Autophagy

The first time Heaven and Hell Apartment had gotten hurt so badly was during the first invasion of the Secret Blood Order. The invaders had used infective centipede hordes to try and control the apartment as a whole. However, that had failed miserably. After being repelled by Song Lei and the others, the infection was fortunately over. On the bad side of things, however, was the fact that the apartment had been badly hurt.

After some time, even though the apartment had recovered to some degree, it wasn't a complete recovery.

The next time was the time the hazes sent by the landlord had attacked. After a fierce fight between the two sides, the soul fortress on Aston's floor had been broken down. Although Song Lei and Aston had managed to repel the attack by the hazes, they were left in a tired and cornered state. In such a situation, they weren't able to escape. For that, Song Lei had to directly face the horde that had been created by the noises of the fight head-on. Using all of his leftover energy and creating a devastating attack, Song Lei had hurt the apartment a lot.

It was to such a degree that the apartment wasn't even able to create hordes anymore. According to Aston, if there were to be another fight of the same scale in the apartment, it would definitely die, resulting in the loss of its ability to separate its insides from the outside.

In such a situation, they would all die.

Obviously, Song Lei and Aston didn't want that. However, they had to push on and attack the landlord's territory if they wanted to utilize their window of opportunity.

According to Old Wolf's words, the Heaven Alliance's leader had told the landlord to slowly retreat to the upper half of the apartment, creating living space for the Hammer Branch. Song Lei couldn't understand why the leader hadn't just killed the landlord, however, he felt that it was normal for such a mysterious person to take incomprehensible decisions.

Because of this, The Landlord had been without proper opposition in the apartment for a long time. He knew that with the strength of the people in the Hammer Branch, they couldn't do anything to him. In such a situation, it was not wrong to guess that he would be ill-prepared against a new faction rising so quickly and without his notice. Before he could get his defenses up to par, Song Lei and Aston wanted to take away from him as much as they could.

Dream spaces were important sources for Song Lei. Although they were initially prepared as traps, Song Lei would instead benefit from them a lot.

Unfortunately, the next time he went to an upper floor and tried to beat a dream space, a direct confrontation would be inescapable. He would have to bring Aston and Isabel with him as protection while he dealt with the dream space.

In such a situation, the already badly apartment would lose its life.

To prevent this from happening, they had to heal up the apartment. According to Aston, the biggest problem in the apartment's recovery was its lack of supplies. Unless a Lost One was summoned in the apartment and was swallowed by the horde, it would have a very little amount of souls it could recover with.

For this reason, Song Lei had come up with a very basic solution.

They would feed the apartment with their own hands.

Now that the apartment had healed enough, it could generate hordes on its own, albeit much weaker compared to before. However, just this tiny amount was enough for Song Lei and Aston's plan to work.

First of all, they needed a source of food. The fastest, and the most cost-effective was obvious.

The New World's streets were filled with black smog, which was essentially made up of countless ghosts and monsters that had blended into each other. Although it was the main reason that humans couldn't wander around freely, it was definitely a good enough food source for the apartment.

"Are you ready?" Aston asked. His figure turned slightly blurry and wrapped itself around Song Lei. His body blended into Song Lei's, only leaving the upper half of his head protruding out of Song Lei's head. "This way, I'll be safe from dangers while I observe the process and help you out if needed, okay?" He asked further without waiting for Song Lei to answer.

"Mm. I- I'm ready. Although it feels a bit weird," Song Lei said in answer. He shook his arm around and squatted a few times to get used to the awkward feeling of fusing with Aston.

"You can start whenever you want to," Aston said. Song Lei nodded as his expression suddenly became solemn. He waited next to the main entrance of the apartment silently. As he felt the rippling inside his soul calm down, he grasped the door's handle and yanked it open.

In a split second, the black smog started pouring into the apartment like crazy. Song Lei only had to keep the door open for two seconds before a tenth of the floor was filled with it. Noticing this, and with Aston's signal, Song Lei used his body weight to close the door as fast as he could. Although it took quite a bit of effort, he managed to close it successfully, cutting the connection between the inside and outside of the apartment.

When he did so, the black smog that had entered the apartment started transforming. To create some space, Song Lei took a few wide steps back to go to the other side of the corridor.

Shortly after, the black smog finished transforming, turning into five distinct monsters.

One of them was an ethereal figure of a seemingly normal human male. However, albeit its normal looks, Song Lei could determine that it was dangerous to some degree just by looking.

The other was a warped amalgamation of what seemed like human body parts.

The remaining three were of the same kind. They were gray-skinned humanoids that seemed human below their heads. However, they had huge mouths instead of faces. Those mouths were filled with warped, yellow teeth of different shapes and sizes.

Faced with these monsters, Song Lei's heart didn't flutter even slightly. Brandishing The Excommunicator inside his hands, he got ready to fight.

The monsters were confused for a few seconds, as they weren't waiting to be suddenly diffused out of the black smog. However, they quickly came to their senses. They looked at each other briefly and decided they were enemies. When they turned their heads towards Song Lei, they decided that they could at least work together until they took him down.

"Come...."