Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 192: Beneath the Depot, Flesh Feeds Flesh

Chapter 192: Beneath the Depot, Flesh Feeds Flesh

The hatch gave a soft clack as the rusted seal cracked. Air rushed up—hot, damp, and faintly metallic. I saw no movement down the tunnel, but the Qi leaking from below wasn’t natural. It pulsed in slow waves, like something alive was breathing beneath the depot.

I stepped back.

"I’m going with backup."

The others regrouped quickly.

Zhou Xue dropped from a wrecked freight crate, her bow slung behind her shoulder. Roulan approached from the east platform, her tonfa still wet with black gore.

I turned to Tang Wei first. "You stay topside. Keep the Jeeps ready. Sweep the outer perimeter. If more come, you pull the rookies out and fall back to the highway. Don’t wait."

She nodded, eyes serious. "Got it. I’ll take Liang Mei, Qiu, and the others. The streets are quieter, but I’ll stay sharp."

Zhou Xue joined her without being asked. "I’ll cover her. This bow’s useless in a tunnel."

"Good." I glanced to the side. "Roulan. Yifei. You’re with me."

Shen Yifei didn’t flinch. "Understood."

Roulan gave a sharp nod, checking the blade inside her tonfa. "Lead the way when you’re ready."

Then I felt her eyes on me.

Mu Qinglan.

She tilted her head, walking slowly and deliberately across the cracked concrete, sword resting lazily on her shoulder. Her gaze moved from Yifei to Roulan, then to the open hatch.

She didn’t speak right away.

Just watched me.

I shifted, waiting for the obvious comment.

Instead, she smiled.

Lan’er skipped towards me and hugged me tight, her arms squeezing my butt as she kissed my neck, her warm lips comfortable until she started sucking violently.

"L-Lan’er!"

"Mmnnph~ fufu, your neck is full of my spit and marking now." She then hugged me tighter. The faint scent of her sweat made my crotch swell, but it wasn’t the time... and then she whispered in a huskier voice. "Looks like you’re finally acting like a leader." She winked. "I’ll help up here. Can’t leave Zhou Xue and Tang Wei alone with these rookies."

It was strange... and made me a little confused.

"Don’t worry, I’ll keep them safe, my beautiful little man."

Qinglan’s hands pressed against my cheeks, squeezing my face, before she turned away with squinted eyes. "Your ass is so fine."

"W-What is she doing!" Yifei’s complaints echoed from behind me. Meanwhile, Jiang Roulan chuckled, trying to calm her down.

That threw me.

I blinked.

Somehow, it felt that Mu Qinglan was coming out of her shell... I found myself watching her swaying hips as she approached Tang Wei. "...Yours is much finer."

This situation was improving. I no longer felt so suffocated, and our group’s relationship and dynamics have increased and improved.

I looked at Roulan, then Yifei.

"Let’s move."

We dropped into the dark.

***

The ladder groaned under my weight.

Below, nothing but thick air and blackness. I kept one hand on the rusted rung, the other gripping a Type-9K. My boots hit the bottom with a wet squelch.

The smell hit first.

Rot. Not fresh. Old, dense, and wet. Like meat left too long in a sealed room. Mixed with stagnant water and mould. My visor adjusted slowly, filtering some of the air, but it didn’t stop the taste from clinging to my tongue.

Behind me, two more sets of boots dropped.

"Lights," I said.

Two beams cut through the dark.

Yifei raised her Type-9K, flashlight mounted under the barrel. The pale cone of light revealed the tunnel ahead, thick with grime, waterlogged, and lined with rusted pipes. Her spear was slung behind her back, but I saw her fingers brush it once before she took point on the right.

Jiang Roulan stood on the left, tonfa drawn and silent, her light scanning low along the ground. Rats scattered ahead of us, fat and slow. She didn’t flinch.

Before we’d dropped, I burned 6,000 ZKP to upgrade all three of our Type-9Ks to increase various parts and doubled the capacity. I swapped the standard 9mm for .45 ACP +P tungsten-fragmentation rounds. Slower velocity, but heavy, hot, and brutal on flesh. Especially rotting flesh.

A round that didn’t just punch through—it carved.

I checked the ammo counter in my HUD. Full mags. Four spares.

Our boots splashed through ankle-deep water that stank of chemical rot.

The tunnel narrowed slightly.

My flashlight beam caught moss spreading across the lower pipework—dark green with veins of purple. It pulsed faintly, but didn’t react to us.

Not yet.

Yifei stayed ahead, her gun up, flashlight leading. Her back straight, steps measured. Her spear swayed behind her, secured with a shoulder harness.

Roulan mirrored her pace, silent. Tonfa ready. She kept her beam low, tracking for movement. Drainage tunnels fed into this artery every few meters. Any of them could hide something.

The silence pressed in tighter the farther we walked.

Twenty meters in, we passed a rusted maintenance door. The keypad blinked green, impossibly still powered, but the steel frame became bloated with corrosion. I didn’t stop.

The Qi in the air kept thickening.

Sticky now. Almost hot.

Yifei raised a fist.

We halted.

She turned slightly. "You feel that?"

Roulan’s answer came without delay. "John... this feels like the pressure that you emit during combat... is this Qi? But it feels strange, almost twisted. Like it’s being squeezed and dark."

I nodded once.

The qi pressed against my spine in waves, slow and regular. It didn’t feel hostile or welcoming—just dark, thick... and heavy. Somehow, the scent it carried lacked the freshness of the other elements.

’What’s making it like this?’

Almost like something alive beneath the concrete was pushing breath through the walls.

We moved again.

The tunnel curved, and at the end it split into several roads.

Left, toward tighter sewage lines.

Right and down into a wider, more reinforced area. A maintenance hub, maybe. Some kind of platform.

Then came the sound.

It wasn’t footsteps. Instead... the sound of zombies or something chewing?

"W-What’s that disgusting sound!?"

Yifei seemed slightly unsettled, while Jiang Roulan became silent; instead, she looked at me with resolute eyes. "It’s probably something horrible..." Roulan mumbled.

’Yeah, it sounded like something being eaten.’

There were small traces of humans living down here, and if they escaped to the sewers to survive during the initial outbreak.

Then what if...

I raised my gun, flicked the safety twice, then pointed toward the right.

"This way."

We descended.

***

The tunnel sloped downward in a shallow curve. The air got hotter, and there was an irritating and wet heat. That came from the dead bodies.

The chewing grew louder.

It wasn’t rhythmic. Just messy. Fast. Ripping flesh... bone crunching, something gulping wetly.

None of us spoke.

Even Shen Yifei’s breathing had slowed. Roulan didn’t blink. Every step we took echoed louder than it should have, boots splashing through rank water and filth.

My flashlight beam caught deep scratches along the tunnel walls.

These were clean, parallel, and precise cuts, which were far too accurate for Brutes.

I lowered my stance.

We cleared the curve.

Then we saw it.

The tunnel opened into a circular chamber—an old maintenance hub, maybe six meters wide, the ceiling cracked and sagging. A collapsed staircase led deeper into darkness. Around the edges of the room, stacked in piles, were bodies.

Human.

Hundreds.

Bones stripped of all their meat and flesh. Others looked freshly killed, still twitching. All of them were adults. Some wore scavenger armour. Others had shredded guard uniforms. No children. No civilians.

Just fighters.

’A massacre...’

"Oh my god..."

Jiang Roulan’s voice trembled... likely because of the police uniforms in the pile.

Roulan took a step forward, covering her mouth with her sleeve. Her beam passed over the bodies and landed on a hunched figure tearing into a corpse’s chest cavity.

It didn’t look up.

Not right away.

But the one beside it did.

Its head snapped toward us.

Its focus was precise and calculating.

Two disfigured faces with tight skin wrapped around angular bones. No lips. No nose. Just a half-rotten skull and yellow eyes glowing beneath the sockets.

Although disgusting, the eyes looked more human than before.

’Shit!’

Its arms—

They weren’t arms anymore.

Long blades extended from its elbows to its wrists. Black metal fused with bone. They gleamed in the light.

It rose slowly. The other one followed. Two Blade-types.

[John! Blade Types!]

[System Warning: Stage 3 Blade Types Detected!]

They didn’t scream.

They didn’t roar.

They moved.

Fast.

Not like Brutes—no stomping, no wind-up.

But like shadows that cut through the air, they darted towards the group.

The first one dashed across the room, slicing through a ribcage like it was paper as it passed. The second cut a pipe as it jumped, using the rebounding pressure to twist in the air and aim straight for Yifei.

I raised both guns.

"Roulan! Yifei! Move!"

The tungsten-frag rounds barked out of both barrels.

I didn’t hesitate, even when the blades were slashing towards me and the source of the strange QI waited... deeper while stirring in the pit.

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