"How could this be... This door is never locked!"
Despair had already filled Lin Qingqing's eyes.
The heavy footsteps behind them were closing in fast. Huan Tian's eyes were deathly calm as he scanned the surroundings. Suddenly, he looked up and spotted an air duct overhead—just large enough for two people to crawl in one after the other.
"Get on my shoulders, quick!"
He lowered his voice and lifted Lin Qingqing onto his shoulders. She immediately understood what he meant. Planting her feet firmly on his shoulders, she straightened her back and pushed the slatted vent cover aside before starting to climb upward.
Above the vertical shaft was a horizontal main duct, forming an L-shape in structure.
The approaching footsteps drove Lin Qingqing to unleash strength far beyond her usual physical limits. She clung to the corner of the main duct with both hands and slowly, inch by inch, pulled herself up.
Huan Tian followed right behind her and crawled into the square duct, carefully replacing the vent cover behind them.
The horizontal duct was just tall enough for a person to crouch while moving, but too narrow to fit two side by side. Lin Qingqing, being slender, lay flat on her back while Huan Tian held a plank position above her, pressing close.
For a moment, the air they breathed sprayed across each other's faces, and the narrow space grew increasingly hot.
Meanwhile, the heavy footsteps turned the corner and passed directly beneath the vent.
The moment she caught sight of the figure, Lin Qingqing almost screamed—but thankfully, Huan Tian had already clamped a hand firmly over her mouth.
The hulking figure below still wore the orange construction uniform from when it was human, though the bulging, mutated body had stretched the fabric to its limit. It still bore some resemblance to a man, except for its grotesquely enlarged right arm, which had already burst through the shirt sleeve and now dragged behind it like a whip.
Its original skin was completely gone. Bulging muscles radiated violent energy, splitting the flesh and exposing raw sinew that wrapped around the entire limb. Blood dripped steadily down the arm.
At the end of it, five pale, bony claws extended from the muscle, their surfaces caked with dried blood—like death's own fingers, twitching beneath them.
Huan Tian's heart skipped a beat the moment he saw that claw.
This was the same monster he'd seen drag Fili through a hole barely thirty centimeters wide beneath the elevator—half his body wrenched out with brute force.
A Tier-2 Strength-Type Mutated Zombie!
Even among Tier-2 infected, this type stood at the very top. Their terrifying strength could crush any equal-tier enemy with ease, and their massively swollen muscle density formed a natural suit of armor.
All strength-enhanced mutants were walking tanks of destruction.
A glint of danger flashed in Huan Tian's eyes as his pupils narrowed sharply.
"That's Luo Mai from Engineering..."
Lin Qingqing extended a trembling finger, carefully tracing the words into Huan Tian's palm.
"You know him?"
She nodded and continued writing, cautiously:
"He was assigned to replace the building's wiring tonight… He must have gotten caught in the rain."
But getting caught in the rain shouldn't cause someone to mutate straight into a Tier-2 zombie!
Huan Tian narrowed his eyes and peered through the slats of the vent. Suddenly, he caught sight of a shimmering azure glow in Luo Mai's dragging right palm.
His expression darkened instantly.
It was a Nightmare Crystal—
And not just any crystal, but a Tier-2 one.
Everything made sense now.
Luo Mai must have picked up the falling crystal during his work on the upper floors. The crystal's high concentration of nightmare virus would have penetrated his skin in seconds, ravaging his body from the inside out and transforming him into a Tier-2 mutant on the spot.
"Stupid bastard," Huan Tian cursed under his breath.
But just as he finished, Luo Mai suddenly paused and looked up sharply, sensing something.
Before he could move, Huan Tian reacted in a flash, clamping his eyes shut and shielding Lin Qingqing's face with his hand.
Inside the pitch-black ventilation shaft, there wasn't a single glimmer of light. With their pupils concealed, no reflection betrayed them.
Luo Mai stared hard at the vent for several seconds but saw nothing. With a low growl, he finally lowered his head.
But he didn't leave.
Instead, he began pacing slowly beneath the duct, step by step, as if waiting for his prey to make a mistake and reveal itself...
Suddenly, Luo Mai swung his massive right arm and slammed it violently against the wall, clearly enraged by the sudden disappearance of human scent.
Boom! Boom! Boom!Each strike hit like a thunderclap. The entire wall caved inward under the force. White plaster cracked like a spiderweb, and even the cement beneath fractured into jagged, terrifying fissures.
The ventilation duct shook violently with every impact.
Huan Tian lay pressed against Lin Qingqing, arms braced hard against both sides of the shaft to minimize any sound. His muscles tensed like a drawn bowstring.
Eventually, Luo Mai's furious rampage subsided.
Dragging his grotesquely swollen arm, he slowly turned and walked away, disappearing from the narrow field of vision through the vent slats.
Both of them silently exhaled in relief.
But before they could fully relax, a faint screeching noise echoed from deeper within the ventilation shaft—
The sharp sound of something heavy being dragged across metal, followed by the scrape of a belt buckle skimming against the steel wall.
Lin Qingqing looked up in terror, toward the direction of her feet.
A zombie construction worker was crawling through the shaft, previously just wandering for prey—but the moment it spotted them, its dead gray eyes lit up with a naked, predatory hunger.
It began scrambling forward at a frightening speed, dragging a trail of blood behind it.
Fortunately, the zombie made no noise—or more accurately, it tried to scream, but its throat could only release a faint, raspy hiss.
Its entire larynx had been ripped open, and its shredded trachea was exposed to open air, making vocalization impossible.
The cramped shaft offered no room to turn or escape, and with Luo Mai still nearby below, even the slightest sound could mean death.
They could only watch in horror as the zombie inched closer and closer.
"We're done for. Is this it… is this how we die?"
Lin Qingqing stared in despair as the zombie crept toward her bare ankle.
To its eyes, her pale skin must have looked like fresh, tender cabbage to a starving man.
It opened its bloodied jaws and lunged.
But at that exact moment, Huan Tian's eyes flashed with icy light.
With his agility boosted to 8 points, his legs fired upward like twin projectiles.
In a split-second scissor kick, he locked the zombie's neck between his calves, while his lower legs clamped down on its arms, pinning them tightly and leaving it no room to struggle.
The zombie construction worker never expected such a sudden attack.
Once caught in the deadly lock, it instinctively tried to struggle free—but Huan Tian's strength, now at 8 points, had already far surpassed that of a Tier-1 zombie.
It couldn't move.
It couldn't even make a sound to alert Luo Mai below.
In that crushing silence, a deadly contest of strength unfolded.
Huan Tian's entire body was drawn taut like a fully stretched warbow.
His muscles quivered with exertion, his limbs trembling under the strain.
Beads of sweat the size of raindrops rolled down his face, dripping one by one from his chin.
He held it like that for five full minutes.
Only when he estimated that Luo Mai had turned the corner and moved away did he finally twist his legs with a sudden burst of power.
Crack.
A sharp fracture echoed through the narrow duct.
Outside, it would've sounded like little more than a faint click.
The zombie collapsed inside the vent, writhing weakly, the last flickers of hunger still burning in its dead, gray eyes, fixed hungrily on Lin Qingqing's exposed ankle just inches away.
She finally exhaled in deep relief.
But before she could truly relax, she felt Huan Tian's body collapse downward onto hers.
Five minutes of brutal tension with a zombie in total silence had drained even his upgraded body.
His limbs went numb, his muscles refused to respond.
Sweat continued to fall from his chin, soaking the front of Lin Qingqing's shirt, leaving behind warm, damp patches.
"Huan Tian…"
"Don't move. Just give me fifteen seconds."
"…Okay."
Lin Qingqing's face flushed bright red.
The words "You're lying on my chest" hovered at the tip of her tongue, but never made it out.
Neither of them moved.
In the claustrophobic shaft, only their mingled breathing remained.
And behind them, the faint clatter of the zombie's jaws still snapping in empty, instinctive hunger.
But as their breaths gradually steadied, they both became acutely aware—
Something about the atmosphere between them… had shifted.