"Everyone get back, the employer has mutated!" Lao Liu's pupils constricted as he saw this scene, realizing what was happening, and quickly shouted to everyone.
His subordinates' faces changed drastically upon hearing this, and they hastily retreated, their gazes cautiously fixed on the awakened "Young Master."
"Grog… grog…" The Young Master let out a painful groan and bit down on the jacket man's neck, devouring his blood in large gulps. Only then did the pain in his body lessen considerably.
"Sixth… Sixth Master, has he turned into a ghoul?" a subordinate beside Lao Liu asked tremblingly.
While the Young Master was busy gnawing on the jacket man, Lao Liu stared intently at him, confirming his current state: "The resentment within him suddenly intensified, exceeding his body's limit, causing him to become a walking corpse controlled by resentment."
"Sixth Master, is there any hope for him?" a relatively calm subordinate asked.
Lao Liu shook his head: "This situation is beyond saving. Even if the King of Heaven came, it would be useless."
"Then what do we do now? Should we leave this building?" a subordinate cautiously suggested.
"Let's go!"
Lao Liu's decision was resolute. He knew that it was no longer possible to achieve anything. With the employer gone, what was the point of trying to get money? They should focus on how to face the employer's family's blame after they got out.
While the Young Master was still devouring the jacket man, the group bypassed him and headed towards the staircase.
The unknown malevolent spirit hiding in the shadows slapped its thigh in frustration. This human-turned-malevolent spirit was not very smart, only knowing how to eat. Why didn't it go up and fight them? It was infuriating!
However, seeing the direction everyone was heading, the unknown malevolent spirit chuckled: "You came, but you want to leave? You'll all stay here."
This building allowed entry but not exit. Forget a few humans, even an immortal would have to obediently climb upwards.
It concealed its presence and quietly followed Lao Liu and the others, maintaining a detached observation and not attacking them.
"The staircase is just ahead, everyone be careful." Lao Liu reminded them, holding his gun and sticking close to the wall as he led the way to the staircase.
The others followed cautiously, remembering their previous encounter with a large number of gray resentment dolls at the staircase. This time, they hoped to descend safely.
"Sixth Master, why do I feel a sense of unease?" a subordinate said nervously inside the stairs.
The group descended the stairs step by step, looking back frequently and warily at their surroundings.
"It's probably the oppressive environment," Lao Liu frowned and instinctively reached for a cigarette in his pocket, only to remember and put it back.
"Tap tap tap…" Suddenly, footsteps echoed from the corridor behind them, accompanied by painful roars.
"Is that Young Master chasing us?" Lao Liu glanced back into the darkness. "Hurry!" he said, quickening his pace down the stairs.
Although he wasn't afraid of a man turned monster, he didn't want to lose his men in such a pointless place.
The others followed quickly. Soon, the footsteps faded into the distance, and the staircase to the next floor appeared before them.
"Sixth floor?" Lao Liu shone his flashlight on the floor indicator. If he remembered correctly, they should have been on the fifth floor. How could descending one floor lead them to the sixth?
"Sixth… Sixth Master, weren't we just on… on the fifth floor? How did descending one floor become the sixth floor? Did we take the wrong stairs?" the subordinate stammered, the building growing increasingly bizarre.
They were definitely going down, so how could they have gone up a floor?
Lao Liu suddenly thought of something and turned to the group: "You all wait here for me, I'll go back and take a look." He then ran back up the stairs with his flashlight. Soon, the floor indicator appeared before him, and he shone his light on it.
"As expected… it's become the seventh floor?" Even Lao Liu, with his strong composure, felt a pang of tension upon confirming his suspicion. The stairs in this building only allowed ascent!
Lao Liu dared not step onto the seventh floor from the stairs, fearing that if he entered, the stairs would only lead to the eighth floor.
"We can only try to escape through the window," Lao Liu pondered, then walked back with his flashlight.
"Sixth Master, how is it?" a subordinate asked anxiously as he saw Lao Liu returning.
Lao Liu shook his head: "This building is very strange. All the stairs go upwards. We cannot leave through the stairs now, so we must find another way."
The subordinates were thrown into a panic. In a building filled with monsters, they knew intuitively that the higher they went, the more dangerous it would become.
"Sixth Master, what do we do? Are there any other ways to leave?"
Lao Liu voiced his plan: "Let's try to break a window and escape. If we can't leave through the windows either, then we'll probably have to reach the 18th floor to leave."
"Follow me."
The group, armed with flashlights, marched into the sixth floor. Surprisingly, they encountered no monsters along the way.
"Everyone be careful. We haven't encountered any monsters on this floor so far, which is very unusual," Lao Liu said cautiously.
The others also sensed something was wrong. Someone said, "Generally, in the animal kingdom, there aren't many other animals active near powerful ones. You think… could there be a very terrifying monster on this floor?"
The group agreed, raising their vigilance, fearing the appearance of another elusive monster.
Meanwhile, the unknown malevolent spirit had been following them for a long time. Seeing that the big one on this floor hadn't appeared yet, it felt perplexed.
"Why isn't Wang Quan coming out? Is he asleep?" the unknown malevolent spirit muttered to itself. "Then let me give you a reminder."
With that, it casually left a mark on one of the individuals and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
On the other side, Fang Ming had explored the entire fifth floor and encountered a group of gray resentment dolls and several large toads. These creatures pounced on him as soon as they saw him, forcing Fang Ming to retaliate and absorb resentment with a suppressed smile.
In this day and age, such weak yet proactive monsters were rare.
After scavenging the fifth floor, Fang Ming followed the stairs to the sixth floor, planning to kill all the monsters on this floor, which might significantly strengthen his tentacles.
Although his tentacles didn't show any obvious changes, he could clearly feel the increasing amount of resentment within them, and the energy feeding back into his body was also increasing. His overall physical condition was constantly improving.
As for the danger of being assimilated by a malevolent spirit, Fang Ming was dismissive. He wasn't afraid of becoming a malevolent spirit himself – in fact, the only thing he worried about was becoming too ugly as a malevolent spirit. Did he still care about a mere assimilation affecting him?
"Strange? Why haven't I found a single monster after searching for so long?" Fang Ming checked several rooms and found that each room was in disarray, destroyed by some unknown force. There wasn't even a rat, let alone small malevolent spirits like the gray resentment dolls.
"Looking at these marks, there must be an incredibly powerful creature on this floor," Fang Ming stood before a wall in the corridor, chin in hand, staring at a claw mark nearly a meter long on the wall.
On the other side, Lao Liu and his group also saw such a large claw mark. However, unlike Fang Ming's mindset, they were all in a state of panic. With such a large claw mark, how big must the monster be?
"Sixth… Sixth Master, I'm really scared. Can we really deal with the creature behind this?"
Lao Liu remained silent for a long time, then slowly said, "The problem is significant, but panicking is useless."
Creatures of this caliber were beyond their capabilities. He knew some Taoist secret arts, but they could at most deal with monsters like gray resentment dolls. The creature that left this claw mark was definitely not something he could handle.
"We have already checked the windows, and it's clear that jumping out the window is not an option. We only have one path left. Let's hurry to the staircase and use it to quickly climb to the eighteenth floor to find an exit and leave here." Lao Liu felt an ominous premonition and quickly led the group towards the staircase.
At this moment, the unknown malevolent spirit crept into a large hall and saw a giant monster, about ten meters long, curled up on the ground, sleeping.
This monster resembled a caterpillar, its body covered in scales, each the size of an adult's palm. Countless leg-like appendages resembling human hands were curled beneath it. Below its head were two nearly two-meter-long claws. Its forehead was covered with countless densely packed eyes, and a huge mouth was dripping foul-smelling saliva.
"Sleeping quite soundly," the unknown malevolent spirit chuckled maliciously. "Then don't blame me for being impolite."
The unknown malevolent spirit chuckled and quietly moved behind the giant monster, aiming at a specific spot and stabbing it with a knife.
It had no choice; it couldn't penetrate other parts of the giant monster's defenses, so this spot was the most suitable for a stab, and it would definitely wake it up effectively.
The monster's localized area suddenly tensed, and countless eyes opened almost simultaneously.
"Roar—" A painful roar echoed throughout the sixth floor, and both Fang Ming and Lao Liu's group looked in that direction.
"Let's go! The monster is awake!" Lao Liu exclaimed, quickening his pace towards the stairs.
The giant monster turned its head and saw nothing behind it: "It's you again!" But this didn't prevent it from guessing who it was, indicating that the unknown malevolent spirit had done this before.
"Can't you choose another place to strike? It's always the same spot!"
"No way, what if my knife breaks on other parts?" the unknown malevolent spirit chuckled, then pretended to sternly criticize, "This floor has been nearly turned upside down by humans, and you're still sleeping soundly. Do you live up to the professor's trust? Do you live up to the professor's nurturing? Do you live up to..."
"Humans?" The giant monster's eyes lit up and it immediately began to sense the movements on this floor. It had laid countless fine threads throughout the floor, and as soon as anything touched them, it would be sensed immediately.
"Found them, and so many," the giant monster's foul-smelling saliva dripped even more. "It's been a long time since I've eaten humans, how wonderful!"
With that, it ignored the unknown malevolent spirit and charged out of the door without looking back. Its massive body almost filled the entire corridor, and the sound of countless footsteps echoed throughout the sixth floor.
"Still want to escape through the staircase?" the giant monster sneered. Threads from within its body spread out from beneath it, lunging towards Lao Liu and his group.
"That monster is right behind us!" one of Lao Liu's subordinates exclaimed in terror.
"It's okay, we're almost at the staircase. If we go up one more floor, we should be able to escape," another subordinate consoled.
"Look!" someone pointed at the staircase in horror. The group quickly looked, only to see the space at the staircase turning white at a visible rate, completely sealed off by a thick cocoon in just a few seconds!
"We're finished…" was the thought that surfaced in everyone's mind.