Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Dr. Du stood where he was, his scalpel hand shaking constantly. He looked pathetic, his lenses covered in white fog.
His lips trembled. “Yes. You can live, and I can’t. If I become you, heh heh heh, I can walk out alive…”
What a twisted genius of logic. He had actually worked out a way to make it happen!
Heng Jiangyue clutched her neck, her body swaying. She had never imagined that she would fail even to leave the campus.
She could dream of the future!
Wasn’t that the sort of special advantage only a protagonist received?
She could not accept it. She could not accept it at all.
Blood ran between her fingers. Her open mouth rasped, and bloody bubbles rose from it.
At last, still bitterly refusing to accept her fate, Heng Jiangyue fell heavily to the ground.
Dr. Du looked around, thinking no one had seen him.
He wiped the scalpel on his shirt and dragged Heng Jiangyue’s twitching corpse into the shrubs.
When it was done, he wiped away the tears beneath his black-framed glasses.
He crouched beside Heng Jiangyue, both hands hanging down, and laughed nervously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to choose you at first, but those two girls ran off. You kept talking about your dreams, and I believed you.
I’ll probably have nightmares tonight too. Please don’t come into my dreams and frighten me. If you have any last wishes, tell me in a dream. Once I get out alive, I’ll fulfill them for you.”
Something was wrong with Dr. Du’s head.
Killing people and repenting at the same time.
Hidden behind the rubbish bin, Lin Yinxi felt a chill across her back.
She understood what Dr. Du intended to do.
After the acid-soaked bird died, it became contaminated and mutated.
That sick freak, Dr. Du, wanted to kill Heng Jiangyue, then wear her contaminated skin before she fully mutated and sneak out right under the guard’s nose.
Originally, he had not been certain it would work.
But Heng Jiangyue kept muttering about her dreams as they fled. Dr. Du remembered, and that made him decide to target her.
Lin Yinxi instinctively tightened her grip on Deng Miao’s hand. Her palm was soaked in cold sweat.
But Deng Miao lowered her head and suddenly smiled.
If Lin Yinxi could figure it out, Deng Miao surely could too.
Lin Yinxi looked at her in surprise.
Don’t smile!
One hidden psychopath had already appeared. Please don’t let there be a second.
Lin Yinxi was weak and run-down. Her poor little heart could not take it.
Fortunately, Deng Miao merely raised her index finger, poked it into her ear, pulled it out, and poked it in again, as though playing an interesting game.
She tilted her head and stared at Lin Yinxi, whispering mysteriously, “Yinxi, I heard that sound again.”
Lin Yinxi paused. “What sound?”
“The lucky chime.” Her eyes shone as she looked at Lin Yinxi. “Every time I hear it, something good happens.”
Deng Miao had a round face and two small dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
She looked exceptionally innocent. Her trust in her upperclasswoman was so fanatical that it was a little abnormal.
That innocence was rather chilling.
“Yinxi, every time I hear that sound, it has something to do with you.”
Lin Yinxi listened quietly.
The guard had not returned yet, and Dr. Du was still crouching in the shrubs, acting deranged.
Somewhat excited, Deng Miao pressed close and whispered, “The first time I heard it was in primary school. You and your mommy came to our village school to choose someone to sponsor.”
“I heard a bell chime, and then you chose me.”
Deng Miao raised a second finger. “The second time was in the women’s dormitory. You came up to find us. None of them believed you. Only I did. Then they all died, and only I survived.”
“The third time is now.” A red cinnabar bracelet encircled Deng Miao’s left wrist. Her fingers stroked the round beads of the evil-warding bracelet. “Yinxi, don’t be modest. I know you must have a way to get me out safely.”
Deng Miao’s confidence in Lin Yinxi was overflowing.
Lin Yinxi pressed a hand to her forehead.
Help. Stop jinxing her with all that confidence. The pressure was enormous.
Wearing Heng Jiangyue’s skin, Dr. Du slowly rose from the shrubs.
It did not fit him perfectly. He was ruthless enough to use the needle and thread he carried to sew part of the skin onto his own body.
Head lowered, pressing down the ill-fitting areas, he staggered toward the security booth. From a distance, he really did look like an injured Heng Jiangyue.
Lin Yinxi held her breath and watched his movements intently.
A round button was on the windowsill outside the booth. Normally, students seeking the guard’s help pressed it to ring a bell inside.
Dr. Du reached the windowsill and pressed it.
Ding, ding, ding. A clear bell rang at the silent campus entrance. Ordinarily, the sound meant nothing. Now, amid this thick atmosphere of death, each ring seemed to make Lin Yinxi’s heart lurch.
The guard returned, crawling sideways from the other side of the gate. Several jointed legs alternated rapidly, looking rather like a deformed crab. The guard’s head tilted, eyes darting about, one hand holding the radio-shaped [Eye].
Red light flashed on and off.
Dr. Du stood motionless.
Lin Yinxi nervously held her breath too.
She could see his shoulders quivering slightly and his hands clenched tightly at his sides. He had killed swiftly and decisively. When it came to himself, he was desperately afraid to die.
The guard crawled up to him and stopped.
The radio-shaped [Eye] slowly rose. Its red light shone onto Dr. Du, scanning him from head to foot…
No alarm sounded!
After the scan, the guard’s grayish-white eyes turned, and a hand reached toward the waist.
With a beep, the cantilever gate opened.
Cold sweat broke out on Lin Yinxi’s palms.
That method really worked!
Wearing contaminated skin was enough to fool the guard’s scan!
Seeing the gate open, Dr. Du stumbled and rushed out.
Lin Yinxi slowly turned toward Heng Jiangyue’s corpse in the shrubs.
After dying, the bird had twisted into a strange shape and flown again.
After Heng Jiangyue’s death… she too might come back to life in a monstrous form.
Mutation took time.
They did not have much time left.
Deng Miao followed her gaze, swallowed, and asked quietly, “Yinxi, do we have to get out that way too? There are two of us, so we’d need two skins…”
She had such faith in her lucky chime that she was not remotely worried Lin Yinxi would copy Dr. Du and slaughter her.
Lin Yinxi said nothing. Though the shrubs had hidden it, merely thinking of what Dr. Du had done there made acid rise in her stomach.
Yes, her spleen and stomach were weak too.[^spleen-stomach]
Lin Yinxi thought they might slip through if they put the corpse in front and hid behind it, letting it block the red light.
But as soon as the idea occurred to her, she frowned again.
No.
Practice was much harder than theory. Heng Jiangyue was dead, and dead people were heavier to handle than living ones.
She had seen people drunk unconscious before. Though their weight was much the same, dragging them felt like hauling something filled with lead.
And there were two of them to consider now.
She and Deng Miao could not possibly maneuver Heng Jiangyue’s corpse precisely all the way to the entrance.
What could they do? Lin Yinxi searched her phone for a way forward in the group.
Just then, a new message arrived from [Rabbit Keeper].
[^spleen-stomach]: In traditional Chinese medicine, the spleen and stomach are linked with digestion. Lin Yinxi uses these terms to joke about her frailty.