124: Chapter 116 My daughter is still waiting for me to pick her up from school.

There were no stairs to the third basement level.

To be precise, the section of stairs leading to the third basement level had things growing on the treads, starting from the seventh step.

Silver threads emerged from the concrete cracks, stretching horizontally across the treads. The spacing was more than ten times denser than the floor above. Standing on the sixth step and looking down, Pei Duo saw the entire lower half of the staircase woven into a web by silver threads. At its widest point, a fist could barely fit through the mesh.

'We can't get through,' Lin Sa said, squatting down and flicking the nearest silver thread with the tip of her dagger. The moment the blade touched it, the thread vibrated slightly, emitting a very short 'buzz.'

Like a guitar string.

That 'buzz' traveled down along the ground. Two seconds later, three silver threads at the bottom of the stairs lit up simultaneously before dimming.

They were linked. Touch one, and a whole section below reacts.

Read reliable Taiwan novels here.

Pei Duo didn't look at the silver threads. She was looking beneath them.

The end of the stairs opened into a vast space. Unlike the hospital bed maze above, the third basement level had no partitions or walls; the entire floor had been cleared into a single, massive open space.

Hundreds of hospital beds were neatly arranged in a phalanx. There were no maze-like twists or fancy tricks—just a purely dense arrangement, bed next to bed, with less than half an arm's length between them.

People were lying on every bed.

Their postures were the same as those above. Lying on their backs, hands at their sides, mouths slightly agape. Silver threads emerged from their spines and plunged into the floor.

But the people on this floor no longer rolled their eyes.

They were weeping.

Their eyes remained still, staring straight at the ceiling. Tears flowed silently from the corners of their eyes, sliding past their temples and into their ears or onto the pillows. There were no sobs, no changes in expression—they just cried. Like a leaky faucet, drop by drop, unstoppable.

Pei Duo squatted on the sixth step, staring at the elderly man on the nearest bed. The tear stains on his face had already dried in several layers, with new ones overlapping them, one after another.

The jade pendant throbbed.

It wasn't the battle-ready throb from before. It was heavy and dull, beat after beat, as if sighing for something.

'The color of the threads is wrong,' Meng Tian's voice emerged from the shadows, uncharacteristically hushed. 'They aren't all silver.'

Pei Duo narrowed her eyes and looked in the direction Meng Tian indicated.

Middle-left of the phalanx.

The color of the silver threads on that bed was changing.

Starting from the ends, the silver faded bit by bit, replaced by a dull dark gold. The dark gold climbed up the threads like ink seeping into cotton—slow, uniform, and irreversible.

Pei Duo pulled out her phone, found Xu Mo's previous voice message, and fast-forwarded to that specific part—

'When the silver threads turn completely dark gold, it means the soul has been fully digested. It's irreversible.'

She put down her phone and looked back at the bed.

The dark gold had already consumed ninety percent of the silver threads. Only the last one, connected directly above the person's heart, remained silver.

But the silver was visibly fading.

Pei Duo stood up.

'I'm going down.'

Lin Sa stopped her. 'How will you get past the silver thread web?'

'I won't,' Pei Duo said, patting her chest.

The jade pendant hummed.

Black-gold patterns rose from the jade's surface as nine coiled dragons began to swim slowly. An extremely restrained aura of imperial power seeped out from beneath Pei Duo's feet, gliding along the stairs like water, silently washing over the silver thread web.

The silver threads didn't break.

But they yielded.

As if gently pushed aside by an invisible hand, the silver threads bent to either side one by one, leaving a narrow path just wide enough for one person to pass through.

It wasn't brute force. It was the crushing weight of a higher law. The natural suppression of the Great Qin's imperial power over the authority of the Greek God of Death.

Pei Duo stepped onto the seventh step. The silver threads trembled slightly at her feet, but none dared to touch her.

She passed through the silver thread web and entered the phalanx.

The gaps between the hospital beds were extremely narrow. She moved sideways, looking at each bed one by one.

Every face was weeping.

There were elderly people, middle-aged people, and young girls with remnants of unremoved pink nail polish on their nails.

Pei Duo didn't stop.

She walked straight toward the bed where the colors were changing.

A middle-aged man lay on the bed.

His skin was dark and his hands were rough, with calluses on his thumb and index finger from years of gripping a steering wheel. There was a faint ring mark on his left ring finger—a wedding band worn for a long time, removed before his admission.

Pei Duo pulled her phone from her pocket, opened the scanned medical records Xu Mo had sent, and flipped through a few pages.

Found him.

Zhou Jianguo. Forty-six years old. Occupation: Taxi driver. Reason for admission: Lumbar disc herniation, worsening pain.

Rating: B.

The remarks column was blank.

A B-grade soul. Not the purest, and not worth special attention. In the eyes of Thanatos, he was probably just an ordinary grain of rice in a giant cafeteria pot.

But this grain of rice had a home.

Pei Duo looked at the last silver thread over his heart.

The silver was fading. The dark gold was climbing up from the bottom and had already passed the halfway mark.

'Meng Tian.'

'This general is here.'

'If I cut this thread, will it trigger the linkage?'

The shadow was silent for two seconds.

'Yes. The silver threads within a three-zhang radius will vibrate synchronously, transmitting the signal to the main underground vein.'

'Can the vibration range be contained within this area?'

'...If the jade pendant's laws are output at full power, it can be suppressed. But it will expose our position.'

Pei Duo looked down at the face.

His eyes didn't move. Tears were flowing.

His lips were slightly parted, just like all the other puppets.

But Pei Duo noticed a detail.

His lips were trembling.

It wasn't the rhythmic twitching of the mourning song. It was the kind of trembling from extreme pain when one cannot make a sound.

Pei Duo extended her right hand. The black-gold patterns of the jade pendant spread along her arm to her fingertips, condensing into a point of light as fine as a needle tip at the end of her index finger.

'Lin Sa, stand guard three zhang away.'

Lin Sa was already in position. Her dagger was held across her chest as she leaned against the outermost bed, her eyes scanning in all directions.

Pei Duo took a deep breath.

Her fingertip descended.

The black-gold point of light sliced precisely through that silver thread—not at the heart, but at the root where the thread emerged from the skin.

The cut was clean and sharp.

The moment the silver thread snapped, it emitted an extremely sharp, thin sound.

Within a three-zhang radius, all the silver threads vibrated violently at once. The dense buzzing sounds layered together like a swarm of hornets whose nest had been disturbed.

The jade pendant suddenly grew hot.

Nine black dragons surged from the jade's surface, spreading along the floor to weave a black-gold soundproof barrier within the three-zhang range. The buzzing was pinned down inside the barrier, without a single trace leaking out.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

The buzzing faded. The silver threads' vibrations subsided.

The black dragons slowly turned back and sank into the jade's surface.

Pei Duo looked down.

The man's eyes—stopped.

They no longer rolled.

Tears still hung on his face, but they no longer flowed down.

His lips slowly closed. His chest heaved violently once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Then, he blinked.

In the entire third basement level, among more than three hundred beds and three hundred silently weeping shells, he was the first person to blink.

His lips moved. His Adam's apple bobbed. The first syllable in three days squeezed out from the cracks of his parched lips.

"...It hurts."

His voice was incredibly raspy, but it was human speech. Words spoken by a living person.

Pei Duo squatted by the bed, remaining silent.

The man blinked again. His eyes slowly turned, taking several seconds to focus on Pei Duo's face.

He didn't recognize who she was, but he knew it was a human face.

His lips moved again.

"...My daughter... is still waiting for me to pick her up from school..."

After saying this, he ran out of strength. His eyelids drooped, and his chest rose and fell weakly.

He fell asleep.

A real sleep. Not the standby mode of a puppet, but the kind of sleep where a middle-aged taxi driver with a herniated disc could finally close his eyes after three days of pain.

Pei Duo stood up. Her face was expressionless.

Lin Sa walked over.

She didn't speak.

She glanced at the man's arm exposed outside the blanket—dark and thin, covered with needle holes left by the silver thread piercings, some of which had already bruised.

Lin Sa reached out, pulled up the corner of the blanket that had slipped aside, and covered the arm.

Her movements were very gentle.

After covering it, her hand lingered on the edge of the blanket for a second. Then she withdrew it and gripped the hilt of her knife.

"Let's go."

Pei Duo nodded and turned around.

She took two steps.

She stopped.

The underground chanting—

Skipped.

As if a record had been pressed by a fingertip for an instant, a very brief break appeared in the melody. No more than 0.3 seconds.

Then it resumed.

Four-four time, continuing.

But Pei Duo heard clearly which direction that skip came from.

Not Channel 3.

It was Channel 5.

She turned her head, looking deep into the right side of the phalanx. Nothing could be seen in that direction; it was a mass of darkness.

Meng Tian in the shadow also fell silent for a beat.

"The main vein," Meng Tian uttered.

Pei Duo pulled the twice-folded fax paper from her pocket.

"Don't take Channel 3, take Channel 5."

The handwriting on the paper lay there quietly.

She stuffed the paper back. Without hesitation, she raised her foot and walked toward Channel 5.

Behind her, deep in the phalanx, the silver threads on hundreds of beds suddenly lit up simultaneously.

Extremely fast. Extremely brief.

Like an eye blinking once in the darkness.

The entrance to Channel 5 had no sign.

Even the two screw holes where a sign should have been nailed to the wall were filled in and plastered over with cement, the color half a shade lighter than the surroundings.

Someone had erased this path from the blueprints.

Pei Duo squeezed in sideways.

The passage was narrower than expected; two people couldn't walk side-by-side. Less than twenty steps in, the ground began to slant—not into stairs, but a continuous downward spiral ramp.

The slope wasn't very steep.

But as they walked, the sensation underfoot changed.

The concrete was gone.

What replaced it was slightly soft, with a hint of elasticity as if stepping on a taut membrane. The surface was densely covered in patterns that spread from underfoot to the walls on both sides.

Pei Duo reached out and touched the wall.

It was warm.

Not the dry warmth of underfloor heating, but body temperature. Around thirty-six degrees Celsius, and the moment her finger pads touched it, something pulsed underneath.

It wasn't an illusion. It was truly throbbing.

Beat, beat.

Lin Sa touched it too. Her fingers recoiled, and she cursed under her breath.

"This wall is alive."

Pei Duo didn't respond.

She was looking at the patterns.

Fine lines branched and converged with clear directions. In some places, rice-sized bumps protruded, forming a string that meandered down the wall.

Vessels.

The entire passage was a blood vessel.

From the outside, it looked like a hospital fire escape. Inside, it was an organ.

---

The spiral ramp completed its first turn.

A section of the left wall was recessed, inset with a transparent observation window.

Pei Duo leaned in to look.

Behind the window was a two-square-meter compartment. No bed, no equipment.

A man was squatting facing the wall, his right index finger pressed against the surface, tracing repeatedly.

The same character.

Over and over again.

Pei Duo discerned it after a few seconds—the character 'Liu'.

The man's fingernails were gone. His ten fingers were bare, with bright red flesh worn down at the tips. Blood was smeared on the wall in layers of varying intensity.

But he didn't stop.

Horizontal, vertical, downward stroke. Each stroke was distinct, his finger moving fluidly, even carrying a certain sense of ritual.

Like a monk copying sutras.

Pei Duo looked down.

The silver thread.

But the direction was wrong.

The silver threads on the puppets upstairs were driven in from outside the spine—like nails into wood, from the outside in, crude and direct.

The silver thread on this man's chest grew from within.

The end of the thread emerged from the center of his chest, through his clothes, extending outward and plunging into the floor beneath his feet.

The opening where it emerged was smooth and rounded, with no signs of tearing. The surrounding skin bulged slightly, like a mole that had grown roots.

It hadn't been forced in.

The body had grown it itself.

'Meng Tian,' Pei Duo's voice was barely a whisper.

'I see it,' the muffled voice from the shadow replied. 'From the inside out.'

---

Pei Duo continued walking down.

The second window.

A woman in her early forties was kneeling in the center of the compartment. The knuckle of her right ring finger was grinding against the floor. The flesh on her finger had long since worn through, exposing the pale white bone.

She was writing.

'Wang Lihua'.

The third window.

A teenager, seventeen or eighteen, with a school badge still pinned to his uniform collar. He was hitting the wall with his forehead. It wasn't the desperate banging of self-harm—it was one hit after another, light and rhythmic. With each hit, another stroke was added to the bloodstain.

He was using his head to write his own name.

The fourth.

The fifth.

The sixth.

All of them were writing their names.

All of them had silver threads growing from the inside.

Pei Duo looked through window after window. When she reached the eighth, she stopped.

"There's a gap in the intel Xu Mo gave us."

Lin Sa caught up. 'Where?'

"He said Thanatos was 'extracting' souls." Pei Duo pointed at the silver thread growing from the heart inside the window. "These people aren't being extracted."

She paused for a beat.

"This is a seed."

Lin Sa was silent for two seconds.

'Planted inside?'

"Planted inside to let it sprout on its own. The soul isn't being dragged away; it's flowing out on its own through this thread." Pei Duo tapped her fingertip on the glass. "The puppets upstairs are like a livestock pen—forced confinement and violent extraction. But this floor—"

She didn't finish immediately.

She withdrew her finger from the glass and clenched it into a fist, her knuckles turning white.

"This floor is for believers."

Meng Tian's voice came from the shadow. It wasn't loud, but it was as deep as muffled thunder rolling up from underground.

"This general has fought all his life. No matter how ferocious the Xiongnu, the Baiyue, or other barbarians were, they at least used their blades openly. Such methods..."

He paused.

He didn't say "crude."

"Despicable."

Just one word.

In all the time Meng Tian had been with Pei Duo, it was the first time he had used that word.