Chapter 614: Breath Listening

It seemed there was some kind of connection between the monster and me. Thinking back, it really felt that way.

The moment I saw the White Fur, a sense of familiarity washed over me. Even when it lurked right behind me earlier, it hadn't immediately tried to kill me.

With so many similar points of suspicion, my previously clear train of thought tangled into a mess once again.

Zhang Heng gripped the door, his eyes locked onto me. If I made the slightest unusual movement, he would probably bolt.

To avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings, I slowly raised my hands to show I meant no harm.

"If I could control the monster, you'd both be dead already. Don't rush to argue; I've had plenty of opportunities to kill you along the way."

"Who knows what you're holding back for?" Zhang Heng glared at me, his gaze like a knife trying to cut right through me. "Out of all of us, you're the only one wearing a mask. You talk about outdoor live streaming, but I refuse to believe an amateur streamer has this kind of mental fortitude. Do you think you're a damn war correspondent?"

"That's the second time you've cursed. Use your brain before you speak. If you were certain I was the killer and the one controlling the monster, you wouldn't be standing here talking to me. You would have snuck off long ago." I saw right through Zhang Heng's thoughts. "You're afraid I'm the mastermind, but you also want to rely on my ability to sense the monster's location in advance. So you're feeling pretty conflicted right now, aren't you?"

I didn't like beating around the bush, so I laid the stakes right out on the table.

"So what if I am? I'm just trying to survive. Is it wrong to be careful?" He slowly calmed down, though the look in his eyes grew increasingly wary. "If you can clearly explain how you judge the monster's position—as long as you can tell me that, I'll believe you have no connection to it. But if you can't..."

"Then what? Kill me? Do you even have the ability? Wouldn't your only choice still be to run away?" I couldn't be sure if Zhang Heng was a live show streamer, but at this point, it didn't matter. If he wanted to hide his identity, he definitely wouldn't do anything out of line.

Zhang Heng's grip on the door handle slowly tightened. He wanted to retort, but to his frustration, what I said was the truth.

Seeing him like this, I didn't say anything more. A little verbal beating was enough; I couldn't push him too far. Even a cornered rabbit would bite.

"Fine, since you want to know, I'll tell you. There are no secrets between the three of us tonight." I pointed at my ear. "The monster walks silently, but its body is soaked in liquid. When it moves, drops of water fall from it. I determine its location based on the volume of those falling water drops."

"The sound of water drops?" Zhang Heng and Chen Mo both stared wide-eyed.

"Are you kidding me? Can you make up a better excuse?" Zhang Heng was already preparing to run for his life; my explanation hadn't convinced him in the slightest. "Brother, that monster should have been at the stairwell between the first and second floors, which was probably thirty or forty meters away from you. Over such a distance, you can actually hear water dripping off the monster?!"

Chen Mo also thought I was lying, but the young man's reaction was much better, and he remained standing beside me. It seemed what I'd said earlier had worked, and the kid still had some trust in me.

"When the monster moves at high speeds, the water drops are flung off. That sound is rapid and very easy to distinguish." I waved my hand, too lazy to keep explaining. "If you don't believe me, we can do a test."

I picked up a few tiny pieces of broken floor tile. "Take these pieces into the innermost room and throw them out through the crack in the window. I'll stand right here without moving and determine how many you threw based purely on the sound of them landing."

"You can even hear that?" Zhang Heng took the pieces with a look of doubt. He stared into the depths of the sealed hospital room, then suddenly pulled his hand back. "You aren't planning to lure me into the room to kill me, are you?"

"If you don't even have that much courage, we can have Chen Mo go instead."

After a standoff lasting a dozen seconds, Zhang Heng finally decided to let Chen Mo do the throwing. His hand never left the door, ready to flee at any moment.

"I'll go?" Chen Mo took the handful of broken tiles and blinked at me, as if asking how many he should throw. He didn't believe I could hear clearly either, so he wanted to put on a show with me.

I remained expressionless, giving him no hints whatsoever.

Harboring his doubts, Chen Mo walked into the inner room. I closed my eyes, held my breath in deep concentration, and circulated the Profound Truth Mental Method with all my might.

About half a minute later, Chen Mo walked out of the room. Zhang Heng glanced at him. "Done throwing? That was fast."

He hadn't heard a single sound. After all, this was the third floor, and below was nothing but wild grass and muddy ground. When the tile fragments fell, their force would be cushioned, making it very difficult for them to produce a collision sound.

"Three." While Zhang Heng was still completely baffled, I turned my head to look at Chen Mo and blurted out the number.

Chen Mo had been about to speak to Zhang Heng. Hearing my number, he froze in place before a look of shock spread across his face. "That's right, it was three."

"Bullshit. Did you two discuss this beforehand?" Zhang Heng let go of the door, found a handful of even smaller brick fragments on the floor, and went into the inner room to throw them himself.

When he came back out, I gave him a cold smile. "You threw eleven pieces in total, spread out over four tosses. Aren't you tired?"

"Holy shit. You could really hear it clearly? Are your ears mutated?" Zhang Heng clicked his tongue in amazement. He circled around me, his expression instantly changing as his attitude underwent a massive shift. "I'm convinced, you've really opened my eyes! I was in the wrong earlier. Be the bigger person and don't hold the mistakes of a petty man against me!"

"You don't doubt me anymore?"

"How could I! It was just a misunderstanding." Zhang Heng had scrapped his way through the entertainment circle. Working as a paparazzo and taking sneaky photos, he had suffered plenty of dirty looks; his skin was incredibly thick, and he didn't care about my sarcasm at all.

Seeing me clear myself of suspicion, Chen Mo's expression also improved greatly. He had been feeling completely on edge earlier.

With the misunderstanding resolved, Zhang Heng tactfully stood by my side, subtly treating me as the leader of our trio.

I was well aware of his little schemes. When working with smart people, many things didn't need to be spelled out.

Pushing open the hospital room door, I stood in the corridor and used Judging Eye to look at the water stains on the ground. They had been left by the monster.

'Does it not have feet? Why did it leave these kinds of marks?' A few minutes ago, I had seen the monster through the crack in the door and noticed something strange about it: its clothes weren't completely soaked.

'Where did the water drops on the monster come from? Its outer jacket isn't completely soaked, which means the clothes were put on later. Could it have first crawled out naked from some place with water?' Thinking of a place with water, my first thought was the water tank in the Diagnostic and Treatment Building.

'That's not right. When I was being chased by the monster, the bubbling sounds inside the water tank hadn't stopped.' My expression changed as a terrifying speculation suddenly formed in my mind. 'Could there be more than one monster? Is there something else in that water tank?'

My scalp went numb. If I had seen what was inside the water tank when I first entered the Diagnostic and Treatment Building, I wouldn't be in such a passive position right now.

'Could a whole tank full of "people" be submerged in there?' This was a rather horrifying guess. The water tank was about three meters long. If it was fully packed with monsters, their numbers would be absolutely despair-inducing. And there was an even more terrifying point—I wasn't sure if there was only one water tank in this abandoned hospital!

"What are you thinking about? Why do you look so awful?" Zhang Heng asked in a low voice, walking beside me.

"I suspect there's more than one monster."

"What?! Did you hear the sound of water drops again? How about we hurry up and leave the hospital? At worst, I'll become a monk and hide in a temple for the rest of my life." Zhang Heng's reaction was extreme; locking eyes with the monster through the door earlier had truly given him a nasty fright.

"Don't panic, it's just a speculation." I waved Chen Mo over. "Stay close. We're going to the underground morgue right now to find that birth certificate. If I sense danger, I'll warn you in advance."

"Understood."

I had Chen Mo walk in the middle of our group with the flashlight while Zhang Heng brought up the rear. The three of us entered the emergency stairwell once again.

We headed all the way down until we reached the door leading to the basement.

The heavy door was locked. Kicking it open by force would make too much noise.

I tried to unlock it with the Skeleton Key, but too much time had passed, and the inside of the lock was completely rusted shut.

"Dead end." The three of us ran over to the emergency stairwell on the right to take a look, but that door was locked dead as well. The chains on it were covered in rust, as if it hadn't been opened in a very long time.

"Something isn't right. Neither of these doors to the basement can be opened. Could the basement still be exactly as it was twenty years ago?" The mastermind controlled Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital. The basement housed the hospital's morgue and was where hazardous materials were stored. It was incredibly important, so there was no reason for him to ignore this place. I furrowed my brows in thought. 'Is there another passageway? Or is there something in the underground morgue that even the mastermind is afraid of?'

I had a premonition that the reason for the hospital's relocation twenty years ago was hidden right here in the basement.

"Normally, hospitals transport bodies through dedicated underground corridors. There has to be a secret passage connecting the Diagnostic and Treatment Building to this one," Chen Mo said. His analysis made sense, but we didn't have enough time to head all the way back to the Diagnostic and Treatment Building to look for it. Moreover, the water tank was over there, and there was no telling how many monsters were still inside. It was better to avoid that place if at all possible.

"A passageway meant for transporting corpses definitely won't be a comfortable walk for us living people." Looking at the locked door in front of me, I came to a decision. "You two get ready to run for your lives. We might look pretty pathetic in a moment."

"What do you mean by that?" Zhang Heng realized something was wrong and was just about to try to talk me out of it.

I took two steps back and kicked the door hinge with all my might!

"Bang!" A massive crash shattered the dead silence of the entire hospital. I turned to look at the two men, who stood completely dumbfounded, and shouted, "Run!"