Chapter 188: Thread-Pulling Gu

The skin on Zhang Jiaqi's arms was pale—not a healthy, supple white, but swollen on the surface from prolonged soaking in chemicals.

Right now, she knelt beside the sink in total concentration. Holding a freshly killed black cat in both hands, she waited quietly like a fisherman with a cast line. Her eyes were locked on the corpse-filled pool as if expecting something to emerge.

She was so engrossed that she didn't even notice me walk up behind her.

Holding my breath, I suppressed my curiosity and watched in silence.

The front of the black cat in Zhang Jiaqi's hands was perfectly intact, its fur devoid of any wounds. That bone-chilling chewing sound was coming from beneath its body.

Its black fur soaked in the formalin. The brutally killed cat's eyes were wide open, and its bright red tongue was slowly fading to a ghastly white in the chemical solution.

'What is she doing?' Carelessly waking a sleepwalker could cause severe nerve damage. I didn't dare make a sound, afraid Zhang Jiaqi might have an extreme reaction.

About five minutes later, an unimaginable scene unfolded.

The dead cat, half-submerged in the formalin pool, suddenly twitched. I could hardly believe my eyes. 'Resurrection of the dead?'

The dead cat's limbs began to spasm. Like a live fish pulled from the water, it actually started struggling in Zhang Jiaqi's hands. The sight was incredibly bizarre.

The dead cat had considerable strength. Zhang Jiaqi had to put in a lot of effort to hold it down in the pool. Her arms trembled and her shoulders heaved, exactly matching the scene I had witnessed from outside the door earlier.

After a while, the dead cat stopped moving. This cycle repeated two or three times before Zhang Jiaqi finally pulled the cat out of the pool.

As if completing some sort of ritual, she straightened her arms, took a step back, and slowly lifted the dead cat out of the liquid.

The front of the feline corpse was perfectly intact, but a long knife wound had appeared on the back that had been soaking in the formalin.

The gash was half a palm long, yet not a single drop of blood or organ spilled out. Instead, fluttering white threads emerged from the cut.

'This thing again!' The threads were exactly the same as the ones I had seen on the cadaver—slender, pristine white, and dangerous, as if they had a life of their own!

Carefully avoiding the threads on the black cat's body with her fingers, Zhang Jiaqi laid it flat on the edge of the pool.

Both of us were captivated by the dead cat, our eyes locked onto the small body that should have been lifeless.

"Crack!" The sound of dislocating bones echoed from inside the dead cat, followed by a dense series of similar crunches. Then, the most terrifying thing happened.

Those white threads stitched the knife wound shut, forcefully binding the parted flesh together. Right after that, the black cat that should have been dead lifted its front paws and slowly climbed to its feet!

I gasped. The scene unfolding before me completely violated the iron laws of life and death.

Perhaps because of my sheer shock, Zhang Jiaqi heard the unconscious noise I made. The female student revealed a vicious expression I had never seen before. She whipped around, pulled a Scalpel from her satchel, and slashed at me.

"Zhang Jiaqi!" I hurriedly backed away as the blade flashed past my eyes, leaving a chilling gleam in its wake.

"It's you?" After getting a clear look at my face, Zhang Jiaqi's expression turned strange. She blocked the path between me and the dead cat, keeping her Scalpel raised. "How did you find this place?"

"Calm down. I think we can have a proper talk." Although Zhang Jiaqi was bizarre, she was undoubtedly a living person, so there had to be a possibility of communication between us.

"There's nothing to talk about. I gave you a chance, but you just had to seek death yourself! Even if I don't kill you, the teacher will!" Despite being a delicate girl, she spoke of murder so casually, as if life were just a piece of warm experimental material in her eyes.

"Teacher? It seems you knew all along that your teacher didn't disappear, but was just hiding somewhere in the West Campus. I just don't understand what kind of experiment you two are running. You have to hide it from the outside world and even use living people as material." I was now certain that Zhang Jiaqi's multiple late-night visits to the West Campus were never to search for her teacher, but to conduct some horrifying human experiment alongside them.

"You don't need to know, and you won't ever know."

Zhang Jiaqi lunged at me, brandishing the Scalpel. I didn't think she posed much of a threat, though. Tracking the trajectory of her strike, I easily caught her wrist. "Can we talk now?"

"Talk? Go talk to the dead!" she shrieked. Before I even realized what was happening, the resurrected black cat darted out from behind her!

It was too fast. I raised my foot to kick it away, but the cat clung to my leg like an octopus and sank its teeth in.

The wound wasn't large, but I felt my entire leg go numb. Something icy burrowed into my flesh through the bite.

"Oh no, it's that white thread!" I snatched the Scalpel from Zhang Jiaqi, shoved her away, and retreated.

The short Security Guard stationed at the door heard the commotion and rushed over. He spotted the black cat clinging to my leg and, without hesitation, reached down to help me yank it off.

"Don't go near it!" I warned him, but it was too late. The black cat whipped its head around, bit into the short Security Guard's palm, and darted out of the underground morgue with a whoosh.

"What was that?" The short Security Guard's raised arm slowly dropped. He stared at his own body in shock. "What's going on? I can't feel my hand!"

A numbing sensation spread through our bodies. The thin white threads from the black cat had already entered me and the short Security Guard through our wounds.

"Let's go!" I yelled at him, grabbing his shoulder and running for the exit.

"You saw that thing, and you still think you can leave?" Zhang Jiaqi chased after us like a madwoman, screaming and shouting. Rustling noises drifted from the ajar doors on both sides of the corridor, as if the once-motionless shadowy figures had all come to life.

The short Security Guard and I sprinted with all our might. The root cause of my negligence this time was relying too heavily on the Underworld Live Show's hints. The show had an optional task to protect the living. Once I confirmed Zhang Jiaqi was a living person, I instinctively assumed I could communicate with her. I hadn't expected the Underworld Live Show to screw me over so badly. There likely weren't any ghosts or evil spirits in this livestream—everything was man-made!

The underground layout of this building was a labyrinth. The short Security Guard and I ran around for a long time without finding a way out. A few times, we even came face-to-face with those mobile cadavers.

"Why don't you just go? Don't worry about me." The short Security Guard's pace grew slower and slower until he collapsed to the ground with a thud. He tried to stand, but his limbs were limp and powerless. "My arms and legs feel like they don't belong to me anymore. It's hard to even move them."

"Can those white threads paralyze the whole body?" I glanced left and right to ensure no one was following us, then dragged the short Security Guard into a nearby classroom. "Strange, why didn't I have a reaction?"

I had definitely felt a hint of numbness when the black cat first bit me, but the sensation faded after I ran a few meters. I had assumed it was a slow-acting poison, but seeing the short Security Guard's condition made me unsure again.

"How does the place you got bitten feel right now?"

The short Security Guard shook his head. He couldn't even speak anymore. When he opened his mouth, I could only see tiny white spots surfacing on his once bright red tongue.

"Thin white threads? A white tongue?" I let go of the hand I was using to support him. Without treatment, it probably wouldn't be long before this short Security Guard turned into another Old Tao.

Standing at the classroom door, I looked at the short Security Guard lying stiffly on the floor. If I left now, he would face certain death. A living, breathing human life would just vanish.

But saving him on my own was going to be difficult. All I knew was that the thin white threads were afraid of light. As for how to extract them from a body, I didn't have a clue.

Shuffling footsteps echoed down the hallway again. The chaotic, irregular noises sounded like a bizarre symphony, interpreting the word "resurrection" in a deeply terrifying way.

"Done running?" Zhang Jiaqi spotted me standing at the classroom door from afar, a terrifying look on her face. "Can you no longer command your body? Do you feel something wriggling through your veins, inching its way toward your heart bit by bit? Poor thing. I clearly gave you a chance, but you didn't appreciate it. With the Thread-Pulling Gu in your body, you can peacefully spend the rest of your life in this underground lab."

"Thread-Pulling Gu?" At the mention of a Gu poison, I looked down at my wrist. Right at the Plum Blossom Brand, a grayish-white, half-dead thread was crawling out from the wound.