Chapter 91: Satan's Woman (2)

I tried picking the lock with the banknote again, but the crumpled bill wouldn't work a second time.

"Stay here and wait for me. I'll get you out tonight, I promise."

I got up and waded upstream. Fighting the stinging pain in my palm, I grabbed the rusted iron grate once more. "This is the third room. Let's see exactly how many people they've locked up down here."

I pulled the grate free, held my breath, and slipped into the channel.

The stench hit me from all sides, overwhelming my senses. The moment light appeared overhead, I desperately thrust my head up, gasping for fresh air.

But the second my head broke the surface, a massive force clamped around my neck.

The world spun. I flailed my arms, sending filthy water splashing in all directions. The grip on my neck only grew tighter, and my lower half was still wedged inside the channel.

I struggled frantically, kicking against the slippery bottom of the channel for leverage, but couldn't find any.

My brain was starved of oxygen and breathing was impossible. Driven entirely by survival instinct, I opened my mouth and bit down hard on whatever was choking me.

I bit down with all my strength, and the salty, metallic taste of blood instantly filled my mouth.

"Argh!" a scream came from behind me. The chokehold slipped. I seized the opening to wrench my lower half out of the channel, planted a foot against the wall, and used the rebound to slam the person choking me to the ground.

"You want to die?!" In that moment, I genuinely wanted to kill him. In an environment this dangerous, there was no room for mercy. Besides, I had just felt death approaching, and my neck was still throbbing.

I spun around and grappled with him. He had a heavy build, but fought without any technique.

A heavy punch knocked his jaw askew. He lay on the ground, clutching his mouth and groaning. Only then did I finally see his face.

"You?"

The man in front of me was the taxi driver. "I remember you weren't wearing a seatbelt. I thought you flew out of the car at the end there."

The man didn't have any serious injuries, but he was limping on his right leg. It was probably fractured in the crash.

It was a good thing his leg was injured; otherwise, that shove earlier wouldn't have knocked him down so easily.

"Fuck! It is you!" The driver's eyes widened as he looked at me. "My mistake, I thought the bad guys were coming! You can't blame me, though. Anyone would react like this if they saw a guy crawling out of a sewer in the middle of the night!"

I touched the strangulation marks on my neck, my eyes narrowing. The driver was definitely lying. I had been choked the second I entered this cell. His strike had been precise, clearly premeditated.

Furthermore, his position just now was obviously close to Jiang Fei's cell. It was highly likely he had eavesdropped on every word of my conversation with her.

"It's all a misunderstanding." His jaw was knocked askew and his mouth couldn't close properly, making him lisp slightly when he spoke.

The driver was captured at the same time I was, so I likely wouldn't get any useful clues from him. I studied him for a long moment before suddenly asking, "Why aren't there any chains on you?"

Both Jiang Fei and I had been bound by iron chains to restrict our freedom, showing that the kidnappers were extremely cautious with their prisoners. Yet the driver didn't even have rope marks on him, let alone iron chains. He could walk around the cell freely.

"Are you in league with the kidnappers?"

"What the hell are you talking about? You're a healthy guy and you don't have chains on you. Why would they need to lock up a cripple?"

The driver's defense seemed pale and weak to me. He was definitely hiding some secret.

"Regardless, we're grasshoppers on the same rope now, so let's just put that unpleasantness from earlier behind us." The driver held a hand out to me. "My name is Wang Yingnan. What do I call you?"

"Gao Jian." There was indeed no need to fall out with him right now; escaping was the primary goal.

I called the driver over to help, and together we dismantled the iron grate leading to the next room.

"Your freedom isn't restricted. Later, if I end up in a conflict with someone, crawl through the channel and prepare to ambush them. If the two of us work together, our chances of escaping will be much higher."

"Crawl through the channel?" The driver shook his head. "You're crazy. I'd rather die than squeeze through this stinking ditch."

"Then just wait here and die. Without a key, the channel is the only way out." I cast a glance at him, already standing in the water.

"Holy shit! Were you in the special forces? A massive patch of blood just floated past in the water. For all we know, there could be severed heads or limbs in there! And this smell—how can you even stand it?" The driver stared at the murky water and firmly shook his head. "I really can't do it."

His attitude was firm, so I didn't push the matter. I took a deep breath, curled my body up, and squeezed into the channel.

'Song Xiaofeng, Jiang Fei, Wang Yingnan. The cell I'm in now should be the fourth one.'

Having been played by the driver, my movements were much more agile this time, afraid of another ambush.

Looking up, a faint light shone on the floor. A boy around fourteen or fifteen years old stood in the center of the cell.

His gaze remained fixed on me from the moment I climbed out of the channel.

"Don't be afraid, I mean you no harm." I declared my stance upfront, not wanting to trigger any unnecessary conflict, but I quickly realized I was overthinking it.

The boy in the cell was mentally disabled—the kind that sent a chill straight to your core with just a single glance.

His hair was a matted, foul-smelling mess. Tears continuously streamed from his eyes, yet his mouth kept letting out foolish giggles.

If that were all, most people probably wouldn't find him terrifying; they might even feel a sense of pity.

But looking further down, the boy's ragged clothes were crusted with large patches of dark blood. His loose pants hung around his hips; he clutched his waistband with one hand, and in the other, he was holding a hand.

That wasn't a slip of the tongue. The boy was holding a severed hand, dripping with filthy water.

He didn't seem to realize what he was holding. He merely treated the thing as a toy, holding it in his hand and bending the fingers of the severed palm.

Accompanied by meaningless giggles, the boy fixed his gaze on me. He walked over holding the severed hand, and every step he took closer made me feel unsettled and terrified.

The sense of horror this child brought me was different from monsters or ghosts; it was a visible, tangible terror that was slowly approaching.

"Stop! Don't come any closer!" I raised a hand, but the boy acted as if he couldn't understand me, continuously backing me into a corner before finally stopping.

Stopping just half a meter away from me, he mumbled and held the severed hand out to me. "F-for you."

The boy spoke in stutters, and only then did I notice that he actually had a cleft lip.

"Why are you giving this to me?" The boy had congenital defects in both his intellect and body. Although I felt terrified, I still forced myself to stay calm.

"F-for you." He waved the severed hand, stubbornly trying to shove it to me. His expression gradually turned agitated, his cleft lip parting to look even more terrifying.

I didn't want to overstimulate him, so I hurriedly took the severed hand. "Where did you get this thing?"

Seeing me accept the severed hand, the boy bobbed his head in delight and pointed at the ditch. "I-inside. There's still g-good things."

After saying that, he squatted next to the ditch. Not minding the filth, he happily dredged through it with both hands.

I didn't stop his bizarre behavior. This child clearly had an intellectual disability. If I wanted to get any valuable clues out of him, I couldn't be hasty; I could only play along with his whims and slowly guide him.

I squatted down beside him too, adopting the same posture as his. He seemed to feel he had found a companion and looked very happy.

"Why are you locked in here?"

"S-scooping meat."

"How old are you?"

"P-pet..."

The boy's answers were completely irrelevant. I asked a few more questions in a row but got nothing.

"I can't waste any more time here, I need to go check the next room." The surface of the cut on my palm was already festering, making my entire hand feel a stinging, piercing itch.

Walking upstream along the channel, I had just grabbed the iron grate when, unexpectedly, the boy followed me.

He mimicked my posture, grabbing the rust-mottled iron grate with one hand while giggling foolishly, and pointed at the adjacent room with his other hand. "C-crying. C-crying. C-crying."

"Is it a woman crying?" I was a bit curious and carefully observed the boy's face. Because of the cleft lip, his entire face looked somewhat awkward, making it very easy to overlook certain details.

For example, the boy's remarkably clear eyes, as well as the unstoppable streaks of tears covering his face.

"What's your name?"

"Song X-Xiaowang."

The familiar name reminded me of someone else. 'So this boy in front of me is Song Xiaofeng's brother. Just who exactly did their family cross to end up in such a state?'

With each room being opened, I grew increasingly curious about the truth.

I took down the iron grate and entered the next room. Judging by the footsteps I had heard earlier, I was now getting closer and closer to the end of the corridor.

I didn't know if it was my imagination, but the stench I had already gotten used to seemed to have grown a bit more intense. Crawling out from the channel, at first glance, everything was blood-red.

"So bloody."

What appeared before me wasn't some scene of dismembered bodies or butchered corpses, but rather painting after painting of dripping blood.

It was similar to my first impression upon entering Jiang Shihan's hospital ward, except this time the paintings before my eyes weren't drawn with lipstick or iodine, but with real blood.

Large and small, hideous streaks of blood smeared across the entire cell.

I stood frozen in the channel, as if my throat had been choked by a massive, bloody hand. My eyes swept aimlessly over the terrifying murals, finally stopping in the corner of the cell, where there was a woman tethered by chains.

Her limbs, her neck, every single one of her joints was bound by heavy chains.

She was looking at me too, her pale face entirely devoid of color. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke strange words, almost as if she were singing.

"Once deemed a top-tier material, one can no longer walk out the front gate as scrap."

"Every hospital room is a top-secret processing workshop. Once a person is tethered by IV tubes, they can only surrender without a fight."

"They are obsessed with the processing, treating it as both pleasure and performance."

"They emphasize precision and demand patience."

"If no one raises an objection, they can self-righteously dismantle the body, wash it, sterilize it, remove the rust, and polish it."

"Then, following the morgue's construction blueprints, reassemble it into a gift for the devil."

I moved slowly through the channel. The woman's singing seemed to hold a peculiar power that could make every hair on a person's body stand on end.

"You are..."

She smiled somewhat cruelly: "I am a gift, I am a slut, I am Satan's woman."