Chapter 22
Chapter 22
A cold gun barrel pressed against Assistant Li’s temple. Expressionless, he reached up to adjust his glasses, cracked and scarred from the blows.
But his body was trembling. Blood from his palm smeared onto his face, adding vivid streaks of red to his bruised cheek.
He had never been in such a sorry state. His white coat was filthy and torn.
The bandages over his treated injuries had come loose. The wounds were in bad shape.
Even so, he didn’t change his story. “I don’t know Zhao Xiuming’s plan. I don’t know what you mean.”
“The two-headed monster outside doesn’t obey me. It can track people. Neither of us is tipping it off.”
He paused, then gave a bitter smile. “We gave you all the dried meat. You’ve searched us several times. Isn’t that enough?”
In the white ward, several armed soldiers stood guard and forced answers out of him. They hadn’t tied him up. Instead, they kicked him to the floor and viciously stamped on him.
Their leather boots were fitted with sharp ornaments that could draw blood with a kick.
Still unsatisfied, the soldiers finally struck him with their rifle stocks in fury. At least they didn’t shoot him outright.
Before Assistant Li could relax, another kick landed on his shoulder. Pain twisted his face.
The soldier holding him at gunpoint swore as he gave orders. “Fuck! You think I won’t kill you? Getting above yourself, are you?”
“Sixteen of us protected you all night, and this is how you repay me? Come on! Keep kicking!”
Assistant Li had the constitution of an ordinary human from a romance novel. He couldn’t begin to compare with Terror Game’s players.
Though he did his best to shield his vital areas, a kick still caught him in the chest. He spat out blood and collapsed.
Zhou Qingyan stood nearby. She had few injuries, but she was just as filthy and looked utterly exhausted.
Watching him anxiously, she held up her phone to the soldier beside her. “I’ve sent him a message. If Zhao Xiuming isn’t dead, he’ll reply.”
“I told him what you wanted. That you’re a rescue team, and you have to find everyone before you can get us out. If he really has ties to the anomalies here, he’ll show himself.”
“Stop hitting him. Please, stop.”
“Zhao Xiuming must know where Zhang Xueya is. Please stop hitting him.”
Unable to hold back, she began sobbing aloud, her composure shattered.
After they split up with Zhao Xiuming, she and Assistant Li had been discovered by the rampaging anomalies.
Fortunately, the anomalies weren’t very interested in them. The monster made from the driver and bodyguards had also been drawn away by Zhao Xiuming.
Their hiding room was safe. But the peace hadn’t lasted long before a group of soldiers broke in.
At the time, Zhou Qingyan had thought they were a rescue team from the real world. She’d burst into tears of joy.
Under that misapprehension, she’d poured out everything that had happened to her.
The Terror Game players, believing they’d encountered story characters, hadn’t killed them.
Assistant Li had fought his way through life and was deeply calculating.
Zhou Qingyan, however, was the perfect weak point. Under the “rescue team’s” probing, she disclosed where they had come from and why.
Neither Zhao Xiuming nor Assistant Li had told her about the romance novel.
She hadn’t mentioned instances or players herself, either. Not because she was clever enough to spot something wrong.
She simply assumed that if soldiers could come to rescue them, they must already know instances existed.
Besides, she’d told the truth in the president’s office and been declared mentally ill and locked up. If Assistant Li hadn’t driven over to collect her, she might still be undergoing treatment.
That painful experience had taught her to keep quiet. Thanks to that, when they discovered the so-called soldiers were Terror Game players, they hadn’t revealed too much and still had room to maneuver.
She had never been good at making decisions. Assistant Li had handled all the negotiations.
Knowing the players could produce lie-detecting items, they tried to answer truthfully.
As both sides tested one another, Assistant Li realized the players seemed to regard him as an NPC who could issue missions. He decided to play along.
Now they were being mistreated because, after explaining the “instance storyline,” the two NPCs had outlived their usefulness.
Keeping them around required effort to protect them. They were dead weight.
Terror Game’s players weren’t actually here to find someone. Their objective was to discover the truth behind the hospital instance’s mutation.
They, too, had noticed that apart from the two-headed flesh monster, which could be injured, the anomaly doctors healed themselves and couldn’t be killed.
Combined with the storyline NPC Assistant Li had provided, this convinced them that the instance’s changes were connected to Zhao Xiuming.
Especially after seeing how inseparable he and the biker were, they judged the two to be working together.
Over the course of the night, Horror Game’s players had been looking for their companions’ bodies. The Terror players hadn’t lost anyone and hadn’t had much time to look for other clues.
Even a fool could have noticed that the pattern of the two-headed monster’s attacks was connected to Assistant Li and Zhou Qingyan. They assumed the two NPCs had a special link to it.
Worse, the monster was growing fast. Even with sixteen people taking shifts, they couldn’t destroy it. Keep this up, and they were bound to start losing people.
The soldier leading the beating was thoroughly irritated by Zhou Qingyan’s sobbing. He took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Shut up! That crying makes me sick.” Crushing the butt, he approached her. “If this weren’t such a bad time, I’d… Hell, no reason I can’t do it now.”
Sensitive to the danger, she looked desperately at her phone.
She feared Zhao Xiuming had died and left them here to wait for death. She also feared he’d already escaped the instance and abandoned them.
Her thoughts tangled. She couldn’t help backing away.
Her hope was fading. She felt for the scalpel hidden in her sleeve. If Assistant Li died and left her alone, if this man dared come any closer, then she would…
Buzz.
The phone vibrated at that ill-timed moment. The soldier stopped unbuckling his belt. Zhou Qingyan immediately answered.
A casual voice, touched with amusement, came through. “Oh? It actually connects?”
Then, a gentle, relieved question, almost to himself. “When did phones start working?”
“Is that you, Miss Zhou?”
“I saw your message. A rescue team actually came? That’s… wonderful.”
He hesitated before continuing. “I know where Zhang Xueya is.”
“In the morgue. I’m here, too.”
“It sounds dangerous, but it’s actually very safe here at night.”
“Are you listening? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
The other soldiers stopped beating Assistant Li. The one lowering his trousers hurriedly pulled them up again.
They surrounded Zhou Qingyan, warning her with their eyes not to say the wrong thing.
The nearest soldier aimed his gun at the back of her head. She closed her eyes and tried to answer calmly. “I understand.”
“Zhao Xiuming, you… stay safe.”
On the other end, he laughed meaningfully. “Of course.”
“I think I’ve figured out the hospital’s secret. I’m really worried now. Can you and Assistant Li come quickly?”