Chapter 126 - Smell of Agarwood and roses
The car rumbled through the basement’s winding, whirling pathway, its tires screeching slightly against the cold, smooth concrete. Shao’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as he carefully maneuvered the vehicle, eyes darting between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. Every turn felt like a gamble, every shadow a lurking threat.
Muchen sat stiffly in the passenger seat, his fingers curled tightly around the fabric of his pants. His breath was still uneven, his heartbeat a rapid thrum in his chest. The tension in the car was suffocating, the weight of what they had just escaped pressing down on them like a storm cloud waiting to burst.
Then, up ahead—something in the way.
A car was parked awkwardly, its front tilted slightly to the side, as if whoever had driven it last had barely made it this far before abandoning hope. The sight alone was enough to raise alarm bells, but what made Muchen’s stomach turn was what lay inside.
Two figures sat unmoving in the front seats.
At first, they looked disturbingly normal, just people caught in the middle of tragedy, frozen in time. But as the headlights swept across them, the horror became clear.
A mother and daughter.
The woman’s face was locked in a grotesque expression of hunger, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her eyes clouded with the sickly white sheen of the infected.
One of her arms—her own arm—was missing, nothing but a gnawed stump left behind, torn flesh barely clinging to the bone.
In her remaining hand, she still clutched the limb, chewing mechanically, dead eyes staring straight ahead as though this gruesome act meant nothing.
The child—Gods, the child—was even worse.