Autophagy

"If the apartment dies, outsiders will enter. Whatever horrors there are in the outside, they'll all come in and fill the apartment."

"If that happens..."

"We're pretty much doomed if that happens," Aston finished Song Lei's sentence for him.

"What should we do then? You said that the apartment was recovering well, right?" Song Lei asked as he folded his arms in front of his chest.

"Mm. That's the case. Although this apartment is a living being, it shows some awkward features. For example, its recovery speed isn't related to its internal state at all. Instead, there is a fixed rate of recovery that doesn't change according to the amount of damage unless the damage goes above a certain threshold."

"Then as long as we keep the apartment safe, it will heal with time..."

"Yeah. That's pretty much it. Fortunately, the apartment seems to be pretty much invulnerable on the outside. It seems to get harmed only from the inside."

"How much more do you think it will be able to endure?" Song Lei asked. He got up and walked towards the nearest wall to touch and feel. To see if he was able to notice any sign of its liveliness.

"Honestly? It will go down with another fight of the previous scale. So we don't have any leisure on that part," Aston explained. Failing to feel any difference on the wall, Song Lei backed off and threw himself on one of the beds.

"Do we have any way of helping it?" Song Lei asked. This question caused Aston to hold his chin and go into deep contemplation. After pondering about it, he parted his lips.

"It's a bit weird," he said. "Although this apartment carries seemingly biological properties, it basically acts as a spiritual amalgamation."

"The problem with it is that the apartment doesn't consume things naturally," Aston said. "Rather, the food should throw itself at it. So unless a new Lost One spawns in the apartment and gets consumed by a horde, the apartment is essentially constantly spending its resources to patch itself up."

"It's like a closed system with no energy intake..." Song Lei muttered. "At least that's what I was able to understand."

"Mm. You're right. If we want to somehow help the apartment to heal, we need to find a way to feed it," Aston said. Song Lei put his elbow on the bed and lied down while supporting his head with his hand.

"I have an idea actually..."

...

"I want to officially welcome you to the HQ of the DIR Empire," Liu Kun said as he left the elevator. Jia Feng followed along and left the elevator. They were in a reception room, neatly designed, however, devoid of any person. To his right was a curtain wall that exposed the majestic bird's eye view of the city from one of the highest buildings in it.

"Or should I say... The Heaven Alliance..."

"Woah..." Jia Feng eyed every part of the place with awe. Having lived most of his life in the slums, working as a construction worker, he had only seen such scenery on television.

"I'm glad you like it," Liu Kun said as he started walking again. He pulled Jia Feng into a corridor leading out of the reception room. The place had a color palette of dark gray, brown, and white mixed together. It gave a classy look to it, which was probably what the designers intended.

Walking through the long corridor, they came to a place that looked like a research lab. There were all kinds of scientists, running around in lab coats, all of them dealing with different types of equipment. He could see one that was looking at a computer screen, reading data that was running through at incredible speeds. Another one was slightly leaning forward, looking through a microscope carefully, occasionally adjusting its lense.

"Good morning," Liu Kun said, stopping briefly. The nearest scientist turned towards him and returned his greetings. As Liu Kun started walking with Jia Feng behind him, all the scientists they walked past greeted him respectfully. It was obvious that these people respected Liu Kun a lot.

"They seem to respect you a lot..." Jia Feng muttered. Liu Kun cast a curious glance towards him briefly as he kept walking. "Are you... Their leader or something?"

"Haha! No no..." Liu Kun laughed heartily as he heard Jia Feng's words. "I'm the one who brings test subjects here. There's no way that one of the research team leaders come and seek you out."

Jia Feng was slightly offended by Liu Kun's words, however, he was on their turf now. Swallowing whatever worry and anger he had, he continued following him.

They entered through another door, this time coming into an office. The room was pretty big, probably bigger than all of the rooms in Jia Feng's house combined. Its innards were mostly empty, having only a single office desk right against the door, further away towards the back wall of the room (which was made out of glass that let them see a magnificent bird's eye view of the city).

"Dr. Xie, I've brought the first one," Liu Kun said as he walked to the middle of the room. After stopping there, he slightly lowered his head and brought his hands together in front.

"Great job, little Kun," a hoarse voice, filled with dignity and years of experience resounded throughout. Making Jia Feng slightly shudder at the overwhelming pressure.

Briefly later, he realized that there was an office chair behind that table, its back turned towards them. That office chair slowly turned around, creaking, revealing an old man to their eyes. If a single word was used to describe him, it would be 'dignified'. Although it was easy to see that this person was old from all the wrinkles running throughout his face, one simply couldn't ignore his overbearing aura. With his arms resting on the armrests of the chair, he eyed Jia Feng penetratingly.

"And this one seems to meet our needs perfectly," he said. Jia Feng was disturbed. Not knowing what to say, he kept his silence. Liu Kun was also silent, not answering and only looking down. "You shall immediately make him sign the contract and start the training. The other parts of the research are about to come to an end."

"Yes, Dr. Xie," Liu Kun said respectfully. Turning around, he pushed Jia Feng out of the room.

"Hmph..."

Staring at the now empty space that Jia Feng had been a few seconds ago, Dr. Xie sighed.

"A great subject indeed..." He muttered to himself. Pushing with his feet, he turned the office chair once more to face the view of the city.

It gave him life, the strength to continue on his research even with his old and tired body. All the people, as small and insignificant as ants, living their lives oblivious to the world around them...

He didn't hate them nor did he like them. In this life, he only had one goal.

'To recreate that person's invention... No. To improve it even further,' Dr. Xie thought.

He closed his eyes and listened to the silence of being at the top...

...

"That seems plausible," Aston muttered. "However, we have to let the apartment recover for a little bit by itself. At least until it is able to produce hordes."

"Mm. That's an essential part of the plan after all," Song Lei nodded along. After he briefed his plan, Aston seemed pleased. "By the way, what were you researching so excited when I came here?"

"Oh? Umm... It doesn't mean much actually," Aston said. "At least for now... It is just scientifically exciting."

"What is it? Tell me," Song Lei asked. Aston sighed and gestured Song Lei to come closer. Getting up from the bed, Song Lei walked forward. Meanwhile, Aston spun around on his chair and pulled himself closer to the computer screen.

"Do you see this?" He asked as he pointed towards one of the few numbers that weren't constantly changing on the screen.

"Yeah?"

"That's the space stability consta- value," Aston sput out a name Song Lei had never heard of before. "Its symbol is K, which I just randomly gave. After all, during the time I was alive, no one other than me knew about this."

"Well... Its name is pretty explanatory," Song Lei said. The value was changing slightly from time to time, ranging between 0.20 and 0.23. "Is that like... Good?"

"It isn't something that's bad or good. It's just there," Aston said. "It basically represents the stability of space somewhere. I still don't exactly know how it being this low affects us. After all, it was always the same everywhere in the Old World. I didn't have the ability to compare for that reason."

"Low? How low exactly?" Song Lei asked.

"Unless there were mistakes in my previous calculations in the Old World, the value always came out as 14.07. It never changed. No matter where or when I run the experiment, that was the number that greeted me."

Song Lei facepalmed hard after hearing the number. Pushing his annoyance to a corner of his head, he asked, "That means..?"

"The New World is very, VERY unstable...."