Chapter 639: Secret Passage Exit

I stared at the human bone in my palm, momentarily stunned. I had only reached blindly into the Inner Coffin; who could have known I'd actually pull out a bone?

"Could this be a piece of the Uncorrupted Bone?" Before I could examine it closely, corpse qi surged from the Inner Coffin and knocked me right off the Suspended Coffin.

Caught off guard, my ghost art broke. The Five Directions Plague Ghosts wavered and slowly began to dissipate.

"Crap, it's going berserk!" Corpse qi flooded from the Inner Coffin like an ocean. With an unstoppable force, it instantly drove back the White Fur. Every single white fiend and Earth Corpse that had entered the cave was swallowed whole, turned into pure nourishment for the corpse qi.

The Uncorrupted Bone was incredibly overbearing. Even before it broke its seal, I could already feel its monstrous ferocity.

"Screech!"

Outside the Suspended Coffin, a dragon's roar rang out from the head of the casket. A gentle force shook the Paulownia Mulberry Talisman loose.

Then, an image of two dragons playing with a pearl circled the Suspended Coffin. The weapons of the Eight Immortals manifested with lifelike clarity, forming an exquisitely brilliant formation array.

Eight Immortals Coffin Suppression!

I snatched up the Paulownia Mulberry Talisman. With no time to catch my breath, I ducked under the casket and gathered Gu Tongtong into my arms.

Her little face was flushed, oozing fine beads of blood. A bite mark half a finger long marred the back of her neck. Even more terrifying, the wound was swollen and ringed in pitch black, as if she had been poisoned.

"Wake up." I pinched her philtrum, but she didn't react, her consciousness completely hazy. 'Why did the ghost girl hurt her? Could they share the same origin, meaning she needs her blood to break the Suspended Coffin's seal?'

I had seen Gu Bei's text messages before and knew that both he and his sister had the extremely rare p-type blood. Could that blood type imply some special constitution? Were people with this constitution the only ones capable of nourishing the Uncorrupted Bone?

The sudden turn of events left me no time to think.

The moment I stole a bone from the Inner Coffin, the Uncorrupted Bone went completely berserk. That proved this vertebra was absolutely crucial to it.

Missing a single bone, it still couldn't break out of the casket. Right now, it was fiercely clashing against the Eight Immortals formation. Ghosts wailed, black clouds churned, and within the small cavern, the forces of wind, thunder, earth, and fire faintly manifested.

The White Fur was temporarily driven back, leaving the cavern floor littered with insect carcasses and bleached bones.

Holding Gu Tongtong tightly, I crawled out from under the Suspended Coffin to put some distance between us and the epicenter of the chaos.

The ghost girl had tried to use me to open the casket. She harbored ill intentions, and staying in this cavern wasn't an option. I had to find another way out.

"Outside are white fiends and Earth Corpses, and inside is an Uncorrupted Bone on the verge of breaking free. Wolves in front, tigers behind—what the hell do I do?" I held Gu Tongtong close, watching the wound on the back of her neck rapidly worsen. Corpse qi had invaded her small body, draining her life force drop by drop. She wouldn't last much longer.

"Little one, wake up!" Regret gnawed at me. If I had just noticed the ghost girl's scheme earlier, I wouldn't be stuck in such a desperate corner.

With nowhere left to retreat, I crunched over the carpet of dead insects and walked toward the only exit.

The White Fur had been blasted away by the corpse qi, and any white fiend that dared step into its radius was instantly reduced to dried bones.

Inside the cavern, not a single white fiend dared to step within ten meters of the Suspended Coffin.

They clustered tightly at the tunnel entrance, bound by an instinctive terror of the corpse qi rolling off the casket. If their controller hadn't been forcing them forward, they likely would have scattered in terror long ago.

"I pulled this bone out of the Suspended Coffin. If it really is a piece of the Uncorrupted Bone, it should still carry its aura. I just hope this thing can keep the white fiends at bay for a while."

The sheer number of monsters outside the cavern was staggering. Their mutated, misshapen heads crammed together, forming a towering wall of human faces. It was a sight that would curse an ordinary person with endless nightmares.

"Let's test it." The clash between the Uncorrupted Bone and the Eight Immortals formation had reached a critical climax, leaving neither with the spare energy to attack me. Seizing the opening, I gripped the vertebra tightly, shielded Gu Tongtong against my chest, and walked out of the cavern step by step.

One hand reaching forward to forge a path, a pale bone serving as my lantern.

I walked at an agonizingly slow pace, tentatively closing the distance to the white fiends.

When I thrust the Jade Bone toward them, terror washed over the horde of monsters. Pushing and shoving against each other, they hastily stumbled backward.

"It's working!"

The reaction from the white fiends and Earth Corpses sparked a glimmer of hope. Curling my body inward to shield Gu Tongtong, I held the bone high against my chest. "Get the hell out of my way!"

Relying on the aura of the Uncorrupted Bone, I squeezed into the sea of corpses. Their faces were twisted in violent struggle, as if some invisible force in their minds was desperately compelling them to attack me.

I waded through the horde, occasionally brushing against their stiff limbs. My heart was lodged in my throat. If even the slightest thing went wrong, I would be torn to shreds by the endless sea of white fiends and Earth Corpses, suffering a fate a hundred times worse than Gu Bei's.

I swallowed hard, cold sweat dripping steadily down my face as I took stiff, mechanical steps, holding my breath.

There were simply too many of them. Even as I finally cleared the cavern, I could see a steady stream of monsters pouring into the outer passageway. Over the last twenty years, this hospital had buried far too many lives, and now they were all crawling out from beneath the earth in twisted new forms.

Gripping the bone like a lifeline, I navigated carefully until I finally found the storage room I had originally come from.

"Bang!" I slammed the door shut, slumped back against the wall, and slid straight to the floor.

My clothes were soaked with sweat as I gasped for air. "I can't believe I actually made it out of there."

The little girl in my arms was in critical condition, so I had no time to rest. I walked over to the secret passage and looked up. The white fiend that had been wedged tightly in the exit was gone.

"Something isn't right." After being played by the ghost girl, I was far more cautious. I activated my Judging Eye to examine the area closely and finally spotted a few clues.

Gouge marks scored the edges of the passage entrance, accompanied by tiny splinters of fractured bone.

'The entire front half of that monster's body was crammed into the passage. It was completely stuck. There's no way it could have broken free on its own; someone or something else must have yanked it out from the other side.'

'But why would they pull the monster out? Did they need to use the passage too? The monster's body couldn't fit through, so... that means there has to be another human down here on the Underground Ninth Level!'

'Someone is hiding in the shadows, watching everything. Just who the hell are they?'

'Chen Jiuge? Impossible. Right now, he should be busy controlling the horde of corpses. Between hunting down the live show streamer and trying to suppress the Uncorrupted Bone, he doesn't have the spare time.'

'Could another live show streamer have entered?'

Staring into the pitch-black exit, a dozen questions swirled in my mind. 'Whatever. I need to get out first; it's far too dangerous down here.'

I stripped off my jacket and used it to strap Gu Tongtong to my chest. Gripping the Jade Bone in one hand and the wooden rungs in the other, I began to climb. I was only halfway up when a strange noise echoed from below.

Glancing down, I saw white fiends and Earth Corpses shoving open the storage room door and flooding inside.

I couldn't tell if the mastermind had noticed me and was deliberately targeting me, or if it was just dumb luck.

"What's the point of chasing me now?" Holding the bone high, I scrambled up the ladder. Since I was already on edge, I kept my guard fully raised, simultaneously activating my Judging Eye and Breath Listening. When I was just two meters from the exit, I sensed something was wrong.

I heard the faint rustle of clothing brushing against the wooden floorboards.

'Someone is up there?' I maintained a steady climbing pace, but just as I reached the very top, I suddenly exploded with speed.

I cleared the last few rungs in a blur, launching myself upward in a single breath.

I braced my arms against the floorboards and thrust my head out of the passage. My eyes quickly swept the room, freezing the instant I looked to my left.

An ugly, horrifyingly familiar face was lying on the floor, peering right into the hole—and he was gripping a rusted pickaxe in both hands!

"Writer?!" I yelled in shock. Kicking off the ladder, my body launched out of the secret passage like a coiled spring. I landed in a half-crouch on the side, my eyes locked on him in high alert.

Lying beside the trapdoor with the pickaxe raised, the Writer hadn't expected my sudden burst of speed. He only reacted after I was completely out of the passage, a deeply awkward expression crossing his face.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, my gaze freezing over as I stared at the deadly weapon in his hands.

The iron tip of the pickaxe had been sharpened to a lethal shine. If he had swung it downward the moment I poked my head out, it would have effortlessly split my skull open.

"I was here..." He offered a highly strained smile, the skin of his ugly face twitching slightly. "...waiting for you, of course."

"You want to kill me? You?" A furious red tint filled my eyes. This was no time to show mercy; if he really wanted to throw down, I would use everything I had to butcher him.

"No, no..." The Writer waved his hands frantically. "I just want to make a deal with you and your companion."

"You're full of shit. You really think I'd believe you?" I had already been tricked by the Writer once. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

The Writer tossed the rusted pickaxe to the side. Raising both hands in the air, he slowly spun in a circle to show he wasn't hiding any other dangerous weapons. "This is a show of my sincerity. If you still don't believe me, I can tell you some of the hospital's secrets..."