Chapter 56: Major Crisis

Ren Jie swallowed hard, cold sweat streaming down his back.
"K-Keep joking around, will you? You're really telling me you guys didn't do this?"
Ye Yue's expression was solemn.
"How could it possibly be me? I only broke through to the fourth-tier Concealment Realm yesterday, and my cells are still in the evolutionary stage. Where would I get this kind of power?"
"Whatever anomaly this is, it's definitely not limited to Sub-level 17 alone. Perhaps... the entire Demon Subjugation Headquarters has been snared by a nightmare..."
Yun Xiao's face turned completely pale.
"What on earth is going on here? This is the Demon Subjugation Headquarters! There are countless Demon Subjugators inside; it's practically the most impregnable place in Jincheng."
"To be able to trap the entire Demon Subjugation Headquarters in a nightmare? Just how immense of a power would that require?"
Ye Yue frowned deeply.
"Don't act rashly. Let's try contacting the other colleagues first to figure out the situation. Where are your communicators?"
Ye Huai shook his head. "They're dead. No signal..."
Ren Jie took out his phone. Sure enough, there was no signal either, but the next moment, his expression froze.
Because the time displayed on the phone was precisely 9:09 PM.
"What time is it?"
Wu Yunqing glanced at his watch. "Past nine? What's wrong?"
Refusing to believe it, Ren Jie snatched Wu Yunqing's watch and looked at the dial.
"How can it only be nine o'clock? I didn't check the time while we were training, but it should at least be midnight by now. Hisss—"
On the dial, the second hand kept twitching back and forth, stuck stubbornly at 9 minutes and 59 seconds past 9 o'clock, refusing to move forward.
Everyone seemed to be trapped in this single second for all eternity...
Five pairs of eyes stared fixedly at the time, silently counting to sixty in their hearts, but the time on the watch remained completely unchanged, as did the phone's...
In the silent corridor, the lights flickered, and the occasional sound of dripping water echoed, creating a deathly stillness that seemed intent on swallowing the five of them whole.
Veins bulged on Wu Yunqing's forehead.
"Playing God and casting illusions! Screw whatever ghost wall this is, I'll just smash the wall to pieces!"
With muscles bulging all over his body, he directly transformed into a lizardman and slammed a ferocious, heavy punch into the floor beneath his feet.
With a loud "boom," the metal deformed, the floor shattered, and a massive hole was punched through the ground. The five of them fell straight down through the breach.
Yet, a despairing sight unfolded before them: the next level down was a corridor and layout identical in every way to Sub-level 17.
Looking up through the hole in the ceiling, the two corridors were stacked one upon the other, as if infinitely superimposed.
Soon, the upper corridor was swallowed by darkness, and the hole smashed by Wu Yunqing began to mend, eventually disappearing entirely as if it had never happened at all.
At this, everyone's expressions turned truly grim.
Wu Yunqing gritted his teeth. "This isn't right. Beneath Sub-level 17 should be the Demon Prison. Why is it still this same floor?"
Yun Xiao turned pale. "How... bizarre is this?"
Ye Yue said heavily, "Without a doubt, we've been trapped in a spacetime loop—a structure similar to a Möbius strip or a Klein bottle."
"Our colleagues in the Demon Subjugation Headquarters must be facing the exact same situation."
"And we have been trapped for at least three hours. If whoever is striking at the Demon Subjugation Headquarters is a demon, then its ability definitely possesses spatial attributes, and perhaps even temporal ones."
"In other words, no one in the headquarters has broken this loop for three hours. Our choices boil down to two: either wait in place for rescue, or find a way to break the loop ourselves."
Ye Huai gasped sharply. "You've got to be kidding me? It's been three hours, and the Director-General is here too! He's so powerful, and he hasn't resolved this yet?"
Ye Yue's gaze shifted. "Ren Jie? What do you think? Any good ideas?"
"This can also be considered a vivid practical class. Sometimes, dealing with demons requires more than just raw power; you have to use your brain."
Ren Jie pulled a dark face. You've got to be kidding me?
The Demon Subjugation Headquarters is under attack, and under circumstances like this, we're still having a class?
"I'll just stand by and watch~ Since Director-General Shen hasn't sorted it out yet, let's not waste our efforts. Let's just... wait... wait a minute, what did you just say was underneath Sub-level 17?"
Wu Yunqing shrugged. "The Demon Prison, obviously. Usually, the headquarters selects some suppressed demons and stuffs them into the prison to study them and find their weaknesses..."
"Since the training room is rather noisy on ordinary days, it was arranged further down. What's wrong?"
Ren Jie's mouth twitched violently as he stared straight past them.
"I can now be certain that what you said is true..."
The group turned around stiffly to see the floor in the distance twisting before transforming into a pitch-black vortex.
A tumor-like demon covered in hundreds of eyes crawled out from the vortex.
Wu Yunqing turned pale. "Tier 4! Argus Demon? We're in big trouble now!"
All the demons from the Demon Prison had broken out? If so, the situation faced by the other Demon Subjugators couldn't possibly be any better.
Ren Jie: ???
What kind of ridiculous name is this demon? Does it get triggered easily or something?
The next moment, all hundreds of eyes on the Argus Demon snapped open, locking instantly onto Ren Jie. It opened its foul, stinking maw, and a sound like fingernails scraping across sheet metal issued from its throat...
"Ren Jie... target member... capture... kill... heh heh heh~"
All of its eyes lit up with crimson light, and an overwhelming sense of extreme danger welled up from the bottom of their hearts.
Ye Yue: !!!
"Danger! Dodge! Old Wu!"
Hundres of crimson laser beams shot out from the demon's eyes, instantly filling the entire corridor and frantically destroying everything in sight.
The corridor was cramped, leaving zero room to dodge. Wu Yunqing let out a roar and charged forward instantly.
"Rock Lizard Heavy Armor!"
He blocked the vast majority of the laser attacks, while Ye Huai waved a single hand, stripping the metal sheeting off the corridor walls and turning it into a shield to block the lasers.
Simultaneously, the numerous firearms in the shooting range all flew out under Ye Huai's control, firing frantically. Every single bullet struck a demon eye with pinpoint accuracy.
However, the Argus Demon's formidable regenerative ability took effect; the eyes that were blown apart regenerated rapidly. Besides, the ammunition in the training room consisted only of training rounds, not subjugation bullets.
"Heh heh heh~ Ren Jie... Ren Jie..."
Braving the hail of bullets, the Argus Demon charged fiercely toward Ren Jie's location.
Ren Jie was completely numb.
Why is it coming after me again? Haven't I already worn the concealment spike?
How does it even know my name?
The entire Demon Subjugation Headquarters is under attack, just to catch me?
Such a massive operation—has the matter of the Demonic Inscription been exposed?
We are in huge trouble now!
Yet, in a battle of this scale, Ren Jie couldn't intervene at all. He was only in the Tier 1 Awakening Realm; no matter how strong he might be, he was no match for a Tier 4 demon.
Just as the group wanted to retreat to a relatively spacious area so they wouldn't remain so passive, a vortex regenerated in the corridor on the other side.
Out came a creature shaped like a maned lion, but devoid of flesh and blood—its entire body formed from a skeleton, while scarlet soul fire burned furiously within.
"Roar—!"
Countless bone spikes shot toward the group at breakneck speed.
Bone spikes sprouted wildly along the corridor walls and even across the ceiling.
It was precisely a Tier 4 Bone Fiend Demon.
Caught in a pincer attack from front and rear, their situation instantly plunged into extreme peril!
(PS: Here it comes, here it comes~ The update is here! I’m begging for five-star reviews and bookmarks, (∗ᵒ̶̶̷̀ω˂̶́∗)੭mUa~)