into his mouth. It provided sustenance for a day of activity, essential in the Inverse Realm where the ubiquitous black mist was more than just light and heat-absorbing. Apart from the Ascendants, regular people exposed to the black mist for over 15 minutes without protection would meet their demise. Death was the most desirable outcome, as some individuals would be tainted by the mist, ultimately transforming into creatures resembling those outside the door.
Therefore, in the Inverse Realm, carrying liquid food was necessary. When consumed, it required the use of an extraction device for food supplementation in sealed conditions.
After consuming a portion of the liquid food, Tianyang finally felt a bit of warmth, and his hands and feet were no longer ice-cold. He moved his body, then took the remaining hemostatic adhesive tapes and layered them over the breaches in his protective suit.
Layer upon layer.
Tianyang hoped they would seal the gaps in his suit, preventing further leakage of pheromones. Whether or not they were effective, he had to leave to fate.
Fortunately, it seemed fate hadn't abandoned him. After a while, the pounding on the door outside gradually ceased.
But the danger was far from over.
This small team found themselves trapped here due to their captain's reckless pursuit, which had led them deep into the Inverse Realm, cutting them off from their team's return route.
Unless they found a new route, once their survival supplies were exhausted, Tianyang would have no choice but to await death.
Tianyang clenched his fist tightly. He refused to accept that he would die here. When he joined the collection team, he had made a promise to ensure his mother, who had toiled for most of her life, could finally enjoy a good life.
Furthermore, he intended to repay Qin Wu for his "kindness," although Tianyang had yet to figure out how to bridge the vast class divide and exact revenge on the unscrupulous captain who had used him as bait.
From the window, faint gunshots could be heard. Those were the sounds of the Attacker rifles roaring. Tianyang propped himself up and moved to the window.
Peering through the thin mist, he faintly saw lights at the bottom of the building to the southeast, followed by a vehicle charging out of a dimly lit alley.
It was their team's standard vehicle, the Wolfland Light Off-Road Vehicle. The vehicle had a high chassis, equipped with swivel-wheel rims on the tires, allowing for versatile direction adjustments. It also had a continuous-fire solid bullet machine gun and a front-mounted light machine gun for providing some firepower support.
It seemed that Qin Wu and the others had successfully left the building. However, whether they could safely return to their team was still a matter of luck.
Tianyang looked at the sky. Although it wasn't completely pitch black, the dimness resembled the kind one would experience before a summer thunderstorm, with heavy clouds blocking the sunlight.
Under this oppressive light, he could see the outlines of ruined buildings across the street, mere skeletal frames remaining. Together with more distant structures, they formed the entities known as "cities."
Qin Wu was right; this 127th Inverse Realm was remarkably similar to the world where Tianyang had been born and raised, nurtured by sunlight and rain.
But Tianyang couldn't bear to see his birthplace, where he had grown up in a world full of life, turn into the nightmarish, corrupted version before him.
Perhaps, in the distant past, this world had also been filled with sunlight and fragrant flowers. But now, this world was like a terminally ill patient, gasping for breath on the brink of death.
A hollow, eerie howl emanated from the street below, and Tianyang saw several wanderers passing by the base of the building.
These creatures had grotesque, twisted forms, resembling lepers, and seemed like living disease carriers, akin to walking pathogens. They were everywhere, wandering aimlessly. Wherever they went, they left filth in their wake.
These abominable entities were situated at the bottom of the Inverse Realm's biological pyramid. They moved slowly, devoid of senses. However, once they amassed in sufficient numbers, they could inundate everything.
On their way here, Tianyang had witnessed a massive gathering of wanderers. They pushed and shoved, and from a distance, they looked like a writhing serpent.
They coiled, tumbled, and surged!
These hideous entities, entwined and roiling, spread like a contagion along the streets, contaminating the entire world.
Currently, there weren't many wanderers near the base of the building, but Tianyang knew that it wouldn't be long before evil overran the place.
He had to leave this area!
But where should he go?
As Tianyang pondered this question, he noticed that the few wanderers that had passed by the building had reached a nearby intersection. However, for some inexplicable reason, they suddenly stopped, turned around, and started heading back.
Wanderers did have the habit of moving aimlessly within certain areas, but their recent behavior was contrary to this norm. It was as if they had encountered something frightening and were now avoiding it.
Tianyang decided to investigate what was at that intersection.
Sliding down the exterior wall from the pipe, he moved cautiously along the wall. When a wanderer passed by him, it didn't detect his presence. It moved with a clumsy gait, oozing pus, and continued on its way.
Tianyang breathed a sigh of relief and gripped his knife as he reached the intersection.
It was a T-shaped intersection, and the streets appeared empty, devoid of any wanderers. Abandoned vehicles lay scattered on the road, resembling mere heaps of metal with only four pitiful wheels and thin armor.
These once-vehicles now appeared as steel corpses, overgrown with some kind of large, white, and morbid fungal vegetation that had invaded them.
Through the weak illumination on his suit's shoulder, Tianyang saw patches of fungi covering the road. Accidentally stepping on them felt like treading in muddy muck. The sensation of decay and putrefaction was utterly nauseating.
Tianyang carefully chose a path where the fungi did not cover the ground and continued around a corner. Suddenly, a glimmer of light caught his eye from the corner of his vision.
He stopped in his tracks and looked back. Not far from the corner, there was an entrance to an underground tunnel.
The outer side of the tunnel entrance displayed a conspicuous sign with symbols and characters that Tianyang couldn't understand. But the symbol was familiar – a train traveling through a tunnel.
It seemed that the creatures that once lived in the Inverse Realm had an odd penchant for digging tunnels beneath their cities. What kind of morbid fascination was this?
Right at the entrance to that tunnel leading underground, there was a peculiar plant growing. It resembled the Moonlight Grass that Tianyang was familiar with, but this one was a luminescent crystalline form.
It was a plant-shaped crystalline entity, Star Crystal Grass!
Tianyang's heart suddenly burned with excitement. The light emitted by Star Crystal Grass was something that the Darkborn despised. Even wanderers, who were unresponsive to light sources, instinctively avoided areas with Star Crystal Grass.
Moreover, Star Crystal Grass only grew near the Pillar of Starlight. In other words, there might be a Pillar of Starlight in the underground tunnel!
The Pillar of Starlight was an exclusive product of the Inverse Realm, a crucial medium that offered ordinary people the opportunity to become Sublimates. It also served as an essential energy source for the operation of each fortress.
The mere discovery of a Pillar of Starlight was a feat that could earn a significant amount of contribution points.
This was the very reason why Qin Wu had risked venturing deeper into the Inverse Realm.
Tianyang took a deep breath inside his helmet and then entered the tunnel. As he descended further, the light grew brighter, and when he set foot on the ground, he was struck by an astonishing sight.
A towering tree stood in the middle of the tunnel. It was majestic, with a straight trunk and lush canopy, emitting a radiant silver glow from its roots to its leaves.
Every part of the tree shone with this silver radiance!
The light was so pure that it dispelled the darkness, like a lighthouse on a dark sea, rekindling hope in the hearts of those who had lost it.
Tianyang reached out his hand, his lips trembling, his heart racing with excitement, and began to approach it.
However, a squeaking noise suddenly came from above the tunnel, a somewhat sharp sound that sent shivers down Tianyang's spine, snapping him back to reality.
He quickly turned around, raised his knife, and dropped to a fighting stance. Something was approaching...