Free Web NovelChapter 127: Chapter 127: The 18th Layer of Hell
Shen Feng leaped out of the water, snatched the automatic rifle from the ground, and took aim at the figure.
But then, looking through the scope, he suddenly noticed the figure’s body seemed to be faintly glowing.
The light was too dim in that area, making it hard to see clearly.
Shen Feng took a deep breath and charged forward, covering dozens of meters in an instant. He reached the figure and pressed the muzzle of his gun against its head.
CLINK... A soft sound of metal striking metal. The gun’s muzzle felt like it was pressed against stone.
He flicked on his tactical flashlight, shining it on the figure’s face.
What stood before Shen Feng was none other than a metal statue of a person.
It wasn’t a living person.
Shen Feng couldn’t help but frown.
Back in the Stone Statue Apocalypse, he had seen countless humanoid stone statues, so he was long since immune to this sort of thing.
He crouched down and carefully observed the metal statue.
The statue depicted a middle-aged man in work clothes, wearing a slightly worn-out work cap.
It was seated slumped against the wall, its hands reaching up as if grasping for something.
The expression on its face was terrified and twisted, its gaze fixed upward.
Not just its body, but its clothes, hat, and even its glasses had all been turned to metal, identical in material to the surrounding gray metal walls.
Shen Feng’s expression was grim. He stood up, having already confirmed what had happened to the man.
Gray Consumption.
He was no longer the clueless person he’d been when he first entered the Stone Statue Apocalypse; he certainly wouldn’t mistake this metal statue for a piece of art.
This was a human who had been consumed by the Gray Tide formed from Nanomechanical Insects. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
When the nanite swarm’s programming malfunctions, it tends to execute only the initial commands while aborting the latter ones.
Simply put, it only consumes its prey and performs a metallic conversion, but no longer uses the prey as raw material to construct the objects specified in its programming.
The consumed matter is spat back out, unchanged at the molecular level, still retaining its original form.
This is what’s known as Gray Consumption.
Just then, Shen Feng suddenly spotted the corner of a notebook peeking out from inside the figure’s clothes.
He immediately reached out to pull it, but cursed the next second.
Fuck.
The entire worker had turned to metal, and the notebook on his person had fused with him, becoming a single piece. It was impossible to get it out.
After checking the surroundings and confirming there were no other humans who had undergone Gray Consumption, Shen Feng ambled back to the pool and jumped back in with a huge splash.
He’d been here for seven or eight days, running through pitch-black corridors for seven of them. He had finally made it out, only to find that the one human he encountered was just a metal statue left by Gray Consumption.
Shen Feng was starting to wonder if there were any living humans left in this world at all.
The Gray Tide, composed of Nanomechanical Insects, could be described as world-devouring. Even digging a nuclear bunker would be useless. Even the once most heavily fortified Cheyenne Mountain Military Base was utterly defenseless against the Gray Tide.
Whether metal or stone, the nanites could devour it at a molecular level. They were simply unstoppable.
Because of this, it was highly likely that all of humanity had been completely consumed.
Either broken down into basic raw materials and turned into structures like floors, walls, and pipes...
...or, like the man just now, directly subjected to Gray Consumption and turned into a metal statue.
After completing two apocalypse missions and thwarting several cataclysms in the real world, Shen Feng felt a sense of powerlessness for the first time.
’It might take me a very, very long time—perhaps even many years—to end all this...’
There were no clues at all.
It was as if this place was a dead world.
A metallic graveyard.
’No...’ Shen Feng shook his head sharply. He had almost been overcome by the cramped, oppressive, and monotonous environment inside this super-construct.
’There’s still one clue!’
Shen Feng got up, dried himself off, got dressed, gathered all his gear, and returned to the metal statue of the man who had undergone Gray Consumption, observing it carefully.
Its hands, and its eyes, were both pointing upward at the final moment before death.
Up!
’Perhaps the only way to find the answer is to go up, to walk beneath Solar!’
At the same time, Shen Feng was surprised to find several lines of small text under the giant Azure Sky Technology logo.
It was an etched barcode, along with a few lines of text:
Storage Construct 47287567 September 12, 2029
The "workshop" he was in turned out to be a warehouse building.
And it was the 47,287,567th one, built on September 12, 2029!
Drawing on his experience from the nuclear wasteland apocalypse, Shen Feng instantly understood that the Gray Tide outbreak must have happened sometime before 2029 in this world.
But as for the current date in this Gray Tide apocalypse, there was no telling what it was...
’The answer... is probably up there.’
Without further hesitation, Shen Feng started climbing a flight of stairs inside the construct.
Soon, he reached the next level.
This level was different from the last one. It looked a bit like the inside of an office building and was nowhere near as high, only two or three meters tall. Apparently, this also counted as a floor.
It was still a pile of jumbled construction components, but the structure was slightly more organized and simple than the level below.
Shen Feng didn’t pause at all, continuing up the internal staircase.
The next few floors were similar, but everything was becoming more orderly, as if a clumsy Architect was gradually learning how to construct buildings.
Apparently, the Gray Tide was also constantly iterating and evolving as it built these constructs.
The height of each level varied, yet it was all gradually developing in an orderly direction, even faintly showing a sense of architectural beauty.
Another three days passed, and Shen Feng had climbed hundreds of floors.
His food was almost gone, and only a third of the water he had replenished two days ago remained.
Most critical of all was the intense feeling of loneliness.
If it weren’t for Jingwei keeping him company, chatting and talking nonsense, Shen Feng reckoned he probably wouldn’t have been able to hold on.
Other than endless rooms and buildings, and a staircase that seemed to have no end, there was nothing here.
Not even a cockroach.
Shen Feng once thought that if Hell existed in this world, its lowest level would be the highly radioactive nuclear blast craters of the nuclear wasteland.
But now he was sure that the lowest level of Hell was undoubtedly this lonely hell of empty architecture, devoid of any living things.
SHUFFLE... SHUFFLE... Shen Feng took heavy steps up the last two stairs and set foot on a new level.
959.
The Arabic numerals on the wall indicated the floor he was now on.
Suddenly, Shen Feng froze, then lunged toward the entrance of a huge storage construct before him.
Unlike the monotonous, chaotic floors he had passed through before, level 959 was another giant storage construct, dozens of meters high.
And within this storage construct, a few lights were on.
Beneath the dim lights were huge glass coffins, connected to various pipes and cables that snaked up from the floor.
Shen Feng rushed to one of the glass coffins and peered inside, his eyes widening in shock.
Inside the glass coffin was a person.
Brown hair, white skin, male.
A living, breathing person, submerged in cryogenic fluid.
Looking out across the entire storage construct, he saw that every glass coffin contained a person.
A boundless, densely packed sea of people!
Just then, a flurry of footsteps suddenly sounded behind him.
~
