Chapter 48: Underground Once Again
“Hiss—ha…”
Waking slowly from unconsciousness, I expected to feel bodily pain immediately.
Since entering the JD Ruined City, I had grown accustomed to injuries.
But to my surprise, the pain wasn’t intense.
Instead, the safety harness tightly strapped around me made breathing difficult.
The sensation of weightlessness had stopped, but my body didn’t feel like it was on solid ground.
It felt more like I was suspended in midair…
Where… was this?
Struggling to open my eyes and regain vision, my reviving consciousness first observed my surroundings to assess my situation: darkness, chaos, dampness, and an air filled with a foul, fishy stench…
The terrible first impression made me realize the problem.
This wasn’t the surface—it was underground?!
Coming to my senses, I noticed I was in a deep trench below the surface.
But it wasn’t like the subway station I had fallen into before.
There were no traces of civilization’s ruins here.
It was more like an underground passage formed by crude, violent destruction.
Could it be… the passage dug by that monster?
Recalling the scene I saw from the high-rise, I suddenly understood the kind of space I was in.
I hadn’t expected to fall into this place through a crack above the passage.
The walls and ground clearly bore the marks of massive, sharp claws scraping through.
The ruins were riddled with severe damage.
My current state matched my earlier sensation: suspended on a piece of rebar protruding from the building’s debris, hanging about four or five meters above the ground below.
I had to admit I was lucky.
Being caught mid-fall prevented a direct collision with the ground, sparing me new injuries.
I had only minor scrapes, negligible in comparison.
The sharp rebar hadn’t pierced my body.
Instead, it firmly caught the safety harness that had bound me to Han Nianling…
Wait, where was Han Nianling?
When I turned my head, I realized the other end of the safety harness wasn’t connected to Han Nianling, who had fallen with me.
The empty rope end was frayed with countless tangled fibers—marks of the harness snapping under unbearable strain.
My gaze quickly followed the trajectory of the fall downward.
Soon, I spotted a figure lying quietly among a pile of dirt and rubble.
“Employer Han! Han Nianling!”
I called out twice but received no response.
A wave of panic spread through my heart.
Continuing to call was futile; the silence urged me to act immediately.
“Why… won’t it open?”
The clasp at my waist seemed jammed.
No matter how hard I pressed, until my fingernails turned pale, it wouldn’t budge.
This slot-type safety lock should have been easy to release.
Could the tension from being caught have jammed it?
I drew the short knife strapped to my waist and cut at the harness.
In this situation, the gear’s strengths became a drawback.
Designed for durability, the harness was far tougher than I expected.
It took considerable effort to finally cut through the restraint.
Freed from the harness, my body continued its descent, completing the final four-meter drop.
During the fall, I leaned forward.
The moment my toes touched the ground, I rolled forward twice to dissipate some of the impact.
Even so, an unavoidable numbness shot through my feet.
“Ugh…”
“Han Nianling! Employer Han, wake up… now’s not the time to sleep…”
Limping across the uneven ground, I finally reached Han Nianling’s side.
I crouched down, pressing my ear to the respirator of her gas mask—she was still breathing, and not weakly.
Though I confirmed Han Nianling was alive, the situation remained urgent.
Her gas mask had visible cracks, and one side of the respirator was pierced by something sharp, exposing the protected filtration system.
Such severe damage, even with the mask’s modular design, couldn’t ensure complete isolation from pollution.
Especially in the highly contaminated Sector 01B, it needed immediate attention.
But spare gas masks had been destroyed in the earlier high-rise explosion… a new gas mask…
After a moment’s thought, I removed my own gas mask and replaced its filter canister with a fresh one.
Without the filter’s barrier, air surged directly into my nose.
The foul smell became even more pungent.
I never considered myself a noble person capable of self-sacrifice—such lofty ideals were beyond my understanding.
But I absolutely didn’t want Han Nianling to die like this.
She was a senior researcher at the Research Institute, promising to use her vast knowledge to uncover the truth about my transformation.
As my employer, ensuring her survival was my duty as a mercenary.
More importantly, she had risked her life for me in a critical moment.
Throughout our journey in the JD Ruined City, Han Nianling had teased and mocked me plenty.
But her concern for my safety was undeniably genuine.
At the last moment of the building’s collapse, she came back for me.
That alone was enough.
I had thought, in this era where everyone lived for survival, only Sister Shang Shu would go this far for me.
Regardless of Han Nianling’s motives, her actions couldn’t be denied.
Besides, during my unconsciousness in the subway, the polluted air had already irreversibly affected my body.
Continuing to wear a gas mask felt like self-deception.
At least, compared to me, Han Nianling still had a chance to live.
I just felt a bit sorry for Sister Shang Shu.
If I could somehow return to Chu Sheng City alive, I’d ask Han Nianling to look after her before I succumbed to illness…
As quickly as possible, I fitted my gas mask onto Han Nianling and treated her forehead and arm scrapes with healing spray and trauma patches.
She appeared to have lost a lot of blood, but her injuries were relatively minor.
The rebar not only caught me but also cushioned Han Nianling’s fall.
Otherwise, her injuries wouldn’t be so light.
Of course, internal or skeletal damage couldn’t be ruled out.
Luo Shi and the others… they should be safe by now…
After tending to Han Nianling, my tense heart finally relaxed.
I took a deep breath.
Despite the JD Ruined City’s extreme pollution, the air, aside from being dry, felt no different from normal air.
“Now what…”
Murmuring to myself, I surveyed our surroundings, carefully assessing our situation.
This underground passage was about ten meters below the surface.
The uneven walls seemed to offer many footholds for climbing.
But the constant shedding of debris and gravel showed their instability.
Moreover, the walls curved inward, making climbing without professional tools impossible.
“If we could go back…”
Following this wide passage back toward the monster’s entry into Sector 01 seemed a viable escape.
But when I saw the condition behind us, I fell silent.
The path was completely blocked by rubble from the collapsed building.
Had we deviated a few meters forward, Han Nianling and I would likely be buried under that concrete and steel debris.
The problem was: like in the subway, we had no choice but to move forward.
This time, it was worse.
Without Uncle Lin or Xiao Liu’s help, it was just me and an unconscious Han Nianling.
Sector 01A…
I looked toward the passage’s direction.
It was likely the most dangerous place in the JD Ruined City now.
Yet, for some reason, I felt a faint call from that direction.
It was as if an invisible nightmare whispered in my ear, repeating that place’s name over and over.