The woman's face was ashen, like the dense black clouds in the sky.

The feeling of oppression seemed to appear out of nowhere. She couldn't understand how much pain one must endure to reveal such a despairing expression.

Even in the pitch-dark garbage dump, she never saw such despair in the eyes of those homeless men; there was mostly daze.

The woman before her felt like a puppet whose soul had been hollowed out, bones holding up the skin, sustained by some unknown force keeping her alive.

A profound sense of powerlessness rose within Xu Xiaoyou.

"It's dangerous outside, and since you don't seem hurt, go back to wherever you were hiding," the woman said. "Children shouldn't run around..."

"What about you?"

"I'm leaving."

"Where to?"

"To find my daughter; she's still somewhere in this city."

Xu Xiaoyou watched the woman silently walk away, further and further, until she vanished from sight.

She wished to say that there should barely be any survivors here; it was likely her daughter had met a tragic fate too.

But she wasn't sure if saying those words aloud might cause the woman's thin body to collapse suddenly.

The woman had risked saving her earlier, perhaps simply because she looked young and resembled her daughter a little?

Perhaps the woman knew the truth herself but was unwilling to accept it in her heart.

Meeting the woman was like two small streams randomly converging in a vast sea, and long after, Xu Xiaoyou roamed the city with Anya without encountering a second living soul.

She had already been in Alley No. 5 for four hours.

She realized a severe problem.

How was she supposed to leave Alley No. 5?

How long would this bloody midnight feast last, and how much longer before it ended?

She had felt something strange for a while.

The intel stated that Alley No. 5's feast time was supposed to be from 8:15 to 8:30, lasting only fifteen minutes.

Yet now...

Over four hours had passed since she entered Alley No. 5, and that eerie blood moon still hung high in the sky. Its position hadn't changed, casting a blood-red glow upon the city below, where everything the red moon touched remained silent.

Moreover, what felt even more bizarre to her.

She hadn't felt hungry or thirsty or even tired yet.

Earlier, during the battle with that Dissector, she expended a lot of physical strength but received no negative feedback from her body at all.

It was now midnight, yet she hadn't felt a hint of fatigue, remaining spirited.

Anya was the same, still enthusiastically circling around her without any sign of tiredness.

Usually, by this time, Anya would be too sleepy, curled up and asleep.

There was definitely something odd going on; Xu Xiaoyou silently noted the anomaly.

Another three hours passed, and Xu Xiaoyou gazed at the blood moon on the horizon with a hint of disarray in her vision.

Under the crimson moonlight, the air slightly distorted, and after staying too long in such an environment, Xu Xiaoyou instinctively felt uncomfortable, increasingly wanting to leave.

Based on settings from the Cthulhu-like games she used to play, her sanity was slowly dropping.

In a deserted alley, she saw a row of people kneeling against the wall, hands clasped together as if praying for something.

They had long died, sharp objects piercing their throats, ending their lives at the world's corner.

Another ten hours passed.

Silently sitting in a cake shop, gazing at the cabinet with smooth, delicate cream surface adorned with sugar icing, meticulously like fluffy clouds, Xu Xiaoyou had no appetite.

She even felt nauseous.

The cake shop had been ransacked and looted; most of the glass cabinets shattered, shelves collapsed everywhere.

From this scene, Xu Xiaoyou judged that, during the early stage of the disaster, people must've gone mad trying to seize these survival supplies.

Along the commercial street, department stores and various shops had been looted, but then it seemed something happened, as people stopped the violence.

Staring at the cake in the cabinet, Xu Xiaoyou zoned out.

She wondered how long these cakes had been out of the oven, sitting on the countertops, with the cream not melting a bit.

During this time, she walked back towards where she came from, discovering the wall had vanished; rather, the entire road she came from was gone.

The city's edge was replaced by endless fragmented void, like a solitary helpless island, with the former junction with the city streets now left only with blood-colored foggy chaos.

Humans are creatures prone to madness in solitude, especially in such strange unknown environments riddled with danger.

But what Xu Xiaoyou found disturbing wasn't the loneliness, but the inability to sleep.

It had been over a day since she last slept, her mind still clear; closing her eyes brought forth countless thoughts.

She was sure,

This feeling is not difficult to fall asleep, but rather an inability to fall asleep.

She yawned.

This was her forty-fifth yawn of the hour.

She didn't even know why she bothered remembering such meaningless things.

Her body shivered a little.

Could it be that something is wrong with her spirit as well?

Half a month later.

Xu Xiaoyou tiptoed onto a chair, pulling a rope tight, intending to loop it around her neck.

Her eyes had turned into dead fish eyes from exhaustion, her face determined and resolute.

Anya was terrified, hurriedly grabbing the blonde girl's body, crying out in panic, afraid she'd irrationally do something foolish.

"I'm joking, Anya."

Xu Xiaoyou chuckled, taking the rope off her neck.

"Let's go, let's see if we can find a way out today."

Walking down the deserted street, looking at the all-too-familiar scenes she could almost recite, Xu Xiaoyou sighed inwardly.

In her heart, she no longer held much hope of leaving; living was fine, dying was okay too.

Half a month!

A whole half month, do you know how she got through it!?

Only after experiencing this did Xu Xiaoyou realize she was quite optimistic by nature.

In the past half month, she hadn't slept a single second, didn't feel thirsty or hungry, nor tired, almost as if her physical state was frozen at the moment she entered No. 5 Alley!

Sleep forbidden, eating forbidden, socializing forbidden, she felt like she was the unfortunate soul repeatedly tormented in some twisted game.

She gradually understood those whose spirit had twisted into madness inside No. 5 Alley.

Under such circumstances, being able to maintain sanity like hers was certainly a rare case.

Throughout her daily negotiations with the dissector, Xu Xiaoyou clearly felt her reactions and thoughts becoming slower.

Several times she was nearly in danger; if Anya hadn't been by her side watching over her, she might have already been packed into the dissector's jar.

Xu Xiaoyou was dejected.

Occasionally, in her confused state of mind, she saw hallucinations, mistaking those blood-drenched creatures for survivors, seeing the souls of the dead in the river of blood screaming for her to return their lives.

She frequently heard whispers, like a group of people constantly murmuring in her ears.

She almost forgot why she entered No. 5 Alley initially.

Oh right, it was to understand these dissectors, to find a breakthrough point to recover debts.

If she had known this would happen, no way would she have stepped into No. 5 Alley in the first place!

Continuing like this, her mind would break.

Would she also be assimilated into a howling monster?

Xu Xiaoyou thought somewhat pessimistically.

Just then, she suddenly heard the sound of gunfire from a distant street!

Bang bang bang—

It was the firing sound of a spinning gun.

Bang bang bang—

How familiar.

Xu Xiaoyou thought with emotion.

She quickly rushed with Anya towards the street where the noise came from.

A burly man stood expressionless, carrying a Gatling Gun, the barrel spinning wildly, discharging a torrent of bullets, roaring like a metal beast, shattering the approaching dissectors.

In no time, the street was cleared of all dissectors, and the burly man noticed Xu Xiaoyou hiding in the distance, his voice flat:

"Come out."

Xu Xiaoyou hadn't seen a living person for more than half a month. Even if the person suddenly fired a burst at her, she would still feel quite familiar.

Villagers meet villagers, tears well up in their eyes.

"There are still people here, that's great."

The burly man spoke like a cold machine, his words devoid of any emotion.

Getting closer, she realized this man's eyelids were propped open with two toothpicks, piercing through at the tips. His large robe, almost soaked through with bright red fluid, faintly showed it was a Taoist robe...

Just as Xu Xiaoyou thought the man seemed normal, yet his mind likely collapsed some time ago, his next words made her extremely excited.

"Come with me, I know the way out of No. 5 Alley."

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