Just then—
rustle…
A very faint sound, like fabric rubbing against a rough surface, reached my ears.
It felt so close! Right outside the door!
Immediately following was a faint, almost inaudible inhale that was suppressed deep in the throat.
That wasn't a cough; it sounded more like... a sniffing sound? With a chilling, cautious greed.
It seemed as if something was sniffing through the thin metal door, smelling the sweet, rotten odor emanating from Xiao Jin, the scent of a highly infected person!
Who is it?
Xiao Jin's eyes, which had been tormented by high fever and festering sores to the point of almost losing focus, suddenly contracted the moment she heard that voice!
Deep within his murky pupils, a sharp, icy glint suddenly shone, like a blade sinking into an icy sea!
Her rotting, stiff muscles tensed instantly! As if struck by an electric current!
The left hand, festering and swollen with dark purple veins, moved silently to its side with lightning speed, completely out of character for its condition, and firmly gripped the hilt of the broken shadow's knife.
Because of the force, her fingertips dug deep into the festering flesh around her palm, squeezing out foul-smelling pus, but Xiao Jin felt no pain whatsoever.
Is it a player, an NPC, or a fog spirit? Or perhaps some other monster that spawned from within the black fog?
Xiao Jin was like a bowstring stretched to its limit, brimming with the power of death. All her senses were heightened to the extreme, locked onto the thick, deadly darkness outside the door.
Breathing was suppressed to the lowest possible level.
Inside the rotting chest cavity, the heart beat heavily and slowly, enveloped in thick, dark purple blood.
one time.
Two times.
Outside the door, the faint, chilling sniffing sound seemed to pause for a moment.
It was as if the "thing" outside the door had also sensed the extremely faint yet real killing intent emanating from the "rotting corpse" inside.
A deathly silence returned, thicker and heavier than before.
The air seemed to solidify, each speck of dust carrying the deathly stench of gunpowder, rotting flesh, and blood, pressing heavily on Xiao Jin's festering skin.
Outside the door, the suppressed gasps of breath disappeared.
Instead, there was a more unsettling...silence.
It is not emptiness, but a hunting-like silence, where some living creature, under extreme concentration, holds its breath and compresses all vital signs to the limit.
Just like a venomous snake coiling up before launching a fatal attack.
Xiao Jin's festering eyelids trembled slightly, and the murky darkness in his vision seemed to grow even thicker, with countless tiny tentacles dancing around the writhing black shadows at the edges.
The headache felt like countless red-hot steel needles repeatedly piercing and stirring inside the skull, each stirring bringing a wave of overwhelming dizziness.
She bit her lower lip hard, breaking the festering sores. A strong, rotten, sweet, and metallic taste filled her mouth, which ironically brought a twisted clarity to her dazed mind.
I mustn't faint! Absolutely not!
Time stretched out infinitely in the suffocating silence.
A second feels like an eternity.
Click.
Suddenly, a very faint, almost hallucinatory metallic scraping sound rang out.
It wasn't from the lock, but... the hinge?
Xiao Jin's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints!
Almost at the same instant the sound rang out, her body, which had been poised to strike, suddenly released itself like a spring that had been compressed to its limit!
Instead of retreating, he used all the remaining strength in his body to lunge and roll to the right of the door panel, away from the direction of the door hinge's rotation!
boom--!!!
The moment Xiao Jin's body left the spot, the seemingly sturdy alloy door panel was struck head-on by a battering ram, emitting a deafening and terrifying roar!
The entire door then burst open inwards!
Twisted and deformed metal fragments, broken door lock parts, and even shattered concrete blocks from the door frame edges sprayed violently into the room like shotgun shells!
Immediately afterwards, a huge, twisted black shadow, carrying with it an intense, suffocating stench of rotting flesh and a violent killing intent, crashed into the room like a runaway train!
It chose the exact spot where Xiao Jin had just been leaning against!
Unfortunately, we came up empty-handed!
A pungent smell of dust and metal shavings filled the air.
The dark figure missed its target and its heavy body crashed into the wall where Xiao Jin had been sitting, making a dull thud. The wall instantly caved in and cracked!
It let out a low growl, a mixture of rage and confusion, like the strain of an old bellows.
Xiao Jin, who was rolling around, didn't have time to see what it was. The violent movement aggravated the festering wounds all over his body. The excruciating pain swept through his nerves like a tsunami, and his vision was instantly submerged by the surging darkness and stars.
She endured the excruciating pain and nausea that seemed to tear her soul apart, and with the instincts honed from countless brushes with death, before her body had even completely stopped tumbling, she swung the knife in her right hand fiercely towards the direction the dark figure had crashed into!
The bluish-purple blade light flashed with a sharp aura and struck the dark figure directly.
boom--!
A dull sound suddenly exploded!
A pale blue energy trail cleaved vertically across the shadowy figure's head, chest, abdomen, and other vital areas! The lightning briefly illuminated the dimly lit room.
This also allowed Xiao Jin to see clearly the terrifying entity that had just turned around after the impact, revealing part of its outline!
That wasn't a human at all!
It still vaguely retains the outline of a human, but its size has swelled to nearly twice its original size!
At the same time, the skin has a viscous, flowing, pitch-black texture similar to tar, and is covered with swollen, pulsating dark purple pustules!
One arm had mutated into a huge organ with several sharp bone spurs splitting at the front end; this was the thing that had just smashed the door!
Its other arm hung limply at the end, with several pale white tentacles that wriggled and dripped corrosive slime!
Its head... no, it could no longer be called a head, it was more like a huge, fleshy tumor that kept secreting black mucus.
Although the positions of the facial features could be barely discerned, only two bottomless holes remained in the area of the eyes, burning with a murky dark red light!
[Beep beep beep—Warning! Warning! Highly distorted variant has appeared!]
As a pollutant carrying a large amount of toxins, being hit by it will significantly increase the player's corrosion level...
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