Chapter 593: Footsteps

Chen Chen was the first to hear the footsteps. His body had long become non-humanoid and his sense of hearing was vastly superior to that of a regular human. Before the other two had even caught the slightest hint of the footsteps, Chen Chen had located the exact location of where the footsteps came from.

The sound of footsteps came from within the mall and was approaching the second floor at this very moment.

“Clack, clack…”

For some reason Chen Chen could not discern, the footsteps carried a strange quality to it, the practiced manner of its steps felt almost mechanical. From the manner of feet shuffling against the floor, he felt it was closer to a dead body stepping mechanically across the floor than a live human traveling along the corridors…

As the sound of the footsteps drew closer, Zhao Shanhe soon came to hear it as well.

Zhao Shanhe’s chest tightened. He immediately sat up from the bed and craned his neck closer to try to make out what it was.

“Boss…”

Jenny was the last one to hear it. She jolted upon hearing the sound and stood up. Zhao Shanhe immediately raised a finger and hissed at her, telling her to not make any noise to draw attention.

Before the situation was figured out, they should avoid drawing attention to themselves at all costs since there was no telling what could happen.

“Clack, clack…”

The footsteps finally arrived outside the door. Both Zhao Shanhe and Jenny were on their feet, standing vigilant at this point. It was only Chen Chen who remained seated.

Something unexplainable occurred. The moment they heard the footsteps arriving by the door, it seemed to have completely vanished without a trace!

After reaching what seemed like its destination, it disappeared without a whisper as if it never existed in the first place. Once again, the place was plunged into an eerie silence.

An invisible pressure gripped the entire staff dormitory.

Chen Chen enveloped his highly concentrated mass psionic power around the entire dormitory. The moment he detected anything unusual, he could unleash his power in an instant.

The stalemate lasted for more than ten minutes, by which point Zhao Shanhe and Jenny were beginning to have their doubts.

They noticed the footsteps suddenly coming to a halt after arriving at the door and no movement had been detected since. It seemed like this person had departed silently, leaving behind an empty corridor.

However, they doubted that this person would just leave whimsically. Furthermore, they did not hear the sound of the departing footsteps, implying that this person or entity was now standing motionlessly outside.

What was it waiting for?

Jenny’s sweat poured down her back relentlessly. She could not handle this much longer. The sheer horror of discovering a stranger’s footsteps in this subspace countercurrent world where even corpses could not be found was indescribable.

After another ten minutes passed, the stalemate seemed to have finally come to an end. They heard the steady sound of footsteps clapping against the floor again, this time, departing from their location.

It had finally left.

After hearing the last of the distant footsteps, Zhao Shanhe and Jenny deflated with relief. Zhao Shanhe wiped the sweat on his brow. “D*mn that strange footsteps, waiting outside for so long!”

“Why did it not come inside?”

Jenny noted. “I’d much prefer it if it barged right in. The worst-case scenario is that you still have the Civilization Monolith. I don’t ever want to experience anything like that suspenseful twenty minutes wait ever again.”

“The reason it didn’t barge in isn’t that we hid ourselves well but because we haven’t triggered it just yet.”

Zhao Shanhe stated, “Also, the Civilization Monolith isn’t invincible. Using it places a lot of burden on my psyche, which will take considerable time to restore. It’s best to use it conservatively in the subspace countercurrent.”

Throughout their whispered exchange, Chen Chen did not add any comment. He only listened silently and took in whatever information he could from their dialogue.

It seemed all of them shared the same sentiment that what came to them earlier was not human.

Just as the three had let their guard down, a sudden noise came from the door and spooked the group.

“Knock, knock, knock, knock!”

It caught them completely off guard and made them jump. Zhao Shanhe especially was so startled that his face twisted with fright and goosebumps crawled up his back!

The strange footsteps should have departed. Who was knocking at the door?

Chen Chen felt a cold shiver down his spine as well. He took a risk and pushed his psionic power underneath the door to investigate. His discovery was rather baffling since there was not a single soul outside the door!

“Knock, knock, knock, knock!”

They heard knuckles rapping persistently against the door again. This time, it was more urgent than the last time!

Meanwhile, Chen Chen also heard the familiar footsteps returning. It approached slowly and steadily with an eerie, gloomy composure.

Even Zhao Shanhe heard it as well. The color of rage immediately rose to his face and he stormed to the entrance and kicked the door open with all his might!

“Bang!”

The door was kicked wide open. The sound it made traveled through the entire dormitory while revealing an empty corridor!

Needless to say, the sound of knocking was immediately cut off.

The three of them were frozen in place, feeling slightly by this anticlimactic development.

Did it enter the room? Or did it leave?

“What’s going on?”

Jenny muttered. She scanned the vicinity of the corridor with her Force but could not find anything. This constant state of agitation was not good for her heart.

“Clack, clack…”

The footsteps at the end of the corridor drew closer.

In this decisive moment, Chen Chen suddenly flicked an eyebrow and made an abrupt move!

“Bang!”

The door shut with a loud slam!

“What are you doing?”

Jenny questioned Chen Chen in a fit of anger.

“Shhh…”

Chen Chen raised a finger and signaled for her silence. He needed to pay attention to the developments outside.

“Clack!”

The footsteps arrived at the now tightly shut door again and just like last time, silence descended.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes…

This time, the sound of footsteps outside the door stayed in place for about ten minutes and then left again, heading toward the other end of the corridor.

After the footsteps went away again, they calmed down slightly.

“Didn’t you guys notice?”

Chen Chen said in a hushed voice, “The knocking earlier seemed to come from inside instead of outside.”

Zhao Shanhe and Jenny were startled by Chen Chen’s sudden remark.

“You can tell that it’s clearer and sounded like it came from inside because if it came from outside, it’d at least be muffled slightly by the door.”

Chen Chen explained coolly, “I think whatever was knocking at the door went out the moment Zhao Shanhe opened the door. We had the false assumption that it originated outside since we heard footsteps coming from the outside earlier.”

Jenny’s face turned pale.

If the sound of knocking did come from the inside, could it mean that they were staying in the same room with whatever it was all this time?

There were millions of different emotions appearing on Jenny and Zhao Shanhe’s faces, which were quite fascinating to see.

“This won’t do, I have to investigate it myself.”

Zhao Shanhe grunted suddenly as he raised his hand flat in the air. A tiny black slate appeared at the center of his palm and levitated above it. It emitted an undetectable shockwave that permeated the room!

However, this shockwave still did not detect anything.

Zhao Shanhe seemed to be convinced and retracted the black slate.

Seeing Zhao Shanhe’s reaction, Chen Chen shook his head without a word, then went back to his thoughts.

Chen Chen remained vigilant. In truth, even he could not believe that his Field would be restricted in this place and for his psionic power to be rendered useless as well. He could not even sense the source of the knocking sounds that they heard.

There was no logical explanation for the footsteps and door knocking that they heard. Could it just be as Zhao Shanhe suspected that it was an unknown memetic effect?

Chen Chen certainly had no way of knowing.

The three of them soon noticed an established pattern behind the footsteps. It seemed to resurface every hour or so along the corridor, then it would arrive outside the door and remain there for ten minutes.

At first, the three of them would tense up at its arrival but as they slowly grew accustomed to it, they eased slightly. Considering that it never seemed to attempt to barge in, there was no use continuing stressing about it.

As time went on, Jenny, who only recently recovered, could not handle the fatigue anymore and fell asleep soundly on the bed. Zhao Shanhe and Chen Chen remained silently on the chair with their eyes closed.

The clock slowly ticked away. The night sky was now seeing the first signs of daylight.

Chen Chen could sense that daytime was approaching because he was seated underneath the window. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the faint darkness slowly brightening with traces of light. Eventually, a glimpse of light passed through the curtain and beamed inside the room to welcome the day.

“It’s now around six in the morning of the second day…”

Chen Chen roughly estimated the current time. With his acute senses, this estimate should be quite accurate, with only a five or ten-minute difference.

Jenny got up around this time as well. She sat up, feeling slightly better after getting proper rest.

“Get ready. After the next footsteps, we can head out.”

Zhao Shanhe informed the group while retrieving some food from his bag and passing some to Jenny. He made sure to offer Chen Chen some as well.

Chen Chen declined the kind gesture. His body was composed of the combined essence of five thousand death row inmates and surpassed the boundaries of a common person. He could easily go on days without any food or water so there was no need to exhaust their food supply.

Zhao Shanhe left it at that and ate silently.

Before they finished their breakfast, the footsteps that had been hounding them all night returned…

Upon hearing the approaching footsteps, Chen Chen became quite restless. He had already thought about poking through the gap underneath the door with psionic power to see who this mysterious visitor was. The only reason he had not done that was that he figured there was no need to escalate the situation. There was no telling if his psionic power would trigger some kind of unknown chaos.

Now that they were about to leave anyway, Chen Chen was not about to let this opportunity pass him by.

Chen Chen quickly took advantage of the window before the footsteps arrived at the door and slipped a tiny slither of his psionic power out the door…

Psionic, like Field, was an intangible force without any shape or form. Both of these powers were not known for supreme penetration and could hardly pass through obstacles more than several millimeters thick but a gap underneath the door was certainly a viable path of entry, even if it took a bit more effort.

Faint traces of psionic power slipped out until it filled the section outside the door. By this point, the footstep was almost here.

“Clack, clack…”

Chen Chen held his breath and conservatively extended his psionic reach, hoping to make the first contact with the owner of this footstep.

Upon “seeing” who this person was, Chen Chen froze.

This “person” turned out to be a robot, one with large spots of rust all over it and in a state of disrepair!

The exterior of its shell was covered with stitched layers of human skin. A large portion of this skin had rotted away and only hung over the robot’s shell like a broken cape. The hard, metallic shell of the robot could be seen underneath rotted holes formed on the skin…

“This…”

Chen Chen was baffled by this. The possibility of this entity patrolling outside the dormitory the entire night being an aged, nearly broken-down robot had never even occurred to him!

Chen Chen had never seen this model before. Its design was quite humanoid, sporting two arms and legs like that of a regular human with a head as well. He would have assumed it was some sort of alien property if not for the layers of skin stitched atop it.

This explained why he could not sense a human presence behind these footsteps. It was not a human all along…

Chen Chen had yet to make direct contact. He only observed it from a distance with psionic power so far. When it arrived at the door, it stopped and seemed like it was trying to scan the interior of the room.

Due to the decrepit state of its devices, its sensors were of no use at all. All it could do was to stand motionlessly outside the door for about ten minutes before realizing that its sensors yielded no result. Then, it turned around and moved down the other end of the corridor again.

After sensing its departure, Zhao Shanhe sat up and stretched, then motioned to Chen Chen. “It just left. Based on the pattern we’ve observed all night, it should be another hour and a half before it returns. We should’ve enough time to return to the Air Force One and head to the real subspace.”

Chen Chen answered with a brisk nod. Zhao Shanhe cautiously opened the door and left the room first. The rest followed and soon exited the mall compound.

Just what in the world was that robot?

The curious subject still vexed Chen Chen but he knew this was not the time to be bothered with such details. He left the mall with the group.

Several minutes later, they reached the Air Force One.

Chen Chen sensed the thick fog in the vicinity that further limited his psionic range, shortening it from twenty meters to a mere eighteen meters.

When he surveyed the Air Force One with his psionic power, he noticed that the aircraft was covered with thick vines like blood vessels.

This strange plant appeared to grow by seeping from the black mist in its surroundings. It was still growing at a noticeable rate like it would not stop until it could completely wrap itself around the almost destroyed Air Force One.

Zhao Shanhe seemed unfazed by this and continued crawling through the cracks of the aircraft as if its current state was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Come on!”

Zhao Shanhe called out and stretched a hand for Jenny to grab onto.

Chen Chen frowned a little upon noting this. He lifted himself with his psionic power and stepped into the cabin with the rest of them…