“...Maybe it’s some higher being, like a god or something, seeing that I’m about to starve to death and granting me a blessing? No, maybe it’s actually paper money burned for me by the living.”

William Clark ate almost all the food, his stomach completely bulging. He lazily lay on the ground, carefully eyeing the remaining nine colorless light pellets. As he joked and pondered, he suddenly froze after saying this.

As a native of Chongqing, Z Country, he had always been taken by his parents to burn paper money since childhood—whether during Qingming, memorial days, or Spring Festival, they’d burn it two or three times a year. He vaguely remembered his parents saying that this paper money was food for the ancestors, belonging to their incense offerings.

“That’s it! If I think about the timing, Spring Festival is just these couple of days. My parents must be burning paper money and thinking of me. And now I’m already dead—even though my soul has crossed time and space, aren’t the ancestors also people of the past? In other words... these colorless light pellets might be incense offerings? Or something like the faith energy in novels?”

William Clark’s eyes lit up as he looked at the remaining nine colorless light pellets. He pinched off another one, and this time, instead of thinking about food, he focused on something else, wanting to test this sudden idea.

Slowly, the colorless light pellet disappeared, and in William Clark’s hand lay a semi-transparent bullet!

William Clark immediately pulled out the handgun, loaded the bullet into the magazine, reinserted the magazine, and aimed the gun forward. But for a moment, he didn’t pull the trigger—partly out of fear that hope would turn to disappointment, and partly out of fear that the gunshot would attract monsters.

Just as William Clark hesitated, suddenly a cry of alarm came from the street outside the building—and it was a child’s scream!

At once, William Clark ran toward the second-floor corridor, then peeked toward the street through a collapsed section of the corridor wall. A few seconds later, he saw humans.

Two adults and five children were running down the street, with three human-faced dogs madly chasing after them. One of the girls looked about seven or eight years old, but she was very fat. As she ran, she stumbled and fell to the ground, while the others kept running. Then, in William Clark’s line of sight, the fat child was pinned to the ground by a human-faced dog’s two paws, and its ferocious jaws tore down.

In an instant, only a pile of torn flesh and blood remained in the human-faced dog’s mouth...

William Clark’s pupils contracted, and he clamped his hand tightly over his mouth. Meanwhile, the remaining six people ran straight toward the building he was in, rushing into the first floor, with the two human-faced dogs that hadn’t caught prey hot on their heels, also charging into the building!

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 8: Rescue

What should I do!?

When William Clark saw the two adults and four children rush into the building, two thoughts immediately flashed through his mind.

The first thought was to quickly run upstairs, but this instinctive idea was dismissed as soon as it appeared.

There were still more than thirty hours until he could return. He could no longer survive by sneaking around like a rat. These monsters were much faster than he could run, and their vision and sense of smell were both extremely sharp—there was no way he could hide!

The second thought was to fire at the monsters from a distance to test whether the bullet made from the colorless light pellet could actually shoot. But William Clark rejected this idea too. First, he had only made one bullet, and except for firing a single shot during university military training, he had never handled a gun before—he couldn’t trust his own aim.

Right away, William Clark grabbed two colorless light pellets in each hand, condensing four semi-transparent bullets at once. Now, only four colorless light pellets were left floating around him, which made William Clark ache inside, but there was no time to worry about that now. As he ran downstairs, he loaded the semi-transparent bullets into the handgun, and by the time the magazine was back in place, he had reached the first floor, just in time to see the two adults and four children frantically running into various rooms.

At this moment, the two human-faced dogs that had rushed in each pinned down a child. Kids couldn’t outrun adults, and the monsters’ ferocious jaws tore with a single bite. The two children died screaming—one had his neck bitten through, the other had his belly ripped open, with liver, kidneys, and intestines all half-devoured.

William Clark’s pupils twitched violently. He mustered his courage and shouted, “Run to the corridor, quick! Run to the corridor!!”

The two adults were both white men, dressed in light blue uniforms—probably work clothes. There was a badge on their chests, so they were likely school staff. The remaining two children were in school uniforms, one older and one younger. The older was a girl, about ten years old, and the younger was a little boy, only six or seven.