Autophagy

Damien finished his job with Lu Peng uneventfully and came back to Song Lei's side. There wasn't anyone left to talk with so they made their way onto the 7th floor. The 7th floor was livelier compared to an hour ago when they first came here. There were a few groups of people talking with each other here and there.

The Buddhist monk that had cast a searching spell on Song Lei was standing on a corner with closed eyes. He seemed to be talking to himself. Song Lei and Damien looked at each other at the same time. Damien shrugged and led Song Lei towards the monk.

"Hey! Gao Jing?" Damien reached out. Monk slowly opened his eyes and looked at Song Lei and Damien. He didn't say anything and nodded his head.

"How's it going?" Damien asked. "Have you finished reciting your sutras for today?"

Gao Jing slightly chuckled. "Reciting sutras isn't something that ends Damien. However, I can say that I've indeed done a lot of recitals today. And I am indeed very okay," he said. He then turned his head towards Song Lei. "And it's always great to see young and pure souls like you, Little Lei."

Song Lei smiled back at Gao Jing.

After that, Lu Peng and a burly man entered floor 7. This burly man's name was Shi Feng. Song Lei had seen this person before. His room was filled with all kinds of muscle training equipment and weird tools he had never seen before. Following them, another person entered the floor. This person was called Xuan Zhen. He was absurdly overweight but seemed weirdly nimble on his feet. This person's room didn't look out of the ordinary but had a horrendous stench coming from it.

Although it was bearable for Song Lei who had tasted the disgusting food back in Isabel's mansion, it could make a normal person puke pretty easily.

These three walked towards the meeting room. While passing by Song Lei, Lu Peng tried to push him away by shouldering him. Unfortunately for him, Song Lei had inhuman strength and body balance compared to him. Because of this, the one who got pushed away was Lu Peng.

Seeing Lu Peng try to do petty things and fail must've been very funny for Damien as he started chuckling loudly. Compared to him, Song Lei was much calmer. He didn't have any particular emotion showing on his face. Although he was a bit angry at Lu Peng, he knew well enough that this kind of petty people didn't need to be taken seriously.

Lu Peng instantly blushed and looked down. Shi Feng and Xuan Zhen hardly held themselves back from laughing. They quickly flurried away and entered the meeting room early. There was more than one hour till the meeting.

When Damien finally managed to calm down, they started chitchatting with Gao Jing. At one point, Song Lei felt his hair stand on its end and jumped aside. This time, he knew what was happening exactly. He saw Xu Chang passing by him and crashing her head on a wall.

"Hey!" She said while holding her forehead.

"Sorry. Habits..." Song Lei said and looked at his phone's hour. It was almost the time of the meeting.

"By the way, why are all the hours here synchronized? Do you guys synchronize them manually or something?" Song Lei asked.

"Well... It's like a rule of the New World. All the clocks are synchronized. It doesn't matter if they are digital or analog," Damien explained. Song Lei raised one of his eyebrows.

"How does that even work? What if I spring one forward?" He asked.

"If you change a clock, it stays like that as long as you don't break eye contact with it. As soon as you break eye contact, it goes back to the real-time clock."

"What? What I'm asking is the mechanism behind it. How does it go back? What if I record it with a camera or something?" Song Lei asked in response.

"If you record it, it counts as having eye contact. If you're observing it in any way, it will stay the same. To put it in another way, we'll never learn why or how they stay synchronized," Damien said. Song Lei thought while holding his chin and nodded.

"That's interesting..."

When the meeting time finally came, Song Lei entered the room with Damien and Gao Jing. Everyone other than Old Wolf was already seated in their respective places. Song Lei had the 13th seat reserved for himself. He located the chair with the number 13 on it and sat down.

Shortly after, Old Wolf entered the room and all the chatterings stopped. All the people in the apartment seemed to respect Old Wolf in some way. This made Song Lei wonder what Old Wolf had done to put all these weirdos together and maintain order.

Old Wolf went to the head of the table and hit the table with his two hands.

"Let's start this meeting without delaying further. Today, I have something very important to announce," Old Wolf said. He looked over everyone's faces.

"As of today, floor 16 is under our control!" Old Wolf announced.

As soon as he dropped the bomb, the meeting room got filled with excited whisperings. Song Lei could feel that a lot of eyes were turned towards him.

"Today, Song Lei went on an expedition all by himself and managed to beat a spirit guardian all on his own! Thanks to him, we could get all of this," Old Wolf continued talking. He brought up a box. The branch members seemed to be confused. This confusion went away instantly when Old Wolf took out the insides of the box.

More than twenty small bags of blood-red beads came out of the box. The whispers stopped and left their place to a weird silence. The branch members looked at each other confusedly.

"Is this amount of blood beads really from one floor?" Fu Ah asked.

"Yes, it is. Hell floors seem to be very different from the heaven ones. I'll explain it in more detail later. Now, let's continue the meeting...."

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