Chen Ke had hoped to find some clues through the black man he just encountered, but he was somewhat disappointed. Besides a leather wallet stuffed with three 100-dollar bills, there was nothing else on the man.
Not even a spare magazine! This made Chen Ke very puzzled. Surely, one should carry a spare magazine, right?
Chen Ke groped his way to the end of the dark hallway, intentionally keeping to the left wall, moving silently with light footsteps. The glowing night sights of his Glock 17 emitted a green fluorescence.
For some reason, Chen Ke always felt a chill breeze drifting past him, as if an invisible entity was brushing by.
A sense of eerie panic slowly clawed its way up his heart, and that chaotic and frantic emotion tried to swallow his rationale. Chen Ke rallied his spirit and focused on the sight alignment.
With a gun in hand, what was there to fear?
He bolstered his courage and continued on toward the end of the corridor.
The hallway was not very long. Aside from the door he had come through, the rest of the office doors were tightly closed. After turning a corner, a sliver of light appeared.
Upon closer inspection, it was the floor indicator light of the elevator. Beside it was a double door with a green "EXIT" sign illuminated, indicating the stairwell.
The elevator seemed operable. Chen Ke wondered whether to take the stairs or the elevator. At this moment, a strange shadow slowly entered his field of vision.
The shadow looked like a dog; it had emerged from the door of the security stairwell and was roughly the size of an adult Husky with a gait as graceful as that of an elderly woman.
Chen Ke took a deep breath, slowly crouched down by the wall, and aimed the sights squarely at the dog's head.
This dog gave him an extremely eerie feeling.
And then, confirming Chen Ke's suspicion, the dog—seemingly unaware of Chen Ke's presence—slowly made its way toward the elevator.
It lifted its head to sniff at the shadows where Chen Ke was hiding, then sat down in front of the elevator doors. Next, it extended its paw and pressed the down button.
This was a dog that knew how to call an elevator.
The floor indicator on the elevator lit up: 8th floor.
The sound of the elevator's operation echoed in the silent hallway while Chen Ke squatted there, watching the dog wait for the elevator. Several times he wanted to pull the trigger, but his subconscious told him this was no ordinary canine to mess with.
When the elevator doors opened, the white light from inside illuminated the pitch-dark hallway, forcing Chen Ke to squint his eyes.
The dog walked into the elevator and sat facing the doors.
It was only then that Chen Ke noticed the face of a white elderly woman atop the dog's head.
It smiled at Chen Ke and pressed a floor button, its eye sockets deep, dark, and devoid of eyes.
The dog's smile appeared to come from the Abyss, and just one glance made Chen Ke feel as though his soul were being drained away.
He gasped for air, unable to suppress the overwhelming fear, his hands trembling with the gun, fingers so stiff they could hardly pull the trigger, the thought of closing his eyes brutally interrupted by some inexplicable force.
At that moment, a line of orange text popped into his field of vision:
"Using lifespan to replace lost sanity."
"-10 minutes"
"-10 minutes"
"-10 minutes"
…
Once the elevator doors slowly closed, everything returned to calm, and the hallway darkened once again.
In just a few seconds, Chen Ke had lost more than 40 minutes of his lifespan, leaving only 3 hours and 10 minutes from the hard-earned 4-hour lifespan.
Taking deep breaths, he leaned on the wall and stood up, fine sweat emerging from his palms and forehead, his back soaked with perspiration.
Chen Ke truly felt that the fear had taken something from him—if not for the lifespan price, he might have gone mad by now.
The elevator was out of the question; he didn't want to bump into that dog as soon as the doors opened again, and who knew what else lurked within the building.
He decided to try his luck with the safety passageway. Just as he thought this, a white man suddenly emerged from the stairwell door.
The white man had brown hair and was about 180 centimeters tall, wearing a blue shirt and brown trousers, gripping a steel-gray pistol in his hand.
Upon seeing Chen Ke, the white man first showed a trace of panic, but after confirming the other was human, he immediately put on a stern, businesslike expression.
Both sides almost simultaneously aimed their guns at each other's heads, and Chen Ke could clearly feel the intense killing intent emanating from the other side.
"+15 minutes"
"+15 minutes"
"+15 minutes"
"+15 minutes"
...
"Trained? Huh? What the hell are you prowling around here for in the dead of night? Who are you?" the white man asked.
From Chen Ke's gun posture and reactions, the white man could tell that Chen Ke was no ordinary person, and his expression grew more serious.
"Are you Miles?" Chen Ke suddenly asked.
"No, no, my name is Parker..." the white man shook his head, but just as he finished speaking, he suddenly froze, as if catching on to something, and angrily said, "Hey you! What kind of trick are you trying to pull?"
"Listen, buddy, I'm as clueless about this place as you are, so why don't we put the guns down and figure out what the hell is going on here together?" Chen Ke said.
He guessed that this Parker wasn't with the Black man from before, and right now, Chen Ke was desperate to interact with another living person to obtain any useful information.
Besides, he had only been through the transition for less than half an hour, and he didn't want to kill anyone he encountered.
"I think you seem to have a pretty good idea of what's going on. You Asians always like to play tricks, whether in business or anything else... Completely untrustworthy! Who the hell are you?" Parker was not very cooperative.
"Damn it, I'll say it one last time, let's put down the guns together, and then find out what the fuck happened here. If you call me 'Asian' again, I swear I'll shoot all the bullets in the magazine into your ass!" Chen Ke glared at him furiously.
The two stared at each other wide-eyed for a while, and several seconds later, Parker slowly lowered the gun muzzle and allowed his arms to droop.
The count of Chen Ke's lifespan was fluctuating like the stock market within a few minutes; the life timer went from 3 hours and 9 minutes and 23 seconds to 4 hours and 5 minutes.
Parker provided half as much lifespan per unit time compared to the Black man before. Chen Ke deduced that he had received more lifespan earlier because the Black man had pointed a gun at him when he was unarmed. In this instance, since they both had guns, the threat wasn't as great, and thus the added lifespan was less.
It seemed that the more vicious the intent to kill him, the more lifespan he received.
"Tell me, what happened here." Chen Ke asked.
"What? You... you really don't know? This building has experienced a 'spiritual energy burst effect' and has become Spirit Explosion Space now," Parker said with an incredulous expression.
It was as if this situation was very common in this world, like some common knowledge.
Spiritual energy burst effect? Spirit Explosion Space?
Chen Ke suddenly had a thought and asked, "This is like a game, right?! Like... Horror Park?!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, man. Are you out of your mind... You don't seem like you work in this building, and that gun probably isn't yours either... The ejection port has been modified to the left side, yet you're holding it with your right hand..." Parker pointed to the gun in Chen Ke's hand and shook his head.
Chen Ke glanced at the gun in his hand and couldn't help but admire Parker's keen observation; the Black man was left-handed and had modified the gun's ejection port to the left to avoid being hit or obstructed by ejected shell casings.
While they were speaking, the elevator started moving again, and both men looked at it in silence.
"Did you encounter a dog with a human face when you came up through the emergency staircase?" Chen Ke asked.
"No, are you talking about a person-faced dog? You ran into that thing? It's in this building?" Parker said, surprised.
"Yeah, when I ran into it, it just happened to come out of the door you came from and took the elevator down... Maybe it forgot something and is taking the elevator back up right now..." Chen Ke said while looking at Parker, noticing that his face turned ashen.
Perhaps it was the sudden realization that he had been so close to that creature unknowingly that sent shivers of fear through him.
As if by some unspoken agreement, both men slowly edged towards the safety passage entrance, slipped through the door, and groped their way downstairs.
"That's a person-faced dog, buddy. If it were a straight fight, I wouldn't be scared, but a sneak attack would be tricky. They'll rip your face off and morph their own face to resemble that of their victim. Moreover, these monsters possess strong spiritual power and can directly assault the sanity and perception of living people. Without special protective gear, they're hard to deal with."
Parker's gun was equipped with a tactical flashlight, allowing him to light their way in the dark stairwell, so he took the lead, with Chen Ke following. As they descended, Parker briefed Chen Ke on the person-faced dogs.
"It's worse than I thought. Person-faced dogs aren't the most powerful monsters, but they belong to the C-class that can affect the minds of normal people, which means the spiritual energy burst effect in this building is stronger than I estimated."
They looked at the safety exit doors on the first floor, at the sliver of orange light leaking through the gap. Parker turned to Chen Ke, not caring if he could see his expression in the dark, and said, "This means we're in big trouble. We can't stay here long. There's a Spiritual Ability Tunnel in the lobby on the first floor that can get us out of here. We need to move fast."
Chen Ke and Parker pushed the door open together. The bright orange light in the lobby was blinding, and through the haze, Chen Ke saw masses of white, worm-like objects writhing on the lobby floor, accompanied by occasional low barks.
A suffocating spiritual oppression hit them; Chen Ke focused and saw more than a dozen white person-faced dogs leisurely pacing the lobby floor, some even lying on the counter, licking their fur.