Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 140: Cold Corners

Chapter 140: Cold Corners

March 20th, 8:12 AM — Longwan Mall, West Wing Service Hall

Mu Qinglan POV

—

The air changed the moment we stepped off the main corridor.

The tiled floor gave way to cracked linoleum. The overhead lights dimmed behind us, swallowed by yellowed walls and hanging exit signs that no longer glowed.

A faint chemical stench clung to the corridor, like damp cleaning fluid mixed with rusted steel. Not rot. Not blood. Just... something off.

I motioned Zhou Xue forward. Her black bow angled low, eyes sharp, calm. Liang Qiu and Deng Hua stayed middle formation. Chen Xun brought up the rear with Liang Mei trailing beside him, tense and too quiet.

We passed under a low archway marked SERVICE STAFF ONLY. The mall’s backrooms opened into a tangle of old storerooms, rusted folding chairs, broken mannequins, and disused stage props.

No windows. No airflow. Only the smell of dust, faded paper, and something electrical sparking behind the walls.

Liang Mei coughed once.

"Don’t," I said without looking.

She bit her lip and stayed quiet.

My sword, Endless Night, hung against my back. Not drawn yet. Not needed. Not unless something touched my team.

We moved slowly. Our boots scraped over curling floor tiles and faded murals of smiling cartoon mascots long since forgotten. Every shadow felt deeper than it should have been. The corners didn’t end clean — they bent, warped by uneven lighting and collapsed beams.

A crumpled employee vest lay near a bench with red faded lettering: Talent Showcase Week — March 1st.

The stage was just ahead.

We stepped into the performance area. The lights here still worked. Half of them, at least, casting a sickly green hue across the half-collapsed risers and curtain rails. A children’s piano sat off-centre, keys warped, one middle note jammed halfway down.

Something scrawled in marker along the edge of the stage:

"They said it wasn’t real."

My grip tightened around the hilt of my blade.

Zhou Xue moved toward the side curtain, bow raised.

"I don’t like this," she said.

"You don’t have to," I replied. "Just watch the gaps."

She swallowed and nodded.

Liang Qiu tapped a dressing room door with the tip of her arrow. "Back here, too."

"No one moves alone," I said.

Even with John gone, his way of handling people stuck in my head.

I’d never cared much for that.

But these kids were here because of him.

And I’d protect them.

No matter what crawled out of the dark.

Even if I was terrified when he wasn’t beside me, he gave me confidence...

——

We reached the West Wing Stage Access, at least according to the signs and came to a large dressing room, though the doors weren’t locked...

They didn’t open easily, either.

Liang Qiu pressed her shoulder into one, then stepped back as the hinge groaned and swung inward just enough to let the smell out.

Old cosmetics. Something mouldy. Hair dye gone chemical. Beneath it, the bite of dust was disturbed too recently.

"Don’t step in yet," I said.

Liang Qiu stopped immediately, nodding without turning her back to the dark. Her braid had come loose at the end, a few strands sticking to her cheek with sweat. She was young, but she moved with good instincts.

Maybe better than some of the men who used to guard my father... near the southern checkpoint.

Zhou Xue knelt at the corner near a cracked makeup station. She dipped one gloved finger into the fine grey layer covering the tiles. A tiny swirl broke the surface.

"Someone passed through here," she murmured.

"Undead?"

"No shuffle. No drag. Straight feet. Two sets."

I nodded once. "They’re not dumb."

Deng Hua stood near the backstage hallway, arrow drawn halfway. He hadn’t said much since we entered the backrooms. That wasn’t strange. Deng only spoke when he was about to kill something, or when something caught him completely off guard.

Right now, he was breathing through his nose, steady, silent. His eyes kept flicking to the half-open bathroom door past the vanity stations.

Chen Xun moved to his side, checked the frame, then whispered, "No mirror."

Deng Hua didn’t move.

"No reflection," he said flatly.

Liang Mei hovered at the back of the group. She kept close to Chen Xun, one hand always near her quiver. Her bow was good quality — real wood, real grip, not one of those salvaged pipe frames the slum archers used. But her shoulders stayed too tight. Her balance shifted from foot to foot too often.

I stepped closer to her, quietly.

"You’re crowding the middle."

She blinked at me, startled. Then adjusted.

"...Sorry."

"Don’t be, are you alright? John worries about you a lot..."

"He does?"

The way her eye sparkled and the faint blush on her cheeks told me everything, another girl... maybe it wouldn’t go further, but knowing he slept with Yifei made me jealous and insecure.

Is that why he bought me this sword?

John, was this a message to me?

A sword that cannot break...

I shook my head quickly, as Liang Mei nodded back to me and hopped to the side, her movements were good, but her heart...

"Do your best, he does."

The hallway broke into three paths.

Left: locked security door with a burnt keypad. Middle: The storage walk lights were dead. Right: a stairwell down into the sublevel costume archive.

I pointed to Zhou Xue and Liang Qiu.

"Check the storage hallway. If anything moves, fall back. Don’t engage unless you are in danger. first contact the team."

Zhou Xue gave a quick nod, eyes already narrowing. Liang Qiu followed without a word, drawing her bow as she moved.

The rest of us waited outside the dressing room door.

Something tapped once inside.

Not loud. Not sudden.

But deliberate.

Deng Hua didn’t blink. He just drew his bow to full tension and aimed at the floor near the couch.

I drew Endless Night.

The weight settled instantly into my hands, comfortable, expected. Not ceremonial.

I stepped through the door first.

The light above the mirror flickered once, then died as I stepped inside.

It took my eyes a second to adjust.

The dressing room wasn’t big. One cracked mirror, two bolted-down stools, a torn couch in the back corner, and a wardrobe with half its doors broken. Makeup powder covered the counter in a thick coat of grey. A pink wig lay on the floor like it had been stepped on, then left to rot.

But the air...

The air moved.

Behind me, Deng Hua stood in the doorway. Chen Xun covered the left angle, aiming into the shadowed gap beneath the couch.

I scanned the space. Nothing obvious. No groaner. No lurker. But that pressure — pressure-the same pressure I’d felt in the food court—pressed against the back of my neck.

There was no reflection in the mirror.

The frame was intact. The glass had no cracks. But the surface was dead black. It swallowed light instead of bouncing it.

I stepped closer.

Behind me, I heard Deng Hua murmur under his breath.

"That’s not glass."

I nodded once.

Liang Mei hovered outside the door, bow held stiffly in both hands.

"Do we... go in?"

"No," I said. "You stay there."

She didn’t argue. Good.

I crouched near the couch and tilted my head low, looking for any hint of movement beneath. No breathing. No limbs. No shadow that didn’t belong.

But something stared back at me.

Not from under the couch.

From inside the mirror.

Just for a second.

A pale face, no mouth, no eyes, no expression — just flesh pulled tight across a smooth skull. It vanished the moment I blinked.

Endless Night hummed faintly in my hands.

Not literally. But I’d held it long enough to know when it wanted to be used.

I slashed the mirror.

Glass didn’t shatter. It peeled like the layers of a rotten onion pasted over something too soft.

Behind it, the wall was pulsing.

Veins. Faintly black. Spread like mould across the plaster.

Chen Xun stepped closer.

"What the hell is this?"

Deng Hua didn’t speak. He was already watching the ceiling.

"Above us."

I looked up.

A hand gripped the vent frame.

Long thin fingers... inhuman... strange...

Not rotten.

Not bloated.

Fresh.

It wasn’t normal... a pure white body, with long limbs... no genitals... eerie, so eerie that my spine tingled in fear upon seeing it.

My teeth jittered and clacked together before I sank my teeth into my tongue.

The monster watched us before it leapt into the vent and vanished.

Even the others remained shocked... terrified.

Then a thud echoed behind the wall, light, like someone crawling fast.

Back toward the storage corridor.

"Zhou Xue," I snapped into the comm. "Status?"

Silence.

Then static.

Then...

"Saw something. It ran, but I hit it’s thigh... it’s blood was white... like glue"

It ran?

My jaw tightened as I bit my lips.

"They’re herding us."

I stepped into the hallway, blade ready.

"They think we’re prey."