Chapter 59 Circle (Part 7) The First Time.
The lights above turned back on.
The two faced each other without speaking first. A strange competitive spirit made Xia Zhu refuse to exchange glances with Ying Huo.
"Why don't we go out and take a look..." His voice came from the bed opposite. Before he could finish speaking, Xia Zhu rolled over and stepped onto the ground.
Ying Huo followed behind her, a cold sneer escaping his nose.
They walked down the corridor one after the other, to an elevator door at the end, with the emergency exit sign lit in the lower right corner. The other corner was hidden in shadow, and Xia Zhu was unsure which way to go.
Suddenly, the door behind her was flung open with tremendous force, and a dark figure crashed into the opposite wall. Even a fleeting glance sent chills down Xia Zhu's spine.
Neither human nor dog.
Xia Zhu and Ying Huo exchanged a quick glance and, surprisingly, ran toward the elevator in perfect unison.
Isn't it an emergency exit, like a mission marker in a game?
"Ding—" The elevator doors opened, and the two slipped inside, closing the doors before the monster could rush over.
Xia Zhu leaned against the elevator wall, slightly out of breath. The cramped space brought them closer than ever before. In fact, an elevator could carry seven or eight people; such a space shouldn't have made two people feel uncomfortable about their social boundaries. But unfortunately, only Xia Zhu and Ying Huo were in that elevator.
She was alright, but her keen sense of smell made it impossible for her to ignore the scent on the other person, as if she were lying on a grassy field that had just been drizzled.
On the other hand, Xia Zhu thought that if Ying Huo's parents were there, they would definitely push him on the shoulder and say, "Good boy, be generous." For a moment, Xia Zhu even wanted to say those words for him.
He huddled in a corner inside the elevator, perhaps thinking that this would allow him to maintain the greatest possible distance from Xia Zhu. This unfamiliar girl always made him feel uneasy; that familiar sense of oppression made Ying Huo both wary and curious.
Even though he didn't know Xia Zhu's full name.
Ah Zhu, that's what the Feng family calls her.
What character is "Zhu"?
Suddenly snapping out of his reverie, Ying Huo's expression was one of utter terror.
"Nobody wants to press the elevator button?" As if to cover something up, he casually put one hand in his pocket, straightened his upper body and walked to the elevator button. His pale and slender fingers hesitated over the only four numbers. The pigeon blood red gemstone ring once again attracted Xia Zhu's attention.
Beneath the flame-like burning light, there seemed to be some kind of texture hidden.
Before he could make a decision, the elevator car suddenly shook violently, and the overhead light source flickered incessantly.
Ying Huo's pretty face turned deathly pale again. He quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket, spread his arms, and pressed his back tightly against the wall.
"What's going on!" His voice was distorted.
Xia Zhu slowly shifted her gaze from the ruby ring to his face, expressionlessly admiring Ying Huo's rather dramatic posture.
"Maybe it's an elevator malfunction. The kind that suddenly drops."
"What?! Then what should we do?" Those beautiful gray eyes blinked pitifully, making it hard to bear looking at them.
"It's best to crouch down and hug the body, so the people collecting the body won't have to bother."
"What's the trouble?"
"Go and pick up your scattered body parts."
Perhaps it was because Xia Zhu's face didn't seem like the type to talk nonsense, or perhaps it was because her expression was too serious and her tone too sincere. Under her gaze, Ying Huo slowly squatted down, burying his face in his hands and huddling in the corner.
The elevator shook even more violently, and the man had a faint urge to scream, but out of his non-existent sense of dignity and face, he gritted his teeth and swallowed it down.
Xia Zhu subtly curled the corners of her lips, feeling inexplicably pleased. She turned her head to look at the screen inside the elevator, where the numbers were rapidly flipping, plummeting from 3 to -1, and then rising back to 3. Even Xia Zhu had to reach out and tightly grip the handrail behind her.
The elevator finally stopped at a certain floor, and the number on the screen eventually displayed "-1".
The doors slowly opened to reveal a dark corridor and a halo of light at its end. She stared at the light for a moment, then stepped out of the elevator.
Sensing the changes around him, Ying Huo finally lowered his hands and raised his head.
Before her eyes was Xia Zhu's tall figure against the light. Although she was wearing a school uniform, her posture was upright, and she held that...that short sword in her hand. Her sleeves were rolled up above her forearms, revealing a smooth muscle line on her elbows, which then disappeared into her sleeves along her smooth and delicate skin.
He suddenly felt the temperature inside the elevator rising, making his head spin. So he quickly stood up, patted the wrinkles on his clothes, scratched his actually meticulously styled hair, and stepped out of the elevator as if to appear relaxed.
"What a coincidence, I was also going to check out the basement level."
Xia Zhu ignored him and walked straight towards the room at the end of the room.
Ying Huo followed behind her, snorting in dissatisfaction.
Morgue.
At the end of the alley was just an overly spacious morgue.
Feng Feng and Ji Wuchou are not here.
The bright incandescent light overhead shone directly onto the translucent floor. The two figures were reflected in it, swaying precariously.
A conspicuous clock hung on the wall by the door. Ying Huo stood below the clock, staring at the hour hand that was stopped at exactly one o'clock without saying a word.
"It seems like this place..." Xia Zhu was about to say something when a series of hurried footsteps came from outside the door. She tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword. Several unfamiliar faces appeared at the door, their expressions panicked and terrified.
"Humans? Are you human?" a boy asked Xia Zhu timidly. When he saw the furnishings in the room, he was clearly startled again, and his voice was choked with breathlessness.
Xia Zhu glanced at Ying Huo, who didn't intend to pay attention to these people, and decided to negotiate himself.
"Who are you, and where did you come from?"
The group chattered on, explaining that they had woken up in a hospital room as a pair, were chased by a monster that was neither human nor dog nor rabbit, and had fled all the way here. Some of their companions had already been brutally murdered.
“We don’t know each other, how did we end up waking up here for no reason? What exactly happened…” The boy, who looked frightened, wanted to say more, but Xia Zhu gestured for him to be quiet.
A strange vibration came from the ceiling above my head, followed by a creaking sound.
"Step back." Xia Zhu waved to signal everyone. As soon as he finished speaking, the ceiling collapsed, with rubble and broken planks plunging downwards in a dangerous manner. A huge, gooey figure slipped out of the hole, falling a considerable distance before coming to rest in the corridor. Like a puddle of mud pooling on the floor, its massive body slowly revealed itself.
Xia Zhu shifted her gaze from the monster and placed an arm at the entrance of the hole. Her pupils contracted sharply, and she rushed down into the hole, ignoring the writhing monster.
Ji Wuchou hung there, her face covered in blood. Sharp wooden splinters were stuck in her arm. Blood blurred her vision, but she seemed to sense Xia Zhu's presence and barely managed to open her eyelids.
"Run...faster..." She only managed to say this to Xia Zhu before the last glimmer of light in her eyes went out completely. Xia Zhu couldn't accept such a sudden change. She tried to stand on tiptoe and reach out to grab Ji Wuchou's limp arm, but found that she couldn't feel the Xiang power flowing in her body, while Ji Wuchou was still lying there quietly with her eyes closed.
The force seemed to have vanished.
She blankly withdrew her hand, looking at the still-warm blood of Ji Wuchou in her palm.
The giant stitched monster in the corridor had stood up again, its body squeezing into the corridor like a lump of rotting flesh, seemingly sucking away all the oxygen, with a giant rat-like fleshy tail swishing behind it.
The monster lunged at the group of NPCs by the door. A boy pushed his companion into the doorway and spread his arms to shield the monster. This brave and touching act couldn't stop the monster from opening its blood-red maw and biting off the boy's head.
The severed neck and torso remained sprawled in place, the monster having already brushed past the corpse, its claws reaching for the others inside the door. Screams echoed around Xia Zhu; the slaughter was swift, almost instantaneous, and everyone, including Ying Huo who had been far away, lay in pools of blood.
Xia Zhu stared blankly at everything before her, then dragged her heavy steps to Ying Huo's side.
His once-proud clothes were now a crumpled mess, covered in so much blood that Xia Zhu couldn't find a fatal wound. He was even paler than before, like a petal so thin you could see its veins.
Ying Huo barely opened one eye, revealing a gray undertone.
"Now, it's up to you..."
Xia Zhu closed his eyes completely under her strange expression.
"I'm counting on you?" This is not something an arrogant person like Ying Huo would say. He cherishes his life so much that he would never, on his deathbed, tell Xia Zhu to live on strongly like a righteous and virtuous person.
All of this is too bizarre.
Xia Zhu couldn't accept the outcome as reality. For a moment, she even doubted whether she was cold-blooded and heartless, unable to feel a trace of sadness.
She knelt on the cold floor, staring at Ying Huo's corpse, her eyes slowly losing focus.
Suddenly, the overhead lights flickered a few times, and the surroundings were plunged into complete darkness.
Five seconds, or maybe ten seconds.
The darkness was both brief and long.
Xia Zhu clenched her fists to confirm that she was still alive.
When light returned, she stared in disbelief at the scene of utter devastation that had vanished. The blood, the hole in the ceiling, the corpses of Ying Huo and Ji Wuchou—all had disappeared.
It was so clean, as if I had just had a dream.
She stood up stiffly, realizing the practical purpose of the room. Then she slowly walked towards one of the refrigerated compartments. She stared at the metal handle as if thinking about something, and after a moment, with great courage, Xia Zhu pulled open the drawer in front of her.
Her dry, red hair was slightly curled, and a round, brown bead hung down her neck.
She slammed the drawer shut, not daring to look at it again.
Her chest heaved violently, causing her breathing to become disordered. Xia Zhu gripped the small sword tightly in her hand, telling herself that this was all a lie.
"Ding—" The sound of the elevator stopping came from the end of the corridor. She took a deep breath and walked towards the elevator.
Unbeknownst to Xia Zhu, on the wall next to the entrance to the morgue, the clock had already ticked to exactly two o'clock.
Xia Zhu No. 1 stepped out of the elevator and returned to the corridor on the third floor.
She hid in the shadows around the corner and watched as she and Ying Huo walked out of the ward.
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