Chapter 606: White Walls

Standing 1.75 meters tall with utterly ordinary features, Zhang Heng would vanish in the blink of an eye if placed in a crowd.

He was sharp, resilient, and adaptable. I could see nearly every trait of an entertainment reporter in him—which also happened to be exactly what was required to become an Underworld Live Show Streamer.

Pulling my gaze from the dV in Zhang Heng's hands, I gathered my thoughts and listened quietly.

Zhang Heng had a unique way of telling stories. Pointing the dV directly at me, he said, "You can come a little closer to watch. I have most of it recorded right here."

He played the dV as he spoke. "I brought this scrap of paper out of a private hospital in Xinhu City. This whole thing started with the flaying case that happened in Xinhu a few months ago."

Between the dV footage, Zhang Heng's distinct voice, and our terrifying surroundings, the moment he uttered the words "flaying case," Chen Mo—who stood closest to him—shivered.

"What? Scared already?" Zhang Heng fast-forwarded the video, skipping the unimportant beginning to get straight to the point. "This case caused a massive uproar in Xinhu, but the police haven't managed to catch the killer. The bounty posted by the authorities has only grown over time, and it's already hit 300,000! You get 300,000 just for providing a crucial clue! That was way more tempting to me than tailing some celebrity. For the money, I've been tracking and investigating this case for months."

My eyelid twitched slightly at that. He was lying.

I knew perfectly well that if he was truly doing it for the money, all he had to do was hand the photos on his computer and his previous audio recordings over to the police, and the 300,000 bounty would be safely in his hands. Yet he hadn't done that.

Staring at Zhang Heng's face as I pondered this, I found it even stranger.

Why was he investigating the Two-Faced Buddha? Why was he clinging so stubbornly to the flaying case? It had been a long time since we last parted ways, yet he was still digging into the flayings. Wasn't he obviously pitting himself against the Two-Faced Buddha?

That photo on Zhang Heng's desktop clearly captured Lu Xing committing murder and flaying a victim, which meant the true mastermind behind the flayings was very likely the Two-Faced Buddha. This guy had interfered with the Two-Faced Buddha's plans and somehow survived until now. He was starting to seem more and more extraordinary to me.

'Two-Faced Buddha, flaying case, Zhang Heng, live show streamer.' I connected the four keywords in my mind. As I thought it over, my eyes suddenly widened. 'Xiao A said that one of the live show streamers absolutely despised Fate Usurpers, and the Two-Faced Buddha is exactly that—a Fate Usurper!'

The mask hid my expression, keeping my shift in emotion hidden from everyone present. 'The odds of Zhang Heng being that live show streamer are incredibly high—higher than anyone else.'

Chen Jiuge still hadn't shown up. Right now, Zhang Heng was the one I needed to be most wary of.

While I was deep in thought, Zhang Heng's story reached its conclusion. "That recent body was unclaimed, so the police temporarily kept it at the hospital. I snuck into the morgue to uncover the truth, and I found this note inside the deceased's clothing. You know what happened after that. I ended up here just to stay alive."

"How did you sneak into the morgue? As far as I know, even the morgue of a private hospital has a dedicated guard. And another thing—you said the police placed the body in a private hospital, which means a forensic doctor must have performed an autopsy before you ever touched it. They couldn't have missed this note." I didn't want to burn bridges with Zhang Heng, but I used the opportunity to test his reaction.

Zhang Heng paused when I asked those two questions, seemingly caught off guard. "I can answer the first one. The old woman guarding the bodies was extremely greedy. As for the second question, I have no idea. Maybe the forensics team just got careless."

Zhang Heng's explanation was a little far-fetched, but to my surprise, Chen Mo stepped in. "You can't treat this note with common sense. It's just like what happened to me. My roommate clearly took the note away, but after he died, the note came right back to me. It's like a vengeful spirit lives inside this piece of paper. We have to do exactly what it says, or else we're all going to die."

Once Chen Mo spoke up, I couldn't really press the issue anymore.

Since Chen Mo's own past experiences vouched for it, questioning Zhang Heng would mean doubting both of them at the same time. Our fragile alliance would likely collapse on the spot.

'This works too. As long as we don't openly turn on each other, no one will dare make a move in plain sight.' I still couldn't be certain who the live show streamer was, and since the true prey I wanted to hunt—Chen Jiuge—had yet to appear, I could only bide my time and preserve my strength.

I stopped interjecting, and the Writer kept his head down in total silence. That left only Chen Mo and Zhang Heng chatting in the Central Operating Room. Both of them had received the notes, and since misery loves company, they found plenty of common ground. It didn't take long for them to hit it off.

'Zhang Heng claimed the note was found on a victim of the flaying case. Could Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital be connected to the Two-Faced Buddha too?'

While I was turning the problem over in my head, someone suddenly nudged my arm. I turned to see the Writer standing beside me. He lowered his voice. "There's something wrong with that guy. That crossbow of his is a huge threat to us. You interested in taking it from him?"

Staring at me sideways with his mismatched eyes, the Writer looked like a demon lurking deep in the human heart, tempting me to do something crazy.

The hand crossbow wasn't loaded right now. If the Writer and I flanked Zhang Heng, we had a very high chance of success. People always like to preemptively eliminate anything that threatens them. And if they can't eliminate the threat, the next best thing is to seize control of it themselves.

I was genuinely tempted for a moment, but I quickly squashed the thought. If Zhang Heng really was a live show streamer, acting recklessly would only cause the situation to spiral out of control prematurely.

"We're all in the same boat right now, Writer. That's a very dangerous idea," I replied quietly. I stepped away from him and moved closer to Zhang Heng, wanting to get a better look at the man.

Seeing me approach, Zhang Heng's expression stiffened. "Could you take that mask off? This damn place is already terrifying enough without you wandering around wearing that thing. Are you trying to make things worse?"

If I removed the Good and Evil Mask, I would be targeted by the heavens and plagued by terrible luck, which would be disastrous for my stream. So, I simply pretended I hadn't heard him. "You got to the Central Operating Room before us. Did you find anything?"

Our standoff had already wasted too much time. The sense of urgency in my chest was steadily growing heavier.

"For this naive kid's sake, I'll share what I know. Follow me." Carrying his crossbow and holding up the dV, Zhang Heng walked straight into the sterile operating room.

Unlike standard operating rooms, sterile operating rooms were used for major procedures like tumor resections, neurosurgery, and organ transplants. They required strict environmental controls—everything from temperature and lighting down to the very air pumped into the room, which had to be specially purified.

"Why did you bring us in here?" I had assumed Zhang Heng was going to show us the death certificate mentioned on the note, but instead, he led us into an operating room that had been completely cleared out.

"Don't rush. Look closely and you'll see what's wrong with this place." He walked over to the passage connecting the operating room to the adjacent rooms, where a threshold had been installed on the floor. "Hospitals never install thresholds so emergency gurneys can roll in and out effortlessly. But this operating room has one. It's completely unnatural."

Ordinary homes built thresholds to keep out vicious ghosts and ward off evil spirits, but a threshold at the door of an operating room? This was the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing.

"Someone probably installed this later." The Writer crouched in front of the threshold and ran a hand over it. "The surface is rough. It hasn't been rolled over much."

"But what's the point of installing one? They were already relocating, so why come all the way to this operating room just to put in a threshold? Why go to the trouble? Could there be something unclean inside this room? Were they afraid it would get out?" Zhang Heng glanced at us, then pointed at the walls. "There's something even weirder. Normally, the walls of a sterile operating room are painted light green or light blue. It's the same reason surgeons wear green or blue scrubs—to prevent afterimage illusions caused by complementary colors. But take a look. What color are the walls in this room?"

Prompted by Zhang Heng, I finally noticed it. The walls of this operating room had been painted entirely in a sickly, pallid white.