Autophagy

"As you can see, we have three wounded people on our hand," Fu Ah said. Old Wolf, Gao Jing, and Lu Peng were all lying on the same bed. They looked like a bunch of dried seaweed side by side.

"Fuck," Damien cursed. He held his chin for some time and asked, "How is their situation?" Other than Lu Peng, Old Wolf and Gao Jing didn't have very obvious wounds.

"Lu Peng is heavily wounded as you can see," Fu Ah said while pointing at Lu Peng's charred arm. "His arm has to be amputated. It will be very hard to do properly and even then, there's little chance that he will live."

"Old Wolf has overused his energy and exhausted himself. Fortunately, he didn't have to use any more energy as he would probably die if that happened," she continued.

"How long will it take for him to heal?" Damien asked.

"Do I look like a doctor?" Fu Ah said. She sighed and started thinking. "Well... It probably won't take more than 12 hours. I'm just guessing though."

"I see... And what happened to Gao Jing? He seems fine as if he was just sleeping," Damien asked. Even though Old Wolf had no external wounds, you could guess that he was in a bad condition because of his rapid breathing and pale skin. As opposed to him, Gao Jing looked like he was sleeping casually.

"I don't know too. If Lu Peng woke up, we could ask him. But he doesn't seem to be waking up anytime soon," Fu Ah said.

"What are we going to do?" Fu Ah asked. "You have been in the New World for much longer than me. You're the boss," she said. She then walked to the right side of the room and sat on a chair. 

Damien held his chin and thought for some time. When he was done, he nodded to himself and said, "Okay. You'll be staying here and I'll be going down. After I finish searching the lower floors, we will go carry the wounded to the upper floors if I find any more of those robed men."

"What? Why would we go upwards?" Fu Ah asked. "Isn't it more dangerous there?"

"Not really," Damien said. "We have to go and find Song Lei. As long as we group up with him, we will have a much better chance of surviving. Furthermore, because the upper floors aren't fully cleared yet, we can use the neutral ghosts to our advantage."

"That's smart," Fu Ah praised. "But what would Song Lei help us with?"

"Well... You'll understand when we meet him," Damien cut her off.

"I hope that we can see him," Fu Ah said with an emotionless expression.

"Hm? What do you mean by that?" Damien asked while raising one of his brows.

"What do I mean? Isn't it obvious?" Fu Ah asked. Seeing that Damien was clueless, she continued by saying, "If there were any enemies left in the lower floors, they would have probably come up by now. We've made a lot of commotion, right? The mastermind is probably on the upper floors."

Hearing Fu Ah's reasoning, Damien frowned.

"How did they even enter the apartment?" He asked.

"Maybe they barged in through the main entrance?" Fu Ah said.

"That isn't very possible," Damien answered. "It's blocked after all."

"We can always learn that after we beat them. You should quickly clear out the lower floors and come back."

"Yes," Damien said. "See you then."

After taking the urn and putting it inside a backpack he found in the room, Damien parted ways with Fu Ah.

He passed the 3rd floor and went to the 2nd.

There wasn't anything out of the ordinary on this floor as opposed to the 3rd. Just like the others, this floor's branch member wasn't around too.

'More than half of them seem to have disappeared. I wonder what happened...' Damien thought. Realizing that he wasn't going to find anything more useful, he decided to go to the 1st floor. The first floor was mostly the same as the others. The only difference was that there were 7 rooms on this floor as opposed to other floors which had 14. There was a wide main entrance on the right side of the floor. This entrance had been blocked by Old Wolf back in the old days.

When Damien stepped onto the first-floor hallway, he was met with a horrifying scene.

'What the..?' He thought in his head. There were countless different monsters on this floor with white fog filling more than half of it. There were centipedes made out of human heads, Scorpions made out of human skin, and hazy-seeming demons that couldn't be distinguished by the human eye. Of course, all of these were clearly seen by Damien because of his eye ability. They were all fighting and trying to consume each other. There didn't seem to be an absolute winner for now.

'The entrance! The entrance must've been breached by those robed men!' Damien shouted in his head. 'Because they've breached the entrance, the apartment has become a target for the horrors outside. But why aren't they coming to the upper floors?'

Damien went back into the staircase and looked around.

'This must be it,' he thought. There was a small, yellow piece of paper stuck to the wall right next to the first-floor staircase entrance. The words on it were incredibly complicated and were constantly glowing in golden color. Damien couldn't read a single one of them. But, for some reason, he felt a weird attraction towards this talisman. If he didn't know that he would doom the entire apartment, he would probably take this talisman with him.

'How did I not realize this when I first passed here?' Damien asked himself. He had just passed by this place. Because the talisman was shining, it would be very noticeable in the darkness. He should've definitely noticed it when he passed by. When he turned his head, he realized that there were four more talismans on the wall. They weren't shining like the other one though.

Damien was about to leave but he heard a faint whisper in his ears.

"Help me..."

Damien quickly looked around him to spot who was making the sound. Unfortunately, he couldn't.

"Help me..." The voice repeated.

Damien gulped loudly and reached his head out to look into the hallway. The horrors were still fighting each other, however, there was a small light shining between those horrors. It was coming from one of the rooms on the floor. The door of the room was slightly opened.

'That's right!' Damien thought. 'This floor belongs to He Lingxin! This must be his ability.'

He Lingxin was the branch member of this floor. He was 27 years old and had a very shy personality. He had blue hair and his height was around 1.7 meters. His ability was telepathy. Although it didn't have much combat ability, its utility was very high. Normally, in any emergency situation on the first floor, He Lingxin would use his ability to inform the upper floors about it. His ability would let him inform people up to the 5th floor.

Damien, who got He Lingxin's signal, stepped back into the staircases to think.

'Hmm...'

Damien turned around and looked at the talismans on the wall. Damien grinned widely and took one of the talismans on the wall. After he had the talisman in his hand, he stuck it to his forehead. As soon as he did so, he felt an eerie energy wrapping around his body. Although he couldn't see it, the talisman was shining golden.

He took a deep breath and looked at the chaotic hallway.

'Great! This is so exciting!' Damien thought in his head. He hadn't felt this kind of excitement in a long time.

After taking another talisman with him, Damien stepped out to the hallway. As soon as he did so, all the horrors stopped fighting each other and turned their heads towards Damien.

Damien's mouth twitched when he saw this scene.

'Fuck.'

He stood in his place without moving. After a short time, the horrors got back to fighting each other.

Damien sighed and started walking through the hallway. Although he had to dodge a few stray attacks from the horrors, they weren't much of a problem as they weren't aimed at him. After passing the hallway and reaching He Lingxin's room, the door was opened and Damien was pulled in.

He Lingxin closed the door behind Damien and turned on the lights. There were marks left on his eyes, indicating that he had been crying. Damien facepalmed and said, "Put this on your forehead. Make sure that you stay calm and don't make any sounds. We have to leave this place." He held the talisman out.

"Mm," He Lingxin nodded. He took the talisman and put it on his head. The talisman started shining just like the Damien's one.

They left the room together and started walking towards the other end of the hallway. Although He Lingxin was really scared, he could still somehow put up with the terror he was going through.

As soon as they reached the staircase, He Lingxing breathed a sigh of relief.

"We have to go now," Damien said. "Fu Ah is waiting for us...."