When the Wild Beast is Trapped in the Nightmare Cycle (BL)-Chapter 696: Underground Bunker?

Shen Nianzu froze.

Staring at the scene of stillness before him, he could not quite articulate what he was feeling right now. This was certainly not what he had envisioned when he first heard of the Nightmare City. It was so still, so silent and desolate that he now perfectly understood why Jin Jiuchi had called it a graveyard.

And this was the final Cycle that would supposedly decide the fate of their world?

If the whole city was dead, then who would issue the mission to them? Could it be that these people would wake up at some point?

Come to think of it, the last time Shen Nianzu had heard of the Nightmare’s prompt in his mind...

Right, it should have been after the bus entered the dark tunnel.

[Exit in seven days, or stay.]

Had Jin Jiuchi not taken him away in time, he would have been trapped in the nightmare forever, unable to find the way out. Slowly forgetting his own identity. Slowly forgetting where he had come from, and what his original goal was. He would then assimilate with this world and become one of the inhabitants in the countless medical pods.

Just the mere thought of it gave him a lingering fear.

Shaking his head, Shen Nianzu forced himself to quell the agitation in his heart. Now was not the time to agonize over what had already happened. The priority right now was to observe and familiarize themselves with this place, then find a way to return to their world!

"I want to look around," he stretched out a hand toward Jin Jiuchi, "Help me."

"Okay, Nian’er!" Jin Jiuchi was more than happy to comply.

The previous ordeal had left Shen Nianzu feeling bizarrely weak, his whole body heavy as if laden with lead. It was as if all the negative emotions he experienced there had completely sapped him of strength. Being an Elite player with enhanced physique, Shen Nianzu had almost forgotten how it felt to be this weak, to the point where he needed Jin Jiuchi to support him and catch his breath every ten steps.

Nonetheless, Shen Nianzu wasn’t willing to tarry. He had a strong hunch that he would be able to discover something extremely important in this place.

First, he chose to inspect a couple of rooms around.

True to his speculation and Jin Jiuchi’s account, all the rooms here were identical to the one he had woken up in, containing only a single medical pod. Inside lay people... if they could still be called that. They were all clinging to their last breaths, their lives sustained only by the pod. Their bodies were so gaunt and emaciated that they resembled a skeleton.

There were a few times Shen Nianzu thought he was looking at a corpse—a dried corpse, with how they only had skin and bones—and then he was surprised to find they were still breathing!

Jin Jiuchi was right; their lives were indeed worse than death.

"Do you still want to look around more, Nian’er?" Jin Jiuchi asked upon seeing his jade doll’s increasingly ugly complexion.

"No, that’s enough," Shen Nianzu took a deep breath, nausea churning faintly in his stomach. He paused and gathered his thoughts for a while before asking, "When you explored this place earlier, did you come across a place that looks... important? Somewhere that stores a lot of data?"

Jin Jiuchi tilted his head slightly, "Now that you mention it... yes, seems like there’s really such a place."

With Jin Jiuchi’s lead, the two of them made their way to the elevator capsule. Shen Nianzu received another jolt of shock when he looked at the panel— they were actually underground all along, and there were more than a hundred negative floors! No wonder he could not find the sky, turns out it was the ceiling all along!

As he struggled to process this information, the elevator shot upward rapidly, stopping at the negative first floor— the highest level available.

Not the ground floor?

Shen Nianzu shot a questioning look at the man beside him, and Jin Jiuchi, seemingly reading his mind, answered seamlessly, "You can only get off here and climb up, Nian’er. You will see later."

Suppressing the curiosity, Shen Nianzu nodded and stepped out.

What unfolded before them was the eerily same scene: a circular corridor lined with identical rooms packed tightly together, giving people chills.

But to Shen Nianzu’s surprise, unlike the lower floors, these rooms did not contain medical pods.

As he walked past, he saw various heavy machines— air filtration systems, turbines, generators and other devices whose sleek, advanced designs were beyond Shen Nianzu’s understanding. But it was easy to guess that their purpose must be to keep the whole facility running.

Jin Jiuchi had said this was a dead city, so it made sense that everything was self-sustained.

They continued on their way, until Jin Jiuchi came to a halt before a steel ladder that led to the massive vault door embedded on the ceiling.

"This..." Shen Nianzu blinked in surprise. "So this place is an underground bunker?"

Who could have guessed that such a simple airtight door was hiding a behemoth like this underground?

Jin Jiuchi took the lead and climbed the ladder in two or three leaps. It was clear that he had explored this path before; the moment he reached the top, he pushed the door open with a bang and familiarly flipped himself outside. Then he poked his head in and stretched out an arm to Shen Nianzu, who was waiting below,

"Come on, Nian’er. I will pull you up!"

Shen Nianzu glanced at the steel ladder and, considering the debuff on his body, decisively took Jin Jiuchi’s hand. The man exerted minimal force to haul him up before setting him securely on the ground.

Once again, Shen Nianzu felt his breath catch on his throat when he took in their surroundings.

This behemoth of a mysterious facility was, in fact, only appeared as a dome from outside— no more than two stories tall. From where he was standing, the world beyond lay fully exposed before him.

City of ruin, the phrase popped up in Shen Nianzu’s mind.

An eerie dark purple glow washed over the cityscape, casting stark silhouettes of the towering buildings and tall skyscrapers. Countless roads and flyovers crisscrossed the air, suspended like frozen veins. One glance was enough to tell that the city must have been prosperous in the past, beautiful beyond measure. But now it was nothing more than a hollow shell of its former glory.

No lights, no electricity, no signs of activity— only darkness and scalp-numbing stillness that reeked heavily of decay.

Shen Nianzu subconsciously took a step forward, his pale purple eyes reflecting the scene of desolation outside the dome.

...Why exactly had the Nightmare City become like this?