After Bystander A Bound to JJ Literature City – CH106

Chapter 106

“Scrape—”

The sneaker moved.

Like a roller skate, it rolled forward a few centimeters, as if something were tugging it from behind, dragging it ahead. The sole scraped loudly against the floor.

As it shifted, the eyeballs on the shoe’s surface remained fixed on Yu Zhi.

Each eye held no malice, no kindness—no emotion at all. They were simply looking. Staring straight ahead. Incredibly bizarre. So eerie it made one’s scalp prickle.

Yu Zhi froze in place, not daring to act rashly.

This was a contaminant.

As long as they obeyed the logical rules of the contamination zone, contaminants would not attack them without cause.

What worried Yu Zhi more was this: if he shot the shoe now, what if it sprouted even more eyes?

Doctor Qi noticed he wasn’t moving and crept closer. The moment he saw the eyeball-covered sneaker outside the door, his pupils shrank and he sucked in a sharp breath.

The next second, the eyeballs on the shoe rotated. Their pupils turned and locked directly onto Doctor Qi.

Yu Zhi heard Doctor Qi’s fingers crack—he was clenching his fists, forcing himself not to fire.

“Brother Yu, Master Qi, why are you two just standing there?” Lu Liming had only just recovered from the sight of the yellow fat in the room. When he turned around and saw both of them standing stiffly, he walked over in confusion—then his expression froze.

“Scrape—”

The sneaker shifted forward again.

Only then did Yu Zhi notice that after moving, it left several streaks of transparent, wet liquid on the floor.

Like… mucus squeezed out when the eyeballs on the shoe turned.

Yu Zhi’s heart skipped. He watched as the sneaker moved again.

This time it bumped against the security door’s threshold. The shoe tipped sideways and fell onto its side, exposing the sole.

The dense anti-slip bumps on the sole had turned into densely packed eyeballs. As if eager to see them, every single eye trembled and wriggled, jostling one another, all uniformly staring at the three of them inside the apartment.

Yu Zhi closed his eyes briefly. His stomach churned violently. Goosebumps erupted all over his body.

“Ugh—” Lu Liming couldn’t hold it in. He turned and vomited.

Not long ago, he had shot this very shoe and even stomped on it. And now it was covered in eyeballs!

It was like trying to crush a cockroach with your shoe—only instead of dying, it burst into countless baby roaches, large and small, crawling wildly across the sole.

Lu Liming completely lost it, hunched over and retching violently.

In front of them was a sneaker covered in eyes; behind them was the nonstop sound of vomiting. Yu Zhi’s face grew increasingly grim. He felt like he was suffering double mental contamination.

Suppressing his nausea, he forced himself to look at the shoe again. After confirming that the newly grown eyeballs didn’t react to sound, he slowly exhaled.

Yu Zhi tightened his grip on the gun. The cold metal steadied his mind, which began racing.

At first, this sneaker had been perfectly normal. Doctor Qi had examined it. Xiao Ming had even touched it.

What had happened to make it turn into this?

Yu Zhi’s first instinct was to shoot it—then he immediately dismissed the idea. Xiao Ming hadn’t shot the sole.

Besides the gun…

Yu Zhi’s eyelid twitched harder as a suspicion formed in his mind.

—Because of their suspicion. Because they suspected something was watching them.

[Beware… eyes]

Did that mean: beware of imagining eyes?

Lu Liming struggled to suppress the urge to vomit, craning his neck upward, afraid that lowering his head would expose him to the mentally polluting sneaker again.

“H-Brother Yu, should we d-deal with it?”

Yu Zhi said, “At first, it was just an ordinary pair of shoes.”

Hearing that, Lu Liming’s face turned pale. “Is it because I fired? Does that mean I broke the rules here? So… so…”

Doctor Qi was calmer. He said dryly, “But it hasn’t attacked us. It’s only looking at us.”

Lu Liming made a bitter face. “Mental attack. This feels worse than the lip-people and cockroach-people we met before.”

Yu Zhi voiced his guess. “I think it’s because we suspected the shoe was looking at us.”

They hadn’t seen any contaminants upon first entering the zone. Perhaps at the beginning, the contaminants in this area hadn’t fully hatched yet.

Lu Liming took a moment to process it, then sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh no. I—I suspected the peephole earlier too.”

Yu Zhi raised his hand and shone the flashlight at the peephole on the door.

The next second, all three of them felt their vision darken.

The originally brown peephole had, at some point, turned into a protruding black-and-white eyeball. Its pitch-black pupil rotated to the far edge—just like the eyes on the sneaker—quietly staring at them.

The peephole was fixed in the door. It couldn’t move or make any sound. They had been too busy checking the apartment to notice its change.

Lu Liming’s vision darkened again and again. “Holy shit—so the more you think about it, the more eyes grow?!”

If imagination was involved, then there was no way to completely kill these eyes.

Even if they shot and destroyed them, new ones would grow.

As long as the contamination source wasn’t dead, contaminants would be endless.

Doctor Qi’s back prickled. He suddenly felt something staring at him from behind.

It had been far too long since he had properly entered a contamination zone. He couldn’t control his thoughts. In just one or two seconds, his mind had run through everything that might be behind him.

If shoes could grow eyes, what about the table? The chairs? The suitcase by the wall?

Had they grown eyes too? Were those eyes staring at them right now?

The more he thought about it, the stronger the sensation of being watched became.

Yu Zhi quickly noticed the change in both of them. He immediately stuffed a pack of biscuits into each of their hands and reminded them, “Think about something else. Don’t think about this.”

Lu Liming hurriedly tore his open, using food to distract himself.

Doctor Qi closed his eyes and recalled the training he had once received.

Yu Zhi also opened a small bread roll and cautiously stepped forward. The eyes still stared at them.

The three eyes on the shoe’s surface seemed to move. A faint rolling sound came from the floor. With only three eyes, the shoe couldn’t drag its whole body and remained lying on its side.

Seeing this, Yu Zhi swallowed the bread in one bite and quickly said to Doctor Qi and Lu Liming, “Let’s go. Leave this apartment now.”

He strode forward. At the threshold, he gritted his teeth and took a large step over it—almost as if trying to leap straight down to the fifth floor.

Lu Liming and Doctor Qi followed close behind.

The moment they exited 602, the three of them ran downstairs without looking back.

Yu Zhi didn’t dare glance at the peepholes on the doors they passed. He sped up, panting, and only stopped once they reached the first floor and ran out of Unit One. Only then did he turn back for a look.

An eyeball had grown on the unit’s security door as well, staring at them, seeing them off as they fled into the distance.

Yu Zhi immediately looked away and opened another pack of biscuits to steady his nerves.

The livestream viewers, seeing them run just like that, flooded the screen:

[User “Loves Peace” is extremely disappointed in your retreat without a fight.]
[User “Strongest King” reminds you there are eyes behind you.]
[User “Cyber Bodhisattva” urges you to eliminate the contamination source quickly.]
[User “Scarecrow’s Straw” viciously curses that you will be stared to death by eyeballs.]

Yu Zhi glanced at the comments, then looked away and scanned the surroundings.

Night had fallen. The entire Lin’an Resettlement Area was as deathly silent as ever—not a single sound. As if someone had pressed mute on the world.

Chewing his biscuit, Yu Zhi said softly, “That old banyan tree we saw earlier.”

The open outdoor space offered no sense of safety. The cold wind blew, yet the feeling of being watched still clung to his back.

A shiver ran through Yu Zhi from the chill. He forced himself not to overthink and checked the time.

It had been more than half an hour since Fu Suxi entered the contamination instance.

He Han Hai had once said that when Fu Suxi was in B City, it would take at most half an hour to eliminate a contamination source.

Now…

Could he have run into people from Meteorite Biotech?

Even if he had, there should’ve been some noise.

Could something have gone wrong?

Thinking about that mad dog’s unstable mental state, Yu Zhi’s expression shifted. He couldn’t help but curse Fu Suxi in his heart.

How is that lunatic so unreliable?!

“Xiao Ming, do you still have the blind box from your last instance?”

Lu Liming nodded. “Still got it. You told me not to open it, so I didn’t touch it.”

Yu Zhi said, “Get ready to open it. Before you do, imagine what you want—something powerful and useful.”

Since Fu Suxi couldn’t be relied on, they could only rely on themselves.

Turning to Doctor Qi, remembering he hadn’t entered an instance since the apocalypse, Yu Zhi added, “Doctor Qi, consider using universal coins to enhance your physique.”

Doctor Qi nodded. Glancing at the utterly trusting Lu Liming beside Yu Zhi, he hesitated and asked, “The item blind box you mentioned—is that the instance completion reward?”

Yu Zhi acknowledged it.

Doctor Qi pressed further. “Why imagine something before opening it? Does imagination really help?”

Yu Zhi lifted his eyelids slightly, looking at the words “Blind Box” on the translucent panel. “Not sure if it works.”

He just felt the system was rather idealistic.

Like Main Quest Four—although it required initiating a personal guard action, there were no strict limitations on what counted as guarding. As long as he believed he was guarding something, the task would complete.

Even his ability was somewhat idealistic.

He could only store items, but as long as he believed something was an item, he could store it.

Yu Zhi didn’t explain the real reason and simply told Doctor Qi, “Give it a try. Law of attraction.”

“What if you get what you imagine?”

Lu Liming immediately agreed. “Brother Yu’s right. I need to think carefully.”

Yu Zhi blinked, staring at the panel. His mind held only one thought.

He wanted an invincible item with super strong attack power—something that could deal with both humans and contaminants.

He repeated it over and over in his heart.

A bright red, exquisitely wrapped gift box appeared on the translucent panel.

System: [Open blind box?]

Yu Zhi: [Wait.]

He repeated his wish a few more times—six for smooth luck, seven for star blessings, eight for fortune from all directions, nine for completion, ten for perfection!

After chanting it ten full times, Yu Zhi finally opened the blind box.

[Open!]

The lid popped off, and a card sprang out.

[Item: Say It and It’s So (Ability-type)]
[Function: Each sentence costs 1000 universal coins.]

[Description: An ordinary nobody earned ten million universal coins by diligently completing tasks! Defeated the final villain! Married the male lead!
No bragging—I just want to say, as long as you’re willing to work hard, you can say anything.

Believe it or not… if you don’t believe, there’s no money and no love either. Just a crappy life, nothing but crap.]

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