Chapter 142 - 132: Chasing to Kill

The head nurse identified their orientation, confirming this floor was indeed the ICU ward.

The emergency lights emitted a sickly green glow. With the power out, the air was stagnant, and the BEEP BEEP of alarm instruments came from deep within the ward.

The head nurse whispered, "The ICU access control locks down when the power goes out. It can only be opened with a mechanical key. The spare key is kept at the central nurse’s station."

As the three of them rounded the corner of the corridor, Yin Zhen halted her steps.

Bai Qiang stepped back almost at the exact same moment. "You saw them again?"

In Bai Qiang and the head nurse’s line of sight, the eerie green corridor ahead was completely empty.

But in Yin Zhen’s vision, the sides of the long, narrow corridor were densely packed with people—or rather, corpses.

Most of them leaned crookedly against the base of the walls, piled on top of one another. Every single one was covered in black soot from the smoke, their eyes wide open, frozen in their final, most desperate moments of life.

Yin Zhen gave Bai Qiang a subtle look. Bai Qiang understood immediately. Taking the head nurse with her, the three temporarily ducked into a nearby cleaning supply closet to hide.

Yin Zhen told Bai Qiang and the head nurse what she saw, causing the head nurse’s face to drain of color.

"What do we do then? This is the only corridor on this floor. There’s no other way around."

Bai Qiang pondered for a moment and said, "I’ll go distract them. You two go get the key, then head to the ICU ward. I’ll figure out a way to keep myself alive."

"Alright!"

Yin Zhen agreed decisively, without even a second of hesitation.

Bai Qiang glanced at Yin Zhen, suddenly feeling a bit sour. It was like... she could volunteer to lure the ghosts away, but Yin Zhen shouldn’t just accept it so easily; she should at least express some concern. But there was none! What a cold person!

Seeing Bai Qiang’s resentful expression, Yin Zhen told the head nurse to wait a moment. She pulled Bai Qiang to the side and took out the ’Half a Book’.

There were currently four unused pages left inside. Her word count was at 197,000 words. The threshold for a Silver Card was 100,000 words; if it dropped below 100,000, it would turn into a Copper Card.

Yin Zhen did not hesitate at all. She directly manifested Blood Source Resonance and Shadow Instant Teleportation on the new pages.

Blood Source Resonance was S-Class. Shadow Instant Teleportation wasn’t Shadow Manipulation; it was B-level. For the latter, Yin Zhen was taking the opportunity to test whether she could downgrade and dismantle Shadow Manipulation to manifest it, and to her surprise, it succeeded.

The listed price for Blood Source Resonance was 20,000 words for a single use, 60,000 words for a day’s use, and 200,000 words for permanent manifestation.

Yin Zhen wasn’t surprised by this price; she even felt it was cheap. After all, this was the cheat ability of the protagonist in Chi Hai, an extremely practical Extraordinary Ability.

Both Shadow Instant Teleportation and Structural Repair were B-level, but Shadow Instant Teleportation was a bit more expensive: 2,000 words for a single use and 6,000 words for a day’s use.

"Hand."

As soon as Yin Zhen spoke, Bai Qiang happily held out her hand, letting Yin Zhen manifest twenty-four hours of Shadow Instant Teleportation for her, giving her a stronger ability to protect her own life.

Now Bai Qiang no longer felt sour in her heart, nor did she think Yin Zhen was cold. She felt that Yin Zhen was simply someone who appeared cold on the outside but was warm on the inside.

"Go on. Be careful."

Bai Qiang didn’t waste any more words. She opened the door and walked out. Yin Zhen and the head nurse stayed in the cleaning closet, looking out through the glass.

Bai Qiang couldn’t see the ghosts in the corridor. She held the medical record book in one hand and reached into her pocket with the other to grab that pack of tissue paper. She slowly released her massive spiritual power, letting it surge forward like a stream of water. Gradually, she sensed the blurry outlines of those entities.

An overwhelming sense of despair crashed into her consciousness. In their final moments of life, these people were still thinking of their children and families. They hadn’t wanted to die; they had just wanted to make it out alive.

Startled by her spiritual power, the ghosts raised their stiff heads one by one and looked in Bai Qiang’s direction.

The sound of a child crying rang out, one after another.

Bai Qiang’s legs felt cold. She looked down to see two charred, blackened children clinging to her legs, tilting their heads up and crying loudly at her.

The crying pierced her eardrums with sharp pain, and her body grew so stiff that she could hardly move. She couldn’t even use her Shadow Instant Teleportation.

It seemed that to escape using Shadow Instant Teleportation, she had to avoid being touched by the ghosts.

The entities in the corridor began crawling toward Bai Qiang’s direction. In her perception, they weren’t moving at a constant speed; instead, with every breath she took, they would suddenly draw closer and closer.

Just as Bai Qiang was about to be touched by a massive number of ghosts, she shouted without hesitation, "I want to go to the toilet!"

Bai Qiang disappeared from her spot. The ghostly figures in the corridor raised their heads, looking toward the public restroom in the distance, and continued to surge in that direction.

Yin Zhen grabbed the head nurse, and the two of them crept quietly toward the central nurse’s station. The green glow of the emergency lights cast an eerie pall over the entire corridor. The walls on both sides were covered in scratch marks, left behind by those people ten years ago as they clawed wildly before suffocating.

The two arrived at the door of the nurse’s station duty room. Through the glass, they saw four nurses who were still alive. They had locked the door from the inside and were huddled in the innermost corner of the room.

Seeing that it was the head nurse outside, one of the nurses rushed over, unlocked the door, and let them in.

"Head Nurse, how did you get up here?" one of the nurses asked.

The head nurse glanced over the four of them. "Where are Doctor Luo and the intern? Aren’t they with you?"

"Last night, after we sent the patient into the ICU, Doctor Luo said he was going downstairs for a smoke, and he never came back. The intern, Dr. Zhao, might be in the doctor’s office. After the incident last night, outside... outside there’s been a... a completely charred security guard wandering around from time to time."

The nurse was trembling all over. The other three nurses also turned deathly pale at the mention of it.

"That security guard... he killed... he killed the cleaner, Aunt Wang... We didn’t dare go out, so we’ve been hiding in here the whole time."

The head nurse patted the nurse’s back and comforted her, "Don’t be afraid. The people from the Abnormal Investigation Bureau are already here, and we’re currently trying to figure something out. How is the patient in the ICU?"

The nurse shook her head. "I don’t know. After the power went out, we originally wanted to go check, but the key was gone. We don’t know what the situation is inside right now either."

Hearing that the key was gone, Yin Zhen’s expression didn’t change. It was still the standard horror movie trope; there was nothing new about it.

"To see the patient, how many doors need to be opened?" Yin Zhen asked.

The nurses were all very confused by Yin Zhen, a young child, but someone still answered her question.

"Two. The partition door to the treatment area and the individual door to the ward."

"Then we don’t need a key. You guys stay here. I’ll head over by myself."

With the goal so close at hand, Yin Zhen no longer saw the need to continue pretending to be a child. It was a pure waste of time.

She noticed a fire axe on the desk that a nurse had brought in, so she picked it up and gave it a swing.

Although she currently had the body of a child, the Strength of her main body was still there. This axe didn’t feel heavy to her at all.

Carrying the axe, Yin Zhen directly pushed the door open and walked out.

The people in the nurse’s station were surprised and confused. "Head Nurse, who is this kid?"

The head nurse shook her head. She also wanted to know what the deal was with this little girl. She was clearly only eight years old, but following her along the way felt incredibly safe!

Bai Qiang appeared in a stall of the public restroom on the 14th floor. Her foot stepped right into the squat toilet pan, and the soft, sticky sensation made her shiver.

She looked down. Good, it wasn’t feces. But it was entirely made of hair!

A massive clump of hair mixed with dark red blood clots surged up from the drain. Wet and heavy, it wrapped around her calf and began to climb upward.

Bai Qiang struggled for a moment but couldn’t break free. The hair seemed alive, desperately wrapping its way up her calf. The sound of ghosts crying outside grew closer and closer; they had found their way to the restroom.

Bai Qiang fished out the cigarettes and lighter she had bought at the hospital convenience store yesterday. She tore a piece of paper from the back of her medical record book, lit it, and the moment the flames flared up, she tossed the paper into the pile of hair.

The strands of hair immediately loosened, revealing her calf beneath, which was marred with dark purple bruises from the constriction.

Bai Qiang activated her Shadow Instant Teleportation to leave the stall, but she immediately stepped on something wet and slippery outside, slipping and falling to the ground.

Her hands braced against the floor tiles, feeling a puddle of semi-coagulated liquid.

Bai Qiang looked up, her pupils shrinking drastically.

The corpse of the cleaning lady was slumped at the entrance of the restroom. Her body had been hacked into pieces, scraps of cloth mixing with minced meat. Her wide-open eyes were staring right at Bai Qiang.

The sheer shock of that moment caused Bai Qiang’s fear to spike, leaving her numb from head to toe.

She leaned against the wall and stood up, forcing herself to calm down. However, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the mirror beside her. A shadow in surgical scrubs was standing menacingly right behind her.

Two dark, hollow eye sockets peeked out from beneath a surgical cap, and in its hand, it held a power drill pointed directly at the back of her head.

"Patient Zhang Yueqin... brain lesion... craniotomy... treatment..."

Bai Qiang thought, "Doctor, you have far too much medical ethics, chasing me down for ’treatment’!"