Autophagy

"We'll have to be ready," Old Wolf said. Song Lei frowned.

"And how are we going to do that?" He asked. "More than half of our members have died or gone missing."

Hearing Song Lei's words, Old Wolf started thinking deeply.

"There's actually another problem on our hands," Suddenly a voice said. Song Lei turned his head to see Damien sitting straight on the bed. He yawned loudly. "The first floor has been run down by ghosts."

"What? What do you mean by that?" Old Wolf asked with creased brows.

"What I mean is..." Damien started explaining how there were horrors covering the first floor, seemingly blocked from coming to the upper floors by a talisman. Old Wolf listened to him silently and sighed.

"That will be hard to deal with," he said. Song Lei nodded alongside him. They needed a good plan to deal with the situation. "Do you have any of those talismans with you?" Old Wolf asked. Damien shook his head.

"We'll go there later to have a look at them," Old Wolf said. "Meanwhile, we have to decide how we are going to deal with things from now on..."

"Indeed. Now that we have 7 members remaining, we have to decide what floor we are going to assign everyone," Damien agreed. They initially had a system where almost everyone had a floor that was assigned to them. This was possible because they had a good amount of members. But now, more than half of their members had been killed or were lost.

Old Wolf glanced over the remaining members. Compared to the others, the remaining members were much more docile and humane. Although this had some plus sides to that, they had lost a good amount of fighting power.

"And we still have to keep looking for other branch members. They might not be dead after all," Song Lei said. Although he didn't like her too much, Xu Chang was still their friend. No matter where they looked, they couldn't find her anywhere in the apartment. 'I wonder what happened to her...' Song Lei thought.

He had initially thought that Andres had kidnapped Xu Chang. But Song Lei couldn't find her even after beating Andres. Although there was the possibility of Andres killing her and disposing of her body, it wasn't that plausible. After all, there wasn't a meaning behind doing so.

'Maybe the culprit isn't him...' Song Lei thought while holding his chin. He quickly discarded this idea. 'Even if it is so, we can't know it. The only thing we can do is to keep searching.'

"That's right," Old Wolf nodded. "We could start by going down to the 7th floor but we have to properly recuperate first. Make sure that you guys rest well. We'll then have to carry Gao Jing and Lu Peng to the 7th floor. It's much safer to treat the wounded there," he said.

Song Lei and Damien nodded. Damien laid back down on the bed and started sleeping again. Song Lei kept trying to feel the changes in his senses.

When he turned his head to look at the corner of the room, he was surprised by the scene he was met with.

There was the figure of a disfigured little dog. Although its legs were somewhat in the wrong place and its body was covered with weird blobs popping out of it, it still looked like a dog. This was the quake demon, calmly sitting in its place without a care in the world.

What surprised Song Lei was the fact that how much better he had gotten at seeing it. It initially used to be a small silhouette that would disappear under too much light. Now, however, it looked to be a hazy figure. It was like Song Lei was looking at a dog from behind a misted glass.

'I hope it becomes even better with time,' he thought. He was now pretty sure that he could perceive ghosts better as long as he kept raising his soul stat.

After he was done checking out the things that had changed with his body, it had already been more than a few hours since everyone had slept. Song Lei, too, was getting sleepy. He tapped Fu Ah on the shoulder to wake her up.

"Wake up," Song Lei whispered, not wanting to wake the others. Fu Ah opened her eyes and left the bed instantly. It was a bit creepy as if she had just been acting like she was sleeping for the whole time. The speed she could wake up was truly baffling for Song Lei.

After she and Song Lei swapped places, Song Lei dove into a deep sleep...

...

When Song Lei woke up, it was already 7 a.m. Everybody that could wake up had already woken up and dealt with their daily necessities. But because Song Lei's room didn't have a shower in it, some had to go to room 1401.

Old Wolf was still in room 1401, taking a shower. Damien, He Lingxin, and Fu Ah were all sitting in a circle talking to each other. Gao Jing and Lu Peng, on the other hand, were still in a deep coma. It was understandable for Lu Peng to be in a coma, as he had been badly hurt while fighting the darkness infestation.

Gao Jing, on the other hand, seemed to be completely healthy from the outside. Fu Ah, who had some amount of medical knowledge, couldn't detect anything internal too. They honestly had no idea what was happening to him.

Although Song Lei had no particular opinion about both of them, he still wished they would wake up. No matter what, they needed more people in the situation they were in.

While Song Lei was thinking about such topics, Old Wolf opened the door and came in.

"Is everyone ready?" He asked. He didn't wait for any answers and said, "Well... It doesn't matter. Let's go to the 7th floor first. Maybe some people have returned."

Everybody nodded. Song Lei and Damien picked up Gao Jing and Lu Peng. Although Song Lei could probably carry both of them at the same time, there was no need to burden himself so much. They all departed together.

Fortunately, they managed to reach the 7th floor without anything out of the ordinary happening. Although they had just woken up, they were still in a mentally fatigued state. They didn't want to deal with any problems for now.

After reaching the 7th floor, they put Gao Jing and Lu Peng into a room with two beds. They would be taken care of here from now on.

"Let's go to the meeting room and discuss what we will do from now on there," Old Wolf said. Fu Ah shook her head while looking at him.

"You guys go ahead. I will stay here and look after them," she said before turning her head towards Gao Jing and Lu Peng. "I don't want to deal with decision-making..."

Old Wolf sighed and led the others to the meeting room. Nobody had returned to the 7th floor. Now that a good amount of time had passed after the darkness infection was over, it was normal to assume that the people who weren't here were as good as dead.

Song Lei, Damien, Old Wolf, and He Lingxin each picked a chair and settled around the table. This table, which had been full of people when Song Lei first came here, was now mostly empty.

"As all of you know, we've lost most of our members. We now have to decide on what to do with the floors on our hands," Old Wolf said. Damien was tapping his fingers on the table.

"We have to abandon some no matter what we decide to do. There's no way we can control them properly if we spread out two floors to each member. Maybe Song Lei and I could deal with two floors on our own but other members might not be able to," Damien said.

Old Wolf nodded and asked, "Do you two agree with that?"

Song Lei and He Lingxin nodded. There wasn't much to discuss on this topic.

"Then it's decided that we will abandon some floors. The new question is, which do we actually abandon?" Old Wolf asked. Everyone went deep into thought.

"I think we should abandon the lower floors," Song Lei said. "Now that the first floor has been conquered by the horrors, we can't be at ease while having them just below us, ready to murder us at any moment."

"But isn't it worse on the upper floors?" He Lingxin asked. "Those floors aren't cleared after all. What if the horde activates for some reason?"

"We know how to deal with that. We can just shut ourselves into our safe rooms and never come out. However, we don't know what kind of dangers have entered the apartment. Dealing with the unknown is much harder," Old Wolf said. "I agree with Song Lei."

Damien nodded too, indicating that he found Song Lei reasonable.

"We have to redistribute everyone's floors. We will be holding onto the floors from the 7th and upwards. So Song Lei and those who had rooms on the upper part of the apartment can keep their room," Old Wolf said. There wasn't much to talk about anymore so he ended the meeting.

"Now that this was dealt with, bring me to that talisman you talked about...."