Chapter 152: HELP ME…
The smoke hole was cold, the air grew thicker as Joe Joe crawled through, half hoping that he wasn’t noticed while he was climbing into it.
The path ahead split into multiple ways as he racked his brain on which one to follow to get him to the chambers of the demon king.
’Using my Qi in thie position will be dangerous cause someone might detect it.’ He mused, as he lay on the floor.
The space was enough to fit him while he lay down but it didn’t afford him much room to move around as he wanted.
Before him were three paths. He could not know where each one of them led, so he decided to follow each one until he found what he was looking for.
While moving through the path, he would take note of the direction he followed so that when he came back...
It was at that moment he he also equally realized that turning back was not possible, the smoke holes were very narrow, in order for him to turn, he would have to deconstruct his entire body, then reconstruct it, something he wasn’t partcularly capable of, nor felt it pleasant to do.
He lay there for a while, his thoughts racing and his body starting to feel uncomfortable, even though the hole gave him enough space to lay down, he wasn’t much used to being cramped up in spaces like this.
He eventually decided he was going to pick one path and hope it was tbe correct one.
He crawled towards the entrance of all three holes, he turned his head to each one, he heard different sounds emanating from each one.
From the one on the left, he could hear screaming, screams of agony and extreme pain being emitted from the hole. He already knew instinctively not to follow that path.
From the one on the right, there was a metal clanging sound, he thought to follow that, but on second thought, it might be the underground mines.
The hole in the middle emitted sounds of faint whistling, clinking, and bubbling. These sounds suggested that there might be experiments being carried out in the room that this path led to.
So he followed that path.
He must have been crawling on the ground of the smoke hole for about thirty minutes when he suddenly started to see large fumes coming straight towards him.
He could not turn back and neither could he dodge these fumes, he didn’t know how dangerous they were and he had no escape. This was most likely his end, or so he thought.
He braced himself for impact and closed his eyes, the cloth was still tied on his nose. Placing an arm in front of his face, he felt as the fumes breezed past him.
They were hot, very hot, it took all of his effort not to cry out in pain from how hot these fumes were, but they went by quickly, causing very little damage.
He opened his eyes and let out a sigh of relief, as the fumes approached him, he had held his breath for no apparent reason at all, the fear of being burnt alive in a place like this actually scared him.
He was breathing now, but he knew one thing, he could not afford to stay in these smoke holes for the entire mission, he was going to have to get out of them soon.
He made up his mind that when he reached the end of this path, he would get out and explore the castle on ground, if he was in the castle.
He kept crawling, the air had grown thicker and he had started to sweat profusely, the sweat dripped from his forehead and face, to his arms. To the point that he was leaving sweat behind as he crawled forward.
***
It may have taken him a while but he had finally gotten to the end of the road, he could see a bright light shining through another wire-mesh blockage. He perked through and saw a room full of tubes and wires.
There were demon corpses lined on the tables, their bodies had been altered in the most repulsive ways. Joe Joe almost threw up as he looked at them.
Luckily, there was no one in the room, he thought it the best time to climb out of the smoke hole and make his way around the castle.
He grabbed the wire-mesh with both hands and tore it apart, it was then that he noticed the tube mechanism used to pass all the fumes and smoke through the holes.
Joe Joe carefully climbed out of the hole and settled down in the ground, the door of the room was closed and he could hear no sound whatsoever coming from the outside.
He was finally inside the castle, he hoped. He rose to his feet and studied the corpses on the table, they weren’t demons, they were humans, each one of them was no more than a hunk of flesh. There were three of them, all ridiculously altered by a plethora of experiments.
’Well I wouldn’t want to end up like that.’ Joe Joe frowned and walked round to inspect the bodies. He wondered what could be done to make a human body look this way.
He bent over slightly, looking closely at the face of one of the humans, he seemed like it was dead, so he studied it, the flesh seemed to be ripped off its body completely.
Just as he was about to stop, the body opened it eyes instantly and grabbed him by the arm.
"HELP ME..."
"HELP ME..."
The person said as he tightened his grip on Joe Joe’s wrist. Joe Joe was startled, his eyes were wide with shock and he struggled to pull himself free from the grip of this zombie. But for a person in such a state, the grip was very strong.
He feared that someone would walk in and catch him in that position, so there was only one thing left for him to do.