"All corpses loathe the living. They refuse to accept death. They crave rebirth, their eyes brimming with malice and resentment. As their minds continue to twist, their bodies undergo constant mutation—becoming ever more hideous and terrifying!"
From the old man's words, Chen Ge had gathered quite a bit of information and steeled himself accordingly.
The blood door in the core area was already shut. If he wanted to get out anytime soon, the only way was to capture the Door-Opener and force him to open the door.
"Let's assume for now that Doctor Gao is the Door-Opener. There's a high probability he's not currently inside the door-world, so the plan of capturing the Door-Opener and forcing him to open the door won't work. But thinking about it another way—the Door-Opener is the most terrifying existence behind the door. If he's not here, doesn't that mean I can do whatever I want in this place?"
Chen Ge gazed down the blood-red corridor, planning to search through the rooms one by one. Maybe he'd run into some "spirits" he clicked with.
After clearing the place out, even when the Door-Opener eventually returned, the pressure on him would be far less.
"We pool our strength together, while our enemies haven't even realized the problem—they're scattered across every corner of this place. With the old gentleman here to guide us, the odds are clearly in our favor."
Chen Ge still had cards he hadn't played, so he brimmed with confidence: "Old gentleman, let's head to where the principal might be first. There might be an unexpected harvest."
The old man couldn't talk Chen Ge out of it and agreed to lead the way.
Blood vessels on the ceiling cracked open, dripping blood down onto them. These droplets looked nothing like normal blood—they were composed of countless tiny blood threads.
"We'd better move fast." The old man's outer coat was already soaked through with blood. "I once saw a support staff member accidentally nick a blood vessel on the wall while stuffing a corpse into a crevice. Blood spattered all over him. Neither of us thought much of it at first. About forty or fifty minutes later, I came back from a round and found that his body had already become a breeding ground for those blood threads. Countless new threads surged out from his body, dragging what was left of him into the crack in the wall."
"So that means I have at most forty minutes?" A broken blood vessel had unleashed a rain of blood across the entire blood-red world—no matter where you hid, you'd be spattered with droplets. "Feels like a premeditated purge. It could sweep up every monster behind the door."
Chen Ge and the old man walked at the front, while Old Zhou and the other spirits formed a protective ring around Doctor Chen. Before long, they passed between several morgue chambers and reached the outermost perimeter of the underground cadaver storage.
"The principal could be in three places: the laboratory, the operating room, or the office. I know the locations of the laboratory and the operating room. As for the office, I've only heard the support staff mention it."
"So the support staff should know where the office is? No worries—we'll check the other two places first. If we come up empty, we'll grab a few support staff members and ask."
Chen Ge swung the Skull-Crushing Hammer. The old man did believe he had the ability—his only worry was whether there was enough time.
The group wound their way through the corridors and soon arrived at the laboratory the old man had described.
What this room had originally been used for was no longer discernable. Blood threads crept across every inch of the door, and clumps of flesh were packed tight together.
The old man pushed the door open, the blood threads on its surface snapping apart.
The room inside was spacious, filled with all manner of apparatus fashioned from flesh and blood.
When the old man opened the door, two doctors inside were still in the middle of some heated argument, their eyes bloodshot, their mental state clearly far from stable.
The old man gave a deliberate cough at the doorway. Hearing the sound, both doctors glanced back. Spotting the old man, they immediately stopped arguing, the crimson fading from their eyes.