Chapter 23
Chapter 23
Zhou Qingyan could hardly describe the voice she was hearing. She was certain it was Zhao Xiuming on the other end.
But he would never normally speak like that. There was a sort of… clingy, coaxing quality to it.
Her sixth sense was screaming that something was wrong with him, yet she couldn’t pinpoint what.
She could hardly say he’d suddenly become far more tender and affectionate.
What if he was simply in a good mood and exceptionally resilient?
But an ordinary person encountering anomalies, dragged into an instance, then affectionately inviting companions to join him in a morgue… That was definitely wrong!
She had no choice. Her nose stung. Frightened, fearful, and deeply aggrieved, she said, “Yes. Assistant Li and I will… we’ll come find you soon.”
“Please wait for us.”
“Zhao Xiuming…”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I was prejudiced against you before.”
Silence lasted several seconds on the other end, followed by a lazy laugh. “That? What’s it got to do with me?”
“You seem to feel very guilty. Would getting my forgiveness make you feel better?”
“But can we not talk about that right now?”
She didn’t know how to respond. She thought he didn’t want to forgive her, and her already low spirits sank further.
Still, she knew this wasn’t the right time to bring it up. After a long struggle, she managed, “Yes. I understand.”
He seemed a little impatient now. “Don’t say so much to me, or think so much about it. We probably won’t have much to do with each other in the future.”
She didn’t understand and couldn’t ask. Ending the call, she wiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop.
The Terror players beside her didn’t care about her feelings. They didn’t know Zhao Xiuming’s former personality and couldn’t recognize anything unusual. All they heard was the information they needed.
Every Terror player present wore a helmet and a wire-mesh face guard, as well as a communicator.
Unlike Horror Game’s players, they didn’t need to search for one another. A single notification would send the whole group toward the same objective.
Zhou Qingyan and Assistant Li had become valuable again, saving their lives.
After all, they could serve as hostages for negotiating or communicating with Zhao Xiuming.
In the morgue’s body-storage room, the cold turned each exhalation into white mist. Through the haze, Zhao Xiuming half narrowed his eyes.
He stood in the dark. The mutation in his right hand had become severe.
Feelers threaded through his flesh, invading and infecting half his shoulder.
Seemingly oblivious, he let his right hand swell and become hideously distorted.
Patterns of feelers covered his cheek, too. Just like the monster the driver and bodyguards had become, black funguslike veins were beginning to spread beneath his feet.
He crouched with interest to examine the marks on the floor.
His points had reached a hundred thousand. He could buy several purification items to restore himself to normal.
But he wasn’t in a hurry. He even had the leisure to consider how it felt. [System, I don’t think my mind has been affected.]
[You seem fine, too.]
The System sounded unruffled and rather interested. [Disappointed, then?]
[Yes.] Zhao Xiuming liked bantering with him. In truth, he was simply bored. [I’ll have to act a little crazier.]
[Otherwise, how will I lure Zhang Xueya out?]
[Ha…] The System made an odd, inscrutable sound. [My host Gege is keeping a dog and fishing for his ex-girlfriend.]
[And he’s infatuated with the beautiful big sister in red.]
[But my host Gege is still just an innocent college boy…]
Zhao Xiuming felt like laughing. He stood, touched his neck, and turned to the biker beside him. “Can you pull my head out for me?”
“Can I play at releasing balloons like those doctors now?”
The masked biker’s body shook. Slowly, he shook his head.
He gestured for Zhao Xiuming to stop fooling around, then signaled for him to listen carefully.
Zhao Xiuming’s right ear had mutated, and his physique had grown stronger. He looked thoughtfully around.
Then he caught a faint scent: information about Assistant Li and Zhou Qingyan.
A powerful urge to kill rose in his chest, along with hunger.
It was as though something urged him to devour humans. Only by devouring could he grow stronger.
His Adam’s apple moved. He forcibly suppressed the desire.
The sound of flesh grinding across the floor reached him. The first to find him wasn’t a Horror Game player or a Terror Game player.
It was the two-headed monster made from the driver and bodyguards, still a writhing mass of flesh with limbs jutting out in all directions.
But it was wounded, injured by bullets enhanced with items.
Zhao Xiuming was only partly mutated. The creature had mutated completely.
By rights, he shouldn’t be able to beat it. But he had captured many doctors, and his points were still rising.
Bound behind him, Pu Yuanliang was restless, waiting for his chance to profit while the two sides fought.
He hadn’t expected the feelers to hoist him high and throw him out.
Zhao Xiuming turned and smiled at the biker. “Little Darling, I need you to do something for me. And one more thing.”
“Whatever happens, don’t save me.”
Outside the morgue, the Terror Game players waited by the entrance with their guns raised.
They released a low-flying surveillance drone. The scout’s high-definition screen showed the interior of the detached building clearly.
The building lay in shade and was especially cold. With the corpse drawers wide open, the temperature had fallen enough to fog every glass surface.
Most rooms on either side of the corridor were locked. Through the blurred glass, the medicines and equipment inside were indistinct.
Only a windowless storeroom stood open. Numerous footprints marked the dusty floor, showing that at least five people had hidden there.
Farther in, the footprints became more chaotic. Black mold covered the walls, making everything look filthy.
The smooth floor was foul with scraps of flesh and black-red blood. Severed feelers still writhed.
The Terror soldiers watching outside were very interested, especially when they saw the bodies lying throughout the corridor.
All were anomaly doctors. Those plastic things had been torn apart. Their heads could no longer fly.
The dismembered plastic anomalies resembled humans so closely that the sight was especially disturbing.
The Terror Game players didn’t care. They only found it satisfying.
“These doctors haven’t revived. They’ve actually been killed!”
The scout sounded delighted. Their item-enhanced weapons could badly injure anomalies, but were nowhere near capable of killing them.
The drone moved closer to inspect the wounds. The doctors had died strangely. There were no weapon wounds, only tears.
The soldiers sent the drone farther in. Sounds of fighting came through the screen.
The anomalies’ roars were unmistakable. Loud crashes came from the body-storage room at the far end, where a monster made from severed limbs rampaged. Refrigerated cabinets inside crunched and cracked as they were crushed flat.
Anomalies were hurled out constantly, only to get up and lunge back in.
They ignored the drone completely. Every one of them was in a frenzy.
The drone held at a moderate distance and began zooming in.
The broken door hung precariously, leaving the interior fully exposed. Sure enough, the anomalies were attacking one another.
The two-headed monster and the anomaly doctors had joined forces against something surrounded by them.
At last, the camera caught their target through a gap. The Terror players were surprised.
It was Zhao Xiuming.
He had been infected and become a half-human, half-anomaly monster. His entire right arm was swollen and blue-purple, looking at first glance as though it had turned into a zombie’s.
But a zombie’s arm wouldn’t have feelers threading through it, growing into tentacles that stretched, lashed about, and killed in every direction.
His eyes were entirely black, with no whites.
His complexion looked terrible, carrying an eerie plastic sheen. Loose hair swept across his face as he moved, exposing its lower half. The faint smile there was unmistakable.
He looked in a dreadful state. When the two-headed monster enveloped him, he opened his mouth and bit into its flesh, tearing and swallowing as though he’d lost all reason.
Nothing about him looked human anymore. He was more like a beast feeding on raw flesh and blood.
The drone circled but found no sign of Zhang Xueya.
After confirming the situation, the Terror soldiers charged in together.
They intended to wipe out all the NPCs. Seeing the doctors’ bodies, they assumed anomalies could be killed by attacking during the day.
Assistant Li and Zhou Qingyan were forced inside as well. Seeing Zhao Xiuming with their own eyes, both were deeply shocked.
Had he… died? Turned into an anomaly?
The Terror Game players joined the battle, making the scene even more chaotic.
Assistant Li immediately took Zhou Qingyan into the storeroom to hide.
She was dazed. “It’s over. It’s all over.”
“Is that… Zhao Xiuming? Is he dead?”
Assistant Li had little strength left. His injuries were severe.
He sagged against the wall in the corner and said weakly, “The biker isn’t in the room.”
She didn’t understand. “What? What do you mean?”
The body-storage room at the end of the corridor couldn’t possibly hold so many people.
It became crowded at once. But the corridor and other rooms offered more space to fight.
The Terror players coordinated their retreat. Several soldiers also ducked into the storeroom, interrupting Zhou Qingyan’s questions.
A Terror player threw the scout beside Assistant Li. The other three formed up to deal with the anomalies following them in.
Assistant Li and Zhou Qingyan had no chance to sort out their feelings. They were in danger again.
The attack made enough noise to alert the Horror Game players searching elsewhere. They deliberately watched from a rooftop angle that kept them out of sight, still unsure what had happened.
“Why are Terror players fighting the anomaly NPCs? Can they really kill them during the day?”
The man who had hacked the hospital surveillance system had a personal skill in machinery.
Now he took a folding computer from his backpack, bought an item that provided internet access, and checked again.
“That’s some intense fighting.”
Once connected to the morgue’s cameras, they saw the Terror players laying down fierce, unrestricted fire.
Their guns never ran out of ammunition. But with allies and anomalies packed together, they couldn’t use powerful explosives.
Finally confirming that they couldn’t kill the anomaly doctors, they realized their judgment had been wrong. Things would go badly if this continued.
The Terror soldiers tried to retreat. Orders rang in every earpiece as their commander roared, “Fall back! Fall back!”
But with explosives unusable, the anomaly doctors finally had an opportunity to inflict casualties on them.
Watching through the cameras, the Horror players could see the tide had turned. The anomaly NPCs would win this round.
“What’s that?”
The beautiful player in red asked her teammate to return to the previous view.
Then they saw that, in the body-storage room at the far end, the two-headed mass of flesh and feelers appeared to have swallowed Zhao Xiuming.
The flesh enveloped him, his eyes tightly closed, binding his limbs and continually grinding them.
The feelers on his body still resisted, but looked weak. They probably wouldn’t last much longer.
The shoulder-length-haired leader sounded regretful. “Your skill is still on cooldown. Otherwise, you could try charming another NPC. I didn’t think Zhao Xiuming would be this useless…”
“No.” The woman in red tapped the screen. “Look.”
Inside the flesh, Zhao Xiuming’s lashes fluttered. His eyes snapped open.
He seemed to know someone was watching. Across the screen, he met the players’ gaze through empty air. There was no pain on his face, only a quiet calm.
Suddenly, he smiled. The feelers on his body grew wildly, wrapping around the monster devouring him in an instant.
The two remaining heads of the bodyguards and driver stopped moving. Realizing danger had come, they frantically tried to escape.
One pulled left, the other right, trying to break free of the flesh and fly away.
Too late. Zhao Xiuming’s right hand rapidly returned to normal, and he lightly leaped out of the mass.
Once standing, he extended feelers only from his palm. The ends of the fine black strands swelled and devoured.
They instantly enclosed the two-headed monster instead. Their tips became vast, unknown mouths lined with fangs and chewed both heads to pieces.
The body of flesh didn’t lose its ability to move. It kept struggling.
Strangely, Zhao Xiuming didn’t continue eating it. Instead, he controlled what remained of the two-headed monster (a huge, misshapen mass of severed limbs) as though holding a dog on a leash.
The woman in red snatched the computer away, her eyes shining at the screen with delight.
“Did you see? No matter how much firepower the Terror players have, they can’t kill the doctors. And the doctors are eating their colleagues’ bodies. Eating makes them stronger.”
“There are so many dead anomaly doctors in the corridor. Who killed them?”
“It must have been Zhao Xiuming.”
“He can eat other anomalies. He really is powerful.”
She was so happy because she was certain of one thing: Zhao Xiuming was deeply infatuated with her.
Which more or less meant she controlled a way to kill the anomaly doctors.
The stronger Zhao Xiuming became, the safer she would be, and the safer the Horror Game players would be.
Their leader hesitated. “Are you sure he’s still under your control now?”
The teammate skilled with machinery pulled several wires from his backpack and connected them to the computer. He smiled. “Only one way to find out. And we don’t have to get close to try.”
In the body-storage room, Zhao Xiuming was looking at his right hand. He felt extraordinary. The urge to kill surged fiercely inside him. His hunger to devour clamored for destruction.
Excitement and bloodlust rose beyond his control, eager thoughts of slaughter springing up constantly.
Like seeing delicious food when starving, or clear, sweet drinking water when dying of thirst.
No. It was worse than that.
His perception was changing. Even with his reason intact, his understanding was shifting.
Humans needed food.
Just as it was only natural for him to devour anomalies and humans.
He was an NPC from an instance to begin with. Why should he think he was human?
What did being human even mean?
They were cannon fodder, protagonists, supporting characters. None of it meant anything.
Only devouring was real. Only what he felt right now was real.
Most importantly, it was fun. Everything was so much fun.
His wholly black eyes grew more sinister. His skin looked increasingly plastic.
At that moment, an undamaged computer lit up in the equipment area beside the body-storage room.
The beautiful woman in red appeared on it, smiling like a ghost through the flickering signal. “Zhao Xiuming.”
He turned at the call, a gentle smile appearing on his face. Like an intensely curious little animal, he approached the computer and bent down. “What are you doing in there?”
“Can you come out and play with me?”
“Come see me, please? That fight really hurt.”
The System repeated mockingly, [That fight… really, really hurt…]
Zhao Xiuming said, […]
The woman smiled confidently. “I can’t see you now. It’s too dangerous there. Can you kill all those soldiers?”
“Then I can come. Don’t you want to see me?”
He looked hurt. Even as an anomaly, his face was truly beautiful.
“Big sister, I can’t beat them.”
She hadn’t expected a refusal. The fully infected NPC felt far too inhuman now.
Instantly turning cold, she ordered, “Then I’ll never come see you.”
He dropped the hurt expression. After a moment’s thought, he tilted his head. “All right. I promise.”
The Horror Game players’ breathing quickened as they watched him leap back into the monster’s body and join the anomaly doctors in harvesting the Terror players’ lives.
Their leader frowned deeply. “No. Something’s wrong!”