Chapter 420: Elevator Room
It took just one hour for Lin Ye to successfully find the exit leading out of the block space.
It was a black door that appeared at the end of the road.
Lin Ye pushed open the door and discovered that outside was an elevator room about twenty square meters in area. Inside, there was only one elevator. The elevator doors were black, with buttons for going up and down beside them.
Opposite the elevator doors was a metal door painted with an emergency stairwell sign.
"Take the elevator or the emergency stairwell?"
Lin Ye turned his head to ask Andrew for his opinion.
"The emergency stairwell should be safer, right? You decide."
Andrew felt that Lin Ye, who had led him out of the block space, was more reliable than he was.
"If this were a normal human building, I would definitely choose the emergency stairwell. But this is a world constructed from anomalous entities. We can't think according to human common sense. So, whichever path we take, the risk is the same. My luck isn't particularly great. What about yours?"
Lin Ye disliked making decisions based on luck, but there was absolutely no information here that could serve as a reference. Even he could only choose randomly. "My luck is probably worse than yours... Maybe we can take a look at the emergency stairwell situation first."
Andrew approached the metal door, trying to peer through the crack to see what was outside.
Mental energy was completely unable to penetrate the obstacles here;
even his perception range was severely compressed.
"Forget it. Emergency stairwells in places like this usually aren't very safe. Let's try the elevator first."
Lin Ye pressed the up button. The up button lit up with a red light, but even after waiting a full minute, the elevator doors did not automatically open.
"Is the elevator broken? Or does it need some time? Should I open the emergency stairwell door to take a look?"
After Lin Ye pressed the button, Andrew stayed near the emergency stairwell door. If something went wrong in the elevator, the emergency stairwell would at least be a fallback route.
As for the door leading back to the block space, that was the last resort, as it likely didn't have an exit to the outside world.
"Then open it and take a look. If something is blocking the way outside, try not to attack recklessly. We can retreat back to the block space first."
If there were dangerous things inside the emergency stairwell, rash contact could be extremely perilous.
"Don't worry. I am, after all, a ninth-tier spiritual energy user. I can handle ordinary anomalous creatures by myself."
Andrew gently pulled open the metal door. Behind it was a very ordinary-looking white emergency stairwell.
The emergency stairwell had the common spiral staircase structure. There were no windows in the passage. Leaning out over the handrail, one could see the spiral staircases above and below.
"...Just how many floors are there here? Both above and below are identical spiral staircases. You can't see the top or the bottom at all."
Andrew leaned his head out over the handrail, carefully observing the spiral staircase below that seemed to be in an infinite loop.
"Wait! Something seems to be coming up!"
A blurry phantom surged into Andrew's field of vision from below.
Andrew pulled out a straight metal weapon, like a pipe, from his spatial item. But before he could even make a move, he felt a sudden, intense palpitation, as if something extremely dangerous was approaching him.
He glanced down again and saw that the phantom had already moved from the edge of his vision to a place less than ten floors away from him.
His body felt as if it had been petrified, unable to make the proper reaction.
At that moment, Lin Ye forcefully yanked Andrew back into the elevator room and then slammed the metal door shut.
Before the door was completely closed, the phantom had already appeared outside the door. But the phantom did not try to stop the door from closing, nor did it enter the elevator room.
Lin Ye's body froze in place. His consciousness was completely clear, yet he couldn't control his own body, as if the connection between his body and mind had been severed. It took five minutes for this state to gradually fade.
"...What the hell was that thing?"
Andrew climbed up from the floor and asked, his heart still pounding with fear.
"Obviously, it's an anomalous creature you can't handle alone, an extraordinary one."
Lin Ye forced his body to move. For a moment there, he had thought he was definitely dead.
If that phantom could have entered the elevator room, or even if the metal door hadn't closed in time, that phantom could have caused them to die right here.
Just then, they suddenly felt a slight vibration. Both of them simultaneously turned to look at the elevator.
"I hope there are no anomalous creatures inside the elevator."
Andrew walked over near the door leading to the block space, ready to flee there at any moment.
"The anomalous creature in the emergency stairwell likely cannot enter the elevator room... But anomalous creatures inside the elevator are a different story."
Lin Ye also retreated to the vicinity of the block space door. The anomalous creature in the emergency stairwell seemed to be related to some kind of rule, which was why high-level spiritual energy users like them couldn't resist its ability.
*Ding~*
The elevator arrived at this floor. The black elevator doors slid open to both sides. There were no anomalous creatures inside the elevator.
"Huh, no wonder it took so long."
The three metal panels inside the elevator were densely covered with buttons for different floors. If all the buttons above represented individual floors, then there were at least 4,000 floors here. They were currently on floor number 2976.
"Are there really this many floors here?"
Andrew's face looked somewhat unpleasant. He felt a long-forgotten fear of being lost in an unknown area.
"There might be even more. No one said there's only one elevator here."
Lin Ye thought for a few seconds, then pressed the button labeled '4000'. The elevator doors automatically closed, and the elevator began ascending rapidly.
"How did you know to go to the 4000th floor?"
Andrew asked, puzzled.
"I don't know. I just randomly picked a direction. At worst, we can just go back down to the first floor. I actually hope the first floor is the exit;
that would be much simpler."
This time, Lin Ye didn't consult Andrew's opinion because Andrew's luck was clearly not great.
"...Alright. I hope the exit is on the 4000th floor."
Andrew carefully stood in the center of the elevator, afraid of accidentally touching the densely packed buttons on the metal panels.
Lin Ye also stood in the center. The elevator's ascent speed wasn't particularly fast, but it was very steady, no different from a normal elevator.
"At a stable operating speed of one floor every two seconds, 1024 floors would take 2048 seconds. If nothing unexpected happens, we should reach the 4000th floor in 34 minutes."
Even without a timer, Lin Ye could accurately calculate the ascent time.
"I hope nothing unexpected happens."
As soon as Andrew finished speaking, the elevator began to decelerate.
"...Your luck really isn't that good. I suggest you do more good deeds in your daily life."
Lin Ye began to concentrate, compressing his spiritual energy. The elevator decelerating meant something had pressed the up button. If some anomalous creature had pressed the button, then they would have to deal with an anomalous creature's attack in this narrow space.