Infinite Terror: Infinite Reversal

Chapter 7 100 Meters Away
By this time, the mercenaries must have already checked the elevator, right? Mu Xiang recalled the plot: the elevator crashed on the lowest floor, so the mercenaries decided to take the stairs. Who knew that the elevator car was actually filled with a bunch of zombies, their heads crammed together and their hands intertwined? If the elevator hadn't been broken, they probably would have been dragged in and devoured the moment it opened.

As everyone knows, opening any door in Resident Evil is like opening a mystery box...

Looking at the elevator doors, Mu Xiang suddenly felt that this was a can, even more like a can than a "red brick can"...

"The lid of the steel can—once those iron doors slid open, a whole bunch of unchained walking corpses rushed out like wild beasts in a chaotic frenzy." Mu Xiang muttered to himself as he recited the drastically modified text.

"Pah, what am I thinking?" Mu Xiang cursed inwardly. He tended to overdo his吐槽 (tu cao, a Chinese internet slang term for sarcastic or critical comments) when he was nervous. Thinking about this, he couldn't help but admire his own peculiar thought process.

Lost in thought, he had already surged to the front of the group, second only to the mercenaries and Alice; Spence and Matt weren't as fast as him. If he hadn't seen the mercenary captain and Alice talking, he could have even been further ahead. High school students, if they were willing to train, could be much more physically fit than many adults. Mu Xiang ran long distances every day, a rare form of entertainment amidst his stressful studies. In events like long-distance running, Mu Xiang was second to none. Not to mention, the mercenaries had to be on guard and hold their guns while running, while Mu Xiang only needed to move his legs.

As for the other members of the Reincarnation Squad, Zhang Jie has enhanced attributes, so he naturally won't be slow. He's just not in a hurry to rush. If he really ran, he might be among the fastest or even the fastest of everyone present.

Although Zheng Zha is a typical white-collar worker at work, his lifestyle is quite unconventional... For some inexplicable personal reasons, he spends at least one full day at the gym every week, and his physical strength is better than that of people who don't exercise at all. So he's at the forefront of the Reincarnation Team.

The girl with glasses had physical strength matching her appearance; she looked frail and wasn't physically strong. However, she used her intelligence, grabbing Zhang Jie's clothes as she ran up the stairs, thus providing some of the propulsion. Zhang Jie merely glanced at her, said nothing, and led her ahead. Therefore, she was actually slightly ahead of Zheng Zha.

The fat guy who was threatened with death by Zhang Jie at the beginning was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. His whole body jiggled as he ran, and he started panting after a short while. With each pant, his speed slowed down, and he was about to fall further behind.

There were three more people. One middle-aged man seemed to be a manual laborer; although he wasn't running fast, he managed to keep up with the group and didn't seem to fall behind. Another middle-aged woman was even slower than the chubby boy and would probably soon have to shuffle down the railing. The last was a young man about the same age as Mu Xiang, the one Mu Xiang mistook for Li Xiaoyi. He was extremely ordinary-looking, the kind of person who would disappear into a crowd. His physical strength didn't seem particularly outstanding either, but his speed remained the same as the middle-aged man's—neither fast nor slow—keeping him close behind the group while frowning and watching Mu Xiang, who was always charging ahead.

After running for a short while, the chubby boy and the middle-aged woman had disappeared from sight. Suddenly, Mu Xiang heard Zhang Jie above him say, "Two out..."

A puzzled voice came from above: "What? Two people are out?"

Zhang Jie's cold laugh rang out: "Them! Don't take my words lightly. This is the real world. We'll die here. Maybe you don't realize it yet, thinking this is just a movie? It explodes if you stay a hundred meters away from it. That's one of the rules. They... are doomed!" "Boom!"

Mu Xiang was just complaining about how Zhang Jie's words wouldn't have been heard by James and wouldn't have resulted in a point deduction when he heard two loud explosions above the stairs. The new members of the Samsara team immediately looked up in a daze, and even Mu Xiang glanced up—knowing beforehand was one thing, but hearing it under these circumstances was another! But they couldn't see anything... except for the stairs above their heads, they couldn't see anything at all.

Two players are out!

Mu Xiang thought to himself that the way the Supreme God annihilated a civilization was amazing, yet there was no blood or flesh flying everywhere. But what use was this final act of tenderness? The appearance of death wasn't the real issue; the real issue was that he would actually die! Although he didn't need to worry about falling a hundred meters, he still desperately continued to rush forward, even overtaking James.

The team leader probably wondered what was wrong with this young man, insisting on racing him to show off the unique style of civilian staff.

In truth, Mu Xiang's mind was in turmoil... He really was going to die. When death was so close, even with his familiarity with the plots of Resident Evil or Infinite Terror, he could no longer maintain his omniscient, objective calm and sense of superiority. Now, death was no longer the exclusive domain of characters in the story or books; it was an opponent that Mu Xiang, an outsider, had to face. Death had just appeared right above his head!

To be fair, Mu Xiang wasn't actually that misanthropic, nor did he find ordinary life particularly boring or unbearable. Mu Xiang had always believed that ordinariness was more acceptable to him than mediocrity... although the extraordinary might be more to his liking. He remembered the description of Zheng Zha's psychological state upon hearing the explosion in the original work; it seemed he craved a more exciting life, and thus initially regarded this cycle of reincarnation as paradise... Then, amidst the explosion, Zheng Zha realized that this was hell.

Mu Xiang didn't consider this place paradise, but he had at least once believed that, knowing the plot so well, he would thrive in the Main God Space, living the life of a powerful multi-faceted protagonist. But now, did he really think so? Mu Xiang roared inwardly, "Absolutely not!" If he had fallen behind, would the outcome have been different? He too would have been annihilated, meeting his end in the explosion! And not just him! Even Zheng Zha, hailed as the number one protagonist in the Infinite Realms, would have been doomed if he had fallen behind!

Now an unusual path lay before him, but it seemed far from easy to traverse… while the other, more ordinary path had vanished at the fork in the road he had just crossed. And with it, the power of the reader outside the box to look down upon the world within was also gone.

How close is death to people?
When it's far away, everyone can calmly (or pretend to be) comment on death and the deceased: a person dying in the street is mostly seen as unlucky or a lawbreaker, worthy only of a few words from passersby; the deaths of a million people may just be statistics on natural or man-made disasters like plagues or wars. But when it comes close at hand, how many people can maintain that kind of objectivity and rationality?
Mu Xiang was lost in thought, continuing to speed ahead, as if death itself was descending from a hundred meters away, its scythe blade aimed directly at his back...

The mercenaries ahead stopped, apparently reaching the top of the stairs. Mu Xiang also stopped, leaning against the railing and looking around with feigned composure. He noticed that Zheng Zha and the others behind him had visibly changed expressions, likely due to the impact of the two explosions… Apart from Zhang Jie, the scarred man, with a girl wearing glasses by his side, was also sneering as he sized up everyone around him. When their eyes met, Mu Xiang felt a strong sense of being seen through, as if Zhang Jie had already discerned the slight cowardice hidden beneath his calm exterior.

(End of this chapter)