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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Cardboard Boxes
Jiang He pulled out his legs and looked around, saying, "Let's push each box one by one; there must be an empty one behind some of them."
The two nodded and spread out, gently pushing the cardboard boxes with their hands. The three of them scanned from left to right and finally discovered a gap in the corner at the other end.
"Damn it, they even used tricks to mislead us," Ming Junwei cursed. The gap was directly opposite the three women, about ten meters away, with a door still open in between. The father and son had cleared a path from the corner and had secretly tossed the boxes they moved out toward the women, intending to mislead them.
"Why not just run while they have the chance?" Jiang He clicked his tongue, feeling a bit scared. He guessed that while the father and son were working, everyone else was asleep. Bai Yudong, who was awake, had been sitting on the pipe observing the zombies outside, leaving no one to pay attention to the two inside. If those two had sneaked out and attacked them then, it could have caused some serious harm.
"The door is secured with iron bars, and there are zombies outside. Where could we run to?" Ming Junwei patted himself down and realized he had lost his flashlight somewhere.
Chao Yifan loaded his gun and looked at the dimly lit cardboard path ahead, chuckling, "So you're saying those two are hiding right in the middle of the Box Stack?"
"That's possible; they might even be listening to us right now," Ming Junwei replied with a grimace. He ran outside to borrow a flashlight from Song Yao and briefly explained the situation inside, urging her to keep an eye on that graduate student.
Song Yao hadn't expected that the father and son could still pull off such tricks; she immediately became alert, picking up a steel pipe and sitting next to the graduate student.
The small flashlight had been used for quite a while, its brightness significantly diminished; the yellow beam was nearly useless.
The narrow path only allowed for one box to be moved aside at a time, making it somewhat inconvenient for all three of them to squeeze in together. Chao Yifan took point with his gun drawn while Ming Junwei followed behind with a crowbar. They cautiously stepped inside while Jiang He stood guard outside.
Jiang He watched in amazement, thinking how strange these two were. The Box Stack wasn’t a solid structure; to clear a path below, they would first need to remove the boxes on top. He couldn’t understand how those two had managed to create a passage without anyone noticing. But then he thought something seemed off; there weren’t many cardboard boxes scattered around the women, and there were no leftover boxes in the passage either. So... where did all those moved boxes go?
Jiang He felt something was off. He rushed to the partition and lifted the curtain, glancing at the stacks of cardboard boxes piled in the center of the warehouse. This was bad; these boxes were definitely not what they had just moved. It seemed these people had already created a backdoor among the stacks!
Seeing Jiang He's pale face, Song Yao asked with concern, "Is there a problem?"
Jiang He shook his head. "Be careful. If anything happens, call for me." With that, he dove back into the box partition and opened several scattered boxes on the ground.
Ming Junwei had checked a few of them earlier and found only foam shells and crumpled plastic bags inside. At that time, they hadn't thought much of it, assuming it was just stuff moved by the father and son. But now it seemed clear that they didn't need to move anything out from inside; why leave such conspicuous items behind? Wouldn't it be better to make their disappearance unnoticed?
Jiang He swallowed hard, sensing trouble. One of the boxes had foam with obvious cut marks on it, likely made by a sharp object. The father and son weren't setting a trap; they were simply looking for some tools among these boxes! Realizing this, Jiang He panicked. The stacks filled half the warehouse, and if there was a pre-designed passage inside, it surely wouldn't be straightforward. The hidden father and son must be preparing to launch a surprise attack with whatever weapons they had found!
Although he didn't understand why these people were playing this box-moving game out of boredom, it was clear they had ill intentions. Fortunately, despite the size of the half-warehouse, it was still indoors. Jiang He couldn't afford to hide their tracks anymore and shouted, "Be careful! They have weapons!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a muffled sound and an angry shout came from somewhere within the Box Stack, followed by gunfire. Bullets ricocheted off the roof, creating a hole in the colored steel ceiling through which a beam of sunlight slanted in.
In that moment, as Jiang He looked up, he realized something and cursed himself for being foolish. He quickly ran out of the partition and climbed up the pipes beside the iron door.
Startled by the gunfire from inside, Song Yao watched as Jiang He scrambled up the pipes like he was being chased by a dog, confusion etched on his face.
Jiang He didn't have time to explain. Carefully standing atop the pipes, he jumped high and grabbed onto the steel frame of the ceiling, swinging over toward the top of the Box Stack.
Song Yao was clearly bewildered by what was happening. The ceiling was at least four or five meters high from the ground, with a two-meter gap between the pipes and boxes. Hanging from the steel frame above, Jiang He moved slowly forward, swaying precariously as he reached the top of the boxes. Looking down at what resembled a maze below him almost made him want to clap in astonishment.
He hadn’t realized how vast their resting area actually was until he looked deeper into the warehouse; it stretched across four or five football fields! They were merely at one small end of it. As Jiang He adjusted his grip on the railing and turned around, he noticed that every few meters inside, steel frames extended downward from the ceiling, connecting to colored steel plates below that divided the warehouse into sections resembling train cars. No wonder Bai Yudong had been oblivious to any issues while crouching on top of those pipes; from that height, he could only see the descending colored steel plates above him—anyone would think they were just walls of the warehouse.
After the gunfire, a few angry curses from Chao Yifan echoed from inside, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps. Several boxes collapsed to the left, and then silence returned. Jiang He felt his arms growing weak and quickly chose a landing spot, letting go and jumping down.
With a dull thud, Jiang He fell from above and crashed through the empty box beneath him, burying himself in it like a seedling planted in soil.
Song Yao, who had been watching intently, swallowed hard; his attractive diamond-shaped lips formed an 'o' that remained open for quite some time.
The gunfire in the warehouse was like a thunderclap on a clear day, abruptly scattering the horde of zombies that had been congested in front of the dormitory building. So far, people generally...
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