Chapter 185: Silk Threads

The instant the flashlight beam swept past, I caught a glimpse of Old Tao's face. He looked no different from a normal person, but when he opened his mouth, I saw a completely bloodless tongue slide past his lips.

The short security guard snapped to his senses. Forgetting all about moving the corpse, he let go and sprinted toward me.

"Hurry!"

He didn't make it two steps before freezing in his tracks again. I shouted at him to hurry, but then I saw him trembling, pointing down at his feet.

I followed his pointing finger. A pair of withered, dark purplish-brown hands was tightly gripping his legs.

"The corpse is moving!"

He shrieked. A grown man, trembling all over like a frightened little girl, completely unaware his voice had cracked.

'Corpse reanimation?' I narrowed my eyes, raising my hand to throw the Suppression Talisman I had prepared earlier.

"Five Directions Divine Generals, by this dharmic might, suppress all things! Act with the speed of law!"

Stepping into the seven-star footwork, I formed the Five Thunder Seal with my fingers. I had used the Suppression Talisman many times before, so I was highly practiced.

"Suppress!"

With a flash of golden light, the talisman drifted down and stuck perfectly to the corpse specimen's forehead.

The short security guard was stunned by my methods, but when he looked down at his legs full of hope, those withered hands still hadn't let go. Instead, they gripped him even tighter.

"It didn't work?" I was shocked. Although I had drawn this talisman myself, the Daoist charms and divine patterns aligned perfectly with the Profound Truth Detailed Explanation without the slightest error. The Talisman Paper, brush, and ink were all Upper Vehicle materials, too. Its power should have only been stronger!

Plunging from heaven to hell in an instant, the terrified short security guard slumped to the floor. "Boss, this is no time to mess with me!"

'There are no evil spirits hiding in the corpse, so how is it moving?' I didn't have time to think about it. I stomped down, breaking the specimen's arm, and forcefully dragged the short security guard away.

"Run!"

Old Tao was chasing right behind us, and the valuable cadaver on the ground was slowly crawling forward. The short security guard and I fled in a blind panic, left with no choice but to retreat the way we came.

The flashlight beam swung wildly through the pitch-black tunnel. Knowing the tall security guard was still lying on the ground up ahead, I deliberately controlled my speed, afraid to sprint at full tilt in case I accidentally trampled him.

We had walked very slowly on the way here because we were carrying the corpse. Running back, we should have run into the tall security guard very quickly. Yet even after running for a few minutes, there was still no sign of him in the tunnel.

"Old Song!" the short security guard shouted as he ran, but he received no response.

"That guy is probably done for." I sped up. I had no time to worry about anyone else right now; keeping myself alive was the priority.

The passage was pitch-black, and I had no idea what we might encounter around the next corner. What made me even more uneasy was that the walls and ceiling were completely sealed in concrete. We had run for at least a hundred meters, yet I still hadn't seen the collapsed hole in the ceiling.

We sprinted madly, chased by two monsters that were neither human nor ghost. After about ten minutes, I abruptly stopped in my tracks.

"Why did you stop? Keep moving!" the short security guard urged beside me. His hand gripping the flashlight was drenched in sweat, and his face was twisted in terror as he gasped heavily for air.

"We've run almost two hundred meters, but we haven't seen Old Song or the hole."

"Maybe they're just up ahead."

"Don't be so naive. Old Song was taken without a sound, so whoever did it must have blocked the hole too. We've probably already passed the exit leading to the surface." I spoke quickly, my words driving the short security guard into despair.

"Then what do we do now?"

I listened to the footsteps steadily closing in behind us. "Do you know where this corpse transport tunnel actually leads?"

"It should lead to the underground morgue. I'm not entirely sure; I only heard the older teachers mention it occasionally."

"The underground morgue?" I furrowed my brow. "The monsters chasing us have an obvious goal: they want to herd us to the end of the tunnel. If we blindly sprint all the way to the end, it's very likely we'll fall right into their trap. By then, we'll truly be caught with no way out."

"But what else can we do besides run?" The short security guard swung the flashlight behind us. In the beam of light, Old Tao's terrifyingly pale face was steadily drawing closer.

"We can't let them lead us by the nose. Calm down. There's two of us and only one of him. You take the left, I'll take the right. We go together and take him down!" My eyes flashed red as killing intent surged in my heart.

"Is that thing really something we can handle?" Despite his initial panic, the short security guard decided to go for broke. "Fine, let's kill it!"

The short security guard and I stopped in our tracks and stood our ground. Old Tao followed closely, baring his fangs and brandishing his claws.

When he drew closer, I carefully inspected his body. I couldn't find any fatal wounds on him, nor were there any obvious strangulation marks on his neck.

He hadn't died from physical trauma, nor had he suffocated to death. The only abnormality on his body was that deathly white tongue.

'A dead person's tongue is indeed white, but that's only because the red blood cells lose activity in formalin after a long period of storage. Old Tao hasn't been dead for more than two hours, so why did his tongue turn white?' Only then did I realize that the red tongues and white tongues the little boy had mentioned weren't meant to distinguish the living from the dead, but to identify something else entirely.

'The talisman was ineffective. This isn't the corpse reanimation often spoken of in Daoism, and there isn't any dark, evil aura on him, which rules out the possibility of possession. But why would a corpse just start running around like this?' A sudden flash of realization struck my mind, and I recalled Zhang Jiaqi's phone ringtone. 'Mahler's Second Symphony, "Resurrection." Is there truly a method in this world that can bring the dead back to life?'

Old Tao's body was still somewhat different from a living person's. His movements were highly uncoordinated, though it was hard to see clearly while he was running.

Now that he was right in front of us, I could see his arms and legs were bent at deformed angles. Rather than a complete human running, it looked more like a humanoid doll moving along.

I wanted to take a closer look, but Old Tao didn't give me the chance. He lunged at me, opening his mouth to bite.

"Watch out!" the short security guard yelled from the side. I pressed my side flat against the narrow wall, dodging the attack by a hair's breadth.

'He's slow, and he doesn't have much strength. Aside from looking a bit scary, this thing doesn't seem that hard to deal with.'

Missing his strike, Old Tao raised his head and spotted the weak-kneed short security guard. Extending his long tongue, he clawed toward him.

"Save me!"

Hearing the short security guard's cry for help, I didn't stand idly by. I swiftly threaded my arms under Old Tao's armpits, twisting them like a braid around the back of his neck in a tight lock. With a firm press of my palms, a crisp crack rang out as I snapped his neck.

It was a very basic close-quarters combat technique. Killing Old Tao didn't seem difficult at all.

With a broken neck, any normal person would be dead beyond dead. However, as Old Tao lay sprawled on the ground, he shattered my entire understanding of the human body.

Paralyzed on the floor, he propped himself up with his twisted arms, and his neck actually began to rotate back into place, inch by inch.

In the pitch-black tunnel, watching Old Tao's unnatural transformation gave me an eerie, suffocating sensation, as if countless tiny hands were closing around my own throat.

"Let's get out of here," the short security guard urged. At this point, he no longer cared about any corpses or whether his friend lived or died. Completely terrified, his only thought was to escape this godforsaken underground corpse transport tunnel as quickly as possible.

"Hold on." Although I was scared too, I didn't want to just walk away and waste the clues right in front of me.

I was deeply curious about why Old Tao had turned into this. If I could figure that out, many other mysteries would easily be solved.

Seeing my eager expression, the short security guard panicked. "What are you going to do?"

"Just watch from the side." I snatched the flashlight from the short security guard and aimed it at Old Tao. Then, kicking out with my foot, I grabbed Old Tao's wrist with both hands and snapped it in the opposite direction.

"Hiss." Seeing my insane actions, the short security guard backed away a few steps. But since I was holding the flashlight, he didn't dare flee into the dark alone.

Old Tao had been dead for less than two hours, yet even when his wrist snapped and the bone pierced through his skin, not a single drop of blood flowed out. It looked as if he had been dead for a very long time.

I picked up his wrist and held it in front of my eyes. The broken bone appeared to be automatically repairing itself. Looking closely, I realized there was something resembling surgical sutures wrapped around Old Tao's bone joints.

"What is this?" I reached out, wanting to pluck one out, but the moment my hand touched it, the silk thread sliced a cut into my skin.

As my fresh blood flowed, these seemingly docile silk threads instantly changed. Like sharks smelling blood, they detached entirely from the bone and swarmed toward the cut on my fingertip!

Terrified, I hastily dropped Old Tao's wrist, staring in dread at the white silk threads that had crawled out of his skin to hunt for living flesh on their own.