"So-called 'dangerous creatures'?"
Yu Jing looked at the bloodstained hand axe he had chosen and seemed to realize something. Not daring to linger here any longer, he quickly felt along the path ahead and moved forward.
The environment here resembled an underground meat processing facility. Whenever Yu Jing encountered a fork in the path, he always headed in the exact opposite direction from where the initial cabin was located, completely avoiding the corridor between the slaughterhouse and the cabin.
Only after estimating that he had deviated far enough from the main route did Yu Jing allow himself to relax slightly and slow his pace.
"Better to hide here for a while."
At a corner in front of Yu Jing stood an unlocked iron door. After confirming that the room contained a ventilation shaft, he decided to stop here to rest and regroup.
If the room only had the iron door as an entrance and exit, then if the dangerous creature found him, there would be no chance to escape. Compared to the huge footprints he had seen earlier, using the ventilation duct to flee was an excellent option — judging by the creature's size, Yu Jing was certain it couldn't crawl into the ducts.
"This room's atmosphere is totally different from the rest of this place."
The room Yu Jing was in had cement walls and a neatly arranged cupboard. There was even a comfortable chair, resembling a lounge — completely unlike the iron-sheet factory exterior.
After a thorough search, Yu Jing found a small bottle labeled "emergency" — a white spray — and a military-style knife inside the cupboard. Both small enough to fit into his pants pocket. There was also a piece of clothing resembling a technician's uniform, but it was of little use to him.
"Could this be a 'rest room' or a 'buffer room' designed by the research institute?"
Curious, Yu Jing approached the ventilation shaft in the corner of the room and frowned. "Shouldn't this lead to the upper levels?"
The duct stretched straight ahead, its destination unknown. To test if it was passable, Yu Jing decided to crawl inside. The pitch-black ventilation tube felt similar to the one he had encountered just before entering the test area.
After crawling about fifty meters, Yu Jing finally spotted an exit.
But he didn't rush to kick open the iron grille. Instead, he curled up inside and observed the outside cautiously.
The room outside the ventilation shaft was completely different from the factory areas he had seen earlier. It was softly lit with yellow light, elegantly decorated with an old royal style, and the carpet was made from high-quality wool.
"Tap, tap, tap!"
Suddenly, hurried footsteps echoed outside. Yu Jing immediately retreated, keeping about a meter's distance from the exit.
Click! The door opened.
Breath heavy and rapid, a figure familiar to Yu Jing appeared.
"Jiang Tian!?"
In Yu Jing's eyes stood the beautiful woman he had encountered before.
Jiang Tian, now inside the room, looked genuinely terrified. She was trembling uncontrollably, hiding beneath the ebony desk right next to the ventilation exit.
Seeing Jiang Tian here, Yu Jing immediately realized that he was now inside the "interaction zone" mentioned in the notice.
But looking at her, cold sweat broke out on the back of Yu Jing's neck. Once dressed in a white turtleneck sweater and wearing makeup, Jiang Tian was now stained red with fresh blood, her heavy makeup smeared — an unsettling sight.
"Why… why did this happen?"
Jiang Tian stared desperately at the blood crystal ring on her left middle finger. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remove it.
At that moment, Yu Jing's eyes caught a sight under the door at the room's entrance — which Jiang Tian had locked from the inside — a trickle of bright red blood seeping steadily into the room…
The blood kept flowing in, dyeing the carpet almost entirely crimson. At the center, it slowly gathered as if a new life form was about to be born.
"How can there be so much blood? Is this the 'dangerous creature' in Jiang Tian's area?!"
Seeing this, Yu Jing covered his mouth tightly with both hands, trying not to make a sound and attract the blood's attention.
Under the desk, trembling violently, Jiang Tian shook her head repeatedly. Her eyes were filled with a desperate will to live and a deep fear of death.
"Clang!" The iron grille at the ventilation shaft was kicked open by Yu Jing.
"Jiang Tian! Hurry, come here!"
Although Yu Jing had some reservations about this woman, seeing the situation unfold like this—death was a very real possibility. He couldn't just stand by and watch someone die right before his eyes. An inexplicable force drove his legs to smash open the barred gate as he shouted Jiang Tian's name loudly.
"You… Yu Jing…"
Jiang Tian looked at the blood pooling before her, then at Yu Jing waving frantically. Like grabbing the last lifeline, she disregarded all caution, scrambling and crawling over the blood toward the ventilation shaft where Yu Jing was.
"Come in quickly. After passing through the ducts, you'll be in my test zone. The dangerous creature chasing you won't be able to follow."
Yu Jing grabbed Jiang Tian's outstretched hand and pulled her into the ventilation shaft. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blood pooling in the room start to take the shape of a humanoid figure.
Jiang Tian had trouble squeezing her body into the narrow duct, moving slowly. With Yu Jing's help, she finally managed to get inside.
But just then, Jiang Tian's expression suddenly froze.
"Pfft!" A mouthful of fresh blood sprayed directly onto Yu Jing's face.
The suddenness of it shocked Yu Jing into stillness. After a brief moment of stunned silence, he looked up and saw why Jiang Tian had spat blood: her entire left lower leg, still exposed outside the duct, had been violently bitten off by the sharp jaws of the blood creature. Perhaps due to the creature's nature, the wound was still being ravaged, causing an alarming amount of blood loss.
Not only that, one of the creature's blood-formed arms was still gripping the severed leg tightly, its fingernails digging into the flesh.
"Ah!"
The ventilation shaft had narrow gaps. Pressing Jiang Tian's body close to his, Yu Jing raised his axe and brought it down hard on the bloodied arm.
"Crack!"
Without bones, the arm made of blood was easily severed by Yu Jing's strike, the hand gripping Jiang Tian's leg dissolving into a puddle of crimson on the floor.
Outside, the blood creature showed no sign of entering the duct. Instead, it fixed its terrifying face on Yu Jing, who had just chopped off its arm, eyes filled with hatred.
"Is this just my luck? These dangerous creatures can't leave their own test zones... But what kind of experiment is this? Losing an entire leg like that—this amount of blood loss would kill anyone!"
ps: read advance chapters visit https://www.patreon.com/c/Seraphim777