Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Their secret base was the little tree house in their backyard.
The phone signal vanished again.
Lin Yinxi needed to get the key quickly, leave Jincheng University, and meet her brother.
The electronic key was at the guard’s waist. Pressing it would open the cantilever gate.
In the large [Green-Eyed Rabbit Containment Center] group, Lin Yinxi saw the guard’s profile picture pop up.
It was a close-up selfie.
The photograph the guard posted showed the radio that had just been fiddled with.
Lin Yinxi enlarged the radio and discovered it was merely a monster shaped like one. The round part in the middle was not a speaker but a huge, pitch-black eye.
The eye could shine red light outward.
What stuck out from the top was not an antenna either, but a retractable black tentacle.
Afraid of alerting the guard, Lin Yinxi did not dare play the voice message.
After the guard posted it, a string of entities joined in the idle chatter.
Among the strange replies, Lin Yinxi spotted rare entities like [Rabbit Keeper], capable of human speech.
[Corpse-Shedding Immortal: Low-ranking entities really are dull-witted.]
[Corpse-Shedding Immortal: A human’s outer skin can deceive you. Their contamination level cannot.]
[Corpse-Shedding Immortal: You can’t even use Eye. What business do you have guarding a gate?]
[Fly: Heh heh heh. Please don’t insult my work.]
[Fly: Jincheng University’s Gatekeeper is a masterpiece of my careful design.]
[Fly: I fused the school’s day-shift and night-shift guards. I turned their human legs into multiple legs for convenient patrolling, replaced their old eyes with four compound eyes equipped with sensing pores for convenient surveillance, and kept the vocal cords’ broadcast function for convenient dissemination of rules.]
[Fly: He has two brains. One rests while the other works. They alternate, so he can keep going forever.]
[Fly: He may not have retained much intelligence, but he’ll never make a mistake executing an order.]
The two entities in the group had clashed.
Lin Yinxi stared at the photograph the guard had posted.
The radio-like monster in it had a single pitch-black eye in the middle, edged with dark red light.
Corpse-Shedding Immortal had said: You can’t even use Eye. What business do you have guarding a gate?
“Eye…”
Lin Yinxi’s gaze rested on the black eyeball in the picture.
This radio was [Eye]. It could cast a field of red light outward and detect the contamination levels of creatures entering or leaving.
[Fly]’s words, meanwhile, were considerably more horrifying.
Reading Fly’s messages, Lin Yinxi felt a chill down her back. She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms and recalled her brother saying that some entities had once been human.
The guard before her was two living people forcibly stitched into one complete Gatekeeper.
Lin Yinxi saw the guard lower the newspaper. The grayish-white eyes turned outward.
Several jointed legs extended from beneath the chair, below the guard’s waist.
Clack, clack, clack.
Sharp joints struck the ground. The guard crawled out of the booth, carrying the radio-shaped [Eye], and red light slowly swept the area near the campus gate.
As the red light crossed the edge of the rubbish bin, Lin Yinxi immediately pressed Deng Miao’s head down.
The guard drew closer and closer.
Lin Yinxi’s heart thudded.
Just then, a car horn sounded nearby. The guard’s head slowly turned, then the guard scuttled sideways like a hermit crab toward the source of the sound.
Lin Yinxi breathed in relief.
Deng Miao raised her round face and looked diagonally upward through a gap in the leaves, her expression puzzled. “Yinxi, look. That little bird in the tree seems to have grown teeth on its wings.”
Lin Yinxi followed her gaze.
She saw the corpse of the little bird that had fallen from a branch lie stiff for a while. Then its wings suddenly twitched and contorted. It moved again and flew skyward.
This time, it passed through the barrier above the cantilever gate, flapping its wings and flying higher.
When it was alive, the bird had been stopped by the invisible barrier.
After dying and mutating under the acid rain’s effects, it could fly out.
That meant Lin Yinxi needed to cloak herself in a contaminated outer layer, just like the bird.
Dr. Du and Heng Jiangyue finally hurried into sight.
Heng Jiangyue had taken off her jacket and held it over her head, both hands raised to support it. Seeing the security booth from a distance, she slowed and looked around for somewhere to hide.
Dr. Du stumbled toward it, black hair plastered to his forehead, his face deathly pale.
A large patch of his arm had been corroded by acid rain, revealing pink flesh beneath. Bloody fluid flowed down his arm.
“Where are those two students?” Dr. Du stared fixedly at the mutated bird flying away overhead, his expression unreadable.
“Maybe they’ve already got out.” Heng Jiangyue ducked into the shrubs beside them first, crawling forward on her knees.
Then Dr. Du’s gaze slowly settled on Heng Jiangyue.
He stared at her back and extended his red tongue to lick his dry, peeling lower lip. “They left? Didn’t wait for us? College students these days really have no manners.”
Deng Miao wanted to wave, but Lin Yinxi pulled her back.
Lin Yinxi covered her mouth. “Shh. Don’t move.”
Deng Miao blinked her round eyes and nodded.
After Lin Yinxi let go, Deng Miao stayed crouched there.
Lin Yinxi did not reveal herself.
She chose to stay behind the rubbish bin and watch Heng Jiangyue’s and Dr. Du’s reactions first.
Especially Heng Jiangyue. She had kept muttering about her dreams outside the women’s dormitory.
Lin Yinxi was not deaf. She had worked out that Heng Jiangyue could dream of the future.
In those dreams, Lin Yinxi had not escaped the women’s dormitory alive.
Since Heng Jiangyue had prophetic dreams, she must know how to get past the cantilever gate.
Lin Yinxi hid there and watched.
Dr. Du followed Heng Jiangyue. He was tall and long-limbed, and even crouching in the shrubs, half his back still showed.
“W-wait…” Dr. Du hunched his shoulders, looking timid, his throat tight.
Heng Jiangyue frowned and looked back. Restraining her temper, she spoke impatiently. “What is it now? Could you stop making such a fuss about everything?”
Dr. Du held his arm, his face deathly pale.
“My arm hurts terribly… I need to bandage it. Could you come and help me?”
Heng Jiangyue stopped. Her gaze shifted, and she lowered her head to examine his wound, thinking what a burden he was. “You’re a doctor yourself. Asking me…”
She did not finish.
A cold gleam flashed!
Dr. Du suddenly raised his hand. His scalpel sliced smoothly across Heng Jiangyue’s neck.
Too fast. He struck with chillingly professional skill.
Deng Miao shuddered and shrank closer to Lin Yinxi.
Lin Yinxi held Deng Miao’s hand. Her own palm was also slick with cold sweat.
“You…” Heng Jiangyue’s eyes widened. She clutched her neck, blood pouring continuously between her fingers. “Impossible… I got out alive in my dream… I can foresee the future… Impossible…”
She staggered back a step, her eyes full of disbelief.