SSFxWD Ch.7: Luoyin

In the early morning of December 26, 2021, Lin Qiukui was jolted awake by piercing screams coming from beneath her dormitory building.

She checked the time—barely past five.

Dragging her groggy mind to the balcony, she found the outside world shrouded in thick fog, visibility so poor it was appalling.

With her 5.0 perfect vision, she squinted for a long while before barely making out a few eerie, slow-moving shadows within the mist.

Were these things like zombies?

She rubbed her eyes uncertainly, when suddenly the school broadcast blared to life: "Students! All students still in the dorms, listen up! Do not open your doors! No matter what happens outside, no matter what sounds you hear, absolutely do not open the door! Do not leave the safety of enclosed indoor spaces! Although I don't know exactly what's going on, the school is now filled with—"

Bam! A loud crash came from the speaker, as if a door had been slammed.

The female voice trembled slightly for a few seconds before steadying again: "Remember what I'm about to say! Those monsters have no eyes, but their hearing is extremely sharp—they can pinpoint locations by sound!"

"They're slow, strong, and have long arms. Unless it's absolutely necessary, do not confront them head-on! You need to find ways to reinforce your doors and windows, and try to follow the survival manuals issued by the government to make all kinds of safety preparations."

"Hang in there! I'm going to find the patrol troops outside! They'll have a solution!"

Another nerve-racking crash against a door followed, and the broadcast ended there.

A roommate from next door pushed open her door: "Who was that? Broadcasting before dawn—how are we supposed to sleep?"

"Did someone just call for help?"

"I think so—that's what scared me awake."

"There's a rotting smell in the air, really unpleasant... Can you guys smell it?"

From other floors, heads popped out to look around. They chatted among themselves, completely unaware of what was happening.

But the air did carry a certain putrid, decayed odor.

The girl next door caught it too, pinched her nose, and complained in a whiny voice: "Hey, which one of you left your trash out? Takeout's gone bad, you planning to treasure it like a family heirloom?"

Her voice was a bit too loud, prompting someone from the boys' dorm across the way to warn her: "Stop talking! That thing is sensitive to sound!"

Too late.

No sooner had he spoken than the door of the girls' dorm next door began thudding.

At first, the girl shrugged it off: "Who is it again? Don't you know how to knock? Why are you ramming the door?"

But then the door panel crashed to the ground. In an instant, a thick, sticky fog rushed in eagerly, swallowing the entire room.

The air seemed to turn cold and bloody. Within the fog, several enormous, hideous silhouettes loomed faintly, accompanied by a heavy, sluggish, wet sound of walking—like someone dragging heavy objects through shallow water, step by step toward the balcony.

Only when the impossible things fully materialized in her retinas did she gasp sharply: "What the hell are these ugly things?!"

"Close the door."

Lin Qiukui whispered a reminder.

In the critical moment, the girl's body moved faster than her mind—she slammed the balcony door shut.

But the door was made of glass, and it wouldn't hold for long.

"You can climb over here," Lin Qiukui said again.

The top three floors of this building were famous for their luxurious single-occupancy dorms, complete with sofas, air conditioning, TVs, beds, and a small two-square-meter balcony. Between each balcony was a gap of about half a meter—easily crossable in one step for an adult.

The girl grimaced: "I'm afraid of heights."

Besides, it was too late anyway—they were coming.

—Then don't make a sound.

Lin Qiukui raised a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture. The other girl nodded and clamped her hands tightly over her mouth.

Just as the latter tried to follow the instruction and hide in the corner of the balcony, the glass door shattered.

One, two—a total of three monsters stepped onto the balcony. They stood about 2.5 meters tall, their bodies a grayish-black color.

Their outward form roughly matched the structure of a human torso, except their heads were small and flat, devoid of skin, making them look more like moving skeletons with only a few strands of muscle and sinew remaining on the bones.

Their arms extended nearly down to their calves, with sharp, pointed nails.

A fissure ran from the top of the skull all the way down through the chest and abdomen, extending from the pubic region backward into a long, slender tail. Along the edges of this fissure were rings of fine, dense fangs, like elongated, mutated lamprey mouths.

Lin Qiukui struck a match.

The faint sound made the monsters pause and stop advancing. They stiffly turned their heads, showing no reaction to the flame right before their eyes.

Just as the broadcast had said—they had no eyes.

These creatures halted just one step away from the girl. One of them suddenly split its head open from the middle, revealing a long gray tongue.

"Hungry—"

It called out in an unbearably sweet voice: "I'm hungry—"

The base of the tongue was clearly connected to a human throat.

Yet the syllables it produced were extremely hoarse, slurred, laced with some kind of faint pulsation or tremor. Even a two-year-old hearing it would instantly know: no creature on this planet could possibly make such an unnatural, grotesque sound.

—So close.

The girl and the monster were far too close. She could almost feel that sticky, moist tongue brush past her cheek.

Jelly-like, repulsive slime splattered onto her thigh. It took every ounce of willpower for her to suppress the urge to bolt straight into the bathroom. Slowly, she crouched down, hugged her knees, and did her utmost to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.

Lin Qiukui remained motionless, crouched like a cat at the edge of the semicircular balcony, as the system timely triggered a piece of background information in her mind.

"F-class monsters that appear during the early stages of the second countdown share a unified form and characteristics, specifically: a hard body surface, slow and sluggish movement, stiff limbs that are difficult to bend, no vision, and only the sense of hearing."

"Their surface secretes a mildly corrosive mucus that can cause itching, pain, redness, swelling, and burns."

"These monsters primarily feed on fresh human flesh. After consuming 3 to 5 humans, their limbs will become noticeably more flexible, and they will evolve multiple pairs of compound eyes. Their essence is the lowest form of unconscious life, spawned from the complete failure of the fusion between alien species and humans."

That sounds much harder to deal with than zombies—and facing three at once, no less?

She had to figure out a way to exploit the monsters' traits...

She lowered her head and fumbled through her pajama pockets.

A gust of air swept in, extinguishing the candle, and despairing darkness fell once more.

Misinterpreting that Lin Qiukui was about to abandon her, the girl steeled herself and gave her trembling thigh a hard pinch, then tentatively took a small step forward.

The monsters didn't notice.

I can do this. She thought, taking another step.

Just a little more and she would slip past these ugly things—victory was in sight. Excited and nervous, her breathing hitched in uneven beats.

"Hungry—" The keen-eared hunter whipped its head around instantly, its horrific mouth splitting wide open from end to end.

Help!!!

Her mind went blank, and she instinctively wanted to scream.

Lin Qiukui seized the moment and tossed her phone outward.

"Unity is strength! Unity is strength! This strength is iron, this strength is steel..."

The pre-set alarm blared out at full volume. The monsters, without hesitation, followed the music and pitched stiffly over the balcony railing.

From the sixth floor, even if they weren't dead, they'd be crippled.

The immediate danger was temporarily lifted, and Lin Qiukui extended her palm again: "Come over."

The girl bit her lower lip and, without any further complaints about acrophobia or why they couldn't just use the main door, she moved nimbly to the left side of the balcony. Closing her eyes, she relied on Lin Qiukui's strength to cross the half-meter gap of empty space. Then, abandoning all pretense of dignity, she collapsed limply onto the floor, clutching her waist and panting heavily.

After a long moment, she finally picked up her former, delicate tone: "Thanks. I'm Chen Luoyin. How much do you want?"

"What money?"