Chapter 213: The Passage Beneath the Elevator Shaft

Words : 1440 Updated : Oct 2nd, 2025

Chapter 213: Chapter 213: The Passage Beneath the Elevator ShaftZheng Liang felt a momentary burst of fury, but he quickly suppressed his emotions and chose to wisely shut his mouth. Xu Huo did not look at him again, directing his gaze into the distance, where it settled on Dai Wenqian. He watched the number on Dai’s head jump from "5" to "7," then to "8," and then fall back to "6." It oscillated like this a couple of times before finally stabilizing at "5." "Eat something," Kang Hong said, bringing over half a bag of compressed biscuits and half a bottle of water, "it’s already the third day." "Has everyone else’s food run out?" Xu Huo took them. "The man-eating flowers came so suddenly, who had time to grab anything?" Kang Hong said, "But fortunately, the instance will end tomorrow." Xu Huo glanced at the man-eating flower blocking the outer wall, "When the man-eating flower withdraws, we can go back to the seventh floor to look for food." Kang Hong quickly waved his hands, "I’d rather go hungry than face the man-eating flowers again." "I want to go have a look," Jiang Yihua came over, "call me if you’re going down." Xu Huo saw that Da Zhi was slumping against the wall weakly and handed the food and water to her instead, "Your capsule doesn’t work?" "He’s already taken it," said Jiang Yihua, who only took the biscuits, "Thank you." Seeing Xu Huo giving the food to someone else, Gu Yu took the chocolate from her pocket and handed it to him. Xu Huo broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth before finding a spot to catch up on sleep. It wasn’t until six in the afternoon that he stood up again. The window was still blocked by the man-eating flowers, and combined with the misty weather and the limited light source being occupied, the light on the thirteenth floor was dim. People in the building, in a state of hunger and exhaustion, were drowsy and sleepy. Smelling a faint scent in the air, he woke up Jiang Yihua and the others. "What’s wrong?" Gu Yu quickly came to her senses, watching her surroundings with caution. "It’s nothing, you guys were sleeping too deeply," Xu Huo said. Hearing the noise, Zheng Liang and the others opened their eyes. Dai Wenqian frowned, "The mutated plants on the thirteenth floor are a bit strange." "It just has a calming effect," said Wei Bin, who was unable to rest due to the pain. Taking a deep breath, he said, "It’s not very harmful to humans." Kang Hong rubbed his face, "It’s about to get dark, and if we keep sleeping like this, we might be poisoned to death without even knowing." "We might as well wake everyone up," suggested Jiang Yihua. The few of them woke up the people around them, who in turn woke up others. "Why haven’t these man-eating flowers withdrawn?" Zheng Liang approached the window and asked, "Do those things never retract their tongues once they’ve stuck them out?" Xu Huo picked up a piece of glass and poked at the man-eating flower vine. Zheng Liang rushed over to stop him, but Xu Huo simply held him back with one hand and went ahead poking the vine with the glass shard. There was no response from the vine outside. "It’s become docile," Dai Wenqian said from a few meters away, "In this state, the seventh floor should be fine, as long as you don’t deliberately provoke the vines." "You guys are really daring and skilled," Zheng Liang said through gritted teeth, "What if the man-eating flower wakes up and sprays poison powder?" "Don’t worry, it was fine before, and the likelihood of it spraying poison powder now is very small," Xu Huo said nonchalantly before turning and heading towards the elevator. Dai Wenqian fell a step behind. "You guys really going?" Zheng Liang followed the two, "There’s no need to take this risk at a time like this. Even if we can’t stay on the thirteenth floor after ten at night, we could hide in the elevator shaft." However, the two didn’t pay him any attention and went straight to open the elevator door, below which everything seemed calm. Xu Huo went first, using a vine rope to descend and cautiously opened the seventh floor’s elevator door. Peering inside through the gap, he saw that the Man-Eating Flowers hadn’t filled the entire seventh floor as he had expected. A mass of blossoms hung loosely from their vines in the center of the building, seemingly in a state of deep slumber. He went in first, with Dai Wenqian, Jiang Yihua, and Gu Yu descending in that order. Jiang Yihua came looking for food. Although the bottled water had all burst, the broken biscuits and snacks were still edible. She quickly gathered them and then noticed a cart tipped over nearby. She turned back to Xu Huo and said, "Most of the flowers you brought out are dead." Most had been squashed, and several pots were corroded away. Xu Huo went over and unearthed a pot with a small purple flower buried in the soil. Almost all the other flowers were broken, but this one, still embedded in the dirt, was relatively intact. After cleaning off the flower and gathering some soil, he picked up a plastic bag and planted the flower inside it. Jiang Yihua watched his actions and couldn’t help saying, "That flower is really strange, its roots are red." Xu Huo looked up at her, "You take the food up first, and bring the flower with you." Jiang Yihua nodded and left with the items. Xu Huo walked over to where Gu Yu was. She and Dai Wenqian were examining the vine. Different from what they had seen outside the thirteenth floor, the seventh floor’s vine had bulges the size of human heads that looked like pus-filled boils. "It doesn’t look like it’s digesting bodies." Dai Wenqian crouched down, took out a knife, but before he could touch the vine, a white pus boil suddenly burst open, spewing something out! Dai Wenqian immediately swung his knife, but sliced at nothing, and quickly covered his face with his other hand; he felt a sharp pain in his palm as he threw whatever he caught away. It was only when the thing hit the ground that they could see clearly—it was a grey meat worm, as thick as an adult’s forearm and about the length of a palm, writhing continuously. Xu Huo cut it in half, but the worm didn’t die after being split into two. Instead, both halves moved rapidly in different directions. Gu Yu jumped in fright, swung the metal table leg in her hand, and smashed the worm crawling towards her into a pulpy mess. However, when she looked up, she saw the two men beside her staring without reaction at the other half of the worm crawling toward the elevator. "Where’s it going?" Dai Wenqian asked as the worm wiggled the tentacles on its head, seemingly distinguishing its direction. "You don’t think a worm can actually think, do you?" Gu Yu looked at him in shock, but then noticed the pus boils on the vine starting to move. She quickly said, "Let’s go!" Searᴄh the nôvelFire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. The three hurried off the seventh floor, but once they reached the thirteenth floor, Xu Huo stopped Gu Yu, who was about to close the door in haste, and looked down the elevator shaft. When they had come up, they hadn’t closed the door to the seventh floor. Numerous worms crawled out from there, moving down along the elevator shaft to the bottom, where they burrowed under the dead Man-Eating Flowers and gradually disappeared from sight. "There’s a passage under the elevator shaft." Xu Huo and Dai Wenqian said almost simultaneously. The two exchanged glances, Xu Huo used the piano wire to catch one of the meat worms from below, while Dai Wenqian returned to the floor, climbing up to the glass room to dismantle the fan in the ventilation duct. Dai Wenqian pulled out a small fan tube and looked around, "It’s independently wired, there must be a main connection inside." "It’s just the wire isn’t long enough," Dai Wenqian added, "We’ll need to go to the office floors and pull down a few wires." Xu Huo brought the meat worm up, placed it under a flowerpot, and casually said, "As long as it can supply power when connected, that’s fine."

Chapter 213: The Passage Beneath the Elevator Shaft

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