The corridor wasn't long, only about ten meters, but around the corner lay another similar corridor. The path split, with one turn leading left and the other right.
Lin Ye strode quickly past several corners, only to find more similar corridors of varying lengths ahead. Some ended in forks, branching off in different directions.
This was a seemingly endless maze.
Lin Ye couldn't begin to imagine the complexity of a maze that could hold 10 billion people at once.
But that had little to do with him. He didn't need to find his way out; he just needed to find some supplies.
Half an hour later, Lin Ye had explored nine Red Rooms, but all he had found were a few Red Coins, a Red Key, and some usable junk. He hadn't found the treasure chest mentioned in the System's message.
After exploring a few more rooms, Lin Ye suddenly found a locked room.
The door looked the same as the others, except for the red lock on it.
Find the original at "pawread dot com".
The lock was a similar color to the door, and if Lin Ye hadn't been checking every room individually, he likely would have missed it.
Lin Ye knocked, but there was no response from within. The place was like a silent ruin, with nothing but his own presence disturbing the quiet.
Looking at the keyhole, Lin Ye took a piece of wire he'd found in a trash pile from his pocket, inserted it into the lock, and tried to pick it.
After a minute of trying, Lin Ye still couldn't get the lock open. It didn't seem to be an ordinary mechanical lock.
He used the Red Key to open the door, and the key vanished as soon as it was unlocked. The room inside was the same size as the others, but instead of being filled with trash, it was lined with shelves.
This seemed to be a storeroom.
Lin Ye went into the room and checked the shelves. Most were empty, but he did manage to find a few items left behind.
Two bottles of Red Liquid, a metal pendant, and seven rigid cards.
The liquid was contained in sealed glass bottles, each holding about 400 milliliters.
The pendant was a silver, equal-armed cross that could be worn around the neck.
The rigid cards were dark red on one side and inscribed with intricate patterns on the other, similar to the markings on the Red Coins. In total, there were three different patterns across the seven cards.
Lin Ye packed the items into the backpack he'd found earlier in a trash pile. He had no idea what they were for, but he figured he should take them just in case.
Just as Lin Ye shouldered his backpack and prepared to leave, he suddenly heard footsteps.
The footsteps came from the end of the corridor, not the direction he had come from.
The sound was faint, but thankfully, the place was so quiet that he was able to detect them early.
Lin Ye gently pushed the door almost shut, leaving just a crack open so he could peer into the corridor.
Soon, the footsteps neared the room, and a figure passed by the door.
It was a blood-red, shriveled corpse. Half of its head was missing, and the exposed brain was completely desiccated. It was hard to tell what was even allowing it to move.
After the corpse passed the doorway, Lin Ye judged the distance, flung the door open, and fired a shot at the remaining half of the Blood Corpse's head.
Bang!
The gunshot echoed through the corridor. The bullet struck the Blood Corpse squarely in the head, the impact knocking it to the ground.
This was Lin Ye's first time firing a gun, yet the sensation felt strangely familiar, as if he'd done it countless times before.
Pushing the feeling aside, Lin Ye didn't move closer. He kept his eyes cautiously fixed on the corpse on the ground. It was already missing half its head; he wasn't sure if the remaining half was a weak point.
At first, the corpse showed no reaction. But two seconds later, it began to convulse violently, like someone having an epileptic seizure.
Soon, bloody, fleshy limbs sprouted from the Blood Corpse's back. Like spider legs, they propped its body up. Its abdomen split open, and the desiccated flesh and organs burst with renewed vitality, blooming from its belly like a grotesque flower and forming a new structure.
Lin Ye fired three quick shots at the corpse—one to the chest, one to the lower left abdomen, and one to the lower right abdomen, hitting a different spot with each bullet.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He refused to believe the monster was without a weak point; he just hadn't found it yet.
The monster shot up from the ground like a frog, then ricocheted off the ceiling toward Lin Ye, covering seven or eight meters in just two bounds.
Calmly, Lin Ye took a large step back before emptying his magazine into the monster as it lunged at him.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
At this range, precision wasn't the point—firepower was!
Magazine empty, Lin Ye dropped the pistol. He anticipated the monster's second pounce, sidestepping the attack and smoothly drawing the dagger from his belt.
Unable to stop its second pounce in time, the monster tumbled and crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor. It struggled for a moment, then fell completely still.
So it wasn't immune to bullets after all.
Lin Ye stood his ground calmly, wary of the monster playing dead. Throughout the entire encounter, he had wasted no movements and felt his emotions barely stir.
After all, compared to the missions in the simulator, a hopping corpse was relatively easy to handle.
After a few minutes, Lin Ye approached the monster's corpse.
By this point, the corpse had completely lost its humanoid shape. Aside from a few scattered parts, any trace of its human origin was hard to discern.
Lin Ye drew his dagger and began to dissect the corpse.
The creature's various tissues and structures were a jumbled mess. At first, Lin Ye pondered how it had even been able to move. Eventually, he gave up on that line of thought and began studying the monster's strange biological structures instead.
Ten minutes later, Lin Ye put away his dagger with satisfaction and continued exploring.
On the monster, Lin Ye found a key ring holding five identical Red Keys. It seemed these keys were merely a form of authorization for opening doors and had little to do with the locks themselves.
After that, Lin Ye stopped bothering with the unlocked rooms. Most of them contained nothing but trash, and even when they did yield something, it was only a coin or two, or a single key.
Besides, it took nine rooms just to find one key.
He needed to find a treasure chest as soon as possible to see what materials were needed to upgrade the Sanctuary.
Lin Ye strode through corridor after corridor, twirling the empty pistol in his hand. When he'd fired it earlier, the weapon had felt incredibly familiar, as if he'd been using one for more than a decade.
It was most likely residual experience from simulating Kenneth. After all, Lin Ye had never touched a pistol before; there was no way he could be that proficient with one.
But Kenneth, as D-Class Personnel, was another story. There had to be a reason someone ended up with that designation; it wouldn't make sense if they didn't have a few special skills.
Soon, Lin Ye found another locked red door. He knocked, but there was no response. Using one of his keys, he entered the room.
The room's layout was identical to the others, only this one was clean. In the center of the room sat a mahogany chest.
The chest was not locked. Lin Ye cautiously pried open the lid with his dagger, then quickly backed away.
Contrary to his expectations, the chest contained no dangerous traps, nor did a Blood Corpse leap out.
Proofreader: Peter Pan