Chapter 227: Subway

Seeing that everyone else had gone in, Zhang Wenda also stepped onto the stairs, sinking step by step into the viscous ocean of human bodies at the subway entrance.

It was difficult to describe the exact sensation of moving through the sea of people. Pressure from all sides pressed in on every inch of his skin like an invisible, giant hand, cold and suffocating. Even though he had taken an "Underground Breathing Potion," every breath seemed to take all his strength. His chest heaved violently, like a worn-out bellows.

Furthermore, the air he inhaled was thick, stuffy, and reeked of stale sweat.

As he looked out now, his entire field of vision was filled with people. Dense, near-identical pre-fab people were piled up and crammed together in front of him.

A low-frequency, incessant buzzing started in his ears, like tens of thousands of people whispering soundlessly, setting his nerves on edge.

Just as he turned to look back, worried that the short Song Jianguo might be swallowed by the sea of people, he realized his concern was unnecessary.

Song Jianguo was currently wearing a thick, peculiar diving suit made of countless Little Black Cats pieced tightly together, enveloping her completely. Seeing Zhang Wenda looking at her, she struggled to raise a hand through a gap in the swarm of cats and waved clumsily in his direction.

"Stay close. Don't fall behind," Zhang Wenda said in a low voice, retracting his gaze. He then began to descend deeper into the sea of people along the stairs, like a diver. With each step down, the surrounding light grew dimmer, as if he were sinking into a colossal, living abdomen.

During his descent, Zhang Wenda unexpectedly discovered some strange fish living in this bizarre human sea.

They came in various forms, most of them shaped like shoes. Some looked like exquisite high heels, others like leather dress shoes, and there were even some that resembled casual sandals and sneakers. These "shoe-fish" gathered in schools, weaving and playing freely through the gaps between the crowded bodies.

Just as Zhang Wenda was about to reach the very bottom of the subway, a familiar yet slightly distorted voice came from the phone in his pocket.

Zhang Wenda struggled to pull his phone out from the tight press of bodies. Wang Xiaohua's urgent voice erupted from it, "Big Bro! The captain told us to surface and regroup!"

"Surface?" Zhang Wenda looked up at the incredibly dense, almost airtight "ceiling" of human flesh above him. He took a deep breath of the unpleasant air, then, like a salmon swimming upstream, began to struggle his way upward.

When he finally broke through the layers of obstruction and reached the churning "surface" of the human sea, he didn't even have a moment to catch his breath before he noticed the concrete ceiling was alarmingly close to his head. There was less than a meter between the sea's surface and the ceiling, creating an exceptionally oppressive feeling, as if the weight of the entire city was hanging overhead.

He turned his stiff neck from side to side and saw Wanli Shuisheng and his group in the distance, leaning against a load-bearing pillar covered in advertisements and waving at him.

Zhang Wenda didn't dare to delay, hurrying over with Auntie and Song Jianguo in her cat-diving suit.

As they were getting closer, Zhang Wenda suddenly saw that Shuisheng and the others had expressions of pure terror. They were screaming their lungs out at something behind him, their arms pointing frantically.

A chill shot through his heart. He whipped his head around and saw the "sea surface," which should have been only gently undulating, was now bizarrely and slowly sinking downward, forming a massive whirlpool.

It was as if an immense black shadow, like a colossal beast swimming stealthily, was rushing toward them from beneath the surface at an astonishing speed!

'Wait, there are fish in this sea. Don't tell me there are other, more dangerous big things too?' Just as this thought flashed through Zhang Wenda's mind, Shuisheng was already leading the others, desperately scrambling toward them. He shouted as he ran, "Run! That's Line 2! Line 2 is carnivorous! It eats flesh!!"

Hearing this, Zhang Wenda and the other two were horrified and began to run even faster.

But in this viscous swamp of human bodies, Zhang Wenda's speed advantage was useless. Every step was a struggle, like wading through glue. He could only watch helplessly as the terrifying shadow beneath the surface drew closer and closer.

He didn't know what "Line 2" was exactly, but seeing the look on Shuisheng's face, it didn't take a genius to figure out this thing was bad news.

Just as the sinking patch of sea was about to overtake and swallow Zhang Wenda, an image flashed through his mind like lightning. In a stroke of genius born from desperation, he yelled at the top of his lungs to Song Jianguo behind him, "A boat! Boat form!!"

The instant the words left his mouth, the Black Cats that had formed the diving suit flowed and reassembled with incredible speed, as if they had a life of their own.

A moment before the invisible maw of the submerged "Line 2" could reach them, a sleek, black dinghy, constructed from countless tightly packed Black Cats, instantly took shape.

Zhang Wenda, Auntie, and Song Jianguo all leaped desperately onto the "boat"!

The sunken patch of sea representing "Line 2" scraped precariously past the bottom of the boat with a teeth-grinding sound, then changed course and charged toward Shuisheng's group.

Shuisheng and the others immediately pulled out launchers and aimed them at the nearby wall. A hole, barely large enough for one person to pass through, instantly melted into the wall. As nimble as monkeys, they all scrambled up and through it, evading the deadly pursuit.

Only when they saw the sunken patch of sea representing "Line 2" recede like a fading tide and finally disappear into the depths of the crowded human sea did everyone let out a long sigh of relief. They had managed to escape, shaken but unharmed.

After the group reassembled, Shuisheng's expression remained grim. He spoke again, "Something's wrong. This subway station isn't supposed to be on Line 2. If I'm not mistaken, the Big Circle must have deliberately lured it here to act as a free gatekeeper for their base."

Seeing the heavy expressions on the others' faces, Shuisheng changed his tone. "But this isn't entirely a bad thing," he continued. "It at least proves we're in the right place. Everyone, stay alert. We should be close to their nest now."

Watching Shuisheng and his group start to move, Zhang Wenda followed with Auntie and Song Jianguo.

"Where are we going?" asked Song Jianguo, who had changed back to her human form but still had a few cats clinging to her.

"We're looking for Line 26. It's a vegetarian. According to intel from our agent, it can take us to the Big Circle's stronghold."

Shuisheng explained without turning his head, his sharp gaze sweeping over the surging sea of people around them.

Soon, they found the so-called Line 26 in a relatively "sparse" area. It was a gentle, uniform white and lay quietly at the bottom of the human sea, like a slumbering, docile white whale.

The moment the train doors slowly opened like a clamshell, a powerful suction pulled at them. As if by a siphoning effect, they, along with a large crowd of expressionless pre-fab people, were involuntarily "sucked" into the spacious train car.

The car was still crowded, but compared to the hopeless swamp of human flesh outside, it was Heaven.

Zhang Wenda leaned against a cold glass window, watching the countless heads of the people packed together outside slowly stream backward like water. He knew Line 26 had finally started moving.

Squeezed uncomfortably by pre-fab people from all sides, Zhang Wenda had only one thought: 'Let's get this over with and get out of here. Of all the ideascapes I've experienced, this Ideascape 6 is the most miserable and suffocating one yet.'

Seeing they were safe for the moment, Zhang Wenda tried to distract himself by glancing up. He looked at Shuisheng, who was practically squashed against the luggage rack, and asked, "Can you tell me what the Big Circle is doing in this godforsaken place?" 'We're about to get into a fight, and I still don't fully understand the mission objective.'

"Human modification." Zhang Wenda was slightly taken aback by Shuisheng's concise answer.

"You must have noticed. This ideascape has an extremely rich natural resource of pre-fab people."

"According to intel from our inside agent, the Big Circle is trying to exploit this ideascape's human resources to expand their armed forces. They capture the pre-fab people and modify them into combat tools that obey only their commands."

Just then, Line 26 began to speed up noticeably. The stream of pre-fab people outside the window flew backward like a fast-forwarding film. Suddenly, the view outside flashed brightly, and Zhang Wenda felt a sense of sudden openness.

The pure white Line 26, like a true oceanic leviathan, leaped high out of the boundless sea of people.

Its massive body traced a graceful white arc through the air before crashing back down, kicking up grotesque yet spectacular "human-flowers" made of bodies.