As they sprinted, Li Cu and Su Wan began to feel their stamina wane. It was already a miracle that they could keep up with the speed of the man in the black glasses, and forcing themselves to follow had drained even more of their energy than usual. Su Wan’s stamina was slightly worse than Li Cu’s, and he gradually started to fall behind, shouting, “Run, I can’t run anymore!”

The chaotic lines of fluorescence under the feet of the man in black glasses suddenly vanished, indicating that he had stopped. Li Cu and Su Wan panicked; they wanted to brake but were afraid of crashing into him. However, they lacked the ability to stop on a dime and ended up rushing forward several more steps.

In the darkness, Li Cu and Su Wan suddenly felt a force grab the back of their collars; it must have been the man in black glasses striking from the shadows. The momentum was so strong that both of them were yanked off the ground, and then the force that gripped their collars violently swung them around.

If we could see what was happening in the dark, we would witness how the man in black glasses grabbed the collars of both individuals, spun them around, and with a single motion completed a 720-degree turn, flinging them away like two flying discs.

The man’s strength was overwhelming; Li Cu felt as if he were a piece of paper soaring through the air, nearly brushing against the top of the tunnel. Almost simultaneously, he felt a massive object sweep past beneath him.

Everything happened too quickly. After landing, Li Cu rolled and stood up instinctively, sprinting back in the direction they had come from. He understood the man in black glasses’ intention: he definitely did not want them to flank him from both sides, as neither he nor Su Wan could see anything.

Run for your life. That was certainly the message.

In the darkness, without any guidance, they had barely taken a few steps before colliding with Su Wan. The two of them tumbled to the ground, got back up, and continued to sprint forward. A second later, they crashed into a wall.

It was a fierce, unreserved impact that knocked both of them to the ground, leaving them unable to get up for a while.

When Li Cu finally stood up, he found his nose covered in blood. He hastily wiped it off and reached around for Su Wan, trying to help him up.

Su Wan was right next to him. Li Cu hooked his arm around Su Wan’s waist to pull him up but suddenly felt something was off.

What he touched was not Su Wan’s clothing but something else entirely. The texture was strange—cold, rough, and with odd patterns.

He quickly withdrew his hand and stepped back a few paces, pulling out a cold firework from his backpack.

His fear of the darkness made him disregard everything else; he ignited the cold firework. The bright light instantly blinded him.

He squinted, trying to adapt to the light, and looked ahead. A chilling sensation nearly made him drop the firework.

In an instant, cold sweat and goosebumps erupted all over his body. Before him lay something that could not be described with a simple term.

It was a corpse, but not just a corpse; it was a skin? It was hard to determine. To be precise, what lay before him was something resembling a “snake” skin.

However, Li Cu could clearly see that it had the shape of a person.

He calmed himself down and looked back; Su Wan was already gone. Clearly, at the moment of impact, Su Wan had not been as severely affected and had run far away.

The man in black glasses and whatever had seemed to be pursuing them moments ago were also nowhere to be seen.

The cold smoke fire approached the skin, revealing the white scales and translucent keratin membrane on it. It looked too much like snake skin, but it was indeed the form of an adult male, leaning against the wall. Li Zu tugged at it with his hand; this “man-snake” was stuck to the wall.

Li Zu saw the facial features of the snake shed. The distance between the features was very far apart, as if a person’s eyes were on their forehead and their mouth was on their neck. Or rather, it was a snake’s face.

“What is this thing?” A wave of nausea surged over him. The state of the snake shed was very dry and old, suggesting it had been here for quite a long time.

This is not simple, he thought to himself; this place is not simple. A strong sense of insecurity began to emerge. He stood up and walked a few steps forward, only to see more such things, stuck to the wall, in groups of threes and twos. The traces of snake scales piled up like a snake skin bag, presenting various human postures, combined with the traces of a white gel-like substance sticking together, which made Li Zu feel intensely nauseous.

They hadn’t encountered any of these along the way, indicating that they had mostly been running in the central part of this passage. How did the blind man see the way in such darkness? Is he some kind of dolphin hero?

He hesitated for a moment, turned around, and walked back, his mind racing with questions.

What exactly are these things? Are they people with scales, shedding skin like snakes? He began to feel that neither the blind man nor Wu Xie had told him the truth about anything here.

He felt a growing fear of this passage and longed for the clean asphalt walls of a passage with nothing in it.

He started to run back frantically, all the way to the intersection where the glow stick had been broken.

He didn’t see Su Wan, but he did see a series of glowing footprints heading in the other direction of the intersection, clearly indicating that Su Wan had panicked and taken the path toward the monster.

Li Zu hesitated for a moment and made a decision that surprised even himself: he ignored Su Wan and the blind man. Instead, he ran toward the pool where he had come from.

I’m sorry, I will not cooperate.

He thought to himself: I will not act according to the behavior you expect of me.

He reached the edge of the pool, leaned the cold smoke fire against the wall, rummaged through his backpack, and took out a folding submachine gun.

There weren’t many bullets left, so he concentrated the spare bullets into one magazine and found that only six bullets were usable. He sighed and took out a few bars of soap from inside.

This is C4 plastic explosive. He kneaded the C4 into several balls the size of apples and put them in his pocket. Then he counted the detonators.

This is safety explosive; it won’t explode even if shot, only a detonator can trigger it.

OK, boys who play CS know something about these firearms. Li Zu’s CS skills were semi-professional level; discussing the characteristics of guns was a daily essential at the internet café. He had never thought that he could actually fire real guns in the country, nor did he ever imagine he would be handling C4 like this now.

There were a few moments when he felt a sense of unreality, but it didn’t matter anymore.

He ate a few biscuits, took a shower, and stood up to observe the environment, arriving at the previous intersection. He took off his clothes, used the gun as a hanger, propped it up, and then stuck two balls of C4 on both ends of the gun. He attached them to the wall.

He took a large piece of C4 from the remaining stash, pressed it against the inside of the gun, and inserted a wireless detonator. One cubic meter of C4 could send an aircraft carrier back to the repair yard. If dropped from a height of 600 meters, it could create a crater 20 meters deep and 30 meters in diameter. The amount he had in his hands could turn 20 people into a bloody mess if they were positioned correctly. He picked up a glow stick, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and then relieved himself in that spot. The heat was intense, and the smell was very strong, which suited him just fine.