The Walk-in Closet Safehouse CH17
Chapter 17: Working the Night Shift
Not many people paid attention to what happened at Unit 1501, because a far greater trouble had already descended upon Xingfu Community. Mutants had appeared in almost every single residential building. Their faces were ulcerated, the corners of their mouths split and bleeding, and their bloodshot eyes had lost their pupils, the edges turning a faint, dull gray. Gill-like slits had also ruptured across their necks.
They were only one final step away from completing their metamorphosis and completely turning into water monsters, but their consciousness as human beings had already vanished entirely the moment their infection levels reached 100%.
Those who noticed something was wrong first were also the first to be attacked—their own family members. Some reacted in time, binding the mutated individuals securely to beds or chairs; others only managed to barricade their doors with heavy objects, trapping their relatives inside. Then there were those who, completely oblivious, opened their doors and were instantly tackled to the ground, causing blood-curdling screams to erupt all at once.
Someone opened their door in a desperate attempt to cry out for help, but the tightly bolted doors around them remained absolutely motionless. Soon, the frantic knocking and pleas were entirely buried beneath the sound of the falling rain. Right on its heels came a bizarre, wet crunching noise; flesh was torn apart, and a hand still wearing a wedding ring continued to twitch on the floor.
Inside their own apartment, a neighbor who heard the screams fade away was trembling all over, not daring to look through the peephole. Yet, even that single fleeting glimpse from earlier was enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life.
Once the flesh of its kin entered its stomach, the mutation was complete. The water monster stood up to resume the hunt, throwing its weight heavily against the neighbor's front door. But before it could strike again, a silhouette materialized right behind it. Moving without a single shred of sound, the shadowy figure approached the oblivious creature, which simply kept pounding on the metal door, completely unaware.
Inside the doorway, the male resident stared at the shaking door, his face pale with terror. He silently waved his arms, signaling his wife and daughter to hide inside the room and stay put. Trembling, he donned a motorcycle helmet and gripped a kitchen knife, completely prepared to fight for his life—but then, the noises outside suddenly vanished. Everything stopped dead, as if someone had abruptly pressed a pause button.
The man was entirely unclear about the situation outside. He maintained his combat stance, not daring to budge, until a full minute had passed. Seeing that there was still no sound outside, he finally dared to slowly approach the anti-theft security door and carefully peer through the peephole. However, he only managed to see a single silhouette flash past the entrance of the fire escape stairs.
Even by shifting his position left and right, he could only see a limited area through the peephole. He assumed the silhouette that had just departed was the water monster, entirely unaware that within his blind spot—slumped directly beneath the peephole on the outside of the door—lay a water monster with its neck cleanly sliced open. It had died without a sound. Separated by a single layer of steel from the resident who was similarly pressed against the opposite side, the monster’s blood trickled down slowly. It merged with the mangled corpse behind it, only to be washed thin by the slanting rain blowing into the corridor from outside.
In the span of a single day, disastrous news kept pouring into the community chat. The second wave of water monsters since the arrival of the apocalypse had emerged. Each building housed over two hundred residents, and though these newly appeared monsters numbered only a sparse four or five per building, their existence acted like a lit fuse.
While a direct attack from a water monster would not lead to direct viral infection, the omnipresent moisture had already seeped into every corner of the apartments. The high fevers triggered by the facial ulcerations were entirely incurable; what awaited the afflicted was not just death, but a different kind of "new life."
[Mid-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 1 Water Monster × 3 (Completed)]
[Quest Reward: 6 Gold Coins]
[Random Quest Triggered: Clear Building Monsters (Accepted)]
[Quest Progress: 1/5]
Cui Ye hadn't expected to trigger another random quest after a six-day interval. Unlike six days ago, however, when she was the one barricaded inside her apartment, she was the hunter this time. She had originally just completed her daily quest and was heading back to sleep. Solving the water monster blocking the seventh-floor door had been a purely incidental gesture while passing by, making the sudden quest notification a truly pleasant surprise.
Following her routine of going downstairs every night to continue her "fishing entrapment" to farm gold coins, her income had steadily increased, leaving her highly motivated. If the apocalypse hadn't happened and her old company were still forcing her to pull the night shift until this hour, her mood definitely wouldn't be this cheerful.
The only drawback was that climbing all the way to the sixteenth floor in one go was still a grueling task. However, the water level had already reached the third floor, and by tomorrow, it would likely submerge it entirely. At this rate, the number of floors she would have to climb in the future would only decrease. Yet, this realization brought no joy; the rising tide was actively swallowing humanity’s remaining shelter.
After some discussion, He Fangzhou and Cui Ye decided to share their discovery about the water monsters' fear of red lightning in the community chat. If anyone wanted to form teams to venture out for supplies, choosing the specific window when the red lightning appeared would significantly boost their odds of survival.
Quite a few people expressed skepticism at first. Coincidentally, however, the government updated its official Survival Guide just a few hours later, including a description of the red lightning’s characteristics that was fundamentally identical to He Fangzhou’s statement. With that, all the skeptical voices within the chat completely went silent.
Following his achievement of leading the eight-person squad back safely, He Fangzhou’s reputation within the residential complex climbed to a new peak. This made Li Shuo, the leader of the Dawn Guild, exceptionally dissatisfied.
As a gulp of baijiu entered his stomach, the chill gripping his body seemed to dissipate significantly. He ate his late-night snack while listening to the intelligence reported by his underlings. He Fangzhou and his crew of four were far away in Building 7, so there was no immediate rush to deal with them. On the other hand, the "haunting" incident on the 15th floor could be settled first. He absolutely didn't believe in any ghost nonsense; he suspected that a resident had acquired some kind of special item to pull off a sneak attack, which was exactly how several of his men had ended up injured.
"You guys can't even handle a few girls sharing a rental unit? You're completely useless to me!"
The three men who had gone along with Liu Yue were currently wrapped up like mummies. When they first dragged themselves back, their entire bodies were oozing blood. Fortunately, no vital areas had been hit, but because of the sheer number of wounds, their infection levels had spiked drastically. As their leader, Li Shuo reluctantly pulled out a tube of Healing Potion and made them take a single sip each, temporarily keeping their infection levels tightly controlled under twenty percent.
At present, he was short on manpower; counting himself, there were only eight of them in total. If they lost three men all at once, their strength would be severely crippled, and the efficiency of their daily quest farming would plummet. Compared to a single tube of Healing Potion worth five gold coins, completing the second-stage mid-tier quests was far more important.
After all, every time a single person completed a mid-tier quest, they obtained six gold coins. As long as their luck wasn't entirely terrible, the eight of them could easily pool enough to buy a fresh tube of Healing Potion every other day.
The latest official Survival Guide had also compiled data on the shop's drop rates, revealing that as the days of the apocalypse advanced, the refresh probability of Healing Potions in the store steadily increased.
Cui Ye had also managed to purchase a potion yesterday. Outside the entry door of the 30th floor, the knife in her hand was still dripping blood. She stood silently before the doorway as a rich aroma of food wafted out through the cracks of the door. She tilted her ear, listening to the conversation inside the room.
Thump, thump, thump—
The sound of something rolling over echoed from outside the door. The residents of this entire floor had already been cleared out by them, and the hallway now served as their guild stronghold with no one permitted to approach. The sudden noise instantly triggered the vigilance of the few people inside the room. Standing closest to the entrance, a lackey was called out by name as Li Shuo ordered him to go inspect the situation.
The unlucky bastard who was called out carefully approached the peephole to look outside, terrified that he would see a water monster’s face shoved right against the lens. Fortunately, nothing at all could be seen outside. Gripping the machete in his hand tightly, he cautiously cracked open the apartment door, but saw nothing except a pitch-black corridor. Their unit was situated right next to the emergency stairwell. Behind him, his boss's urging voice rang out, accompanied by the agreement of the other lackeys, yet not a single person came up to step out the door and inspect it with him.
Having witnessed his boss's vicious and ruthless methods, the lackey didn't dare disobey. He could only hold his breath to bolster his courage, quickly stepping out of the doorway to cast a fleeting glance into the darkness of the stairwell, terrified that if he looked for a single second longer, something monstrous would pop out.
The small amount of alcohol he had swallowed just now had already been entirely purged along with his cold sweat. He didn't dare look closely, let alone venture deeper inside. At any rate, the people inside the room couldn't see him, so he thought about counting down a few numbers in his head and quickly running back inside to report his task as done. Instead, several blood-curdling screams suddenly erupted from inside the room behind him, causing his scalp to instantly explode with terror.
At this moment inside the room, the several individuals who were waiting for news of the inspection suddenly caught the scent of a fishy, bloody wind. Right after, one man felt a sharp pain radiate from his forearm as a deep gash materialized out of thin air, and fresh blood rapidly dyed his sleeve red. He instinctively wanted to cover his arm, but his hand had only reached halfway out when another wound sliced open on his thigh on the same side. Under the dim candlelight, the sudden screams of their companion combined with the spontaneous bleeding wounds was entirely comparable to a scene from a live horror movie.
Without granting them any time to react or flee, identical wounds rapidly appeared across the bodies of the others as well. Amidst the terror, someone lunged to his feet and began swinging wildly at his surroundings in a frantic panic, inadvertently slashing the companions around him. The candles placed upon the table were also knocked over; lights and shadows flickered wildly alongside the continuous screams. Anyone who didn't know the truth would truly think it was a haunting.
Cui Ye looked at the cowards who had turned into a chaotic mess like headless flies. Worried that these wildly rushing fools might bump into her, she quickly ducked around the panicking lackeys before the sixty-second duration of her [Invisibility Potion] could run out, walking directly toward Li Shuo who was still seated at the dining table.
The other party was currently wearing an identical look of sheer panic. Unfortunately, after looking around in a full circle, he couldn't see any sign of an outsider besides his own men. The bizarre scene terrified him into fleeing the living room entirely, bolting in the direction of the bathroom. The exact instant his fingers gripped the door handle, the man vanished on the spot. Cui Ye, who followed right on his heels, swung her blade outward, but it only grazed his back, merely slicing through a single layer of his outer coat before the target completely disappeared.
The leader of the Dawn Guild had actually bound a Safe House as well—in all probability, it was a bathroom-type Safe House. Only by being placed upon a bathroom door would it possess such a concealment effect, identical to her own [Walk-in Closet].
'Ah. I miscalculated.'
Cui Ye was somewhat surprised, but not by much. Her footsteps paused for a fleeting instant in front of the bathroom before she immediately pivoted toward the kitchen. Amidst the absolute chaos, no one noticed the aberrant noise echoing from the kitchen area. That was where her final target for tonight was located.
[Random Quest: Clear Building Monsters (In Progress)]
[Quest Progress: 4/5]
Chapter Notes:
Not many people paid attention to what happened at Unit 1501, because a far greater trouble had already descended upon Xingfu Community. Mutants had appeared in almost every single residential building. Their faces were ulcerated, the corners of their mouths split and bleeding, and their bloodshot eyes had lost their pupils, the edges turning a faint, dull gray. Gill-like slits had also ruptured across their necks.
They were only one final step away from completing their metamorphosis and completely turning into water monsters, but their consciousness as human beings had already vanished entirely the moment their infection levels reached 100%.
Those who noticed something was wrong first were also the first to be attacked—their own family members. Some reacted in time, binding the mutated individuals securely to beds or chairs; others only managed to barricade their doors with heavy objects, trapping their relatives inside. Then there were those who, completely oblivious, opened their doors and were instantly tackled to the ground, causing blood-curdling screams to erupt all at once.
Someone opened their door in a desperate attempt to cry out for help, but the tightly bolted doors around them remained absolutely motionless. Soon, the frantic knocking and pleas were entirely buried beneath the sound of the falling rain. Right on its heels came a bizarre, wet crunching noise; flesh was torn apart, and a hand still wearing a wedding ring continued to twitch on the floor.
Inside their own apartment, a neighbor who heard the screams fade away was trembling all over, not daring to look through the peephole. Yet, even that single fleeting glimpse from earlier was enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life.
Once the flesh of its kin entered its stomach, the mutation was complete. The water monster stood up to resume the hunt, throwing its weight heavily against the neighbor's front door. But before it could strike again, a silhouette materialized right behind it. Moving without a single shred of sound, the shadowy figure approached the oblivious creature, which simply kept pounding on the metal door, completely unaware.
Inside the doorway, the male resident stared at the shaking door, his face pale with terror. He silently waved his arms, signaling his wife and daughter to hide inside the room and stay put. Trembling, he donned a motorcycle helmet and gripped a kitchen knife, completely prepared to fight for his life—but then, the noises outside suddenly vanished. Everything stopped dead, as if someone had abruptly pressed a pause button.
The man was entirely unclear about the situation outside. He maintained his combat stance, not daring to budge, until a full minute had passed. Seeing that there was still no sound outside, he finally dared to slowly approach the anti-theft security door and carefully peer through the peephole. However, he only managed to see a single silhouette flash past the entrance of the fire escape stairs.
Even by shifting his position left and right, he could only see a limited area through the peephole. He assumed the silhouette that had just departed was the water monster, entirely unaware that within his blind spot—slumped directly beneath the peephole on the outside of the door—lay a water monster with its neck cleanly sliced open. It had died without a sound. Separated by a single layer of steel from the resident who was similarly pressed against the opposite side, the monster’s blood trickled down slowly. It merged with the mangled corpse behind it, only to be washed thin by the slanting rain blowing into the corridor from outside.
In the span of a single day, disastrous news kept pouring into the community chat. The second wave of water monsters since the arrival of the apocalypse had emerged. Each building housed over two hundred residents, and though these newly appeared monsters numbered only a sparse four or five per building, their existence acted like a lit fuse.
While a direct attack from a water monster would not lead to direct viral infection, the omnipresent moisture had already seeped into every corner of the apartments. The high fevers triggered by the facial ulcerations were entirely incurable; what awaited the afflicted was not just death, but a different kind of "new life."
[Mid-tier Daily Quest: Kill Level 1 Water Monster × 3 (Completed)]
[Quest Reward: 6 Gold Coins]
[Random Quest Triggered: Clear Building Monsters (Accepted)]
[Quest Progress: 1/5]
Cui Ye hadn't expected to trigger another random quest after a six-day interval. Unlike six days ago, however, when she was the one barricaded inside her apartment, she was the hunter this time. She had originally just completed her daily quest and was heading back to sleep. Solving the water monster blocking the seventh-floor door had been a purely incidental gesture while passing by, making the sudden quest notification a truly pleasant surprise.
Following her routine of going downstairs every night to continue her "fishing entrapment" to farm gold coins, her income had steadily increased, leaving her highly motivated. If the apocalypse hadn't happened and her old company were still forcing her to pull the night shift until this hour, her mood definitely wouldn't be this cheerful.
The only drawback was that climbing all the way to the sixteenth floor in one go was still a grueling task. However, the water level had already reached the third floor, and by tomorrow, it would likely submerge it entirely. At this rate, the number of floors she would have to climb in the future would only decrease. Yet, this realization brought no joy; the rising tide was actively swallowing humanity’s remaining shelter.
After some discussion, He Fangzhou and Cui Ye decided to share their discovery about the water monsters' fear of red lightning in the community chat. If anyone wanted to form teams to venture out for supplies, choosing the specific window when the red lightning appeared would significantly boost their odds of survival.
Quite a few people expressed skepticism at first. Coincidentally, however, the government updated its official Survival Guide just a few hours later, including a description of the red lightning’s characteristics that was fundamentally identical to He Fangzhou’s statement. With that, all the skeptical voices within the chat completely went silent.
Following his achievement of leading the eight-person squad back safely, He Fangzhou’s reputation within the residential complex climbed to a new peak. This made Li Shuo, the leader of the Dawn Guild, exceptionally dissatisfied.
As a gulp of baijiu entered his stomach, the chill gripping his body seemed to dissipate significantly. He ate his late-night snack while listening to the intelligence reported by his underlings. He Fangzhou and his crew of four were far away in Building 7, so there was no immediate rush to deal with them. On the other hand, the "haunting" incident on the 15th floor could be settled first. He absolutely didn't believe in any ghost nonsense; he suspected that a resident had acquired some kind of special item to pull off a sneak attack, which was exactly how several of his men had ended up injured.
"You guys can't even handle a few girls sharing a rental unit? You're completely useless to me!"
The three men who had gone along with Liu Yue were currently wrapped up like mummies. When they first dragged themselves back, their entire bodies were oozing blood. Fortunately, no vital areas had been hit, but because of the sheer number of wounds, their infection levels had spiked drastically. As their leader, Li Shuo reluctantly pulled out a tube of Healing Potion and made them take a single sip each, temporarily keeping their infection levels tightly controlled under twenty percent.
At present, he was short on manpower; counting himself, there were only eight of them in total. If they lost three men all at once, their strength would be severely crippled, and the efficiency of their daily quest farming would plummet. Compared to a single tube of Healing Potion worth five gold coins, completing the second-stage mid-tier quests was far more important.
After all, every time a single person completed a mid-tier quest, they obtained six gold coins. As long as their luck wasn't entirely terrible, the eight of them could easily pool enough to buy a fresh tube of Healing Potion every other day.
The latest official Survival Guide had also compiled data on the shop's drop rates, revealing that as the days of the apocalypse advanced, the refresh probability of Healing Potions in the store steadily increased.
Cui Ye had also managed to purchase a potion yesterday. Outside the entry door of the 30th floor, the knife in her hand was still dripping blood. She stood silently before the doorway as a rich aroma of food wafted out through the cracks of the door. She tilted her ear, listening to the conversation inside the room.
The other party seemed prepared to use her as an example of "killing the chicken to scare the monkeys," completely establishing their authority within Building 11 so they could absorb more manpower and thoroughly take over management of the entire building. That way, they could force even more people to hunt water monsters to farm gold coins for them to buy items, and then use those items and potions to expand the guild, repeating the cycle continuously.
Under Li Shuo’s grand imaginings and the boasting of several lackeys, it was as though Unit 1501 was a stepping stone arranged for them by the heavens, and the three injured men became their justified excuse to strike. Everything was just that perfectly timed, aligning completely with the will of heaven.
"Our Dawn Guild is bound to... Who's outside?!"Thump, thump, thump—
The sound of something rolling over echoed from outside the door. The residents of this entire floor had already been cleared out by them, and the hallway now served as their guild stronghold with no one permitted to approach. The sudden noise instantly triggered the vigilance of the few people inside the room. Standing closest to the entrance, a lackey was called out by name as Li Shuo ordered him to go inspect the situation.
The unlucky bastard who was called out carefully approached the peephole to look outside, terrified that he would see a water monster’s face shoved right against the lens. Fortunately, nothing at all could be seen outside. Gripping the machete in his hand tightly, he cautiously cracked open the apartment door, but saw nothing except a pitch-black corridor. Their unit was situated right next to the emergency stairwell. Behind him, his boss's urging voice rang out, accompanied by the agreement of the other lackeys, yet not a single person came up to step out the door and inspect it with him.
Having witnessed his boss's vicious and ruthless methods, the lackey didn't dare disobey. He could only hold his breath to bolster his courage, quickly stepping out of the doorway to cast a fleeting glance into the darkness of the stairwell, terrified that if he looked for a single second longer, something monstrous would pop out.
The small amount of alcohol he had swallowed just now had already been entirely purged along with his cold sweat. He didn't dare look closely, let alone venture deeper inside. At any rate, the people inside the room couldn't see him, so he thought about counting down a few numbers in his head and quickly running back inside to report his task as done. Instead, several blood-curdling screams suddenly erupted from inside the room behind him, causing his scalp to instantly explode with terror.
At this moment inside the room, the several individuals who were waiting for news of the inspection suddenly caught the scent of a fishy, bloody wind. Right after, one man felt a sharp pain radiate from his forearm as a deep gash materialized out of thin air, and fresh blood rapidly dyed his sleeve red. He instinctively wanted to cover his arm, but his hand had only reached halfway out when another wound sliced open on his thigh on the same side. Under the dim candlelight, the sudden screams of their companion combined with the spontaneous bleeding wounds was entirely comparable to a scene from a live horror movie.
Without granting them any time to react or flee, identical wounds rapidly appeared across the bodies of the others as well. Amidst the terror, someone lunged to his feet and began swinging wildly at his surroundings in a frantic panic, inadvertently slashing the companions around him. The candles placed upon the table were also knocked over; lights and shadows flickered wildly alongside the continuous screams. Anyone who didn't know the truth would truly think it was a haunting.
Cui Ye looked at the cowards who had turned into a chaotic mess like headless flies. Worried that these wildly rushing fools might bump into her, she quickly ducked around the panicking lackeys before the sixty-second duration of her [Invisibility Potion] could run out, walking directly toward Li Shuo who was still seated at the dining table.
The other party was currently wearing an identical look of sheer panic. Unfortunately, after looking around in a full circle, he couldn't see any sign of an outsider besides his own men. The bizarre scene terrified him into fleeing the living room entirely, bolting in the direction of the bathroom. The exact instant his fingers gripped the door handle, the man vanished on the spot. Cui Ye, who followed right on his heels, swung her blade outward, but it only grazed his back, merely slicing through a single layer of his outer coat before the target completely disappeared.
The leader of the Dawn Guild had actually bound a Safe House as well—in all probability, it was a bathroom-type Safe House. Only by being placed upon a bathroom door would it possess such a concealment effect, identical to her own [Walk-in Closet].
'Ah. I miscalculated.'
Cui Ye was somewhat surprised, but not by much. Her footsteps paused for a fleeting instant in front of the bathroom before she immediately pivoted toward the kitchen. Amidst the absolute chaos, no one noticed the aberrant noise echoing from the kitchen area. That was where her final target for tonight was located.
[Random Quest: Clear Building Monsters (In Progress)]
[Quest Progress: 4/5]
Chapter Notes:
- Baiju 白酒 : It is a traditional and culturally significant distilled Chinese spirit, most commonly fermented from grains like sorghum, wheat, or glutinous rice.
- "fishing entrapment" 钓鱼执法 : A widely used internet slang. It's a Chinese phrase for a "sting operation" or "entrapment" (where law enforcement sets up bait to catch a criminal).
- "Kill the chicken to scare the monkey" 杀鸡儆猴: A classic idiom meaning to severely punish a minor individual in public as a terrifying warning to keep everyone else in line.
- "Stepping stone" 踏脚石: A standard Chinese web novel term for an opponent or obstacle meant solely to be crushed so the villain or protagonist can look more powerful and advance their career.
(Update Schedule: Atleast 2 Chapters every Fridays.)
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