Chapter 191: The Lover's Head (2)

I didn't expect this clumsy trick to fool Liu Xuan. I only hoped to use the opportunity to close the distance between us. As long as she stepped into the room to investigate, leaving the protection of the cadavers, I would have a chance to subdue her.

My pinky trembled unnaturally. With the Scalpel pressed against my cuff, I forced myself to calm down. Right now, I was the predator.

Surrounded by the cluster of cadavers, Liu Xuan cautiously approached the door. The first thing she saw was Zhang Jiaqi lying unconscious on the floor.

"Jiaqi?" she called out softly. When no one responded, she sent two cadavers crawling into the room first before finally daring to enter.

Liu Xuan glanced around and suddenly realized one of the men controlled by the Thread-Pulling Gu on the operating table was missing.

"How did he get out? Why didn't I hear anything?" She turned toward the doorway and spotted the anesthetic Injection I had tossed near the corridor entrance. "Corpses controlled by the Thread-Pulling Gu become sluggish in the light. Did he use that to escape?"

The door leading to the surface was open—the boy hadn't closed it when he ran out earlier—so Liu Xuan couldn't be sure if anyone had actually left. A faint unease prickled at her. The secrets of this underground laboratory absolutely could not be exposed. The very thought left her frustrated and agitated. "To think there'd be a problem with the Thread-Pulling Gu. I've tested it on different people and animals nearly a hundred times."

Left with no other choice, she picked up a Scalpel and sliced into her own flesh. Thin white threads crawled out from the split skin and burrowed into the surrounding cadavers. "Go search outside. He couldn't have run far."

The Thread-Pulling Gu lived up to its name. Once afflicted with this Gu, a victim became a marionette in the caster's hands. By pulling the threads, the caster could command them to do anything.

However, this Gu could not be exposed to light, and its cultivation requirements were incredibly harsh, making it exceedingly rare.

This was exactly what I couldn't figure out. As a professor researching Western medicine, how had Liu Xuan mastered a Miaojiang Gu? The two belonged to completely different worlds. There had to be a middleman bridging the gap.

More than half of the cadavers crowding the corridor left. Liu Xuan brought the remaining few into the room. Her gaze quickly swept past me as she paced around the space, but then she paused. Noticing something amiss, she looked toward the freezer where the reagents were stored.

"There's liquid leaking. Were the reagents inside broken?" She slowly approached, grabbed the freezer handle, and pulled it open.

Thud! The short Security Guard, his body nearly frozen stiff, pitched forward and collapsed. Liu Xuan immediately leaped back. "Why is he in the freezer?"

Gripping the Scalpel, I let the icy blade slither up Liu Xuan's neck like a viper baring its fangs. I grabbed her wrist, feeling the warmth radiating from her skin.

"Because I was the one who hid him in there." This terrifying night had finally reached a turning point, allowing me to seize the upper hand.

"Don't move!" The Scalpel bit directly into her flesh. At a time like this, I wouldn't show any mercy. If Liu Xuan struggled violently or did anything outside my control, I would slit her throat without hesitation. "Can we talk?"

"Who exactly are you?" Her cold voice carried astonishment and anger. Liu Xuan didn't turn her head. With a blade pressed to her throat, her calmness was almost terrifying.

"You don't need to know who I am. I didn't come here to save anyone, nor am I intentionally opposing you. I'm just here to seek the truth."

"Some boring detective game?" She twisted her neck, completely ignoring the Scalpel biting deeper into her flesh, and stared at me stubbornly. "I should have killed you earlier."

"Compared to resurrecting the dead, my matters really aren't worth mentioning. Don't look at me like that. To be honest, I didn't want to come to this damn medical school either. The two professions I hate the most in this world are, first, cops, and second, doctors." My hands were sweating from nerves. This was my first time taking a hostage, and I was terrified that a single slip-up would give Liu Xuan an opening to escape.

"Cops maintain order, and doctors save lives. Why would you hate them?" Liu Xuan wasn't anxious at all. Such was the mental fortitude of a top-tier surgeon.

"I hate cops because I used to be one. I hate doctors because you're the most difficult and unpredictable group of people." I looked at the cadavers standing silently on both sides. "Can you make them leave?"

Liu Xuan waved her hand. The cadavers immediately collapsed to the floor. Then, a scalp-numbing scene unfolded—thin white threads wriggled out from the specimens' orifices and wounds, slithering their way back toward Liu Xuan's body.

"You aren't afraid?"

The sight before me was genuinely terrifying. Any ordinary person would have probably leaped away screaming by now, but I was different. My knife hand remained perfectly steady as I let the thin white threads crawl over my body. "Your Gu is useless against me. You'd better not try any tricks. If you die, the person you're trying to resurrect will never wake up. Think about the price. Are you really willing to let all your hard work go up in smoke?"

At the mention of resurrection, Liu Xuan's expression turned even colder, and she pressed her lips together in silence.

But even if she refused to speak, I had my ways. No matter how tough a person was, having someone they cared about meant they had a fatal weakness.

Gripping Liu Xuan's wrist with the blade still pressed to her throat, I forced her into the room at the very end of the corridor.

"I saw the surgery you and Zhang Jiaqi were performing. You're killing people just to save him." On the two operating tables, Old Song's corpse was growing cold. Through his sliced-open abdomen, thin white threads could be seen weaving about.

The other man had already been stitched up. He still looked half-dead, and the only difference from before was the addition of another hideous surgical scar across his stomach.

"To resurrect this man, how many people are you prepared to kill before you finally stop?"

Liu Xuan didn't answer. Her gaze as she looked at the man was incredibly complex.

"Actually, I had the chance to kill both you and Zhang Jiaqi when you first entered the operating room. But you have that little boy to thank. The sheer humanity you displayed the moment he appeared made me hesitate. Maybe I should hear your story."

No matter what I said, Liu Xuan refused to speak. She lowered her head as the thin white threads tried to burrow into my body. It was a pity that the Gu had no effect on me.

"If you won't speak, then I'll chop off his head and put him out of his misery." This man was the trump card I held against her. By threatening his life, she would surely crack and tell me the truth.

"If you want my research, you can have it. If you want money, I can give you that too. I only ask that you let me finish this experiment." Liu Xuan still refused to mention the past. It wasn't until I reached out to yank the tubes hooked up to the man that she finally caved. "Fine, I'll speak. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Hearing those words, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Killing the man did me no good; it would only result in a lose-lose situation.

"Your husband went missing before you did. Let's start with him." I held the Scalpel steady, the blade still biting into her flesh as I kept a vigilant eye on her.

"My husband's name is Bai Wang. He's an honest man who smokes, drinks, and is a bit of a chauvinist, but he was always truly good to me. My parents passed away when I was young, making Bai Wang my only family. I couldn't bear the thought of him leaving me one day."

"When he was thirty, Bai Wang was diagnosed with lung cancer. From that day on, he became a completely different person. He grew silent, closed himself off, and wasted away day by day."

"The Reaper wanted to snatch him away from me in the cruelest way possible. I'm a doctor. I know that 'lung cancer' is synonymous with death. There is no cure; it's a terminal illness."

"Bai Wang refused chemotherapy. He wanted to leave this world with some dignity. I respected his choice, because I love him."

Liu Xuan kept it brief, but I could hear a strange shift in her tone. "That should have just been a tragic parting between the living. How did it end up involving the dead and turning into this?"

Liu Xuan lowered her head, gazing at her husband's emaciated, almost inhuman face. "In the final days of his life, his pain was magnified to an unbearable degree. I wanted to save him, even if it meant trading my own life. It was a tragedy that had already been set in stone—until I discovered that peculiar corpse."

"Peculiar corpse?" I caught the strange detail and prompted her to explain.

"It was a cadaver sent to the medical school by an anonymous donor. The very first Thread-Pulling Gu was extracted from its skull."