Infinite: Dawn Game

Chapter 899 Waiting

The storage room the old field mouse described was more organized than the warehouses they had seen before, but it was still filled with all sorts of things.

The food didn't look fresh, and some of it was even suspicious—dried mushrooms (some of which were strangely bright in color), bundles of grass roots, some sealed earthenware jars (the contents of which were unknown), a small amount of grain (mixed with many pebbles), and some dried pieces of small animal meat whose original form was difficult to identify.

The group's gazes lingered on the unidentifiable chunks of meat for several seconds before they almost simultaneously frowned.

There was no other reason; it was simply because the storage room smelled terrible.

The air in the storage room was filled with a stale and earthy smell, mixed with the cloying sweetness unique to caves, creating a nauseating combination.

Yu Shijiu felt a little nauseous from the smell, but he held back—unable to resist in the end, he secretly stuffed a piece of bread crumb into his mouth behind Thumbelina's back.

The sweet aroma of the bread crumbs instantly overpowered the unpleasant smell. Yu Shijiu squinted his eyes in satisfaction, pretending he hadn't smelled anything, and began to "organize" the miscellaneous items in the storage room.

Organizing the storage room was indeed a tedious and depressing task.

Thumbelina would occasionally appear behind them, instructing them to sort and stack certain things, while she herself silently organized some small jars, sometimes staring blankly at a particular jar for a while.

While Thumbelina went to the corner to organize a pile of straw ropes, He Lingling whispered to Anjie and Chen Yi:

“She was afraid, not just of the old field mouse and the upcoming wedding, she might also have a vague feeling about the changes that had happened to her and the fate of her ‘companions’… I think she would definitely recognize that straw bracelet.”

“We need to talk to her, alone.”

Ange whispered, "But not here, it's too dangerous. The old field mouse could come at any moment, and these walls..."

As she spoke, she glanced at the seemingly ordinary earthen walls around her.

"Wait until tonight?" Chen Yi suggested. "Let's find an excuse, like asking her to come out and check on Yanzi?"

"But those claws are there at night too..." Xu Han still felt a little scared when he thought about the shape of the "claws" sticking out from the whole cave.

"Perhaps... we can make use of it."

Yu Shijiu suddenly interrupted, raising his wrist wrapped in cloth, a glint of light flashing in his eyes.

"I'm getting more and more curious about these burrowing 'neighbors' whose bodies are probably exactly the same as field mice. Maybe tonight, we can try to... say hello to them?"

His tone carried a dangerous, almost predatory quality, which made Anjie's eyelids twitch.

“Shi Jiu, we can’t do anything reckless,” An Jie warned with a headache. “Don’t forget, the pollution in your body is likely getting worse.”

“I know what you mean, Sister An.”

Yu Shijiu simply smiled, a smile that appeared somewhat blurry in the dim light.

Instead of mentioning that he had been accelerating the infection, he said:

"But sometimes, taking a closer look at the strange NPCs in the story might be the fastest way to find clues, and..."

Yu Shijiu paused for a few seconds before continuing, "I think they aren't completely unable to communicate."

His final whisper was almost inaudible, yet it sent a chill down He Lingling's spine.

She looked at Yu Shijiu; the lines of the boy's profile appeared somewhat hazy in the shadows.

He Lingling subconsciously looked down at his arm—Yu Shijiu's arm was wrapped with strips of torn towels, but she could still vaguely see abnormal bulges and wriggling under the strips.

Yu Shijiu's rate of contamination continued to increase, which led him to believe that the "claws" in the walls and floor could communicate.

...We must speed things up.

He Lingling thought.

Before Yu Shijiu is completely assimilated, or before the situation gets out of control, they must find a way to successfully break the deadlock and leave the cave.

While everyone was tidying up the storage room with their own thoughts, deep inside the cave, in front of the hidden cave entrance that Yu Shijiu had previously discovered.

The sliding wall had opened up again at some point.

A thick, cloyingly sweet, putrid stench seeped out from the opened crack.

Faintly, extremely subtle, sticky wriggling sounds seemed to emanate from the dark cave interior.

The severed neck, embedded in the center of the huge, rotting mass of flesh, rotated extremely slowly... very slowly, by a tiny angle in absolute darkness.

A pair of eyes opened from between thick, flowing black hair, as if "looking" in the direction of the storage room.

On the cave floor, the scattered, pale white bones seemed to be emitting extremely faint "clicking" sounds, drawn by an invisible force.

Meanwhile, inside the storage room, in Yu Shijiu's pocket, who was busy "working," the severed claw that had been silent all along suddenly twitched slightly at the fingertip.

Meanwhile, in another area of ​​the cave.

Fang Youhua and Yang Hua's room.

Yang Hua stared uneasily at the small holes in the door—if those ventilation holes in the wooden doors could be considered windows.

It was dark outside, with only occasional faint flashes of light, whether from claws or something else, that I couldn't tell.

"Sister Fang, are we really just going to... wait like this, waiting a week to receive that mole?"

Yang Hua couldn't help but speak again, "The 'Alive' team must be taking action too, our exploration progress has only increased a little bit..."

She was a little worried that she wouldn't be able to beat the "living" group of players in the end.

Fang Youhua, who was being questioned, sat on the edge of the bed, slowly wiping her hands with a cloth.

Pay special attention to wiping the wound on the back of your hand that was scratched by the old field mouse.

The wound on the back of my hand has stopped bleeding, but the edges are still strangely whitish.

Fang Youhua didn't even raise her head, her voice still soft, but it sounded icy cold no matter how you listened to it.

"What's the rush? The 'reception' task is in our hands, that's our advantage."

Fang Youhua said, "Old Field Mouse likes 'obedient good children,' so let's just do it this way. As for the 'living' players..."

She stopped wiping, looked up, and her gaze was calm and unwavering.

"Do you think that cave, which hides countless Thumbelina skeletons and that 'monster,' is so easy to find and so easy to escape from?"

Yang Hua was taken aback upon hearing this, and subconsciously said, "Sister Fang, you mean..."

“Yu Shijiu already has a ‘scent’ on him.”

Fang Youhua slightly curled the corners of her mouth, but the smile no longer had the gentleness of before; instead, it carried a kind of all-knowing indifference.

"This is a cave inhabited by countless animals and livestock."