Chapter 66 The fleshy figure pieced together from the lips of the old campus floated in a pool of blood...
Suddenly, a stench-filled hand reached down, the sharp metal fragments in its hand slicing across Deng Dayun's face. Deng Dayun's breath caught in his throat for a moment, and he stared blankly at the metal plate. A white mask fell into the hole in the metal plate, its hollowed-out, curved lips facing him.
He heard a triumphant and mocking laugh.
On the other side, the iron plate facing Xue Chao suddenly made a "bang," followed by a series of violent slaps.
The troublesome monsters were not only the nurses who were relentlessly pursuing them, but also the corpses already lying in the morgue. They had just escaped one danger only to fall into another.
The person upstairs was probably dissatisfied with Xue Chao's indifference. He scratched the edge of the metal sheet with his long fingernails, and in the harsh scraping sound, there was a clicking sound of something being pried.
The cabinet was pitch black, and Xue Chao couldn't see anything, so he had to rely on feeling. He felt very carefully, afraid that the person on the upper bunk would puncture the metal sheet and they would end up interlocking their fingers. There was a movable buckle on each side of the metal sheet, which was inlaid in a small semi-circular plate, big enough to fit a hand, but only the person on the upper bunk could open it.
Just then, the upper bunkmate's claws, unable to find the crucial point, accidentally pried open the entire iron plate, causing it to suddenly loosen and tilt like a revolving door. A long, bluish-purple hand covered in lividity reached down with lightning speed, almost plunging into Xue Chao's heart. Xue Chao grabbed the zombie-like wrist, and with a knee thrust, forcibly straightened the iron plate.
This creature refused to give up, thrashing about left and right, up and down, like someone who had just learned to rise from the dead, full of energy, wanting to grab and bite everything. Xue Chao had to support himself with both legs and dodge the claws that could fall from either side at any moment.
His reaction was faster than the upper bunk where he had just become a zombie. The ghost claws swooped down from both sides several times, but he dodged them all. The upper bunk was silent for a moment, as if he was questioning his life. Finally, he started working on both sides of his brain at the same time, and both hands fell down at the same time. Xue Chao had been waiting for this moment. He threw the sunflower stem into the semi-circular hole on the left, turned to the side to dodge the ghost claw on the left, grabbed the ghost claw on the right with his left hand, and reached into the hole with his right hand to pull the stem out from the right side, which tied up the corpse on the upper bunk.
He then flipped over inside the cabinet, his toes touching the ground, his back pressed against the upper iron plate. He quickly opened the latch connecting the cabinet below, then gripped the plant roots with both hands, and with a powerful flip, the movable iron plate rotated 180 degrees, instantly switching places with his zombie brother.
He deftly pulled the rope and closed the latch.
The roots were pulled out, and the corpse fell directly down. The movable board below tilted and hit the corpse that was originally on Xue Chao's lower bunk. The slow-starting corpse was suddenly brought back to life. The two not-so-bright corpses were separated by the loose "seesaw". Their four ghostly claws scratched at each other in the hole, and they were not idle either. They made hoarse roars, like two dogs on the street who didn't get along at first glance cursing and fighting.
Xue Chao politely tapped the metal plate on the new upper bunk, which happened to be the location of the movable buckle. Sure enough, this helped the new upper bunk successfully come back to life. So he repeated the trick twice and successfully moved to the top cabinet.
He had just fastened the clasp on one side when his other hand was suddenly grabbed, and their fingers were tightly intertwined. Xue Chao tried to pull his hand away, but the hand that grabbed his was pulled up without any resistance, preventing him from doing so.
Once the buttons were fastened, Xue Chao could see what it was—a fresh and beautiful severed hand.
Judging from its size and shape, it resembles a young girl's hand.
He waited quietly for a moment. The severed hand did not continue to harass him, but it did not let go either, and the situation was slightly tense.
Since the severed hand wouldn't move, Xue Chao had no choice but to pull it closer to examine it. He carefully examined the hand and, referring to the numbered list, determined whose hand it was: "Minmin... um."
The severed hand suddenly released its grip and fell to cover his mouth.
Once he was sure Xue Chao would shut up, the severed hand slid down and quietly pointed to the inside of the cabinet.
Xue Chao's expression shifted, and he raised his hand above his head. Without him exerting any force, the iron plate facing the sliding door was gently pushed open, and a strong smell of blood rushed out.
More and more corpses were awakening, and the restless knocking grew louder and louder. One sound would trigger a chorus of knocks from all directions. Moreover, now, apart from him and the other empty cabinets, all the cabinets were being shaken. He felt as if he were trapped inside a drum with drumheads on every side, his body and mind facing the deafening noise from all sides, rising and falling.
The headless corpses tried to squeeze through the cramped cabinet, one after another pushing open the sliding doors and slowly crawling out. The sliding doors made a series of sounds as they stepped onto the white tiles covered with bloody footprints, all facing the entire mortuary cabinet, waiting for something.
Once all the corpses have left, there's something wrong with the doors that haven't been opened.
The ghost ancestors in the row below Xue Chao finally stopped their infighting and their bickering—which could be described as either bloody or chickens pecking at each other—and climbed out of the cabinet.
The corpses were mangled beyond recognition, clustered together like ghostly figures standing on the other side of a dream shore, gazing at this side, as if they might appear before your eyes in the blink of an eye.
Whether it was time, or everyone had arrived, or they were simply getting impatient, the corpses finally moved. Skipping over all the open morgues, they opened the remaining cabinets one by one, only to find them all empty.
In the end, only Xue Chao and Deng Dayun remained.
The corpses skipped over Deng Dayun's cabinet and yanked open the cabinet where Xue Chao was.
It's empty too.
The corpse standing on the next cabinet didn't believe it, so it leaned in and climbed over to check the top panel. It then opened a latch, squeezed its way through the gap, and looked down. The other corpses pulled open all the cabinets in that row, but they were all empty.
They had no choice but to retreat to their original spot, staring blankly at the rows of cold, lifeless mortuaries.
Whether they were living people or dead people who had come back to life, they had all left the cabinets, but each cabinet was still vibrating, as if something unseen inside was patting it. The rhythm of all the cabinets gradually became unified, and finally they resonated in unison, like the same sound.
The sound was sometimes even, sometimes so fast it was a chaotic mess, the loud noise reaching the walls and seemingly engulfing the entire hospital.
Xue Chao had already slid into the inner side. Behind the iron cabinet was an endless tunnel. At first, it was iron walls covered with blood mist, which were damp and cold. As he climbed further in, the four edges of the iron walls were gradually smoothed out, becoming softer and stickier. Every step was stained with blood.
The silver-gray cold iron gradually deepened in color, but its texture became increasingly thin and light, even allowing a glimmer of light to pass through.
So through the glowing red tube, he could vaguely see outside the tube. It was a vast, crimson world, with many tangled pipes suspended like a sky bridge built out of thin air, and blood flowing through them.
It reminded him of the lines that were stuck together and branched out in the film.
...Is it inside the blood vessels of a human body?
Whose blood vessels?
Deng Dayun, who was in the same position, was in the same boat. He also discovered the hidden world behind the cabinet. It should be that the first few empty cabinets were like this.
But he discovered it later than Xue Chao, yet he climbed much faster than Xue Chao, as if he were in a hurry to be reincarnated.
Xue Chao couldn't help but frown—there was a place for Deng Dayun in the morgue. Unlike him, this kid was an unregistered person in this unit, the only one in the hospital without a storyline. He had to find another way out, hiding from NPCs and ghosts. Deng Dayun could just stay in the cabinet and pretend to be his future self. Is there anything easier than playing dead?
Even ghosts ignored him, so why was he in such a hurry to run away?
He recalled the footage from the camera, where Deng Dayun's corpse on the upper floor reached out, but perhaps in a hurry to climb out, it just scared him like that, only scratching his face.
They were probably not on the same "blood vessel," which intersected, but the path leading to them was fixed. Without having to find his way through a maze, he quickly passed through a roaring area, was lifted up by a powerful throbbing, and suddenly a wave of blood surged from behind, sweeping him into a place.
He landed on a slippery piece of meat, which was pinkish-red and had small bumps on it. He could barely support himself and it took him a while to regain his balance.
The piece of meat looked like it was placed in a box, which was also fleshy red. In the middle were two rows of closed white teeth, which were white teeth of roughly the same size, like small white stones of different shapes. It was in the mouth behind the open mouth, and at its feet was a tongue.
This realization gave him goosebumps all over.
Light seeped into the gap between the teeth, causing the two rows of teeth to slightly open and push against a paper-made arc—a paper cup. It was lifted higher and higher, prying open the mouth.
Xue Chao had a bad feeling. He immediately squeezed into the gap between his teeth and lips, hiding right under the tilted cup. The liquid rushed in, smelled sweet, and bubbled loudly. The sides of the cup convulsed wildly, as if in resistance.
The overflowing sweet water reached above Xue Chao's knees. The cup finally moved away, but the liquid did not slide down his tongue and throat. Instead, it swelled into a pool of bloody flesh in his mouth.
Xue Chao sat on the teeth as if scaling a wall, looking down to observe the liquid. The liquid was light brown, much like a cheap tea-flavored beverage, with a slightly sweet taste from artificial coloring.
Something was distributed at the bottom of the pool, bulging up little by little with flesh and blood, outlining the shape of a person, as if it was about to tear living people out of the flesh of the tongue. The pool water was constantly being stirred, and dense bubbles rose up in strings, blocking the strange changes at the bottom of the pool.
"It hurts...it hurts so much..."
The sound of weeping came from the pool, mournful and pitiful.
"Help... Help... Let me go..."
"Someone, please save me..."
Different voices arose—fear, pain, despair. At first, they were quite desperate, but later they became numb soliloquies, as if the soul had died in a deserted corner and the body could only repeat the last command over and over again. But even in the numbness, the shrillness was not diminished in the slightest, as if the pain had not accompanied the soul to its death and would continue to haunt it even after death.
Xue Chao observed the innermost teeth and estimated whether, if the tips of the teeth were tied, they could float back into his throat without touching the pool water. At that moment, he suddenly heard his own voice in the pool water.
"...Classmate..." The voice of "him" was very soft, like the evening breeze plucking the strings of a violin, delicate and melodious, "Save me..."
"It hurts...it hurts so much..."
He spoke haltingly, not just in terms of pauses, but with each sound starting and ending abruptly, as if those few sounds had been deliberately extracted from another passage.
That would definitely distort the original meaning.
Xue Chao said coldly, "You've ruined your persona."
"..."
He fell silent.
Just as Xue Chao reached the innermost tooth and was about to throw the plant root, "his" voice suddenly rang out again: "...Sister...don't go..."
Xue Chao paused.
He expressionlessly reeled in the rope, walked to the source of the sound, bent down and scooped it up. A bubble burst in his palm—he pulled out a pair of lips.
The lips were cut off with perfect technique, smoothly and evenly cutting along the fine hairs around the lips, preserving their integrity. The lips were beautifully shaped, full, and glistening with blood, making them crystal clear. Just from these lips, one could feel the embodiment of "beauty".
The dense bubbles burst open, revealing countless perfect lips slumped to the bottom of the pool, squeezed together, their upper and lower lips opening and closing, crying out in fear or screaming in pain. The bottom of the pool had bulged from the smooth surface of the tongue into undulating bumps, looking like a dense mass of fleshy tumors.
The tumor was covered by a layer of constantly talking lips, which tore each other apart to form a human shape. It slowly floated up as the lips throughout its body exhaled and exhaled, creating ripples.
The fleshy figure made of lips became a lotus seedpod floating in a pool of blood.
Xue Chao pressed the lips in his palm into the fleshy man. The fleshy man sank down for a while, then slowly floated up again. So he stepped on the fleshy man's "chest", tied the roots to the "limbs" covered with lips, and pulled hard, gathering the fleshy man into a small boat.
His lips were originally aimed at "Chi An" and were barking at him. Now that he stepped on him, he tried to change direction and continue barking at him, but Xue Chao slapped him across the face without any politeness.
"All you do is talk, nothing you do?" Xue Chao pointed impatiently at the teeth. "Just pretend I'm still in the teeth. It's best if I blow air into them so I can push water—can't you make noise? Make noise."
Quickly send him back to the pipeline.
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