Chapter 187: Chewing

The stench of rotting corpses mixed with the smell of formalin in a nauseating combination. "Get up. Don't stay in one place too long, or they'll notice," I said, sighing as I looked at the short security guard slumped on the floor like a pile of mud. "They'll catch up soon. If you don't want to be surrounded and torn apart by those monsters, hurry up and follow me."

The short security guard jolted upright and made a show of looking around. "Can they find us here?"

"Don't kid yourself. They'll definitely follow us." I shook my head. This wasn't just a logical guess; plenty of evidence suggested our enemy could quickly pinpoint our location, as if he had countless eyes spread across the West Campus.

I helped the short security guard to his feet. "From now on, you listen to me. No matter what happens, don't panic. Just follow my lead and play it by ear."

Saving him didn't mean I wouldn't abandon him later. Sometimes, it was simply a matter of weighing the pros and cons.

"Understood." Though not heavily built, the short security guard was sharp enough to read between the lines. "What do we do now? Are we still going to save Old Song?"

"More than saving him, I want to figure something out. Why hasn't our enemy just killed us? Why use such a complicated method to herd us along? What exactly is waiting at the end of that corridor? What does he want from us?" If the situation hadn't been so fraught with danger and uncertainty, I would have gone to see for myself.

"I have no money and no skills. What could he possibly want from me?" the short security guard asked, keeping his voice low as he followed behind me.

"Not necessarily." I turned and stared at the short security guard until he shifted uncomfortably. "The sealed-off West Campus has plenty of specimens and experimental equipment, but it lacks one crucial thing."

"What?"

I gathered my thoughts, recalling the data on tissue regeneration and the papers on cranial nerve repair I had seen in Teacher Liu's office. Then I thought of the massive pile of fresh corpses in the underground transport tunnel. My expression slowly darkened. "He needs living people as experimental material."

"Using living people as material..." Panic flickered across the short security guard's face. "Let's hurry up and find a way out. A lot of these rooms aren't locked. As long as we make it out of the basement, we can jump out a window."

"You're oversimplifying it. The unlocked rooms are the most terrifying ones. I highly suggest you stay away from them." The doors were left unlatched and ajar because corpses might be hiding inside, or because corpses frequently passed through them.

It sounded like a contradiction, but it was the truth. I had seen it for myself when I fled the partial specimen room earlier. The thing that shut the door behind me was a gross anatomy teacher sprawled on the floor. I hadn't seen its face, but that withered hand definitely hadn't belonged to a living person.

Although the short security guard had slipped into the West Campus multiple times to steal corpses, he had never noticed these details. I was now deeply suspicious that his crew had only succeeded because the mastermind had allowed it. They had stolen the corpses he prepared, and now he was forcing them to pay with their lives.

This twisted transaction could have originally been considered "fair," but my sudden interference had completely derailed it.

'Resurrection is his ultimate goal. He needs living people as raw material, and he can manipulate corpses. Just what kind of entity am I up against?' I thought. Since I began learning Daoist magic, my fear of ghosts and evil spirits had steadily faded, only to be replaced by a much stronger terror of lunatics and psychopaths. I couldn't exactly call them evil, but they were far more terrifying than ordinary criminals. Driven by their own obsession, they would stop at nothing to achieve their goals and willingly sacrifice anything in their path.

I still couldn't piece together the full truth. I had plenty of clues, but they were a chaotic, tangled mess.

"Brother, let's get moving," the short security guard urged, his nerves frayed by my earlier words.

"Let's figure out our location first, and make sure to avoid the doors left ajar." I had the short security guard turn off his flashlight. Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we relied solely on the Underworld Live Show Phone for light.

We moved down the corridor and arrived at a set of massive experimental tables. The surfaces were stained with uncleaned blood.

"The underlying blood hasn't fully coagulated yet. This was likely left by Old Song." I circled the experimental tables and found used anesthesia syringes, medical cotton, and discarded bandages on the floor. "The blood on the bandages is fresh, too. Why would our enemy treat Old Song?"

Old Song had been impaled through the abdomen by a piece of rebar, yet he had still forced himself to walk for dozens of meters. Without emergency treatment, his life would be in danger. Our enemy obviously didn't want him dead; only a living person held any value here. This indirectly confirmed my earlier theory.

"The bandage cutting and Injection were handled very professionally. Whoever did this is highly experienced in treating trauma." These experimental tables held so much information that I felt like I had stumbled upon a treasure trove, making me reluctant to pull myself away.

I walked over to the largest pool of blood, where a faint footprint had been left behind.

I reached down to measure it with my hand. It was even smaller than Zhang Jiaqi's shoe size. The person who treated Old Song was likely another woman.

'Could this person be the long-missing Teacher Liu?' I memorized the shoe size. I had planned to linger a bit longer, but a door down the far end of the corridor suddenly let out a sharp creak.

There was absolutely no breeze in the air, and no one had touched the door. It had moved entirely on its own.

"Forget it. Let's focus on getting out first." The short security guard and I continued moving outward. The underground complex was massive. I hadn't explored this specific basement sector before; it was likely situated beneath the other two buildings.

We turned a corner, and the smell of formalin grew sharply stronger. At the end of a white-tiled wall, a heavy sliding door stood half open. The pungent fumes were wafting out from inside.

"An underground morgue." I had seen a similar facility with Zhang Jiaqi before, but this one was far larger than the one we had visited.

'The door is open. Who's inside?' I crept closer, my heart pounding faster with every step. I had a sinking feeling I was about to see something horrifying.

A few steps away from the sliding door, my ears faintly caught a strange sound.

It sounded like someone gnawing on something, but not exactly.

I poked my head into the morgue. The intense formalin fumes stung my eyes, making it hard to keep them open. Once I finally adjusted, I saw a fashionably dressed female student kneeling on the floor next to a massive sink.

Her upper body leaned forward, almost entirely submerged in the sink. Her shoulders twitched as her hands seemed to grasp at something inside.

The chewing sound ringing in my ears felt like sheer torture. Staring at the woman's back, I was already certain she was Zhang Jiaqi. Recalling the security guard's story about her past and her history of sleepwalking, the truth seemed laid bare right in front of me, but I hesitated.

I was terrified of seeing the very thing I dreaded most. Even though the chewing noises echoing in the room already painted a clear enough picture, the shock of it all was simply too much. No normal person would be able to stomach this.

'The smell of formalin on her breath... that demonic chewing sound in the dissection room... Don't tell me Zhang Jiaqi is actually eating...'

"Hey." Something suddenly bumped against my back. The short security guard was huddled tightly behind me, staring into the distant darkness. "I think something followed us."

I swept the phone screen around and activated Chasing Eye. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the pitch-black corridor, save for the fact that a few of the doors that had been left ajar were now pushed wide open.

"Don't be so jumpy. Keep it together," I whispered. Knowing things were about to take a turn for the worse, I didn't dare waste another second. I ducked down and slipped into the underground morgue.

Zhang Jiaqi played a very special role here in the sealed-off West Campus. Her secret was right in front of me; how could I just walk away?

I inched closer. That horrifying chewing noise was especially loud in the dead of night, making every hair on my body stand on end.

I recognized her back and her clothes, but what Zhang Jiaqi was doing right now felt completely alien.

I didn't dare imagine what she was doing. Just picturing the possibilities sent a violent chill down my spine, but I had to know for sure. If she was truly just sleepwalking, someone needed to step in and put an end to this nightmare.

I aimed the Underworld Live Show Phone squarely at her back. She hadn't noticed; she had no idea I was standing right behind her.

I shifted my gaze forward, standing on my tiptoes, and finally saw everything clearly. The chewing noises weren't coming from Zhang Jiaqi.