Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - chapter 94

Gu Huaiwei and He Xueyi swiped someone else’s ID card and successfully slipped inside.

The heavy metal door slowly closed behind them.

Because of the ID card, He Xueyi had to play the professor, while Gu Huaiwei played his female secretary. She had to wear thin high heels-pure torture for her.

“Walk slower.”

“These shoes don’t fit right. I can’t walk fast.”

Gu Huaiwei had already memorized the map Bai Niao gave her. Normally, she should’ve been observing the direction of every corridor and matching it to the map, but these damned shoes made it impossible for her to focus.

He Xueyi reached out, wanting to steady her.

Gu Huaiwei shot him a glare and lowered her voice, telling him to act more like a professor and stop tugging and grabbing at her like they were up to no good.

He Xueyi could only slow down and walk with her, exchanging pleasantries with people along the way.

It was almost magical-everyone attending the academic seminar clearly wasn’t that close, yet the polite small talk was always the same: “I know you, so-and-so,” and “I’ve read your such-and-such work.”

Even after more than two hundred years since the Nuclear Explosion, the fine tradition of kissing up had still been passed down.

They finally made it through the damn long corridor.

All the way, Gu Huaiwei kept her eyes on the slick marble floor. Luckily, she didn’t fall.

They entered the seminar hall. The air carried a faint disinfectant smell. A massive circular conference table dominated the center. Gu Huaiwei found her assigned seat and reached down to rub her feet.

Several transparent screens floated above the center of the table, displaying all kinds of complicated data and charts that Gu Huaiwei couldn’t really make sense of.

But she saw her sister’s photo and name displayed at the very front.

Below it was a long list of her sister’s publications.

The seminar content was sleep-inducing.

He Xueyi managed to say a few words after every segment, but none of his sentences contained anything of substance.

He leaned hard into sounding profound and unfathomable-people couldn’t understand him, yet they still applauded and pretended they did.

Only He Xueyi could pull off this kind of work.

If Lin She were sitting here, he’d probably just clack away at the keyboard and speak honestly with data.

By contrast, the laptop screen He Xueyi put on for show was spotless.

He typed out a long string of garbled characters.

It didn’t have the slightest thing to do with the seminar.

The atmosphere here was fairly relaxed. Gu Huaiwei saw people moving around the room, picking up tea cups. She leaned in and said, “Professor, I’ll go pour you a cup of tea.”

He Xueyi was a clean freak and never used public cups from outside. Gu Huaiwei said it to signal that she was slipping away to look for what her sister had left behind, and that he should keep everyone here occupied.

“Go. I’ve got this.” He Xueyi lightly touched her wrist. A faint red mark appeared around it. “Watch the water-don’t burn yourself. When the meeting ends, I’ll come find you.”

Gu Huaiwei left the conference hall.

Outside the door, aside from a few people heading to the restroom or getting water, there was hardly anyone.

She turned a corner, took off her high heels, and pulled out a pair of black flats from her Jade Bracelet to put on.

First, she located her current position on the map.

To reach her sister’s former office, she needed to take an elevator.

The meeting room was on the second floor.

And her sister’s office was on the eighth.

Gu Huaiwei took the fire stairs upward instead.

There were fewer people there.

All the way up, thanks to Gu Huaiwei’s keen senses, her stealth was unbelievably smooth-aside from dodging the occasional cleaner.

The staff here were all busy with the seminar on the second floor, and security elsewhere was lax.
The map Bai Niao gave her was accurate.

Back then, as an experimental subject, he’d been locked up in the underground levels of the research institute the whole time.

But both the fire escape and the regular elevators only went up.

The ten subbasements weren’t even displayed.

When she reached the eighth floor, there were a few staff members in the corridor.

Gu Huaiwei noted where the security cameras were, then knocked out a staffer in a blind spot and swapped into her clothes. Hugging a stack of documents to her chest, she walked down the hallway.

She used a knife to pry open the lock and slipped into her sister’s office.

The office was very clean.

No one was inside, but it was obvious that it was tidied regularly.

Gu Huaiwei found the safe and stuffed the whole thing directly into the Jade Bracelet.

She didn’t have time to stand here trying combinations.

Getting out fast was the only right move.

The smoother things went, the more uneasy she felt.

Even though she hadn’t gone into the more sensitive underground zones of the Black Spiral Research Institute, the lax security on the upper floors still put her on edge.

There were some academic books her sister had written on the bookshelf in this room.

There were also photos of her sister with people from this world.

In one of the photos, Gu Huaiwei saw Xiao Ai.

Her sister’s hand was resting on Xiao Ai’s shoulder. The two of them were facing the camera, making peace signs.

Looked like they’d really been close.

No wonder that after her sister left, Xiao Ai had left this heartbreaking place as well.

Gu Huaiwei wanted to pack up everything that had belonged to her sister and take it with her, but to keep a low profile, she didn’t.

She opened the door.

She was just about to slip away.

If nothing unexpected happened-then something was about to go wrong.

A rotten crow swooped into the corridor, its black feathers clinging to bare white bone. It circled in the air, cawing harshly.

The crow looked very familiar.

Gu Huaiwei had seen it before at the Oasis Hotel.

Sure enough, its owner, Qian Duoduo, came out of another room with a group of people.

Her hair was dyed pink and gathered into two little tufts on top of her head. She had a blueberry-flavored nutrient pouch clenched between her teeth and was smiling with a touch of smugness.

“Hey, Four-Eyes, you finally showed. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here for you?”

Here in the institute, Qian Duoduo wasn’t bothering to cover herself up. She exposed the withered skin caused by over-injecting Inhibitors and had the people behind her surround Gu Huaiwei.

“You’re really good at hiding, you know that? Holed up in that nice safe hotel of yours every day, not taking a single step outside.

“Aren’t you pretty chummy with that woman with the scarred face? We even mailed you a piece of her skin, and you still didn’t come out to save her. You’re vicious, you know that?”

Gu Huaiwei ignored Qian Duoduo’s taunts. She only asked, “Where’s Xiao Youqi?”

She needed to ask him about the disc.

An enigmatic smile appeared on Qian Duoduo’s slightly baby-fat face. “You’ll see him in a bit.

“Worried about his safety? Let me tell you a secret. He stole your hair and traded it with the Black Spiral Research Institute for an Upper District pass.”

Qian Duoduo’s words were barbed; she was trying to hurt Gu Huaiwei, to provoke her, to watch her lose control.

“Oh.” Gu Huaiwei’s reaction was cool, not particularly angry.

From the beginning, she and Xiao Youqi had only been business partners; there had never been much trust between them.

Later, she’d seen the forum posts about him as well.

With no foundation of trust, there wasn’t much to call betrayal.

“But that’s fine.” Qian Duoduo sucked the nutrient pouch dry and spat out the empty packet, her voice turning a little cold. “Girls like you, the ones who reek of purity from head to toe, are the easiest to go soft.

“When you see him, who knows-you might just forgive him.”