Jing Shu looked completely innocent, helpless, and speechless. She had never expected that while she was happily collecting bones, Li Yuetian and his group would show up so quickly.
And of all things, they came shining high-powered flashlights straight at her, the blinding white beams cutting through the gloom. The people behind Li Yuetian looked as if they had seen a ghost.
After an attack like the one that had just occurred, who wouldn't be scared out of their mind and hide inside any room with a sturdy door? Who in their right mind would come out into the dark to pick things up?
Wait… where did this pile of white bones come from? There were far too many. And as the light hit them, the soldiers realized the shapes looked familiar.
Weren't these the bones of the monsters that had just died?
The soldiers finally reacted, sucking in a collective cold breath that hissed in the quiet hall. The entire floor was covered in a macabre carpet of bones.
Upstairs, the fight had been intense and bloody, yet there hadn't been nearly this many monsters involved. So how many had there been on the first floor? It was no wonder it had been so quiet down here. Everything had already been dealt with without a sound.
Thinking about it, they realized it was lucky these Darklife creatures hadn't all decided to go upstairs. Otherwise, today might have ended in total annihilation for everyone in the building.
Li Yuetian felt awkward, his flashlight wavering. He wanted to greet her but didn't even know what to say. He couldn't exactly ask something like "Have you eaten?" in the middle of a skeletal graveyard. In the end, he simply pointed his beam at the mangled monsters that had just fallen from the upper floors.
"Where are those Darklife creatures?"
The moment he said it, he realized how pointless the question was. The ground was full of bones. The monsters were either dead or had long since run off into the shadows.
Jing Shu shrugged, her expression the picture of wide-eyed innocence. "I don't know. I didn't see anything."
Cough, cough.
Li Yuetian stared at the ground for a long time, his brow furrowed. He couldn't figure out how these monsters had died so cleanly. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, it didn't make sense.
There was no way this had been done by people using conventional weapons. Even hundreds of well-trained soldiers like his own men couldn't achieve this kind of efficiency, let alone a nearly empty first floor.
He glanced at Jing Shu again. Thankfully, the bulk of the monsters had been concentrated on the first floor. Otherwise…
He suspected there had to be some special method involved. And it was probably this quiet, unassuming Jing Shu behind it. From the moment she went to the United States with Yang Yang and came back with such a staggering amount of supplies, he knew she wasn't simple. Still, this wasn't the time to ask questions. There were too many ears around, and the tension was still too high.
After holding it in for a while, Li Yuetian finally spoke. "How about I have Li Chenglong bring some people to help you collect these bones? It looks like hard work for one person. There are quite a few upstairs too; we can gather them all together for you."
"Don't worry," his tone implied, "no one is going to fight you over a pile of bones. They can't be eaten and they don't seem useful for anything but scrap. Yet you are guarding them so tightly."
Jing Shu nodded, a small smile appearing on her face. "Thanks, I will trouble Li Chenglong then."
So just like that, everyone acted as if nothing strange had happened. Li Yuetian didn't ask where the bones came from or what exactly had transpired in the lobby. He simply had his nephew gather over a dozen people to help Jing Shu move all the unwanted bones into one large pile.
Jing Shu even moved them into the courtyard area of her villa, as if she were afraid someone might try to steal them. The soldiers couldn't help but look at her strangely as they hauled the heavy remains.
Seriously? Did she really think they were the kind of people to loot a pile of monster skeletons?
But no one really cared about the bones now. Li Yuetian led his people to begin a floor-by-floor inspection of the New World Tower. This Darklife invasion felt too coordinated and too strange to ignore.
Luckily, there was still a small medical team active.
"All personnel, all personnel, please gather in the main hall immediately. We will begin a headcount, provide free treatment for the injured, and distribute food based on attendance. Repeating…"
The moment the survivors heard that food would be handed out, even the injured scrambled to get up. Anyone who could still move rushed toward the first floor.
It wasn't that the injured weren't being taken care of; it was just that there weren't many people with minor wounds this time. People were either lightly hurt—scrapes and bruises from the panic—or they had been completely torn apart and devoured by the Darklife creatures. The strength gap between humans and these monsters was enormous, a dynamic like cats hunting mice.
It was like ten cats charging into a burrow of thousands of mice. They would grab one and eat it first, and only after finishing the meal would they go for another. That gruesome delay gave the rest of the "mice" time to escape.
Because of that, once a sludge siren had food in its mouth, it stopped moving for a time. That quirk had actually reduced the casualties more than anyone expected. Still, these creatures were terrifying. They ate everything, even the bones, crushing them between their powerful jaws before swallowing.
Now there wasn't even a need to collect the bodies of the fallen. There weren't even bone fragments left behind to bury. No one could even tell for certain who was missing until the names were called.
This time, even Jun Jia arrived on the scene, his face a mask of stern authority as he quickly began organizing post-battle stabilization and the headcount.
By the time the survivors limped into the first-floor hall, it had already been cleaned spotless by Li Chenglong and the soldiers. Even the black water and the stinking sludge had been cleared away.
Wang Miao, handling the logistics, immediately contacted Boss Lü's people to cook another batch of that black, murky food overnight. This time, they actually added some rice and flour to the mix, just to calm everyone's frayed nerves.
"Our filtered water is gone…"
When Wang Miao heard that, he was momentarily speechless. "What, did those monsters drink it all? Forget it. Just redo the filtration tomorrow. Distribute the porridge first."
After that, Wang Miao arranged over a hundred logistics staff to clean up the remains on each floor, tidy the scenes of the attacks, and count the damaged supplies. There was still a staggering amount of work to do.
During the initial chaos, everyone had been purely panicked. Now, in the cold aftermath, the fear sank deeper into their bones. It was the kind of hollow terror that only lingers after the immediate threat has passed.
In the private rooms, people were already crying, the sounds of sobbing echoing against the glass walls. Most of it was from sheer shock. The scenes they had witnessed in the dark would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
"I was sleeping so well, then I heard chewing sounds right next to me," one man whispered, his voice shaking. "I thought it was Zhu Liang snoring again, so I reached out and slapped him. My hand hit something hard and wet, and it hurt. When I opened my eyes, I almost wet myself. This huge thing was breathing hot, foul air while it was eating Zhu Liang's shoulder… I was terrified. He died so horribly!"
"There are over ten shops on the fourth floor with no doors," another person added. "Seven or eight monsters rushed in at once. It was awful. There was nowhere to hide."
"It is a good thing us girls had a separate room," a student said, her face pale. "It was cramped, but at least those monsters didn't break in. We were so scared hearing the screams from the hallway."
Xiao Liu hurried over to the group, her face still shaken. Only after confirming with her own eyes that Jing Shu was safe did she finally relax. She pulled cloths and blankets out of her bag, arranged them neatly for her boss, and then set up a small stove to boil water for tea.
When the stove warmed up and the firelight began to flicker, it illuminated everyone's pale, shaken faces. There were clearly fewer people in the room than there had been the night before. Some had blood smeared on their faces and hands, whether it was their own or someone else's. Others were injured, lying on the ground and groaning as the adrenaline faded.
Jin Baba appeared in the doorway, clutching his teddy bear to his chest. His face was ghostly pale, his hands gripping the plush toy so tightly his knuckles were white, completely forgetting that he was in a public space.