The Heretical Husband Is Too Good at Acting! - Chapter 11

After walking for a while longer, they discovered a rather peculiar place.

There was a wall here, constructed from shelves, beds, and various pieces of furniture, reaching all the way to the ceiling.

Part of the wall had already collapsed.

The scene was covered in dried bloodstains, and scattered across the ground were fire axes, lawnmowers, homemade bows and arrows, crossbows, and other weapons.

Following the collapsed section, they entered the other side of the wall and found numerous tents, kitchen utensils, household appliances, and other traces of human habitation.

But no one was there.

“This place must have been a base built by those who were trapped.”

People trapped in the inner world would encounter others in the same situation after exploring for a period of time. They would take joint action and establish survival bases.

The supermarket did not lack supplies; food, drink, and daily necessities were all available. The only threat was the monsters at night.

According to descriptions from those who escaped, they would go out to collect supplies during the day and hide within the base’s fortifications at night. They found various lighting equipment on the supermarket shelves to ensure light during the night, but this brightness could not stop the monsters’ assault.

They were forced to fight monsters every single night.

Chen Mo and the others could easily eliminate these monsters, as none of the three were ordinary people. But for those trapped, the monsters’ attacks were fatal. The monsters came wave after wave; often, before the previous wave was dealt with, the next had already arrived.

Many people lost their lives because of this.

These temporary high walls of the base would often collapse after enduring several powerful offensives, leaving the survivors to scatter and flee.

The empty base before them was clearly the same.

“The last middle-aged man who escaped mentioned that his base suffered a monster attack. To avoid pursuit, he fled in a panic, inadvertently saw an exit, and managed to escape by luck.”

“What did the exit look like?” Chen Mo asked curiously.

“In a place where an ‘EXIT’ sign is hanging from the ceiling, if you follow the direction of the arrow, you will soon encounter a door. That door is the exit. Several people who escaped mentioned that sign, but its location seems to appear randomly. While they were inside, they heard others describe it—someone had seen a companion escape right before their eyes, but when they tried to follow, the exit vanished. Some believe that those who can escape are those ‘permitted’ to leave by the consciousness of the inner world. Most of the trapped, I’m afraid, are destined to stay here, never finding a way out.”

“Does the inner world have a consciousness?” Chen Mo followed this line of thought. “If it has a consciousness, can we find the master of that consciousness and change it?”

Zhang Tao smiled and said appreciatively, “That’s a very good idea.”

They inspected the base thoroughly and concluded that the owners of those bloodstains had likely perished, though no bodies were found on-site. Judging by the color and texture of the blood, the final battle had taken place at least ten days ago.

They did not linger in this place for long.

Although none of the three showed signs of fear, in such a pitch-black, massive space, with so many clean and comfortable places available, there was no reason to stay in such a gloomy spot.

Continuing for about half an hour, they arrived at an area selling bedding.

Looking at the rows of soft, plush beds, Chen Mo belatedly felt exhausted, and his eyelids began to fight to stay open.

He suggested, “How about we rest here for a while?”

The two captains exchanged glances, both smiled, and said, “Alright.”

Setting aside the threat of monsters, being trapped in the supermarket was actually not that unbearable.

The shelves were filled with all kinds of food and water, and if one wanted to sleep, they could find wide, comfortable, and beautifully styled beds.

Many people outside might not even live such a good life.

The three took turns keeping watch, each sleeping for four or five hours.

At nine in the morning, the supermarket’s overhead lights turned on.

Chen Mo had slept first and proactively requested to keep watch for the second half; he witnessed the entire process of the supermarket transitioning from darkness to brightness with his own eyes.

He noticed that even at 8:59:59, the interior of the supermarket remained a pitch-black darkness where one couldn’t see their own hand.

When the time hit exactly nine o’clock, accompanied by a faint sound of electric current—snap—the overhead lights switched on.

It seemed the inner world’s time was synchronized with the outside world, but it did not share the sun or natural daylight.

The moment the surroundings lit up, the two captains, who had been resting with their eyes closed, opened them simultaneously.

With their vision restored, the three instinctively looked around.

As superpowered individuals, their eyesight was much better than that of ordinary people.

However, no matter which direction they looked, it was a sales floor divided into different areas, with endless shelves like an infinite labyrinth, seemingly extending to the end of the world.

During their rest last night, they had experienced two or three more waves of monster attacks, and the disposed corpses were piled not far away.

They did not disappear even when it became light.

The surroundings seemed to have undergone some changes overnight. The two captains took out various small instruments to calibrate them, and Chen Mo also opened the compass app on his phone. Unsurprisingly, the situation was the same as last night: the needle spun wildly.

If this inner world really had a consciousness, it clearly did not want people to distinguish directions within it.

So, they chose a direction at random to continue exploring.

Chen Mo took a backpack from the outdoor section. As he passed various shelves, he packed things he might need.

Power banks, flashlights, batteries, lighters, rope, etc. Although food and water were the most common items, just in case, he picked out some high-calorie chocolate bars, compressed biscuits, and a few cans. The supermarket did not sell medicine; he only managed to get some disinfectant wipes and band-aids.

While Chen Mo was busy collecting supplies and sorting his mood, the two captains were using small instruments to measure something.

Although the surroundings were constantly changing, they were still trying to deduce a possible underlying pattern to map out the true geography of the inner world.

Chen Mo, biting into half a piece of bread, was searching for useful items among the rows of shelves when he accidentally came face-to-face with a “staff member” wearing a blue shirt.

The faceless blue-clothed monster was completely different from its violent state at night—where it would attack anyone on sight without a word. It showed no aggressive intent at all, appearing to be in a state akin to sleepwalking, wandering listlessly between the shelves.

Chen Mo looked around and found that in the middle of a nearby row of shelves, there were also two swaying blue figures, both in a very dazed state. It seemed that they did not congregate during the day, wandering freely inside the supermarket, and would only become fierce at night.

He wanted to say something, then turned to look at Captain Shen, who was seriously surveying nearby. Not wanting to disturb him, he decided to have some fun himself.

He patted the monster’s shoulder and said, “Hey, hello?”

The monster ignored him.

Treating the other as a supermarket employee, he asked a few questions, but naturally received no response.

Chen Mo thought: If they are all this peaceful during the day, why not just get rid of them all? Wouldn’t the night be peaceful then?

Thinking this, he launched an attack on the faceless blue-clothed monster. As a result…

The monsters were much more ferocious during the day!

He hadn’t used much strength in his first strike—after all, taking the initiative to attack carried some moral pressure—and then he was frantically beaten.

While the monster attacked him violently, it spoke with conviction: “Can’t you find what you want yourself? Don’t disturb me while I’m at work!”

Chen Mo: ?

Is this really a puppet?

He tried a few more times and discovered that the monsters’ attacks during the day were not collective.

If you provoked one monster, you only needed to deal with that specific one. Even if other monsters were very close by, they wouldn’t join in.

They were quite indifferent, a completely different style from the nighttime.

But it was hard to say which was more terrifying.

Shen Junyao, seeing him having a “lively” time here, walked over to take a look.

Hearing the monsters’ daytime dialogue, he was also speechless, caught between laughter and tears.

By five or six o’clock in the afternoon of the second day, there was still no progress.

Chen Mo was actually a bit worried about the outside. Even when he was abroad, he rarely lost contact with his family. Now that he was home, having said he was going out for a gathering only to disappear for an entire day, he wondered if his mother would be anxious.

He hoped the matter here would be resolved as soon as possible. Surely they wouldn’t really be trapped in here for years?

At around eight o’clock in the evening, two hours before the inner world was about to enter night, they discovered an escalator.

But it was just an escalator; there were no walls, doors, or exit signs.

They followed the escalator to the floor above.

After walking for another period of time, they finally encountered a person.

It was in a clothing sales area.

Shen Junyao stopped his pace first as they passed. Chen Mo followed his line of sight and saw a middle-aged man, appearing to be in his forties or fifties, selecting clothes in front of a row of racks. He was pushing a shopping cart, which was already filled with many goods, with two red dresses draped over the top.

His expression wasn’t great, as if he were dissatisfied with the styles of the dresses, or perhaps just in a bad mood.

Chen Mo’s attention was on his facial features and limbs.

Although he wasn’t a very handsome uncle, he had eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears, and his limb proportions looked normal.

Not a monster!

He couldn’t help but want to cheer.

The middle-aged man noticed them at this time. When he looked over, his expression transformed from initial complete wariness to surprise, and then he became visibly happy. He spoke cautiously: “Are you… humans?”

Zhang Tao, who was further away, hurried over upon hearing the movement.

Two more companions appeared by the clothing racks on the middle-aged man’s side: a young man in his twenties and a woman in her forties or fifties.

There were three people on each side, and they approached each other with cautious postures.

“Are you also customers who wandered in by mistake?” the middle-aged man asked.

Chen Mo and the others exchanged a glance. Without immediately revealing their identities, they simply said, “Yes.”

The middle-aged man asked again, “How long have you been in here?”

Neither Shen Junyao nor Zhang Tao spoke. Chen Mo thought for a moment and answered on their behalf, “We came in this morning.”

The smile on the middle-aged man’s face became much more genuine, immediately followed by a hint of worry: “Did you encounter those fellows in blue shirts on your way? Those things are very dangerous; it’s best not to provoke them.”

“Are they very dangerous? I tried to talk to them, and they ignored me.”

Chen Mo didn’t know what the two captains’ plans were. His thought was that since they hadn’t found an exit for so long, telling these people they were here to rescue them didn’t really make much sense, as they couldn’t even get out themselves.

Furthermore, looking at the state of these few people, they had likely been in the inner world for quite a while. They had no idea what these people had specifically experienced to survive such monsters; there was no need to pour their hearts out to them at the first meeting.

The middle-aged man’s expression became even more earnest. He approached them and reminded them sincerely, “They aren’t much of a threat during the day, as long as you don’t provoke them. But at night, they form groups and kill people on sight—they are very hard to deal with!”

Chen Mo put on an expression of disbelief.