Chapter 616: How Did They Die? (2)

No one answered Zhang Heng's question. Both Chen Mo and I were already captivated by the pool inside the room. Something resembling seaweed drifted across the water in the white-tiled basin.

Following the beam of Chen Mo's flashlight, Zhang Heng finally spotted it. "What are you two doing? Is that floating thing really that scary?"

"You wouldn't understand." I shook my head. I knew exactly how Chen Mo felt right now, because I had witnessed a similar scene in the anatomy lab at Jiangcheng Medical College. Those dark strands drifting through the water weren't seaweed at all. They were a woman's hair.

"Let's go in and take a look." I had no idea what this particular ward was used for. The door wasn't locked or sealed; after a few jiggles, it swung open easily.

The stench of rot and chemical preservatives hung heavy in the air. Beneath that, a faint metallic tang of blood lingered.

"Shut the door tight." We were too close to the stairs. If the monster came hunting for us from the floor above, it could easily trap us in this room.

Chen Mo and I slowly approached the basin while Zhang Heng stood guard at the door, holding up his DV. "Hurry it up, you two. We need to get to the morgue. Don't waste time."

"Hold on a second." I stepped up to the edge of the pool first and peered inside. It wasn't very deep—a meter at most—but it was filled to the brim with foul, chemically tainted wastewater.

And there, submerged face down at the bottom of that murky sludge, lay a woman's corpse.

"Oh, Jesus..." This was Chen Mo's first time seeing a dead body outside of an anatomy lab, and the sight hit him hard. He started dry heaving, desperately trying to look away.

"What's wrong? Is a gross anatomy teacher really that different from a corpse at a murder scene?" I was long accustomed to sights like this. I had seen far gorier scenes during my live broadcast at the mental asylum.

Chen Mo just waved a hand at me, momentarily robbed of speech. I took in his pale, wretched expression and shook my head. "Step back if you can't stomach it."

I had no idea what this pool of water was originally used for. It was so murky that any blood mixed into it hardly stood out at all.

"Her back is intact. Where are the wounds? What was the cause of death?" I grabbed a discarded mop from the corner of the room and crouched by the edge, intending to drag the body up from the bottom.

"Are you out of your mind? Why are you touching her?" Chen Mo asked weakly, grabbing my arm. "You need to show the dead at least a basic level of respect."

"Respect is a two-way street. I respect her plenty, but whether she respects me is a whole different story." Ignoring Chen Mo, I prodded the corpse with the mop handle. The stagnant water rippled and splashed. Zhang Heng and Chen Mo backed away immediately, leaving me to continue my work alone.

I quickly managed to flip the body over. The moment I activated my Judging Eye and got a clear look at her face, my heart skipped a beat. I nearly dropped the mop into the sludge.

"How could it be her?" The dead woman at the bottom of the pool was none other than Che Chili, the woman who had accompanied Gu Bei inside earlier tonight!

Seeing her exceptional, curvaceous figure bloated in that festering sewage sparked no attraction whatsoever—only a wave of bone-deep chill.

"The last time we saw her, she was screaming and running into the woods outside the hospital. So how did she end up in here? Do those hidden passages connect directly to the surrounding woods? Can you just walk straight from out there to in here?" The situation was growing more tangled by the minute, and I didn't dare jump to conclusions.

Noticing my grim expression, Chen Mo and Zhang Heng finally stepped closer. As they peered down at the drowned woman, their reactions were starkly different.

Chen Mo was slowly recovering now that the initial shock had passed. Zhang Heng, however, reacted exactly as I had expected. His face twisted with disgust, but he showed no much emotional distress.

"Zhang Heng, compared to the victims of the flaying murders over in Xinhu, which one looks worse?"

"Why the hell are you asking me that?" Zhang Heng rolled his eyes. "If we're done here, let's keep moving. If we don't find the morgue, we're all going to die!"

"Relax, it was just a passing thought." I tossed the mop aside and pointed down at the corpse. "Look closely at her body. There are lacerations on her abdomen, her neck, and anywhere else with a major cluster of blood vessels. Her cause of death is rather strange."

"Bro, look at the time! Why are you playing detective right now? All I want is to find that morgue and get the hell out of this cursed place!" Zhang Heng stared at the body in absolute disgust, gripping his hair in frustration. "Figuring out how she died is pointless! We're up against a vengeful spirit! A ghost, not a person—do you get that? If this were just some murder, I'd have called the cops already instead of coming back to this shithole!"

He was pushing us relentlessly, unnervingly desperate to reach the morgue. It was a glaring detail, but I kept my mouth shut and filed the suspicion away in my mind.

"Just listen to me for a second. I saw this woman before we even entered the hospital. She's been dead for less than two hours," I said, speaking faster now. "Blood makes up about eight percent of a person's body weight. That means this woman should have had at least five jin of blood in her. Every single one of her cuts targeted major veins and arteries. But look at the pool. The water is murky, but it's not dyed red. Blood diffuses incredibly fast in water. Five jin of blood spilling out over two hours should have turned this entire basin red. Do you realize what that means?"

Both of them looked at me, confusion plain in their eyes.

"It means this isn't the primary crime scene. She was already drained of blood before someone dumped her in here. She died of exsanguination. Also, look closely at her wounds. They're ragged. The cuts on her right wrist are deep and numerous, like someone had to hack at it several times to finally sever the vein. But the cut on her left wrist is clean and solitary—a single, decisive slice." I glanced back at the two men, who were still staring blankly. "If someone else murdered her, there wouldn't be such a stark difference between the cuts on either wrist. This woman likely killed herself. Most people are right-handed. When she held the blade in her right hand, she easily slit her left wrist. But by the time she passed the blade to her left hand, she was too weak to apply proper force. That explains the messy cuts."

"That makes a lot of sense, but what does it matter if it was murder or suicide? Bro, we aren't here to solve crimes. Let's just go." Zhang Heng continued to rush us. I gave him a long, meaningful look.

"Have you stopped to consider one detail? If she committed suicide 'voluntarily,' she wouldn't have carved herself up like this. Not even a masochist goes to that extreme, and she had absolutely no reason to kill herself in the first place. That contradiction tells us something crucial: she was forced to commit suicide! It sounds like a paradox, but it's the only thing that makes sense. I suspect there's another monster in this hospital—one capable of controlling a person's mind and forcing them to act against their own will! Finding her body down here proves that this entity is somewhere underground, not far from us. Do you still think this has nothing to do with us?"

My reasoning left Zhang Heng speechless. His face twisted sourly before he finally gave a reluctant nod. "Fine. What do you suggest we do?"

"Don't panic yet. We still have questions to answer. Why did the monster drain her blood to kill her? And who dragged her body into this pool?" I already had a dark suspicion brewing in my mind: the killer was likely the Female Infant.

After a quick sweep of the room, I found a folding surgical gurney tucked inside a metal cabinet against the wall. Its wheels spun freely, and fresh bloodstains speckled its surface.

"The victim was brought in on this gurney. Pushing a folding surgical cart around doesn't exactly sound like the work of a vengeful spirit, does it? Could it have been the Writer? And what is his connection to the Female Infant?"

As we stepped out of the ward, Zhang Heng kept his head bowed, lost in thought.

"Are you alright? Medical students like you must have seen plenty of cadavers by now. Surely you shouldn't be this terrified?" I asked casually, steadying Chen Mo's arm.

"I'm not scared, just confused," Chen Mo muttered. "You guys might not have noticed, but the chemical smell coming from that pool... it's the exact same scent that the Writer had on him."

"Chemical smell?" I paused to think back, and realized he was right.

"And it wasn't just the smell. Right as we were walking out of the room, I swear I saw the corpse's eyelids twitch. I wrote it off as a post-mortem spasm at first, but looking back, it just feels deeply wrong."

Chen Mo's revelation took both Zhang Heng and me by surprise.

"What kind of nonsense is that? It was pitch black in there. How could you possibly see an eyelid twitch? You're hallucinating!" Zhang Heng snapped. Despite his bold words, he slowed his pace to squeeze between Chen Mo and me, clearly desperate for the safety of the middle position.

"The corpse moved? And the chemical scent was exactly the same?" I didn't think Chen Mo was lying. A memory of something I had done to the Writer slowly surfaced in my mind.

When I first agreed to work with him, I had condensed a needle of Yin energy and slipped it into his body, yet he hadn't reacted at all.

He neither noticed the Yin energy entering his system, nor did he show any of the physical discomfort a normal living person would suffer.

'Could that guy actually be dead?' If that were true, then who was the real live show streamer?

Deep resentment toward the Underworld Live Show's phone prompt flared inside me. If not for that damned mission briefing about the live show streamers hunting each other, I wouldn't have been so paralyzed by paranoia tonight. That warning had forced me to second-guess every move, leaving me completely empty-handed so far.

'Forget the other streamers for a second—why hasn't Chen Jiuge shown up yet?' I had already resolved to kill Chen Jiuge, even if it meant failing the live stream mission altogether. I knew perfectly well that if I didn't eliminate him before he uncovered my true identity, I'd be the one ending up dead.

We hadn't walked much further before that terrifying dripping sound echoed in my ears once more. The monster was incredibly close. If we just rounded the wrong corner, we might walk straight into it.

At that exact moment, Chen Mo's flashlight swept across a heavily smeared doorplate. I scraped off the thick layer of white paint obscuring the surface, revealing a row of black characters: Mortuary No. 1.

"Finally found it!" Zhang Heng rushed forward to push the door open, but I grabbed his arm and stopped him.

"The plaque says 'Number One.' Doesn't that imply there's a Number Two? Or a Number Three?" I murmured. Gripping Gu Tongtong's death certificate in my pocket, I stepped forward and pushed open the pale white door.