From the end of the world

Chapter 486: First Encounter with the Doomsday Weirdness 1
Let's sort out the whole story.

Before, at the main base of Taoyuan Township, I fought a fierce battle with Huang Quan and Xu Gou, and at the end of the battle, I was exiled to the nothingness outside the world.

After I spent an unknown amount of time in the void, I luckily escaped from the void with the guidance of a "firefly" whose location was unknown.

After escaping, I came to my senses and found myself in this room.

This is a messy room, with a lot of household garbage piled on the floor and bed, and dust everywhere. The desk lamp thrown on the bed looks like a battery-powered one, and the power is about to run out. The flickering light is annoying, so I simply turn it off and summon a fireball, making it float in the air to provide light.

When you are in the void, you cannot use superpowers, or in other words, there are no elements that support superpowers. Just like software cannot exist independently without hardware, fire cannot appear in a place where all concepts no longer exist. Fortunately, I can use my powers again now, which is also one of the evidences that I have successfully escaped from the void.

So, have I really returned to the real world?

The answer seems to be no.

My "fireflies" are scattered in the real world, and once they return, I can reconnect with them. But now I can't do that. It's as if all the "fireflies" have disappeared.

I am more inclined to believe that I am still in an abnormal area where I cannot re-establish contact with the "fireflies".

Either it is an alien planet that is countless light years away from the Earth, or it is an alien space with strong isolation properties... Of course, it is unlikely that alien civilizations will have bedrooms like humans on Earth. I even saw Chinese and English on the packaging of household garbage next to it. So judging from the current situation, it can only be the latter.

Another piece of evidence is the feedback from my perception. This space gives me a very strange feeling. As the Great Impermanence, I can easily perceive a space with at least a province as the center. Although I can't "hear conversations anywhere on the earth" like the old boxing god, but under the condition of not paying attention to accuracy, if I work hard, I can try to expand the limit of perception to the scale of national territory.

But I can't do that here. The space here seems to be changing randomly all the time, and most of the feedback is noise, which makes it impossible for me to perceive the scenery outside my field of vision as usual. Even if it is limited to my surroundings, that is, in this room, it is the same. The seemingly unchanging picture, in my intuition, seems to become another unrelated scene as long as I close my eyes for a few seconds and then open them again.

It's simply inexplicable. Even if it's a different space formed by dreams, it wouldn't necessarily be so chaotic, right? Although I haven't entered a real different space formed by dreams.

While confirming the status of the surrounding space, I also checked my own status.

After arriving in this strange space, I automatically recovered my body and soul, and my consciousness became much clearer than in the void. My memory was not lost, and the memory of every day, every hour, and every minute was closely connected.

As for the state of my true spirit, although I cannot feel my true spirit directly, I can confirm it indirectly through my consciousness. My true spirit should still be injured from the fierce battle with Huang Quan. Although it is not as serious as the last battle with Ming Zhuo, it is better to find an opportunity to recuperate.

It would not be a problem to join the battle again, the Slag Straight Sword could be summoned again. There were still nearly two-thirds of the flames stored in it, which was more than enough to activate the third form of light body.

Then, it’s about the “fireflies” that “led” me to this place…

I tried to concentrate again. The signal from the unknown "firefly" was extremely weak. If I hadn't known about its existence in advance, I would definitely not have been able to sense it. Even now, it took me several minutes to finally catch a glimpse of its existence.

That unknown "firefly"...seems to be in this strange space as well?

I was a little unsure. The other party's signal was intermittent. It was also possible that it was outside the alien space, but because it was very close to the boundary of the alien space, I happened to be able to confirm its existence. I could neither establish a communication channel with it nor confirm the distance between myself and the other party.

To put it another way, because my consciousness has become clearer now, I am no longer as preconceived as I was when I was in the void, thinking that the other party is a "firefly". The other party may also be just a piece of heat or something... In any case, one thing can be confirmed, that is, the other party must be something transformed from my spirit.

Unfortunately, perhaps due to the influence of the chaotic space around me, it is now difficult for me to determine the direction of that "firefly" (let's call it that for now), and I don't know how to move towards it.

Anyway, let's explore outside of this room first.

I turned around and tried to open the bedroom door, but after turning the doorknob, I felt something outside pushing the door open.

It was a heavy object that had fallen outside and pressed down the door panel. It weighed about 100 pounds and gave off a very strong stench. I stepped back two steps and stepped aside. The object fell to the floor. Looking closely, it turned out to be a person wearing a dark blue sportswear - to be exact, a human corpse.

The body looked like it had been dead for a long time. It was severely rotten and covered with a lot of foul-smelling corpse fluid and spoiled plasma. When it fell to the ground, it made a sound of water and splashed the foul-smelling liquid. Dense maggots were crawling inside and outside the body, and when the body fell to the ground, some of the maggots were even thrown out.

Even I had an instinctive panic and nausea when I saw this scene. It had nothing to do with my strength or character, it was purely a physiological reflex. Fortunately, after the last exploration of the Humanitarian Division's headquarters site, I had some immunity to this kind of scene, and I would never really have an inappropriate reaction. I burned all the maggots on the corpse, and then roughly checked the cause of death of the corpse.

Although I lack knowledge of autopsies, I have seen countless dead bodies, and I can tell that this body did not suffer any fatal injuries before death, which means that it is possible that the person died of poisoning.

In addition, I noticed a medicine bottle where the body fell. I picked it up and took a look. This is a prescription drug, and there are instructions and contraindications on the bottle, especially warning that the holder is prohibited from taking a large amount, otherwise it may cause death.

There was not even a single pill left in the bottle, probably all of them were swallowed by the deceased. I formed a picture in my mind - for some reason, the deceased was in great despair before he died, and in his last moments, he leaned against the bedroom door, took a lethal dose of medicine in one breath, and waited for his life to pass away.

I stepped over the body and entered the hallway outside the bedroom, then moved to the living room and looked around.

If the situation in the bedroom is just dirty and messy, then the situation in the corridor and living room can be described as "hell drawing".

I have seen several videos posted by accounts operated by housekeeping service companies on video websites. In order to show that no matter how bad the hygiene conditions of the service objects are, they can clean them up to a bright and beautiful state, they would choose some extremely dirty houses that even garbage rooms would be inferior to as the locations for video shooting.

The sanitation here is comparable to those houses that make people doubt whether this is a place where humans can live. There are all kinds of household garbage and kitchen waste all over the floor. If you peel off a layer of garbage, you can see cockroaches and other insects crawling around on the back, and even a lot of excrement. The owner of the house - probably the deceased - seems to use all rooms except the bedroom as excrement places.

As for the reason, I think it is not because the deceased had this kind of lifestyle habit, but because of two aspects.

Firstly, the water and electricity in this house have been cut off, and the toilet in the bathroom cannot be flushed. If one lives in this environment for a long time, it is understandable that the excrement cannot be transferred to the outside, and eventually piles up all over the floor.

If this is the case, why didn’t the deceased change his place of residence, or at least move all the garbage, including excrement, outside the house? This is where the “second point” comes in.

Second, the deceased seemed to be very afraid of the outside world.

I saw at the entrance that the main door was locked from the inside with layers of wooden boards and iron chains, and there were a lot of furniture piled up there, as if the deceased was afraid that something would break into the house from the outside. Even all the windows in the house were fixed tightly with wooden boards and iron nails, and the outside world could not peek into the inside even a millimeter, and the same was true in reverse.

What was the deceased afraid of before he died?

After a little thought, I reached out and removed all the wooden boards on the living room windows. Since the deceased was so afraid of the scenery outside, what I am doing now may put myself in danger.

But after all, I am unpredictable, and most of the weird things cannot pose a serious threat to me, so I have more choices than ordinary people and ordinary demon hunters in weird events. Besides, I can't stay in this messy room forever, I have to go outside to explore. If there is really danger, then appear in front of me now and see.

My current goal is to escape from this strange space and return to the real world.

The possible dangers inside the alien space may help me understand the nature of this alien space itself and find the direction for the next step.

The terrifying corpses and environment certainly made me feel disgusted, but they also gave me a feeling of exploring a horror game and an indescribable sense of anticipation.

Soon, all the wooden boards on the window in front of me were removed, and the scenery outside came into view.

First of all, you can tell at first glance that it is late at night outside and it is in an urban area.

This is really fresh. It seems that unlike the independent reality space of the Humanitarian Department that I have experienced before, this different space is not based on the "inside of a building" as the theme, but has a fairly open landscape.

It might not be quite right to say “open”, as the scenery here doesn’t seem to allow me to see it all as soon as I come up.

When it comes to the city's nighttime scenery, the impression given is not pitch dark, but with the unique bright lights of the city. Even in the early hours of the morning, walking in the lack of lighting in the community, it is not really impossible for ordinary people to distinguish the road conditions with their naked eyes.

However, the "city night scene" I saw was not like that. It was clearly a city, but I could not see any lights. The darkness seemed to devour everything. If it were not for this body that mimicked fire, which could exert vision far beyond that of ordinary people, and the glowing fireballs floating around me, I would not even be able to tell that there was a city outside.

Even in the countryside and the wild, it shouldn't be this dark. After all, even in the middle of the night without city lights, there should be moonlight and starlight in the sky. But I don't know if the night sky here is covered with dark clouds. When I looked up, I couldn't find any trace of the moon in the sky, or even a single star.

(End of this chapter)