Chapter 157: Terrifying Barbie Pink

Two piercing glares locked onto him, sending a chill down his spine. Li Tianque watched Ah Chu nervously, the pounding of his racing heart clearly echoing in the hollow room. The oppressive atmosphere made it hard to breathe.

For the first time, Li Tianque felt such overwhelming pressure from someone's gaze, as if his very blood vessels were being sliced apart one by one.

"What... what's wrong with you?" Li Tianque asked nervously.

Ah Chu did not answer. Instead, she quickly reached inside her jacket and slipped two sets of metal wire loops over her hands.

Li Tianque immediately looked into the distance, discovering that the blurry ghost-like figure was not closing in, which led him to surmise that he was safe for the moment.

This brought him a slight sense of relief. Just as he was about to speak again, Ah Chu suddenly sprang into action!

Two sharp whipping sounds made Li Tianque's heart skip a beat.

Without hesitation, Ah Chu hurled two metal wires toward Li Tianque.

Li Tianque felt two fierce gusts of wind rush past his ears, accompanied by a harsh whistling sound.

Immediately afterward, an even denser rustling of metal echoed from behind him, and Ah Chu sharply scolded:

"Get out of the way!"

Li Tianque quickly dodged, turning his head to look behind him.

He quickly spotted the anomaly along the extension of the metal wires:

From the ladder they had just descended, a massive torrent of thick yellow liquid was now pouring down from above. The liquid continuously spread and corroded everything in its path, emitting a sizzling sound akin to boiling water.

The Gluttonous Boundary had indeed found them, penetrating the thick iron cover and preparing to descend right here.

Li Tianque had no time to be shocked; he immediately ducked behind Ah Chu.

Ah Chu pulled hard. The metal wires in her hands vibrated violently and snapped mid-air.

"That thing still followed us. Where are we supposed to go now?" Li Tianque asked.

"The stairwell should be nearby. Hurry up and find it!"

Find it?

The word left Li Tianque momentarily stunned.

He had assumed that since Ah Chu had spent time rummaging through the corpses there, she must have known how to escape this place long ago.

To his surprise, she had no idea where the exit was either. This was utterly reckless.

Li Tianque helplessly swept his flashlight around the surroundings, searching while pondering something that felt deeply amiss.

Whether due to injuries or some other reason, Li Tianque had a persistent feeling that Ah Chu's current state was a bit overly tense; she looked as though she was...

Starting to feel out of her depth.

With this thought in mind, Li Tianque searched for the exit while patting his body, trying to find anything that could serve as self-defense in case Ah Chu met her demise before he did.

After searching for a long time, Li Tianque realized that the blade in his hand was already dulled, and the small hammer he had barely managed to use for self-defense had vanished.

In his panic, he casually picked up a hard object nearby, only to find it was the very bone he had sneered at just moments ago.

Sweeping the flashlight beam across Ah Chu, Li Tianque saw her glaring viciously at him, clearly extremely displeased with his dawdling.

Li Tianque instinctively avoided her gaze and hurriedly switched on his flashlight to search the ground.

The persistent squeaking of rats echoed from within the machinery, alternating with the sizzling sound of the Gluttonous Boundary corroding the metal, making Li Tianque feel intensely uncomfortable, itchy, and tormented.

He forced himself to shut out the environmental distractions and concentrate on observing the surroundings and the details on the floor.

Soon, Li Tianque discovered that this room had a completely different structure from the meeting room on the upper level.

The room he was currently in looked much newer than the one above, resembling a later addition.

The layout of the entire room resembled a standard operating theater, completely devoid of any hidden doors—at least, no such hidden door could possibly exist right beneath their feet.

There was no downward staircase here like the one on the upper level.

Among the shattered tiles on the floor, it seemed nearly impossible to spot any hidden mechanisms; after all, these tiles were far too fragmented to serve any concealing purpose.

If the mechanism leading to the lower level was truly well-hidden, it most likely existed within the two machines or beneath the three corpses.

Li Tianque had already briefly inspected the machines.

As for the corpses, he had no desire to check them again, especially since Ah Chu had already rummaged through them.

If there were any clues, Ah Chu should have found them.

Even if she had missed something, Li Tianque had no intention of repeating her actions; it was simply too sickening to bear.

As Li Tianque pondered, a deafening roar echoed not far away.

Li Tianque felt a sudden violent jolt beneath his feet. The foul air in the room was stirred by this shockwave and rushed into his nostrils, almost making him pass out.

Li Tianque covered his mouth, swatting away the stirred-up dust.

Clearly, this loud noise meant the giant yellow ball had corroded the cover and tumbled directly down the ladder.

The flashlight beam illuminated the source of the sound...

Dust filled the air, yet Li Tianque could not see the figure of the Gluttonous Boundary, only hearing the sizzling sound of corrosion and the disgusting friction of that massive meat lump.

The giant yellow ball seemed to be wedged at the lower end of the ladder.

Li Tianque directed his flashlight toward the giant yellow ball and quickly verified his guess.

The protruding lumps of yellow gelatin—resembling cuts of pork hanging in a butcher shop's net—were forcefully held back by Ah Chu's metal wires.

Unfortunately, those wires were still too thin and seemed unlikely to hold out for long.

Faced with the formidable corrosive power of the giant yellow ball, Ah Chu's metal wires melted into black smoke within mere seconds, and the Gluttonous Boundary blocking the upper section crashed heavily onto the floor with a loud thud.

Immediately afterward, an overpowering stench of blood surged forth, instantly eclipsing the room's original foul odor.

"That thing looks a bit wrong..." Li Tianque gripped his flashlight tightly and couldn't help crying out in alarm.

Ah Chu froze slightly, her combat stance momentarily faltering as hesitation washed over her.

In the flickering light, both of them saw that this gigantic lump of meat was no longer the repulsive yellow of before, but a vibrant, glossy Barbie pink.

Growing out of the giant pink ball's body were two soft, tentacle-like appendages resembling human arms.

Even more incredible was that the swarms of large tidal bugs writhing densely within the pink ball's belly seemed entirely unaffected by the corrosive fluids inside its body, crawling around with high activity while continuously excreting thick yellow gelatin from their tails.

Even more terrifyingly, within the translucent digestive organs visible inside the pink ball, there was actually a human head contorted in agony. That head was completely covered in swarms of large tidal bugs, which were frantically devouring it.

The dying struggle of that wretched man was laid bare through the plump body of the Gluttonous Boundary.

The rats in the room were also terrified by the sudden appearance of this behemoth, their screeches turning even sharper and more piercing.

Terrified to the core, Li Tianque stared fixedly at the human head inside the Gluttonous Boundary. It took him a long time to snap out of it, and he asked in bewildered shock:

"That head looks like... Tatar Brother... How... how did he get eaten?"

Ah Chu had recovered her composure by now, and said with a gloomy murmur:

"Hmph, since no time was wasted putting him out of his misery, he still had a bit of useful value."