Hidden Dead Ends - Chapter 19: Calm (I)

After crossing the zebra crossing and carefully avoiding the electric bikes speeding on the sidewalk, Li Chengyi stepped onto a white pedestrian bridge with escalators.

He walked to the other side of the road and turned right for 350 meters on the stone path.

Li Chengyi finally arrived at the New Age Building that Sindra had mentioned.

Before he could reach the security entrance in front of the building, a young woman waiting at the doors greeted him.

“Hello, are you Mr. Cheng Yi?” The woman was wearing a black office dress with the hem of her skirt reaching just above her knees. It was a little short and revealed her fair and slender legs. Her brownish-yellow curly hair fell over her shoulders, and she had light makeup on her face. Her eyebrows were obviously overplucked, looking like two pencil leads.

“It’s me.” When Li Chengyi heard the name, he knew that she should be the person picking him up and nodded.

“Please follow me. The entrance to the company isn’t here,” she said softly with a professional smile.

“Okay.” Li Chengyi looked up at the building again.

A sense of urgency suddenly arose in his heart.

According to Sindra, the Dead End would come again in two months. This wasn’t a game, and there would be no rewards for surviving. Therefore, he had to make preparations for as much as possible and as quickly as possible in these two months.

Also, if he could use Sindra’s resources to find a way to evolve the Flower Scale Gear, then his chances of getting through the Dead End would be much higher.

Since the first time the Flower Scale Gear tore apart the human face monster and successfully let him live, Li Chengyi knew that his greatest hope lay in the Flower of Evil.

In terms of intelligence, he was only at the level of an ordinary person, which wasn’t really good…

He followed the woman to the side of the building, entered through an office entrance, and took a separate elevator.

Before long, the elevator stopped on the nineteenth floor.

Ding.

The doors opened.

Inside were rows of neatly arranged office desks and chairs.

White desks and chairs, black floor, silver-white ceiling, large green plants in the corners.

The staff were sitting at desks and using computers from time to time, and some of them were communicating on the phone, looking very busy.

“Here we are,” the woman leading the way reminded with a smile and led the way in.

“Okay.” Li Chengyi followed her past the desks and walked to the dark corridor at the end.

There was only one room at the end of the corridor. The door was half-open, and in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows stood a man smoking.

He was wearing a silver-black suit and a white shirt and had his hair slicked back. One hand was in his pants pocket, and the other was holding a cigarette butt.

Li Chengyi recognized at a glance that it was Sindra, whom he had met before.

He looked at the woman leading the way. The latter stretched out her hand and made a gesture of invitation.

“Ahem.” Li Chengyi stepped forward, passed through the corridor, pushed open the door, and walked into the office at the end.

“You’re here?” Sindra turned around and extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk.

“Look at the contract on the desk. If you agree, then sign it. If you don’t, then forget it.” He pointed at the yellow wooden desk.

The office wasn’t big. From left to right, there was a black leather sofa, a short coffee table, a small whiteboard, two office chairs, and a rectangular wooden office desk.

The furnishings were hurried and simple, like a shell company.

Li Chengyi looked at the wooden office desk with three bottles of drinks on it.

There were two black bottles of black Kachi Cola and a red bottle of Cloud Mountain mineral water. They were all 500 milliliter bottles.

The contract was pressed down by the red plastic bottle of mineral water.

He stepped forward, moved the bottle of mineral water away, and picked up a simple piece of paper.

The content was very simple. It was an agreement that he would work for Sindra’s company and go to and leave work on time every day. There was no work content and no restrictions. On the other hand, the monthly salary and benefits were very detailed.

There was no reason for him not to sign the contract with such generous terms.

He immediately picked up a roller ball pen and wrote his name on it.

Sindra turned around and reminded, “Give your bank card number to the finance department later.”

“Where’s the information about Dead Ends?” Li Chengyi asked what he was most concerned about.

“Let me ask you first. Do you know how many types of Dead Ends there are?” Sindra asked while walking to the door to close it.

“Types?”

“Yes, there are many types of Dead Ends, so you need to tell me what Dead End you entered so that I can accurately find information.”

After closing the door, he took out a dark silver USB flash drive-like item from his pocket and handed it to Li Chengyi. “Just turn it on at the whiteboard or wall.”

Li Chengyi took the item and looked at it carefully. It seemed to be something like a miniature flashlight. There was a simple switch button on the side.

He pointed the light end at the white wall on the left and pressed the button.

Whoosh.

A white beam of light shot out from the end of this item and reflected on the white wall.

A large, colorful screen about four meters long and wide appeared on the wall.

On the screen, rows of yellow folders were densely and neatly arranged. There were at least a hundred of them.

“This is the Dead End information I’ve collected. There’s a lot, right?” Sindra said softly from behind.

“A lot.” Li Chengyi narrowed his eyes and carefully looked at the names of these folders. They were all purely numerical numbers.

“First of all, I have to tell you the most important rule about Dead Ends,” Sindra continued. 

“There are generally only two ways to leave a Dead End.” He stretched out two fingers. “First, among the people who enter together, for each death, the others can leave temporarily. They will enter again two months later.

“This is one of the reasons why we call this phenomenon Dead End.”

Li Chengyi’s pupils constricted as he thought about his current situation. “Is this my situation now?”

“Yes. Someone must have died in the Dead End you’ve entered, so you could escape temporarily.

“Of course, the entry interval after departure isn’t necessarily fixed at two months. This is just an estimate.”

Sindra continued, “The second way to leave is to find a way to escape from the Dead End completely.

“Every Dead End has its own special escape method. These methods are all strange, but they have a lot to do with their origins. For this reason, I established this company and recruited a few special personnel to assist me in investigating this part.”

“How many others have joined you like me?” Li Chengyi asked.

“Not many,” Sindra said concisely.

“How many is not many?” An ominous feeling rose in Li Chengyi’s heart.

“Including you, there are two,” Sindra said calmly. “At the most, there were about ten people. But later, there are only two left.”

“… All dead?” Li Chengyi felt a little suffocated, and his voice was a little low.

“Perhaps. Anyway, for those of us who haven’t entered Dead Ends, they’re all missing. We can’t see them alive, nor can we see their corpses.” Sindra sighed.

“In that case, if many people enter a Dead End at the same time, isn’t it possible for them to die one at a time to continuously extend the survival time until someone finds a way to leave? From the looks of it, there should be someone who has truly and completely escaped from Dead Ends, right?” Li Chengyi instantly understood.

“Yes and no,” Sindra replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Literally.” He walked to Li Chengyi’s side, stood still, and looked up at the projected screen on the wall. “Some people have indeed used external help to find a way to leave Dead Ends using the method you mentioned.

“However… they also encountered another big problem.”

“What problem?”

“Once people start dying in a Dead End, with every death, the next time people enter, the danger inside will increase substantially.”

“Increase…” Li Chengyi’s heart skipped a beat. “Increase to what extent?”

“I don’t know.” Sindra shook his head. “My son is missing inside. I also want to know if Dead Ends can be completely escaped…”

“What about those people who found exits?” Li Chengyi asked.

“They will continue to encounter new Dead Ends two months later until they disappear.”

“…” Li Chengyi finally understood why this phenomenon was called Dead End.

“Don’t worry. The longest official record is a person who managed to survive more than thirty Dead Ends. Work harder, and you might be able to do it too!” Sindra patted his shoulder and comforted him.

“In other words, you want to find your son? Didn’t you say he was dead?” Li Chengyi continued to ask.

“Maybe he’s just missing.”

“Okay.” Li Chengyi didn’t ask further. “What should I say?”

“Start from the beginning to the end. Tell me how you entered, what the environment looked like after you entered, and how you got out.” Sindra’s expression became serious.

Li Chengyi didn’t waste any time and immediately told him how he first entered the omen, then completely entered later, encountered a monster, and so on.

Of course, he omitted all the content related to the Flower of Evil, so he hid the fact that he had torn the human face monster apart once.

In any case, the Flower of Evil’s Flower Language Ability and the Flower Scale Gear were his greatest trump cards, so he couldn’t reveal anything.

“You’re saying that you encountered someone with a gun?” Sindra asked after some thought.

“Yes. That person was definitely prepared. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone straight for the crevice where I hid. In addition, I saw strange symbols in the crevice that suddenly appeared,” Li Chengyi replied.

“Omens allow you to prepare supplies in advance, so it’s natural for others to prepare in advance. If that person happened to have the qualifications to obtain a gun, it’s normal for him to bring a gun into the Dead End. But I’m not sure if he’s an official or not. No… probably not…” Sindra touched his chin.

“Then, what should I do?” Li Chengyi asked with a frown.

“In order to survive, not only do you have to face the dangers in Dead Ends, but you also have to learn to face the threats brought by others. Among these threats, the greatest possibility is various weapons.”

Sindra walked to the side and quickly wrote a few words on the whiteboard with a black marker.

[Physical fitness, weapons, response methods]

“These three things are what you need to study intensively during these two months if you still want to live.”

Li Chengyi put down the projector flashlight in his hand and looked at the whiteboard. “Do you have any arrangements?”

“Of course. I have reserved the entire lower floor as an indoor training center for you and another assistant.

“As for weapons, you have to learn how to protect yourself when facing all kinds of weapons. Then you will learn to use all kinds of weapons yourself.

“The reason why we’re placing learning weapons last is because ordinary weapons, including firearms, were very weak against the various dangers in Dead Ends. The greatest use of guns is against people.”

“I thought you had a very large organization behind you,” Li Chengyi suddenly said without rhyme or reason.