Chapter 609: The Smell of the Medicinal Liquid

In the distance, the Diagnostic and Treatment Building was a blurred silhouette in the darkness. None of us dared approach it, afraid the monster would suddenly come charging out.

Everything that had just happened had dealt a massive blow to the two men beside me, leaving them deeply shaken.

Over a minute had passed, yet Zhang Heng's voice still trembled. "That monster was standing right behind you."

His answer didn't satisfy me. Honestly, I had seen plenty of things ordinary people would call monsters. I had even seen a massive, serpentine shadow dozens of meters long at the Lanjiang Dam.

"Give me the details," I said, snapping a tree branch to roughly splint Chen Mo's broken leg.

"Thanks... you know how to set a bone?" Chen Mo, whom I had dragged all the way out here, was even more withdrawn now. I couldn't hear a shred of hope in his voice.

"Prolonged illness makes a doctor, I suppose. This little injury is nothing, really. Pull yourself together. Just survive tonight and it'll be over." I patted Chen Mo's shoulder. I had saved his life at a critical moment; logically and emotionally, the kid should be on my side now. "You saw the monster in the building too. Tell me about it so I know what we're dealing with."

Both Chen Mo and Zhang Heng were witnesses, but I didn't trust Zhang Heng. Earlier, he had stepped right over Chen Mo without a second thought, ignoring a dying man's pleas for help. A guy like that couldn't be trusted; at best, we were just using each other.

Gripping the grass stems with both hands, Chen Mo desperately dragged himself further away from the building. He had suffered multiple injuries, his body caked in a miserable mixture of mud and blood. "I didn't get a good look. When I raised my head, that monster was already standing behind you. It moved without a single sound, almost like it appeared out of thin air."

"Impossible. I heard the sound of dripping water later on. It must have walked over from a distance. Besides, if it had been right behind me at the time, do you really think I could have escaped?" I trusted my own judgment far more than their words.

"He isn't lying to you. That monster really was right behind you. It was incredibly close, which is exactly why I didn't warn you." Zhang Heng pulled out his dV. "I should have caught some of it on camera. See for yourself."

What is heard is false, what is seen is real. I took the dV, opened the playback, and scrubbed the timeline back to when the four of us had first entered the surgical prep room.

"Right here..."

On the screen, the Writer parked his ass on the table before Zhang Heng shoved him off. The two of them started arguing, and afterward, the Writer began wandering around the room.

At the time, my entire focus had been locked on Gu Tongtong's death certificate. Zhang Heng and Chen Mo were also completely distracted by the documents on the desk. None of the three of us noticed that the Writer, his back to us, seemed to have spotted something.

He visibly hesitated for a second, then actually walked off alone toward the room in the opposite direction.

The three of us had been wrapped up in our own thoughts and missed it completely, but the dV hanging against Zhang Heng's chest caught the whole thing on tape.

The Writer walked very slowly, his steps hesitant.

"What did he find?"

The flashlights had been aimed at the desk at the time, so the lighting was terribly dim. Because of that, the dV didn't capture what was actually inside that room. The footage only showed a patch of pitch-black darkness.

The Writer drew closer and closer to the room. He stepped one foot over the threshold and leaned forward, poking his head inside. Then, a truly terrifying scene unfolded.

It looked as though something had grabbed him by the head. A massive force violently yanked his entire body into the room.

It was as if he had never existed at all. A living, breathing man simply vanished into that room without alerting a single person, without causing even the slightest ripple!

The dV had recorded this horrifying moment. But what was even more chilling was that the Writer had vanished right behind our backs, and the three of us had been utterly clueless, continuing to mind our own business without the slightest idea that danger had already arrived!

My Adam's apple bobbed. Having just broken through to the Breath Listening Realm, I had foolishly assumed that with Breath Listening and my Judging Eye, I could anticipate any danger ahead of time. I had gotten careless. Now I realized I was nothing but a frog at the bottom of a well. Just a few seconds of negligence had nearly cost me my life.

After the Writer vanished into the adjacent room, none of us noticed a thing. We were all still busy with our own tasks. A full second or two passed before the footage finally changed.

"Here it comes!"

A white uniform flashed past the doorway. It looked like a doctor's white coat, but something about it was off.

The thing was exceptionally tall. The dV could only capture its chest. Using the doorframe as a reference, this monster was much taller than a normal person.

Since the dV was hanging around Zhang Heng's neck, the camera angle was fixed. The lens only caught the creature's torso; its head and feet were entirely out of frame.

I kept my eyes glued to the screen. Then, something bizarre happened. When a person walks normally, their shoulders bob up and down with the motion. But as this white coat moved, there was absolutely no fluctuation. It was as if it were gliding perfectly smoothly across the floor!

"Is that thing a ghost?" Chen Mo's face was deathly pale. I had been about to argue the point, but as I continued watching the footage, the words caught in my throat.

The white coat came to a stop directly behind me. The lighting was poor, so the footage was grainy, but I could clearly see Zhang Heng and Chen Mo with their heads down, digging for the death certificates. Meanwhile, I was purposefully keeping my hand in the camera's blind spot, trying to sneak Gu Tongtong's death certificate into my pocket without being filmed.

"It was standing behind me this whole time?!"

Watching this terrifying scene play out on the dV, my legs went weak. I felt the strength being slowly sapped from my body.

The rest of the footage showed Zhang Heng looking up and spotting the "person" standing behind me. Then the camera jerked wildly as we all scrambled for our lives.

"You see? I have no reason to lie to you. It was standing right behind you. I was scared out of my mind, which is why I didn't dare say a word." Zhang Heng re-watched the clip himself, then hung the dV back around his neck.

"If it was there to kill, why did it hesitate? Why didn't it just kill me right then and there?" That was the part I couldn't figure out.

"Maybe it's some kind of sick twisted preference? Toying with its prey, enjoying the thrill of the hunt." Zhang Heng hadn't noticed that I had pocketed Gu Tongtong's death certificate; the dV had only captured the hand I had deliberately left resting on the desk.

"I doubt it." I frowned. As I replayed the dV footage in my head, I suddenly realized something didn't add up.

When the Writer noticed something strange about the adjacent room, he hadn't said a word to us. Instead, he went to check it out alone. Given our situation, why would someone who was naturally cautious do something so reckless?

Furthermore, the Writer had excellent eyesight. From the moment I first met him, I knew he had the ability to see perfectly in the dark.

If he had clearly seen something dangerous in that room, he definitely wouldn't have walked in on his own. With his selfish personality, he absolutely would have tricked one of us into acting as his guinea pig to check it out for him.

"There's a problem. There is definitely something wrong with him!" It no longer mattered whether the Writer was a hidden live show streamer or not. What mattered was that I needed to immediately check out the place where he had been staying. I might just find something unexpected.

"The dV didn't catch the monster's face. Did either of you get a good look at it?" I still didn't know what the monster looked like, which put me at a massive disadvantage.

With his lower leg completely snapped, Chen Mo kept drawing sharp breaths, grimacing in pain. His voice was incredibly weak. "I just saw a person standing behind you. I was scared out of my wits, so I didn't get a good look."

He finished speaking and looked toward Zhang Heng. Out of the three of us, Zhang Heng was the only one who had actually seen the monster's true face.

Zhang Heng thought for a moment, forcing his chaotic mind to calm down. "The monster's face was wrapped in soaking wet bandages, so I couldn't see its actual face. But through the gaps in the cloth, I could vaguely make out a wound. A massive wound."

"What do you mean? There was a wound beneath the bandages?"

"Yeah. The wound seemed to be entirely connected, as if..." Zhang Heng trailed off, his brows knitting tightly together.

"Spit it out! As if what?" I demanded, unable to hold back.

"As if it had been skinned."

A frigid night breeze swept past us. None of us said a word, feeling a bone-piercing chill slowly creep up our spines.

I shivered. "Are you sure? Could it have been an illusion?"

Zhang Heng had been heavily investigating the Xinhu City skinning case. I was worried that psychological suggestion had gotten the better of him, causing his panicked mind to see things that weren't there.

"That's exactly what the monster looked like. I'm not mistaken." Zhang Heng sounded absolutely certain. I couldn't really question him any further and could only follow his train of thought.

"Bandages? Wounds? Was that thing human or a ghost?" I turned to look back at the Diagnostic and Treatment Building. The simplest way to uncover the truth would be to go back inside and take a look.

"If only the Writer hadn't died. The three of us were too busy running for our lives to actually make contact with that monster. I've heard that ghosts don't have physical bodies, so if..."

"That thing isn't a ghost," I said, waving a hand to cut Zhang Heng off. I held my hand out in front of the two of them. "When I ran out of the surgical prep room, I actually brushed against the monster."

Under the beam of the flashlight, a clear liquid could still be seen clinging to my fingertips. It looked like water, but it gave off a very strange smell.

"It's thicker than water." Zhang Heng leaned in close and sniffed my hand. "It smells like some kind of expired, rotting medicinal liquid."

"Exactly. It's not the same as the fluids produced by a decomposing corpse. It's not a natural secretion. That monster must still be alive, and its entire body is coated in this medicinal liquid." I took my theory a step further. "Remember this smell. If we can find this liquid, we can figure out exactly what that monster is."

Saying that suddenly reminded me of another detail. When I had first visited the sickroom the Writer was staying in, he had been downing beers like crazy. He had been chugging them one can at a time, spilling alcohol all over his collar and reeking of booze.

"The Writer had been drinking nonstop ever since he got to that room. Was he trying to use the smell of the alcohol to cover up another scent on his body?" Beneath my mask, my eyes narrowed slightly. These seemingly random clues were finally starting to piece themselves together.

"Hurry! Come with me!"