novelhk Chapter 197 The Hidden Rabbit
Chapter 197 The Hidden Rabbit
Upon hearing the madwoman's warning, Tu Hao clicked his tongue.
"Why am I not surprised?" He threw down the rope, stepped out of the elevator, and felt a chill creeping down his spine.
Does that kid know about this?
"What accident?" Ling asked.
"It's nothing," Tu Hao replied, and walked to the side on her own.
He decided to stay away from this ominous place.
Miao Yin heard Yan Shuzhou's muffled voice in her ear: "Sister, can we go to the eleventh floor?"
"What are you going there for?" Miao Yin let go of him.
“I dropped something there and I want to get it back. Just the two of us, okay?” he pleaded in a low voice.
"Okay," Miao Yin readily agreed.
She tossed the alarm she was wearing to Ling, then said to the others, "We need to go upstairs. Hopefully, by the time I come down, you'll have cleared the building. Ling, it's your turn now."
"Okay." Ling caught the alarm and agreed.
They parted ways there. Miao Yin pulled Yan Shuzhou and pushed open the door to the survival passage, heading upwards.
All three elevators are broken, and this is the only passageway that leads to the eleventh floor.
Ultimately, the mutants broke through several layers of doors, and the corpses in the passage were also completely devoured, making the path much easier than when Miao Yin first came here.
The piercing alarm blared outside again, and chaos erupted in the stairwell. The sounds of monsters climbing the walls and breaking down doors echoed down the stairs, shaking the entire corridor.
Immediately following was the sound of continuous fighting.
With no more mutants ahead, their path became smoother, and they quickly returned to the eleventh floor.
The escape route here was still welded shut with molten iron. Miao Yin raised her hand and blasted the entire door away.
The shattered glass from the shells was scattered all over the ground, and the sun dispelled all the shadows, making the entire eleventh floor brightly lit.
They eventually returned to this place.
Most of the wall in the central control room was destroyed by the Laughing Slave, but the interior still vaguely resembled what it used to be.
Yan Shuzhou's gaze fell on these familiar yet unfamiliar things, and past memories surfaced one by one in his mind. Those figures seemed to come alive before his eyes again, appearing in every corner of the control room.
There's always a line for the toilets in the morning. Men in suits kick the walls angrily, while women pace back and forth anxiously with their children in their arms, then cover their faces and weep bitterly.
Under the monitor, Qi Sun shook his head in frustration, cursing the thieves for breaking the machine, which couldn't be repaired and couldn't be seen outside.
His gaze fell on the corner, where a boy wrapped in a tattered down jacket sat, looking gloomy and silently watching everything happening in the control room.
Lin Yaozong appeared at that place at some point, quietly watching Liao Qian not far away.
The brown-haired woman was holding a notebook, recording the food they had brought back, and biting her pen to calculate the supplies that each person would receive.
The kind man's eyes were filled with tenderness as he murmured softly, "Even a liar... can be loved."
Seeing the boy's puzzled expression, he smiled and shook his head, "You're still young. You'll understand when you encounter this in the future..."
Then a huge argument began, which ended with the deaths of everyone.
Except for the very beginning, the boy who always kept his head down.
"Xiao Zhou, there's something that's been bothering me for a long time."
"what?"
“I remember you told me that many people opposed the existence of people with superpowers like you, and that you only stayed because Lin Yaozong helped you. So, logically speaking, when someone died in the control room and Lin Yaozong was kicked out for it, shouldn’t you have been kicked out as well? But why didn’t I hear any of these voices when I came here?”
“The control room is short of food; they need me,” Yan Shuzhou said.
"More than sixty people, did they all accept your rabbit?" Miao Yin's eyes were clear and sharp, as if she could see through the fog and understand all the illusions.
Yan Shuzhou shook his head: "No, some people have never been able to accept it, because I am an outlier. Even though some people have tried, they still can't believe me."
Miao Yin nodded: "That's normal. They don't know about the existence of people with superpowers. They think you're the same as the monsters outside and are afraid that you'll be infected after eating the Nine-Tails Rabbit and become like the monsters outside. But what's strange is... I don't think I've ever met any of these people."
"Speaking of which... you also have a lottery system, right? Have you ever been drawn?"
On the table, the box they used to draw lots was still there, only covered with a thick layer of dust.
Miao Yin propped herself up on the table, her expression a half-smile.
Yan Shuzhou's fingernails dug into his flesh, and the stray hairs on his forehead cast a shadow on his face, making his lips appear even paler.
"Sister...when did you think of all this?"
"You probably thought of it when we were here, but you only confirmed it after I took you home."
"why?"
"Xiao Zhou, do you remember the second day after you came to my manor, when I had you practice your supernatural abilities?"
"I remember," Yan Shuzhou recalled the scene.
Miao Yin said she wanted to see his control over his superpowers, and demanded that he release all the rabbits he could, and that they not be taken back.
"When we were on the eleventh floor, you told me that you could only release a maximum of six rabbits a day, but that day, you released eight."
Yan Shuzhou's pupils contracted, and he bit his lip until it bled.
Miao Yin placed her hand on the box, her bright red nails like those of a vengeful ghost tearing out hearts: "So I was thinking, if you've released eight rabbits into my manor, when were you able to release seven?"
"Now I understand."
The box was turned upside down and slammed onto the table. A small, rotting animal fell out of the hole and rolled around once.
"Ah, it's here." Miao Yin laughed and threw the box away.
At that time, summoners were still very inexperienced in using power, and could only retrieve their summoned creatures when they touched them.
When abandoned by its owner, its life as a summoned creature ends.
So it died in the box.
The summoned creature's unique properties prevent it from growing maggots or smelling foul; it simply turns into a lump of rotting flesh, slowly turning to ash as the last bit of power within it dissipates.
The rabbit's dark eyes stared directly at Yan Shuzhou, and the boy, with blood on his lips, admitted everything in a low, hoarse voice.
"I didn't have time to take it with me; the monster came too suddenly."
Miao Yin raised her hand like a good student: "So, let me ask you a question: how many people did our little boat kill?"