Hearing the voice,
His hand still gripped the lock. A bone-cold sensation seeped from his palm into his body. He froze on the other side, concentrating every ounce of his attention on pinpointing the source of the sound.
"I can tell it came from inside the room, but I can't determine the exact direction."
A mental image surfaced in Chen Ge's mind: a masked creature dragging a corpse down the corridor.
The sound crept closer, then suddenly stopped.
Every muscle in Chen Ge's body went rigid. It was a profoundly strange feeling — as if the door in front of him were a mirror reflecting two worlds, and the creature were standing in the exact spot where he stood.
They were separated by a single door. Neither side made a move.
Cold wind swept through the corridor. Three or four minutes later, the sound of a door opening and closing echoed from the second floor. The female nurse appeared to have given chase.
The situation was growing unfavorable for Chen Ge — the nurse would be here soon, yet he couldn't afford to move freely right now.
The creature on the other side of the door might have sensed him. The slightest motion on his part, and that thing would probably come bursting out.
It was a silent standoff. The creature inside the room was hesitating. Chen Ge, on the outside, had no intention of engaging it head-on for the time being. What he wanted most right now was to find something to block the door, then tough out the rest of the night.
At the second-floor stairwell, the nurse — having finished searching the second and third floors — finally arrived at the first.
She had clearly been a vindictive person even in life. The moment she spotted Chen Ge, she lurched forward and stumbled toward him at a run.
A sealed hospital building, a pitch-black corridor, and a crazed woman in a tattered nurse's uniform charging straight at him — it was enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
A vein pulsed at his temple. The blue-green veins on Chen Ge's forearms stood out as he watched the nurse closing in with his peripheral vision.
"I already gave you back the notebook. Why are you still chasing me?"
Under normal circumstances, at a different time and place, Chen Ge wouldn't have panicked. The real problem was the crushing pressure from the creature behind the door.
He had heard its voice, but he had never laid eyes on what lurked inside. It was the unknown that dug up the deepest fears buried in a person's heart — and Chen Ge was no exception.
The nurse pressed on relentlessly, claws and teeth bared, and quickly entered his ten-meter range.
The wounds the pig-slaughter cleaver had inflicted were all gone. The female nurse's body, dented and deformed by the skull crusher hammer, had also recovered considerably. Chen Ge could even make out the camera hanging from her collar.
"Don't push your luck."
The instant the nurse closed to within five meters, Chen Ge made a rapid decision: pick the softer target first. Deal with the nurse, then face whatever was behind the door with his full attention.
He slowly drew his hand back, watched the nurse a few meters away, and then erupted forward at a speed even greater than hers, slamming straight into her.
The hammer swung down in a vicious arc — he fought as though he didn't care whether he lived or died. In truth, aside from being extremely difficult to kill, the nurse wasn't all that powerful on her own.
He drew the cleaver and stabbed it into her uniform again, but Chen Ge didn't linger in the fight. He knew his greatest threat came from behind.
While he and the nurse were locked in conflict, blood began to seep from the door of Room Three. Something that resembled blood slid down the surface of the door, dripping to the floor and vanishing the instant it touched the ground.