Lu Dongnuan rubbed her throbbing temples, feeling an anonymous fire burning in her heart.
Why was it that every time she went out, she was the one stepping into traps?
Did those things have a personal grudge against her or what?
However, she puffed out her chest, trying to suppress her frustration and put on a bit of a blustering front.
“Tsk, I’m a mother body after all,” she muttered under her breath, as if cheering herself up.
“Haven’t they played games? A mother body is always the final big BOSS! You little minions can’t even speak properly and only know how to mimic people knocking on doors—it’s fine if you don’t line up to welcome me, but who are you trying to scare every day?”
She patted her chest as if that could pat out some of a BOSS’s majesty.
Unfortunately, she knew all too well that her combat strength as a BOSS wasn’t very high, and she was particularly afraid of pain.
Thinking about it made her even angrier.
‘Fine, a BOSS has to have a BOSS’s style.’
She no longer hesitated.
Her Psychic Power rippled out soundlessly, precisely touching those wandering “lackeys” downstairs.
The command was simple and direct: go to the fifth floor and give the “neighbor” behind that door some warmth.
A dull feedback returned.
Heavy, dragging footsteps sounded from below, moving slowly but firmly upward.
She pretended to walk upstairs, lightening her steps.
Her previous caution was gone, replaced by the aura of someone inspecting her territory.
When she reached the corner of the fifth and a half floor, without any warning, she suddenly turned back!
Her gaze was like an arrow, shooting toward that dark gray door.
Just as her vision was about to touch the door panel…
“Creak.”
The door happened to open a crack.
A hand—pale to the point of bloodlessness with abnormally protruding knuckles—was gripping the inner edge of the door.
Behind the crack, in the thick darkness, two inhuman silhouettes were faintly squeezed together.
The moment Lu Dongnuan’s gaze swept over, that hand jerked back as if scalded!
“Bang!”
The door was slammed shut.
From inside came the sound of messy, hurried footsteps and the rustling of objects scraping against the floor, quickly retreating deep into the room.
Lu Dongnuan: “…”
She blinked.
Afraid of her?
The fire in her heart strangely dissipated a bit, replaced by a ridiculous yet subtle feeling.
She deliberately slowed her steps—one, two, three… and then, utterly without pattern, she whipped her head back!
Every single time, as long as her gaze turned toward the door on the fifth floor, the sound of extremely slight, hurried movements would come from behind it.
They were as if they were observing through the door panel, yet they were terrified of meeting her eyes.
‘Interesting.’
The corner of Lu Dongnuan’s mouth curled into an imperceptible arc.
She stopped looking back and pretended to continue upward.
But at the sixth-floor staircase entrance, she used the wall as cover to quietly place a small shard of mirror on the ground, adjusting the angle.
Then, she walked up to the seventh floor, letting her footsteps echo in the empty stairwell, growing more distant as if she had really left.
In reality, she held her breath and silently retreated to the half-landing of the sixth floor.
Crouching in the shadows, she stared unblinkingly at the small mirror on the ground.
The mirror reflected a corner of the fifth-floor corridor diagonally below, including that dark gray door.
At first, there was no movement.
After about two or three minutes, the door was once again pushed open extremely slowly and cautiously, leaving a crack even narrower than before.
An eye appeared behind the slit.
The pupil was unnaturally large, almost filling the entire socket and glazed with an unnatural grayish-white, peeking upward sneakily.
After confirming there was no “gaze,” the door crack widened.
Two figures squeezed out.
They had a general human shape, but their limb proportions were subtly uncoordinated.
Their skin was the deathly white of something that hadn’t seen light in ages, and they wore crooked, ill-fitting old clothes.
Their movements carried a bizarre sense of mimicking humans but with immense stiffness.
They were exactly the things that had been imitating her behind the door earlier.
They seemed to heave a sigh of relief and began to use a comical yet eerie tip-toeing posture to slip downstairs quickly and quietly, hoping to escape while Lu Dongnuan had “left.”
Lu Dongnuan sneered in her heart.
Just as the two Imitators were tiptoeing down to the fourth and a half floor, about to turn into the fourth-floor corridor…
“Heh… ugh…”
A low, drawn-out growl came from below.
At the junction of the fourth-floor stairs and the corridor, dozens of swaying, ragged figures were blocking the way.
They were exactly the Zombies lackeys who had received the order to go to the fifth floor.
The hunger for flesh and blood made sounds rise from their throats, but a vague obedience to the mother body kept them from pouncing.
They simply blocked the path, “looking” upward with hollow eyes.
For the two Imitators desperate to escape, this was undoubtedly a dead end.
They jerked to a halt, freezing in place as if they hadn’t expected this at all.
After a brief, dead silence, they emitted short, shrill, inhuman screeches of terror and turned to run back.
At this moment, Lu Dongnuan leisurely stepped out from the shadows of the sixth-floor landing.
Folding her arms, she looked down from her high vantage point at this little “interception.”
As soon as the two Imitators looked up, they met her calm and rippleless gaze—a gaze that made them instinctively shiver.
With the mother body staring from the front and Zombies blocking the rear, they completely panicked.
Standing in the shadows of the sixth-floor landing with her arms folded, Lu Dongnuan leisurely enjoyed the chaos on the fourth and a half floor below.
Watching those two Imitators struggle in vain like ants on a hot pan, the frustration she felt from being startled finally dissipated.
But watching the excitement wasn’t the goal.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and that ripple-like Psychic Power spread out once more.
This time, it targeted the two trapped Imitators with clear intent.
Unlike connecting with those Zombies lackeys who had only vague instincts, when she touched the will of these two things, she felt a different sensation.
Their consciousness structure was more complex and more solid, as if covered by a layer of filthy, hard shell.
“Higher intelligence. As expected, it’s a bit of a hassle,” Lu Dongnuan muttered.
However, this instead piqued her competitiveness.
She had ways to slowly wear down a living person’s control, so what was a clearly non-human thing like this?
Her Psychic Power was no longer just simple touch and command.
Instead, it began to attempt to penetrate and entwine, like fine, tough roots trying to probe into the cracks of that filthy outer shell to reach and influence the core.
This was a process of slow erosion that required patience.
The two Imitators below, who had originally been scurrying in panic, suddenly froze in unison.
Their large grayish-white eyes snapped even wider.
They could feel that something cold, alien, and irresistible was trying to burrow into their “insides.”
It wasn’t devouring flesh, but something more terrifying—covering and even erasing their very selves.
After a brief freeze came a total explosion of madness.
“Hiss—Gah!!!”
It was no longer a short screech of fear, but a shrill scream filled with despair and violence.
The postures of the two Imitators, which had been stiffly mimicking humans, changed instantly.
They suddenly lowered their bodies, dropping their center of gravity into a more aggressive, beast-like stance.
Those pale hands suddenly sprouted black, sharp claws—clearly not belonging to a human—that shimmered with an ominous light in the gloom.
They both looked up, no longer dodging or fearing, but “glaring” deathly at Lu Dongnuan above with eyes almost entirely consumed by grayish-white pupils.
That gaze was filled with the ferocity of being cornered and a desperate, all-or-nothing madness.
“?!”
Lu Dongnuan was startled by this sudden change and that fierce glare.
She instinctively took a small half-step back, her heart skipping a beat.
Did she overplay her hand?
Were they going to fight her to the death?
The moment the thought flashed through her mind, one of the Imitators let out a bizarre roar from its throat that sounded like an air leak combined with a growl: “Oh—Hooo!!”
It didn’t pounce on her, nor did it attempt to charge through the Zombies’ encirclement.
The two imitators almost simultaneously performed an unexpected action.
They whipped their bodies around and used those clawed hands to smash violently at the windows of the nearby corridor!
“Crash—!!”
The already old window frames and glass shattered instantly under the immense force.
Without the slightest hesitation, amidst the splashing glass shards and the sudden gust of cold wind, they leapt out into the empty space outside the building!
From the fourth floor, jumping down meant they would be crippled if not dead, but they would rather choose that than face Lu Dongnuan.
Lu Dongnuan reacted the moment they smashed the window.
“Trying to run?!”
Her thoughts shifted rapidly.
Among the Zombies lackeys still crowding the stairs, the two closest to the window pounced toward the edge under her subtle control, their stiff arms lunging forward!
“Pfft—”
One Imitator’s ankle was gripped tightly by the greenish-black, rotten, yet exceptionally powerful hand of one of the Zombies.
Its momentum of jumping out was suddenly halted!
“Screech—!!!”
The captured Imitator let out an incredibly shrill scream, its body dangling in mid-air as it kicked and struggled frantically.
The other one completely vanished from sight outside the window, followed only by a muffled thud and the crashing sound of debris being crushed below.
Lu Dongnuan stepped quickly to the edge of the sixth floor and leaned over to look down.
She saw the Imitator whose ankle had been caught dangling and twisting violently.
The other one had landed safely.
Just when it thought it had regained its life, it suddenly discovered a man covered in various bags and packages standing in front of it.
Lu Dongnuan frowned.
This result was somewhat unexpected.
Oh well, at least one was caught alive.
She focused her attention on the prisoner still struggling, strengthening the binding and erosion of her Psychic Power.
Looking down at the pale figure twisting in vain, she whispered to herself, “It’s not just about paying the price for disrespecting the BOSS… wanting to escape from the BOSS’s hands might cost an even higher price. For example, running into the hidden boss.”