Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 278 Hotel Shock
Unlike other buildings, there are no landscape trees, electric poles, concrete roads, vehicles or anything else around the hotel. All debris within a certain range has been cleared away.

The hotel's golden door was closed. Looking inside through the brown transparent glass on the door, one could vaguely see the dust-free marble floor and the extinguished crystal chandelier. The front desk where the service staff should have been sitting was empty and no one was seen.

Adele withdrew her searching gaze and pushed the door of the hotel. She found that the door itself was made of glass and had a hard texture. There was a heavy lock on the inside that was tied to an iron chain. Considering the rule of "no looking into the mirror", Adele quickly turned her eyes away from the door.

It doesn't look like a stronghold...

Adele cast a questioning look at Qiao Qiao. Qiao Qiao noticed something and replied in a low voice: "It wasn't like this before. We just cleared the surrounding buildings and bunkers and didn't lock the gate."

"Besides, there must be someone at the front desk. Something must have gone wrong here."

Qiao Qiao pinned the red and blue police lights on his chest, then took out a submachine gun and stun grenades from his pocket. "Let's go, let's go to another place."

"and many more."

Adele grabbed Qiao Qiao and said, "You just said that humans will never lock this door or evacuate the front desk?"

"Yes. This is the last containment point for normal humans. It will never be locked or unattended on the inside."

Qiao Qiao said affirmatively.

"Now it's locked. That means the person who did this was definitely not a normal human being, but some kind of creature with human intelligence. They don't want later people to come in. According to the information they have, this lock has a certain degree of deterrent effect, so they locked the door."

Adele analyzed, "In other words, the thing that locked the door doesn't want us to go in through this door."

"It seems to make sense..." Qiao Qiao hesitated for a moment, but still nodded.

"We only follow human rules. We don't need to follow monster prohibitions."

Adele took two steps back, turned around suddenly, and kicked the solid door. The power brought by the potion directly shook the hinges of the door, causing the originally copper-cast and iron-like fiberglass door to flutter.

Then, Adele continued to kick the door hard. Finally, when she kicked it for the third time, the door hinge could not bear the weight, and the glass door fell to the ground with a loud bang, causing dust to fly inside.

The moment the door was kicked open, Adele threw a stun grenade into the door, and then pulled Qiao Qiao out.

A sharp explosion sounded, and Adele felt her hair being blown by something indescribable. Then, without looking up, she thrust her hidden blade forward fiercely.

Sharp screams came from near and far. When Adele retracted her hidden blade, she saw that it was covered with sticky black blood, just like the monsters contaminated by the underground in the dark sea.

When the hall calmed down, Adele and Qiao Qiao looked at each other and walked carefully into the hotel through the main door.

According to Qiao Qiao's description, the original Fountain of Youth was a major attraction on Bimini Island. However, after the pollution outbreak, people discovered that only the spring water in Bimini was not affected by the pollution from underground. In order to ensure the supply, the government simply built a water tower on the top of the Hilton Hotel and transferred the Bimini spring water here.

"The water tower is made of a kind of medulla near the spring, in order to restore the environment of the spring water. After all, the government does not know why the spring water is fine, so it can only replicate the environment where the spring water is naturally produced as much as possible."

Qiao Qiao explained to Adele, "Let's go upstairs first and confirm whether there are any normal residents in the rooms. As for the spring water, let's put it aside for now."

Adele naturally had no objection. After all, the hotel only had four floors and it would be done in a short while.

The two stood in the corridor covered with dark red carpet and looked around. There was a round clock hanging on the wall at the end of the corridor, which showed the time was 11:32 at night. Of course, for Adele, this time had no reference significance, as the time in the two places was obviously different.

The walls were covered with pink wallpaper, which covered the originally mirror-like marble walls. It seemed that in order to avoid looking at the reflection, the wallpaper was pasted in a mess, which made Adele, who had a mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, feel the blood vessels in her head throb.

In the gaps of the wallpaper, two orange-yellow flower-shaped lampshades can be seen at intervals, emitting warm light. The door frame outside the elevator room is covered with a circle of green marble tiles, and above it is a third of a clock-like curved copper indicator that seems to move with the movement of the elevator.

"Those guys seem to interfere with electronic equipment, so most of the facilities have been urgently replaced with mechanical ones."

Qiao Qiao explained to Adele and knocked on the door of the room closest to them.

As expected, no one answered.

Adele was about to kick the door, but Qiao Qiao held her back.

"They are just following the rules here. We can't smash their door. According to the rules, you can't go out after 11:30 at night."

“There are such rules and regulations?”

Adele asked confusedly.

"Indeed, but I can't find a similar copy of the employee code of conduct right now, so you just need to follow my instructions and don't act on your own, otherwise you might end up hurting a lot of people."

Qiao Qiao said seriously, "If the other party doesn't answer, it means they don't need service, or 'they' don't need service. In short, just don't disturb them."

"OK then……"

Adele nodded in agreement, and the two of them checked each room one by one.

Opposite the elevator was a stairwell with a green "EXIT" sign, from which one could reach the upper and lower floors. The stairwell, like the room, had a very good sound absorption effect, so even if she detonated the stun bomb directly in the stairwell, it would be difficult for the people upstairs to hear it.

However, Adele had no intention of investigating at the moment. She just followed Qiao Qiao obediently, listening to her knocking on each door and asking if anyone needed help.

"No one answered 1008, no one answered 1009..."

Qiao Qiao talked to herself as she walked slowly forward.

Looking at Qiao Qiao's figure, Adele always felt something was wrong, but she couldn't remember what went wrong for a while.

"stop!"

Qiao Qiao suddenly shouted in a low voice, and immediately stopped and quickly retreated. Adele also easily stopped her forward momentum with the assassin's control over her body.

The room in front of them, Room 1010, was not locked. Qiao Qiao opened it with just a light knock. The part that could be seen from the outside was the same as a normal hotel room, with nothing unusual.

A difficult decision was placed before Adele and Qiao Qiao: to go in or not?

"I'll go in and take a look. You stay here and watch."

Qiao Qiao made a quick judgment. Although it was dangerous to separate in this situation, her sense of responsibility made her understand that she must never retreat in such a situation.

Adele wanted to open her mouth to stop him, but she suppressed the thought because she couldn't find a better alternative for the time being.

"and many more!"

Just as Qiao Qiao was about to step into the room, Adele suddenly understood the source of her abnormal feeling.

The orange manual said that if you encounter something that consists of only numbers, you should destroy it without hesitation. The door with only the house number is undoubtedly one of the things that needs to be destroyed!

In her previous duty life, Qiao Qiao was accustomed to treating the Hilton Hotel as a safe area, so she did not think about following the rules here. Instead, she handled it according to the hotel rules she remembered, and therefore did not notice anything unusual.

It was obviously too late to pull Qiao Qiao back now. In desperation, Adele directly used her extraordinary ability. Countless white silk threads rushed out from her body, wrapping Qiao Qiao tightly, and light blue frost also grew rapidly in front of her, forming an impenetrable ice wall.

Her timely reaction saved Qiao Qiao's life. Almost at the same time, a dark and corrupt figure rushed out of the room and pounced on Qiao Qiao who was walking in front with lightning speed.

The black liquid on its body gave off an ominous aura. Even with just a quick glimpse, Adele immediately felt the undigested potion in her body stirring. If she continued to watch, she would most likely lose control or collapse. Frightened, she quickly looked away.

The opponent's speed was so fast that ordinary people could not react at all. However, this time it encountered Adele, who had reached the middle sequence, far beyond the scope of ordinary humans.

Based on the judgment made from the quick glance just now, Adele took advantage of the moment when the monster was blocked by the ice wall and created black flames in the air, wrapping the monster that was scratching the ice wall frantically.

The monster let out a shrill wail, and the black mucus on its surface quickly evaporated.

However, just when Adele thought she was out of danger, something strange happened again.

After the black slime mixed with the black fire, it quickly changed. It was no longer in human form. It disintegrated from a broken human form and turned into a spreading black fireball. In the blink of an eye, it climbed up the huge ice wall created by Adele and pounced on Adele and Qiao Qiao who had just been released.

Can it copy the properties of objects it touches?
Adele was horrified, but she had no time to think about it. She quickly raised the wall again to seal the black fire that was climbing up.

The imitation black fire even learned the ability to devour spiritual energy. The spiritual energy required to maintain the ice wall soared almost exponentially, and cold sweat soon broke out on Adele's face.

"run!"

In fact, there was no need to give orders. Although Qiao Qiao still didn't understand what Adele's abilities were and where she came from, she at least knew that she was helping her, and the wall in front of her was already crumbling.

Qiao Qiao and Adele ran upstairs quickly and didn't stop until they reached the elevator.

If that thing had learned the characteristics of black fire, it should not have been able to spread so far. After all, if there were not so many spiritualities for it to eat, it would be absolutely impossible for black fire to spread to such a large area.

Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't seem to have the ability to judge what it should and should not learn... It just learned black fire, and now it should learn the characteristics of ice wall.

Sure enough, after the black flames devoured the ice wall, they stopped moving and remained solidified there, unable to move even if they wanted to.

Of course, the road leading to the other side of the hotel was also blocked. Adele would not risk letting that thing learn new skills anyway.

The elevator stayed on the first floor. When Adele pressed the switch, the long-dusty elevator door opened with a bang.

"Let's go upstairs." Adele was about to walk upstairs when she heard Qiao Qiao's trembling voice behind her.

"Who...are you?"

Adele sighed heavily. She knew that the most troublesome thing was coming. In this world, the trust between people was close to collapse. How to make Qiao Qiao, a normal person of that era, believe in such an obvious outlier like herself? It was really not easy to explain in a few words.

After thinking it over carefully, Adele put away the revolver and hidden blade in her hands, took out the orange booklet from her pocket, and waved it at Qiao Qiao.

Then, under Qiao Qiao's suspicious gaze, she began to recite the contents of the orange manual word by word.

"Humans are creatures that are slightly taller than vehicles and are very similar to the photo on the cover page. Human eyes are never pure colors. Human eyes can only see humans. Human heads do not have extra organs. I should not feel any discomfort. My fingers can be crossed and the number on both sides is equal. My nails are not longer than my fingers."

"Humanity is precious, lovable, loyal, brave, respectable, united, peaceful, and friendly. Humanity will not smile all the time, nor will it cry all the time. Humanity may be afraid, but it will never give up easily."

……

Adele finished reading the last page of the manual, and Qiao Qiao kept holding the submachine gun level with her heart until she finished reading the entire text.

"what do you mean?"

Qiao Qiao's voice was a little hesitant, as if she was still hesitating about something.

“Think about the astronomers.”

Adele handed the orange booklet to Qiao Qiao. "My origins are more complicated than you think, and you and I are from different worlds. We don't know whether knowing each other will pollute each other, but do you still want to get to the bottom of it?"

Qiao Qiao was stunned for a moment, didn't say anything, and the arm holding the submachine gun dropped slightly.

"'Where am I from?' 'Who am I?' Let's put these questions aside for now. All you need to know is that I am a living person just like you."

Adele shoved the orange manual into his hand. "We still have some time. You can slowly summarize the rules of getting along with me. But now, you should read the last page aloud."

(End of this chapter)