Chapter 86-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player
Chapter 86
The shrill crying echoed through the vast underground factory like a demonic sound. Bai Shan dazed for a moment — as if transported back to a certain night, lying in bed listening to the infant next door cry, tossing and turning unable to sleep.
After an instant of confusion, Bai Shan detected subtle energy fluctuations and immediately confirmed — this was not a sound made by a human!
Her heart rate accelerated. A brief dizziness hit her mind. She fished a pair of wired earphones from her pants pocket and stuffed them into her ears — better than nothing.
That creature wasn't in the Wanxia Gorge waterway. It had eagerly come to her doorstep.
Even at a distance, its voice could penetrate the thick stone walls and directly affect her. No wonder it had the confidence to storm the human base.
Bai Shan didn't hesitate. She threw herself at the door, her form dissolving into the heavy building material like a wisp of mist. The calm door panel seemed to ripple for an instant, then returned to normal.
In the tunnel, footsteps surged from all directions. The moment the town chief opened the door, someone nearly crashed into him.
"Chief — there's a mutant, a mutant—"
Seeing the person gasping for breath, the chief quickly picked up where she left off. "That mutant broke in? I think I just heard its voice!"
"How on earth did it get in?"
As a local, the portly chief knew that monster's voice all too well. Even with its ever-changing vocal range, the pulse-quickening, body-trembling sound waves couldn't be disguised. The moment he heard it, his body reacted with conditioned stress — cold all over, heart pounding.
"No, no! It's the Liujia Dam Converter Station — it's under monster attack!"
Transmitting power from the Southwest Hydropower Station to Hai City was a complex process. The Liujia Dam Converter Station was an essential link — it received power from the hydropower station and converted AC electricity into DC for long-distance, high-capacity transmission.
Without the converter station, the Southwest Hydropower Station's electricity simply couldn't reach Hai City!
"Liujia Dam — how is Liujia Dam in trouble too!"
The chief nearly fainted. "What are those mutants doing at the converter station for no reason!"
The middle-aged woman reporting the situation looked equally disoriented. "It's a swarm of mutated insects — crawling everywhere!"
Mutated creatures treated humans as food and experience points. Under normal circumstances, they didn't deliberately destroy human structures — unless some aggressive mutated plant was expanding its territory, its powerful roots savagely tearing through reinforced concrete.
Some mutated insects liked nesting in human buildings, but they wouldn't actively destroy structures — at most they'd dig a few holes.
This afternoon, after receiving contact from the Capital, the chief had immediately dispatched people to inspect the Southwest Hydropower Station and the Liujia Dam Converter Station. Three people died, but they confirmed neither location had sustained serious damage. He then posted sentries nearby as a precaution.
He'd originally planned to wait for the Capital's team before formally organizing operations. Reality, however, gave no one time to breathe!
"I'll go to the Liujia Dam Converter Station."
Langsa Meiduo volunteered: "A mutated insect swarm... it's likely deliberate. Same purpose as those attackers."
Then she sighed — a sound tinged with desolation.
"The game's objective has already been largely achieved."
In Langsa Meiduo's view, the second phase rule allowing only eighty million to advance wasn't meant to eliminate the remaining three hundred and twenty million — it was a crude but effective provocation.
Just as the game intended, humanity — which should have united before disaster — had instead fractured and turned hostile, viewing fallen comrades as burdens to be purged.
This evil ideology wasn't a law of nature — it was the enemy of all life. And so Langsa Meiduo had left her tribe and descended from the mountain peaks.
"Good, good!" Seeing Langsa Meiduo step up, the chief forced a smile. He had the middle-aged woman go form a temporary team — Liujia Dam's defense was in their hands.
"AAAAAH—"
The infant crying had stopped for a while. Suddenly, rising and falling screams of agony echoed continuously through the tunnels. Everyone clutched their heads, covering their ears, feeling as if their eardrums were about to be pierced.
Wu Xinyou covered her ears while scanning in every direction, trying to pinpoint the sound's source. She asked urgently: "Someone's been attacked? Damn it, we need to get there now!"
In the dimness, the middle-aged woman's face turned deathly pale. She shook her head at Wu Xinyou, her voice unsteady: "Th-that sounds like Tang Long... his voice before he died. Don't go over there. Whatever you do, don't go near it..."
After a moment of stunned silence, Wu Xinyou let out a string of profanity, seething: "That beast actually dares — actually dares—"
Mid-sentence, Wu Xinyou felt warmth in her nose. She touched it — nosebleed.
The chief shouted: "We need to leave immediately! Get away from its sound!"
After touching blood, Wu Xinyou grew strangely calm. She told the chief: "You evacuate everyone. I'm going after it."
"We didn't travel a thousand li just to run away."
Theodore, silent for quite a while, seemed to snap back to the present. He glanced at Wu Xinyou and agreed: "Let's go deal with it."
Wu Xinyou couldn't afford to indulge her instinctive dislike right now. This foreigner's ranking was genuinely high. For the greater good, she'd hold her nose and cooperate — eliminating that monster took priority.
"Fine, let's go!"
Wu Xinyou released her hands from her ears entirely, endured the nausea, and listened carefully. She immediately locked onto a direction, vanishing several meters away in the blink of an eye, heading deep into the dark tunnel.
Theodore glanced imperceptibly at the tunnel's arched ceiling, then immediately followed Wu Xinyou.
In a sealed-off area of the underground factory, a three-kilometer-long water diversion tunnel led straight to the river. Humidity pervaded the air. Slippery moss grew inside the tunnel, emitting a faint green glow in the darkness.
The gray mutant's upper body pressed against the tunnel's arched ceiling. Its four limbs stepped over the moss, crawling slowly forward. Its smooth gray tail swept back and forth, scraping against the tunnel walls with a faint friction sound.
Its sound waves tormented everyone in the underground factory, yet where it actually was — dead silence reigned. The friction sounds, dripping water — every tiny noise was infinitely amplified.
This mutant the locals called the "Smile Killer" had a smooth, dolphin-like head — no eyes, no elongated snout. The smiling arc seemed carved into smooth gray stone. Its overly simple structure made one wonder if it had sprung from a child's crude drawing.
The gray body continued crawling toward the other end of the water diversion tunnel. A faint glow emanated from there — quite visible in the darkness — though it couldn't see it.
Ultrasonic waves spread forward, bouncing off objects and returning. Its brain constructed environmental images — far exceeding human eyes in efficiency and range. Before even exiting this long tunnel, it already knew the situation inside the underground factory.
It "saw" many people.
People who could fill its ravenous belly. People who could make it stronger. Fragrant people.
Once it had tasted human delicacy, all other food lost its flavor.
Its horizontal tail swayed left and right, working with its limbs to maintain balance — also seeming to express a kind of cheerful emotion.
Water droplets seeped from the stone walls and pattered onto the moss. Suddenly, the smooth tail stopped swaying. The massive gray monster halted.
It turned its smiling head in the dark tunnel, paused for a moment, and emitted specific sound waves — waves only it could hear.
The round, thick gray head tilted slightly. The smiling arc seemed to recede a fraction.
The returning echo told it — behind it, at some unknown point, a person had appeared.
Someone who'd evaded its detection waves and circled directly behind it.
In the damp diversion tunnel, Bai Shan emerged halfway from the arched ceiling, glanced down at the situation, then dropped without hesitation. Her feet splashed into the shallow water with a soft sound.
She yanked out her wired earphones. Music leaked out — faint melody amplified by the deep, cold water tunnel into an unmistakable sound.
The echoes bounced off stone walls and rebounded into the gray monster's mind, becoming low-frequency vibrations of unclear meaning.
"Everybody is looking for something"
"Sweet dreams are made of this"
Ten meters away, the gray monster smiled at her.
Bai Shan had found it first.
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