Chapter 152: Deadline for Meals

Achu suddenly asked such a question, leaving Li Tianque somewhat bewildered.

Upon reflection, Li Tianque remembered that when he was frantically running upstairs earlier, he indeed seemed to have squashed a few large woodlice.

"It was too dark just now. After I opened that door, I must have crushed a few. Crushing those fellows was actually quite stress-relieving!" Li Tianque said.

After hearing this, Achu fell silent for a moment, pointed at the first door behind Li Tianque, and said:

"Is the door you mentioned the one right behind you?"

Li Tianque nodded and said:

"Yes!"

Achu's eyes widened a bit more, and she said softly:

"We've stirred up trouble, run!"

Run?

Before Li Tianque could react, Achu was already sprinting toward the previously collapsed staircase.

Seeing Achu once again grit her teeth and accelerate, Li Tianque instantly realized the situation was ominous.

It seemed these woodlice were quite likely to bring trouble upon him.

Thinking of this, Li Tianque mustered all his strength to keep up with Achu's pace.

Almost simultaneously, Li Tianque noticed that the woodlice hiding in the corners surged forth like a tidal wave, frantically scuttling past his feet and crawling with a rustling sound toward the door behind him.

"These bugs don't seem to bite, look, they're just running straight past." Li Tianque said.

Before his voice trailed off, Li Tianque was startled to hear unusual movements coming from behind.

Judging by the sound, Li Tianque deduced that the disturbance was originating from inside that door.

This filled Li Tianque with doubt; that door clearly had a solid brick wall directly behind it, so why was it making a sound?

He immediately turned around to shine his flashlight, only to witness a terrifying sight:

The large woodlice from the corridors on both sides and the main hall had somehow forced that door open, sticking densely layer upon layer into the brick wall inside the doorway.

The number of these bugs was simply overwhelming. Their plump carapaces looked crystal-clear under the illumination of the light, resembling from a distance the skin of a patient afflicted with condyloma.

What was even more bizarre was that these bugs seemed to be struggling desperately to squeeze inward into the wall. Some were knocked off onto the ground, yet they continued to climb upward, as if there were some ultimate delicacy hidden inside the wall.

"After you crushed these bugs, their bodily fluids remained on your shoes.

This fluid changes over time, turning into an odor that irritates them and serving as a dangerous signal.

Now that you've appeared among these bugs again, this scent will provoke them, making them feel threatened and driving them back to their original nest." Achu said while running.

Li Tianque was even more baffled, and pointing behind him in confusion, he asked:

"Then wouldn't it be better if they all went back? Why are we still running?"

"Soon you'll know why." Achu had already run to the collapsed section of the staircase, looking up at the ruined steps.

"It's right here, it's collapsed. We can't go up from here. We might as well have just rushed straight through from the first floor earlier." Li Tianque said.

"That way is a dead end." After saying this, Achu slowly climbed up the steps and measured the size of the gap with her hands, as if calculating something.

"A dead end? You mean going up this staircase doesn't lead back to the first floor we were just on?"

"Right."

Li Tianque quickly grasped Achu's meaning.

She meant that the flight of stairs Fatso Bi had walked on probably did not connect to the floor Li Tianque had reached via the other staircase.

The stairs on this side likely led to an entirely different place, which was why Achu had returned to the basement to retrace this particular staircase.

Yet this still did not make sense. If the layout here truly worked this way, how on earth had Fatso Bi and Achu encountered each other?

And how could Li Tianque have picked up Fatso Bi's walkie-talkie?

Just as Li Tianque was feeling bewildered, Achu, who was half-crouched on the stairs, suddenly turned her head and asked:

"Did you guys bring explosives?"

"Explosives? No..."

Li Tianque quickly understood why Achu asked such a question, because he did indeed smell a very strong odor of sulfur here, only he hadn't noticed it earlier due to the emergency.

"You mean to say, this place wasn't trampled down by Fatso Bi and the others, but blown up?"

Achu raised an eyebrow, staring at Li Tianque with a helpless expression that seemed to say asking was a waste of breath.

Judging from the current situation, however, for the two of them to climb up from here using Li Tianque's physical skills was simply impossible.

The drop was far too great. The only plausible method would be for both Li Tianque and Achu to go into the storage room beneath the stairs, where one could step on the other's shoulders to get up first, and then pull the person below up.

Yet before Li Tianque could voice his suggestion, he felt the stone steps beneath his feet begin to tremble again in succession.

At first, Li Tianque thought it was his imagination, but a second wave of tremors struck without warning from the ground a few seconds later.

Li Tianque whipped his head around, discovering that the source of these tremors was that very brick wall covered in woodlice.

In the lingering beam of the flashlight, the brick wall appeared dark and eerie, and the fake door began to shake violently due to the sudden vibration, as if an invisible pair of giant hands was continuously rocking it.

The plump woodlice covering the brick wall all tumbled down in showers due to the trembling force. Yet even after falling flat on their backs, they relentlessly scrambled up again, crawling back onto the wall.

The state of these woodlice swarms was precisely like a mob of refugees scrambling frantically before a distribution of relief food.

Li Tianque's eyes widened. At first, he had assumed there were just so many woodlice that they had piled up in multiple layers. But now, as they tumbled down from the vibration, he clearly saw:

This wall was actually bulging outward...

It was almost as if something inside was about to burst right through the wall!

What could it be?

Li Tianque stared intently in that direction; the wall continued to tremble.

Achu had also noticed the tremors behind them, but unlike Li Tianque, she was not captivated by the sounds. She merely glanced casually and resumed measuring the gap between the stairs.

"Achu, that wall just vibrated..."

"Yeah, it's the feeding limit!" Achu said.

"Limit? What limit?" Li Tianque felt somewhat dazed.

Before Achu could reply, another explosive sound rang out from the bulging wall.

The "thing" inside the wall began to crash against the structure frantically, emitting a series of terrifying impacts.

With every prior impact, a layer of woodlice had been shaken off the wall, but after this single explosive sound, the wall instantly became completely bare.

All the woodlice had been knocked to the ground by this force, and the entire wall had bulged to its absolute limit; if the slightest bit more force were applied from within, the wall would collapse instantly.

Li Tianque's heart also began to pound wildly along with these impacts. Although he had no idea what was hidden inside the wall, nor what the "feeding limit" Achu spoke of actually was,

Since the thing inside this wall originated from this ghostly sanitarium, it was guaranteed not to be anything pleasant or delightful for Li Tianque, that was for certain!

Sure enough, the wall ultimately failed to withstand the shoving of the creature within. With a thunderous crash, it burst open into a massive hole, and bricks and tiles came tumbling down in a shower, scattering everywhere.

The thing inside the wall slowly squeezed its way out...