Chapter 625: Escaping Death

"Run for my life? Where to?" I looked at my phone screen with a bitter smile. "Please, Daoist master Wan, teach me a way to break this deadlock."

Daoist master Wan: "Don't look at me with those pitiful eyes. If you make it out of this hospital alive, you can thank your ancestors' karma and the protection of the gods. You still want to break the deadlock? The Pit of Ten Thousand Corpses involves too many forces; drop those unrealistic delusions."

"If I were alone, I definitely would have tucked my tail and fled ages ago. But aren't you here?" I forced a bashful smile.

"You're a slippery kid. Flattering me is useless. I do have a way to break the deadlock, but it's incredibly perilous. With your strength alone, it's absolutely impossible to pull off."

"Just tell me first. If it's really too difficult, I won't say another word and will leave immediately." Brimming with anticipation, I stared at the phone screen, eager to hear Daoist master Wan's brilliant insight.

"Tonight, you will have to fight against a white fiend and an Earth Corpse. I will first pass on a few chants from the Burial Scripture to you. Commit them to memory."

"The Burial Scripture?" Before I could ask for details, Daoist master Wan's messages flooded the screen.

"Heaven's secrets are hard to grasp and harder still to master; carefully seek the dragon and recognize the stars. Trace the veins to draw the core, locating the tender and elegant point; hide from the wind and avoid the killing intent amid the purple thickets. If you wish to know the golden hue of bone and stone, you must clearly distinguish the convergence and separation of motion and stillness, Yin and Yang."

Daoist master Wan posted his chants directly in the chat. The unaware livestream viewers had no idea what it meant, but they all cheered anyway.

"This is too profound, Daoist master. I didn't understand a single sentence." Speaking the truth, I swallowed my pride and tried to get Daoist master Wan to explain it clearly.

"The Burial Scripture is meant for those bound by destiny. If you cannot understand it, it means you have no connection to it. The truths within can only be sensed, not explained." After Daoist master Wan sent this comment, he went completely silent. I called out a few times, but there was no response.

"Leaving after only speaking half a sentence. You Daoist cultivators always make simple things so incredibly mysterious." Now that I was the only one left, I wasn't afraid of being seen. To ensure I didn't miss any of Daoist master Wan's comments, I directly used my phone to livestream.

"Ignoring an elder's advice invites immediate disaster. This place is definitely evil; it's time to go." Pushing with both hands and kicking against the sides of the freezer, I slowly forced the metal partition open.

As fresh air rushed into the sealed freezer, I had the illusion of seeing the light of day again. "Now I finally know how terrifying being buried alive is. That feeling of slowly suffocating is maddening."

Before I could process my relief, a strange odor suddenly rushed into my nose.

It smelled like liquid medicine, and it was very familiar. It was the exact same scent I had caught on the Writer earlier.

"Why would this scent be wafting through the morgue?" My mind had yet to fully process it when my eyes casually swept the area, and my entire body went stiff.

Right beside me, a face covered in bandages—with wounds faintly visible beneath—was silently watching me.

"It didn't leave!"

A hand nearly a third larger than a normal person's pressed down on my head like a massive boulder. The loose white hospital gown loomed over me like a suffocating storm cloud. This monster had actually been waiting in ambush this whole time!

"Fuck!" Half of my body was still stuck inside the freezer. In a moment of desperation, I kicked hard against the drawer bed and violently threw my head back, headbutting the monster.

Bandages fluttered in the darkness. That wound-riddled face rapidly magnified in my vision. By now, I had no path of retreat.

One wrong step had led to this. To survive, I could only fight with everything I had!

Taking the initiative to strike by smashing my own head against its chest clearly caught the monster off guard.

Thud!

With a loud impact, my forehead smashed into the monster's chest. Because it happened so suddenly and I used all my strength, a noticeable chunk of the monster's chest caved in.

Its skeletal structure was vastly different from a living person's. Under the collision, several of its ribs shattered.

For a normal person, shattered ribs would be a fatal wound, but the monster felt absolutely nothing. Its two massive hands, each the size of a palm-leaf fan, clamped tightly around my neck.

Hiss!

Its grip was freezing, slippery, and clammy—impossible to pry off, as if glued to my skin.

The caved-in chest didn't affect the monster at all. It squeezed my neck with increasing force. I felt the air in my lungs rapidly diminishing, and my vision began to blur. I could only vaguely see the monster leaning down, seemingly preparing to drag me into its hospital gown.

A pungent, nauseating stench of medicine wafted from above my head. My pupils contracted, and my eyes rolled back until only the whites showed.

If I didn't break free soon, I was going to be smothered to death. Mustering the last ounce of strength in my body, I clamped my hands around its arms, planted a foot against the freezer, and kicked upward for leverage.

My legs wrapped around the monster's neck like a pair of scissors, leaving my entire body hanging upside down from it.

"Let go of me!" Squeezing hard with my legs, I choked and contorted the monster's neck. Swinging my waist, I forcefully dragged the monster down using my own body weight!

We crashed to the floor together. The grip crushing my neck finally loosened a fraction. Seizing the opportunity, I broke free from the restraint, wrenched its forearm into a reverse lock, and delivered a full-force kick straight at its head.

"Die!"

Having practiced the Profound Truth Mental Method and ghost arts, combined with repeatedly consuming natural treasures, my physical fitness rivaled a professional boxer's. Kicking open a locked security door with a single strike was proof enough of that.

There was no reasoning with a monster, nor was I planning to interrogate it for any useful information. Therefore, this kick was aimed directly at the most fragile part of its lower jaw.

The kick landed solidly. The monster's head spun ninety degrees in the opposite direction.

"Is it dead?" I noticed the strength in its hands weakening and immediately pulled away. But before I could even get up, an utterly horrifying scene unfolded.

The monster's head, twisted toward its back, was slowly turning around again. And because my kick just now had knocked loose the bandages on its face, what appeared before me was a face paralyzed by sheer, hair-raising terror!

"Skinned..."

The strength in the monster's hands was returning. With its head twisted around backward, a normal person would have died countless times over, yet it was completely fine.

"Even that couldn't kill it?" I quickly snapped out of my fear. Gritting my teeth, I made a somewhat insane decision. Without another word, I lashed out with another savage kick to the monster's head.

"I'll kick your head off! I refuse to believe you can still come back to life after that!" Whether it was due to the Blood Fox's influence or because I had been wearing the Good and Evil Mask for so long, I displayed a side entirely different from my usual self. I was ruthless and decisive, using all my strength as I repeatedly drove my foot into it in a bloody frenzy.

Once, twice...

I didn't know how much time had passed. It wasn't until the monster's spine snapped and its head drooped against its back like a ragged leather ball—thin, thread-like white worms crawling out of its body—that the creature finally stopped moving.

Leaning against the morgue's freezer, I slumped to the ground, my muscles aching all over. Although the fight had only lasted a minute or so, it was incredibly intense. Even the slightest moment of carelessness would have cost me my life.

Greedily breathing in the medicine-laced air of the morgue, I stared at the monster's corpse. My arms were still trembling slightly even now.

"That was too close; I was almost strangled to death! This monster even knows how to lay an ambush; it's so cunning." The monster gave me a completely different feeling from a mere corpse; it seemed to possess an intellect no less than a living person's. "Is someone controlling them from the shadows, or are they naturally like this?"

I climbed up from the floor and found my phone, which had dropped during the fight. Wiping the dust off the screen, I suddenly saw that Daoist master Wan was flooding the chat again.

"Daoist master, slow down. If you spam the chat without leaving a tip, your account might get banned." I picked up my phone and walked over to the monster. Making no effort to hide it, I framed its entire body in the camera.

Daoist master Wan: "Little friend, quickly unbutton the robe on its chest and see if any white fur has grown out."

I did as he said and unbuttoned the white hospital gown. Right on the monster's chest, fine white fur roughly three millimeters long was growing. It looked incredibly bizarre.

Daoist master Wan: "It really is a white fiend! This is bad; this corpse knows how to wear clothes to cover its body, and it even knows how to launch sneak attacks. There must be someone behind the scenes controlling it. By slaying their Fierce Corpse, you will definitely draw their attention. Leave immediately! Do not linger around here!"

"Alright." I snapped a few photos of the monster and quickly fled from Mortuary No. 2.

The pitch-black underground corridor was incredibly oppressive. It felt as if a monster was hiding in every corner. Terrified of being surrounded again, I moved with extreme caution.

But even so, as I reached the second underground level, I still spotted a monster wandering on the staircase. To avoid it, I had no choice but to temporarily hide in the storage room where Gu Bei's wife had been kept.

"Just how many monsters are inside this hospital? Were those water tanks all used to submerge corpses?" Holding my breath, I faced the door, my heart pounding wildly.