Chapter 613: Fear Spreading

The monster looked as though it had just crawled out of a pool. I couldn't hear any footsteps, but I caught a strange, rhythmic dripping sound.

The sound echoed in my ears, making my heart race. I stared at the path ahead, hesitating.

"It's here."

The three of us picked up our pace, sprinting wildly toward the left emergency exit.

Since our position was exposed, we didn't bother covering our tracks. The entire corridor echoed with the noise we made.

The patient rooms and windows on either side blurred past. Chen Mo quickly fell behind, while Zhang Heng pulled ahead to the front. The thought of abandoning Chen Mo crossed my mind, but then I reconsidered.

Chen Mo was still useful. He could serve as my helper later on; he still had value to me.

I steeled my resolve, turned back, and shouted, "Give me your hand!"

Chen Mo was leaning on a branch, desperately hopping on one foot. It looked comical, but no one could manage a laugh.

Given the crisis, he probably hadn't even heard me; his mind was entirely focused on escaping.

Seeing no reaction, I just grabbed his shoulder. The sudden contact terrified him. His expression changed instantly, and I watched him reach a hand toward the small of his back.

How could I not understand these little movements? If my guess was correct, his fruit knife was tucked into his waistband. "Don't move! I'll carry you!"

"You... want to carry me?" Chen Mo froze. This was clearly not what he had expected.

I didn't answer. Proving it with action, I bent down and grabbed his legs. "Hurry!"

Chen Mo scrambled onto my back almost instinctively. Without even checking if he had a firm grip, I broke into a run.

Thanks to constant training and a repeatedly enhanced body, my speed barely dropped even with someone on my back.

Hearing the rush of wind, Zhang Heng glanced back. Seeing me catching up with Chen Mo on my back, he scoffed. "You've got some strength, but can you carry him all night?"

I ignored him. We crashed into the emergency stairwell together. The door to the basement was locked, and with no telling when the monster would catch up, I shot Zhang Heng a look and charged straight upstairs.

Our luck held this time; we didn't run into the monster. It must have chased us from the right side.

We rushed up to the third floor in one breath. The eerie dripping sound still echoed in my ears. Carrying Chen Mo was taking a massive toll on my stamina, and we couldn't keep going like this.

"Find a patient room to hide in! And whatever you do, do not touch the White Fur!" The moment the words left my mouth, Zhang Heng threw open a door on the third floor. He certainly had guts—the room was right next to the stairwell. If the monster searched door to door, it would find us almost immediately.

"There's no time! Get in!" Carrying Chen Mo, I followed right behind him. The three of us piled inside. After shutting the door, we exchanged glances. All of our faces were incredibly grim.

"Fuck it all! Why the hell did we run upstairs? We should have climbed out the window we came through and hidden outside!" Zhang Heng cursed at me, as if he had just realized our mistake.

"If you want to die, go right ahead." I had just entered the Breath Listening Realm. Because the monster moved in complete silence, I could only gauge its position through the faint dripping of water. That inevitably led to a margin of error, but I was absolutely certain of one thing: if we had doubled back the way we came, there was a massive chance we would have run straight into it. The sound had been coming from right near that window. I had no choice but to lead them in the opposite direction toward the left emergency stairwell.

Perhaps my tone had put him off, but Zhang Heng didn't argue. Face dark, he peeked through the crack in the door.

Dead silence fell over the room. No one dared to make a sound.

A dozen seconds later, Zhang Heng grew impatient by the door. His face twisted with the anger of someone who felt played. "It's been forever, and not even a mouse has shown up in the hallway. Are you just messing with me?"

I couldn't be bothered to waste my breath on him. Channelling true qi into the acupoints behind my ears, I listened quietly.

"I'm talking to you. My patience has limits." Keeping one hand pressed against the door lock and the other balled into a fist, Zhang Heng stood behind the door and glared at me, waiting for an answer.

"What are you trying to do?" Chen Mo, whom I had carried the whole way, actually showed a little conscience. Hobbling on his good leg, he gripped his branch and stood beside me, looking ready to back me up in a fight.

"Both of you, shut up," I whispered. I dispersed the true qi behind my ears, adjusted my breathing and heart rate, and pointed toward the door.

"It's here."

Zhang Heng pressed his face back against the crack in deep suspicion. Chen Mo shot me a surprised glance. Since all three of us were standing in the same room, he was obviously wondering how I could possibly know the monster was coming.

Time ticked away by the second. I counted my own heartbeats. Right after the seventh beat, I stepped up to the door and activated the Judging Eye to peer out through the crack.

I wanted to see exactly what this monster looked like.

A faint smell of decay drifted through the silent corridor. From this angle, aside from the wooden boards nailed over the windows, everything was painted white.

Perhaps because so much time had passed, the white wasn't the usual shade of paint you'd see in everyday life. It was mottled with yellow spots and covered in tiny, granular bumps.

Drip, drop...

Hearing that familiar sound, my breathing seemed to stop completely.

The field of view through the crack was extremely narrow. In the blink of an eye, a white shadow flashed past.

It moved so fast that even I couldn't see it clearly.

"Wh-what just went past?" Because he had assumed I was lying earlier, Zhang Heng had absolutely no mental preparation and blurted it out.

He regretted it the second the words left his mouth, instantly slapping a hand over his lips, too terrified to even breathe.

I hadn't expected Zhang Heng to speak right then either. It startled the hell out of me, and I felt a strong urge to rip his big mouth shut.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before the rhythmic dripping in my ears abruptly stopped.

The water drops ceased falling, which meant the monster had halted its steps.

"Damn it." Trapped inside the patient room with nowhere to run, I gritted my teeth, my fingers digging into my clothes to find something that could break this deadlock.

Talismans? The Ghost Ring? The Fate Manipulator Token? None of the items I carried seemed to be of any use against this monster.

After a pause of a second or two, the dripping sound resumed, growing louder and louder.

Staring through the crack in the door, the corridor outside seemed to have grown a little darker.

Without warning, without a single sound, a face completely wrapped in bandages stopped right in my line of sight.

It was a size larger than a normal person's face. What showed through the gaps in the bandages wasn't normal human skin, but raw, unhealed wounds.

Zhang Heng had been right earlier. The monster's face looked as if the skin had been peeled off.

Fear acted like venomous snakes burrowing into my veins, slithering frantically toward my brain. It was my first time seeing this face, and my mind went completely blank.

'How was this thing created?'

It wore a white coat, very similar to a doctor's lab coat, but not quite the same. It was extremely loose-fitting.

I noticed a specific detail: its clothes weren't completely soaked through. Some areas were still dry.

The instant we saw the monster, Zhang Heng and I completely froze by the door. Deeper in the room, Chen Mo noticed our expressions change and clamped his hands over his mouth, not daring to move a muscle.

Separated by a single door, the distance between life and death was exactly that narrow.

One second, two seconds...

There was no telling how much time had passed before that bandage-wrapped face slowly shifted away from the crack. The white shadow flashed by, and the dripping sound resumed in my ears.

It took a full minute before Zhang Heng and I finally stepped back from the door. Stomping my somewhat numb legs, I took a soft breath. "It should be gone."

"Good that it's gone. Good..." Zhang Heng wiped the cold sweat from his temples, only just realizing that his hands were trembling.

"Good my ass. What were you just saying to me?" I raised an eyebrow, glaring at Zhang Heng. The longer we spent together, the more I despised this bastard. If I wasn't worried that he might be a hidden live show streamer, I probably would have eliminated him already just to earn a point.

"A misunderstanding." Zhang Heng slapped himself, though he controlled his strength, merely putting on a show. "I honestly didn't know you had those kinds of skills. I panicked under the circumstances. Please, be the bigger man and forgive my ignorance. Give me another chance. I guarantee I'll follow your lead for the rest of the night."

I let out a cold laugh and patted his shoulder. "I said it before: the three of us are grasshoppers on the same rope. Since you think I make sense, the next time we run into that monster, you can carry Chen Mo."

"Me?" Zhang Heng pointed at himself, his tone laced with astonishment. He blurted out without a second thought, "Why should I?"

"Because he is a living, breathing human life, just like you and me. Is that not reason enough?" I was actually saying this on purpose for Chen Mo to hear. If I wanted his help in the future, I had to put in the effort now. After all, providing help in someone's darkest hour is always better than simply adding to their success.

"Brother, wake up. I don't even know if the two of us with good legs will survive tonight, and you want to drag a cripple along?" Zhang Heng pleaded earnestly. "You have the ability to predict the monster's movements. That's our key to surviving. Don't go throwing your life away over this!"

He had started off trying to persuade me, but mid-sentence, he suddenly seemed to realize something. He jerked back two steps, clutching the door lock with one hand, his face draining of color.

"What are you acting crazy for now? Having an episode?" I asked. Zhang Heng had just tried to convince me to abandon Chen Mo right to his face; there was no way Chen Mo was happy about that.

"No..." Zhang Heng already had the door cracked open. Hogging the only exit, he pointed a trembling finger at me. "How did you predict the monster's movements? The monster clearly wasn't on the first floor at the time. You couldn't see anything, so how did you know it was coming? And back in the Diagnostic and Treatment Building, when that monster stood right behind you, why didn't it kill you immediately? Why did it give you the chance to escape instead?"

With every word he spoke, his expression grew uglier. "Is there some connection between you and that monster?! You're the one controlling it! You're the one who killed Writer!"

Zhang Heng's suspicions weren't entirely baseless. Just as I was about to retort, the words he had just spoken suddenly flashed through my mind: 'Could there be some connection between me and that monster?'