Autophagy

"What the fuck?" Song Lei accidentally asked out loud. The burning hot gust of air made him close his eyes. As soon as he took a step into the hallway, he started sweating uncontrollably. When he could open his eyes properly, he was mesmerized by the state of the corridor.

"The floor is..." Song Lei muttered. He took a step ahead and did his best to not burn himself. "...Lava?"

This corridor, which was tremendously different from the other ones, was like a volcanic underground cave. For Song Lei who hadn't seen too much light in the recent days, this much light was almost blinding. He had to squint his eyes and spend a long time getting used to it. Weird thing was, this absurd amount of light didn't leave the floor for even a centimeter. From the staircase, this hallway looked to be no different from the other floors.

'So this is what a hell floor means...' Song Lei thought. 'I wonder if all the other floors are the same...'

In Dante's Inferno, there were 9 circles of hell. On these concentric circles of hell, the sinners were punished eternally for their sins. In each circle, there were different kinds of punishments for different kinds of sinners. Although Song Lei had no idea about the details, he had heard about Dante's Inferno. He wondered if the hell part of the apartment was similar to that.

The layout of the corridor was weirdly familiar for Song Lei but he couldn't make it out easily because of the lava flowing here and there.

'What is this place..?' Song Lei thought some time while holding his chin. 'Oh right.'

This hallway had the exact same layout as the corridor back in Isabel's mansion's upper floor. But here, instead of rooms, there were houses on each side of the hallway. Of course, the lava was there too. It was flowing down from the ceiling into small puddles of lava. Although there was some space for a person to walk around, no one could resist this amount of heat for a long time. And there was always the possibility of a person's clothing catching fire.

'God... I really can't fathom this world...' Song Lei thought while facepalming. He had seen a lot of weird things since he had entered the New World but every new one managed to make him surprised again.

'How can there be lava in a place like this?' He asked in his head. 'Normally, this amount of lava could easily melt through everything and set this whole apartment on fire. But here, it just flows without burning anything,' Song Lei thought while looking at the wooden doors on the floor.

Instead of standing in the middle of the hallway awestruck, Song Lei went back to the staircases and took out his pen and notebook. He didn't know what kind of effect the heat would have on the paper. For him who had a superior body to most humans, he felt like he would faint if he spent more than two minutes in the corridor because of the heat. He was scared that the notebook would start burning if he tried to use it in the hallway.

He crouched on the staircase and occasionally reached his head out to look at the hallway. After calmly drawing the layout of the floor onto the notebook, Song Lei closed it and put it back into his backpack.

'I should probably leave the backpack here,' Song Lei thought. He decided to take his clothes and backpack off. He left them in the staircase before entering the hallway again.

He only had his underwear and a small bag to carry the red blood beads he would gather in the hallway with him.

'This is hot...' Song Lei thought while wiping the sweat off of his forehead. He had to be quick or he would start experiencing hyperpyrexia.

He started running in the hallway here and there to pick up red blood beads. His bag was filled up in no time so he left the hallway. In around one and a half minutes, Song Lei was left feeling like he was about to faint. The normally chilling, eerie breeze that would make him feel uncomfortable while going through the apartment staircase now made him feel like he was in heaven.

Unfortunately for him, he hadn't gathered all the red blood beads on the hallway yet. Song Lei started waiting for his body to cool down. While doing so, he took out his notebook and started noting down the things he had learned about the floor and his adventure in Isabel's mansion.

He had to rest for almost twenty minutes before he was able to enter the hallway again. This time, he managed to collect more than half of the red blood beads. After repeating this process a few more times, Song Lei managed to finish his job on this floor.

'Now that I think of it...' Song Lei thought as he was about to leave the floor. 'Isabel and Mia are supposed to be on this floor right now, right?'

Song Lei looked at the hallway again and tried to guess where those two would be. He locked his eyes onto the last room of the hallway. 'That must be it,' he thought. Even though he wouldn't be able to perceive them, he still wanted to greet them in some way. He took out the cursed knife from his backpack in case he met with anything dangerous.

After reentering the hallway, Song Lei started walking to the end of it. He had to carefully avoid the lava. Other than that, he didn't have a big problem passing the hallway. All the gurglings and the noises of the lava suppressed any noise Song Lei would make.

This put him at an ease. If he were to accidentally activate the horde while passing the corridor, even his bones wouldn't be left. He remembered how Xiang Yimu had died in the endless ghost horde.

'Definitely don't want to experience that...' He thought.

He reached the end of the hallway and looked at the door.

"Gulp...."