MLV Ch 49

On the mobile workstation, the monitoring page on the computer screen suddenly flickered, and all the candidates’ surveillance videos went offline simultaneously. The teachers were startled and quickly entered commands to reconnect, but to no avail. The monitoring page went completely black.

“What’s going on?” a teacher asked, breaking out in a cold sweat.

“Technical department, investigate the cause of the disconnection. See if it’s a hacker,” Shen Duo instructed calmly. 

“Call the security personnel on site and ask them about the situation.”

The teachers hurriedly made their respective calls. They tried several numbers, but all were out of service.

Shen Duo fell silent. Something was wrong. He took out his phone and dialed Huo Ang’s number. They were short on security personnel this time, so he had arranged for Huo Ang to go in. That guy was a professional mercenary with experience from Taisui Village. Shen Duo had given him cinnabar bullets, which should have been more than enough to maintain order in the exam site. The phone rang for a long time before it was finally answered. He quickly said, “Huo Ang…”

The voice on the other end was intermittent. 

“What… I’m in an elevator… signal’s ba…”

The voice cut off abruptly, and the call was disconnected.

Li Miaomiao was woken up by her phone alarm.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and reached for her little rabbit crossbody bag, but her hand found nothing. She opened her eyes and was instantly frozen in place. She wasn’t sleeping on a Simmons mattress in a hotel room, but on a hospital bed, covered with a white sheet. All around her were similar beds, all occupied by people, all covered from head to toe with clean white sheets. Some of the sheets were too short, leaving the patients’ feet and ankles exposed. Bells were tied to their ankles. She looked down and saw her little rabbit bag at the foot of her bed.

Li Miaomiao immediately realized she was in a morgue.

She had read some ghost stories and horror novels and had heard that bells were tied to corpses’ feet so that if they reanimated, the bells would ring and alert people. A cold sweat broke out all over her body, and it felt as if dense ice needles were piercing her bones. She almost cried. She didn’t understand. She had been sleeping soundly in the hotel and had even promised her brother she would see him off to his exam the next morning. How did she end up in a hospital morgue?

No, she had to get out of here quickly.

She picked up her bag and shakily got out of bed. The head of each bed here had a name card. She was a little afraid to look at hers, terrified she would see her own name. A common trope in horror movies was seeing one’s own picture on a tombstone or one’s own name on a memorial tablet. Li Miaomiao’s heart trembled. She mustered her courage and took a look—it wasn’t her name. She breathed a sigh of relief. She tiptoed towards the door, moving as lightly as possible, her toes barely touching the ground, as if afraid of waking the corpses next to her. The morgue door was open, and an emergency light in the corridor behind it was on. The intense light only illuminated a small patch of ground; further ahead was pitch darkness. The deep darkness was silent, as if some unknown monster was lurking within.

Li Miaomiao’s legs grew weak. The corridor was so dark and looked so eerie, but the morgue with all its corpses was even eerier. Don’t be scared. Li Miaomiao clenched her fists so hard they hurt. If it were her brother, in this situation, he would definitely walk forward calmly. Thinking of Jiang Ye, she couldn’t help but cry. How did she get here? And where was her brother? Did he know she was missing? She shook her head desperately. No, she couldn’t always rely on her brother. She had to get out of here on her own.

She gritted her teeth and was about to step out when she suddenly heard a woman’s cry from the depths of the corridor: “Ah Ze… where are you? Mommy misses you so much…”

There was someone else here. Li Miaomiao’s heart leaped with joy. Just as she was about to go and meet them, she heard another sound that made her blood run cold—the sound of a bell.

Ding-ling… ding-ling…

It was very rhythmic, one pause, one ring, one pause, one ring.

Li Miaomiao froze, her gaze shifting to the bells on the corpses’ feet.

Without a doubt, this crying woman was one of the corpses from the morgue.

The sound of the bells grew clearer, and the crying grew louder, seeming to approach the morgue. Li Miaomiao slowly backed away until she saw a pair of horrifying, long, purplish-blue feet in the dim darkness. It was as if a basin of cold water had been poured over her head. Li Miaomiao was on the verge of losing her mind. She scrambled back to the hospital bed, quickly lay down, and pulled the sheet over her head. The moment she lay down, the woman’s crying reached the doorway.

“So scared… so scared… Don’t you want mommy anymore? Ah Ze…”

Her body was trembling. Li Miaomiao gritted her teeth to control herself, remaining absolutely still. Through the thin white sheet, she could vaguely see a long-limbed monster enter the doorway. What was that? Li Miaomiao didn’t know and didn’t want to know. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing her tears back.

The monster’s limbs were unusually long; it stood at least two meters tall, its silhouette grotesquely deformed. It was prowling around the beds, still some distance from Li Miaomiao. She quietly opened her eyes and peeked through the sheet. She saw the monster pull the sheet off a corpse and bend down, sniffing at something.

It pulled off one sheet, then another, slowly moving closer to Li Miaomiao. Several times, Li Miaomiao wanted to escape when its back was turned to her, but she was afraid of making a sound and being discovered. In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She lay there stiffly, watching it approach the bed next to hers. Li Miaomiao’s heart nearly stopped. The monster bent down and was sniffing the corpse next to her. Its head was also deformed; the upper part was hairless, with a large, blister-like abscess.

Seeing it straighten up and about to move towards her, Li Miaomiao quickly closed her eyes. She smelled a horrifying stench. The sheet covering her was suddenly ripped off. The cold air touched her skin, and goosebumps erupted all over her body. She forced herself not to breathe, not to move, and kept her eyes squeezed shut. The monster seemed to be slowly approaching her. The stench brushed past her cheek, and the large head with the abscess sniffed at her body. Its fingers pressed down on her, the sharp nails piercing her shoulder. Li Miaomiao bit her tongue, enduring the bone-deep pain without making a sound.

This time, the monster stayed for an especially long time. Li Miaomiao was almost convinced she was about to die. Just then, the monster’s fingers finally left her. She heard the sound of the bell gradually moving away, followed by the sound of a closing door. The monster’s presence completely vanished. Trembling, she opened her eyes. The morgue door was closed, and the emergency light from the corridor couldn’t shine in. It was pitch black all around.

Li Miaomiao moved her shoulder. A gruesome, bloody hole was gushing blood. She pressed down on her shoulder and carefully got out of bed. She listened intently. The sound of the bell was gone; the monster must have gone far. Li Miaomiao tiptoed to the door, slowly pulled it open, and a flood of intense white light poured in. The corridor was also silent, without a single soul in sight.

She was safe. She breathed a sigh of relief.

A warm drop of liquid landed on her cheek. She touched her face in confusion and found that it was blood. Why was blood dripping from the ceiling? She looked up and met a huge, pitch-black head. The monster’s body was clinging to the ceiling, its head twisted 180 degrees to face Li Miaomiao, its hideous face directly opposite hers. The drop of blood had fallen from the fingertip that had just pierced her shoulder.

“Have you seen my Ah Ze?” the monster asked in a shrill voice.

Li Miaomiao’s heart stopped.

“Ahhhhh—” she screamed piercingly.

The monster opened its mouth, which was filled with two rows of fangs, and lunged at her.

Half an hour passed, and the candidates gradually returned. Everyone had seen the corpse in the parking lot. With one person already dead, everyone was feeling uneasy and didn’t dare to venture deeper recklessly. They formed teams and tried to return to the mountain path, but after half an hour, they ended up back where they started. Zhang Yi said it was a ghost-walled maze, and there must be a ghost in this place.

Zhang Yi asked Jin Feize, “What’s the situation here? Give us an introduction.”

Jin Feize smiled and said, “Just wait for death.”

“…” Zhang Yi was speechless for a moment, then quietly asked Jiang Ye, “What’s wrong with you two? Did you have a fight? The last time I saw you, you were all over each other. How did you become enemies now? What, you wanted to play S&M and Ah Ze wasn’t into it?”

Jiang Ye gave him a cold look, then turned to rummage through the information desk. He found a small map and was studying it when a group of candidates ran in from the parking lot, saying they heard a girl’s scream at the entrance of the inpatient building.

“The inpatient building is really dark. We didn’t dare to go in,” a candidate said.

“Holy shit, did someone else get into trouble?” someone asked.

“Two kills at the start. What kind of place is this?” another person asked.

Guan Hao asked, “Should we go check it out?”

A young monk in a gray robe chanted a Buddhist phrase and said, “Everyone, before we go check, I think it’s safer to first do a headcount, introduce ourselves, and move as a team.”

Everyone nodded. Jiang Ye didn’t quite agree. If they went to the inpatient building in time, the girl might still be saved. The later they went, the smaller her chance of survival. However, since most people agreed with the monk, Jiang Ye didn’t feel it was appropriate to say much and just went with the flow.

Everyone took turns introducing themselves. There were a total of twenty-three candidates gathered together at the moment, all with names and identities. People who knew each other gathered together in small groups. A girl named Fang Weiwei was probably entering a forbidden zone for the first time and had been crying the whole time. Several boys were comforting her. The monk listened to everyone, looked around, and his brow furrowed even more deeply. He quietly walked over to Jiang Ye’s group and asked, “Sirs, have you noticed anything amiss?”

Zhang Yi grinned.

“What are you looking for us for?”

The young monk sighed. 

“Celestial Master Zhang, you’re the only one I recognize here. Who else would I look for?”

Zhang Yi introduced him to Jiang Ye and the others. 

“This is Master Mingyue from the Shaolin Temple. He went bald at a young age and had no choice but to become a monk. He won last year’s national martial arts championship.”

Mingyue: “…”

Guan Hao leaned over and asked, “What’s amiss? What did you find?”

Jiang Ye said in a low voice, “There’s an extra person in the group.”

Mingyue cast an appreciative glance at him and nodded. 

“This humble monk is not talented, but I have a photographic memory. When we first entered the hospital and split up, I was the last one to leave. A total of ten people went to the outpatient building, five to the inpatient building, and eight to the administrative building, making a total of twenty-three people.”

Guan Hao understood. 

“But one person is dead, and one person is in trouble in the inpatient building. There should only be twenty-one people.”

Mingyue put his palms together. 

“Amitabha. There are patrol officers in the exam site. The source of the sound from the inpatient building might not be a candidate. But regardless, there is at least one extra person here.”

Their gazes simultaneously turned to the crowd. Everyone was mixed together, discussing countermeasures. It was impossible to tell who was human and who was a ghost.

A girl said, “Aren’t we going to the inpatient building? Let’s go now before it gets dark.”

Fang Weiwei said frantically, “We can’t go! What if there’s a ghost?”

The boy standing next to her also objected. 

“We don’t know what level the abnormal creatures here are. Is it really a good idea to act rashly?”

The girl who had just spoken sneered, “If we don’t investigate and check the situation, are we just supposed to wait for the abnormal creatures to find us and catch us off guard?”

Jiang Ye also said, “Maybe the classmate who screamed isn’t dead yet. We might be able to save them with timely rescue.”

The boy opened his mouth to argue, but the girl didn’t back down. Their voices grew louder, and they began to argue, their faces red. Just as Zhang Yi was about to mediate, a suspicious sound came from the elevator. There was clearly no electricity here, so how could there be an elevator? The sound of arguing stopped abruptly, and everyone fell into a deathly silence.

Someone drew a pistol and aimed it at the elevator. Zhang Yi quickly placed three white candles on the floor and lit them. The flames were steady, and the smoke didn’t reveal anything strange. The elevator doors were forced open by a pair of hands, and a tall man with a black bag climbed out of the elevator shaft, right into the muzzles of the candidates’ guns.

“Uh,” Huo Ang raised his hands. 

“Human. Exam patrol officer, Huo Ang.”

Everyone’s guns remained pointed at him.

Huo Ang showed his sports watch. 

“I’m really human. I even have a heartbeat. 80 beats per minute, super healthy.”