Chapter 634: Stealing a Bone (2)

"So the Writer's real name is Wang Wu." I scrutinized the photo. The person inside looked almost identical to the Writer's current appearance.

"This medical record is from twenty years ago. How could the black-and-white photo on it look exactly like the Writer does now? After a full twenty years, he should have aged significantly."

No spell in this world could grant eternal youth. The fact that the Writer's appearance hadn't changed in twenty years could only mean one thing: he was likely no longer a living person in the ordinary sense.

I recalled my earlier test. I had condensed Yin energy into a needle and pierced his meridians, yet he had shown no reaction whatsoever.

"This guy might be a dead man."

On the surface, the Writer looked no different from a normal person. But he could see in the dark and walked without making a sound—traits very similar to those of a white fiend.

"No wonder he treats a plastic doll as his wife. Looking at it that way, he's nothing more than a toy draped in human skin himself."

The Writer was the first to discover me. His purpose for staying in the hospital was likely to act as a gatekeeper, guarding all the filthy secrets here for the mastermind behind the scenes.

I had gleaned many clues from the medical record. Given the medical standards of the time, late-stage lung cancer was completely incurable. How the Writer had survived until now was well worth pondering.

"He must have reached some sort of agreement with the Two-Faced Buddha. He's the one truly acting as a proxy for a tiger." Putting the medical record away, I swept my gaze over the empty room. Those Earth-Bound Spirits had long since scattered.

"Why did they help me? Did they lend a hand just for this little one's sake?" I held Gu Tongtong with one hand. She was covered in dust and dirt, yet her eyes were incredibly lively. "An existence at the level of an Uncorrupted Bone is already beyond my capabilities. I at least have that much self-awareness."

The desire to retreat was already growing in my mind. I couldn't just think about my own life now; I had to consider Gu Tongtong as well.

I set the ghost girl's true form on the table. Truth be told, I hadn't planned on killing her from the very beginning.

Stepping out of the room, I quickened my pace, preparing to head back the way I came.

But the moment I entered the storage room connected to the secret passage, a sudden crashing sound erupted right beside me.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

It felt like being home alone when a vicious ghost came knocking at the door. Listening closely, that urgent, death-knell pounding was coming from inside the water tank.

"Is the monster inside trying to get out?" Recalling those creatures that looked like human-shaped spiders sent a chill down my spine. I stood frozen in place, not daring to make a careless move.

Rust flaked off and dust drifted from the water tank. The iron lid on top rattled violently. Seeing this, I quickly backed out of the storage room.

The very moment I stepped out of the door, the iron lid on the water tank was thrown open, splashing foul-smelling chemical fluid everywhere.

"Can't you just behave for a second?" Retreating further, I noticed the ghost girl hadn't left either. She had been keeping a close eye on Gu Tongtong and me. Seeing us back out, she stood in the corridor and waved at me.

Wiping away the chemical fluid that had accidentally splashed onto my arm, I quickly followed her. "Is there another exit besides this secret passage?"

The ghost girl completely ignored my question and led me into another storage room. With a water tank and a wooden ladder, the layout of this room was almost identical to the previous one.

The only difference was that the commotion inside this water tank wasn't as intense. It only emitted a continuous bubbling sound. The monster slumbering within probably hadn't fully awakened yet.

"We're leaving through here?" I walked to the center of the room and lifted the wooden boards, only to be left dumbfounded. This secret passage led even deeper underground; it didn't go up at all. "You misunderstood me. I don't want to find the true mastermind. Do you know the way back to the surface?"

Flustered, I frantically gestured at the ghost girl, but she didn't understand a thing. Her withered finger simply pointed at the passage entrance as she kept nodding at me.

The noise from the nearby water tank gradually grew louder, the iron lid rattling violently. As if things weren't bad enough, when it rains, it pours. The sound of rapid, dripping water echoed from the corridor outside. It seemed the monster in the previous storage room had already climbed out and was now sprinting down the hall.

"I'm doomed. You've really screwed me over this time." Now, my only option was to hide in the secret passage to wait out the danger. If I had to fight the monsters head-on, handling one or two would be fine. But I feared ending up like Gu Bei—completely surrounded inside and out by a massive horde, with absolutely no way to escape.

"Come here." I lifted Gu Tongtong by her collar. The little one, terrified of being tossed away, hugged my arm in a death grip, hanging onto it like a koala. "Do not make a single sound later, understand?"

I lifted the wooden boards and waited for the ghost girl to enter first before following her down.

Leaving a narrow crack between the boards, I pressed my body against the wooden ladder and activated my Judging Eye to monitor the situation outside.

By my estimation, the monsters in the water tanks were in a state of incubation and hadn't fully matured yet. However, the corpse controller behind the scenes was forcibly driving them out of the tanks. This meant he had likely encountered trouble of his own and needed to muster more forces.

I could just wait for those monsters to leave, then escape back to the surface along the original path. What did their life-and-death struggle have to do with me? Preserving my own life was hard enough. Plus, I had saved Gu Tongtong; that alone was enough to keep my conscience clear.

'This place is perilous. If I can escape, I could lure the people from my sect here and let them fight it out,' I calculated, but the situation developed differently than I had anticipated.

Through the crack in the wooden boards, I clearly saw an immature monster crawl past the storage room door on all fours. Then, I saw something that made my scalp tingle with fear.

Misshapen hands and feet, dried, cracked, and covered in wounds, flashed past the door one after another. The sheer number of them was despair-inducing.

'How are they still not done passing?' I wondered what kind of opponent the corpse controller had encountered. 'Who in the Pit of Ten Thousand Corpses has that kind of capability? To actually force the corpse controller to mobilize every white fiend in the building?'

I actually already knew the answer. It had to be the other live show streamers participating in this broadcast. 'Serves the Two-Faced Buddha right. A single live show streamer is enough to give him a headache, yet the Live Show specifically issued a multiplayer mission this time. Aside from Chen Jiuge and me, there is at least one other live show streamer here!'

'Then again, to survive being besieged by so many monsters and white fiends... this guy is a bit too incredible.' Even as I marveled at this, a wave of delayed fear washed over me. Such a terrifying person might have been hiding right by my side. 'But this works out. With him drawing the corpse controller's attention, I can use this opportunity to slip away.'

A long time later, the sound of dripping water still echoed through the corridor. I didn't dare act rashly and could only wait.

Over a minute passed before the water tank in the room reacted. With a massive bang, the iron lid was blown off, crashing heavily onto the floor not far from the secret passage and giving me a violent fright.

By the time I steadied my breathing and resumed observing, a terrifying scene I would never forget for the rest of my life unfolded before my eyes. Skinless, humanoid monsters crawled out of the two-meter-tall water tank one after another. Lacking any excess muscle or fat, they looked like skeletons, yet also resembled humanoid arthropods.

Drenched in pungent chemical fluid, they crawled on the ground on all fours like wild beasts. They had very sparse hair, most of them completely exposing the hideous scars on their heads.

Densely packed together—it was hard to imagine that so many monsters had been hidden inside a single water tank.

Watching these horrifying figures crawl past my eyes, I suddenly understood why the very first monster I encountered had dressed itself in a patient's gown and wrapped itself in bandages.

The true appearance of these monsters absolutely could not be exposed. Even a tiny leak of video footage would cause a massive uproar.

'The Pit of Ten Thousand Corpses truly lives up to its reputation.'

Having held Gu Tongtong with one hand for so long, my arm was going numb. I wanted to stretch a bit and switch hands.

As my body shifted, the dilapidated wooden ladder let out an extremely faint sound.

"Creak."

The noise was very low. Masked by the splashing of the chemical fluid, it wasn't obvious. Most of the monsters didn't notice a thing, but the one closest to the secret passage seemed to sense something.

Unsure if I had been discovered, my body went rigid on the ladder. I didn't dare move a muscle as my eyes locked onto it.

Due to my viewing angle, I could only see its lower half and limbs.

'Oh no...'

The monster's ugly, deformed hand was inching toward the secret passage. With every rise and fall of its palm, it drew a fraction closer to me.

The soaking wet palm left behind dark prints on the floor, each one looking like a despicable, eerie smiling face.

When the palm print stopped less than five centimeters away from the wooden boards, the monster raised its hand once more.

One second, two seconds...

My heartbeat seemed to have stopped. I involuntarily clenched my jaw.

I pushed my Judging Eye to its absolute limit, but my line of sight was restricted since I was looking through the crack in the boards.

From this angle, I could only see that there were fewer and fewer monsters in the storage room. It seemed they had all left.

'Are they gone?'

My tense heart slowly settled. I convinced myself, 'Right. They're being manipulated by the corpse controller; they don't have any sentience of their own.'

Before I even had time to catch my breath, a drop of murky chemical fluid suddenly fell from the edge of the wooden board and landed right on the bridge of my nose. The chilly sensation made my heart violently skip a beat.

'Chemical fluid? Oh no!' I ducked my head down in a split second.

"Bang!"

The wooden boards directly above me were ripped away, revealing a completely deformed, skinless, terrifying face right above me!

As its chemical fluid dripped down into the passage, my whole body tensed, and I decisively let go of the ladder.

"Hold onto me!" Shielding Gu Tongtong against my chest, I jumped straight down the vertical passage and looked up.

Barely a second later, the monster shoved half its body into the secret passage. It reached downward, wildly clawing the air with a savage expression.

'Good thing I reacted fast.' The secret passages in the hospital were likely an escape route the corpse controller left for himself in case the white fiends lost control. After the corpses underwent secondary growth, their skeletal frames became much larger than those of normal people, making it impossible for them to squeeze into the secret passages. They could only move through the corridors.