Understanding that he wouldn’t get any information from Wen Qiu, Hua Haoming took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.
Xia Bai and Lin Xiang both watched him. After he opened the bathroom door, he immediately closed it again, his hand reaching out to the door frame to steady himself.
Lin Xiang suspected that Hua Haoming had gone weak in the knees, but how could that be possible for a player like him, who ranked in the top twenties?
The more Lin Xiang pondered, the more nervous he became. He felt like this dormitory was a haunted house, surrounded by ghosts. His breathing became heavy, and he asked, “Brother, what’s going on?”
After more than ten seconds, Hua Haoming finally spoke in a low voice, “Go see for yourself if you’re curious.”
Lin Xiang was like a foolish cat. He was clearly terrified, but curiosity still spurred him on to push open the door.
“Bleugh—!”
Lin Xiang, clutching the doorframe, bent over and started vomiting.
Meng Tianyou, who had run over after him, just so happened to see the scene inside the bathroom when Lin Xiang opened the door and Xia Bai cast the flashlight of his phone towards the interior of the bathroom. He screamed and collapsed on the ground, clutching his head and wailing.
Xia Bai had turned on the flashlight on his phone because he wanted to take a look. He just hadn’t expected that Meng Tianyou would see it as well. Of course, he now knew what was going on inside.
He went over and helped Lin Xiang to a bed and then entered the bathroom, carefully examining the scene.
The crying grew louder, filled with increasing amounts of agony and terror. After looking around, Xia Bai walked over to Meng Tianyou, reached out to pat his shoulder gently, and said in an experienced manner, “My condolences.”
“Do you need to prepare the body for burial?”
Xia Bai had a somewhat unique way of comforting people, and he said, “I will prepare the face and body of the deceased to help her regain her appearance before death.”
Xia Bai didn’t know if his words had gotten through to Meng Tianyou. The latter did not respond for a long time. When he finally did, he mumbled, “Xia Bai… can you… can you… my mother… forensic medicine…”
Xia Bai nodded.
In the dormitory, with one person leaning against the wall, two sitting paralyzed, and one in a dazed state, Xia Bai quickly ran downstairs.
Fortunately, though the dormitory they were staying in was damp and run-down unlike the peaceful dormitories in the real Heping Medical College, their belongings had remained untouched and had not been consumed by the game.
Xia Bai pulled out a cloth bag from his blue and white woven bag, then quickly returned to the bathroom in Room 405.
The bathroom door was half-covered, and the four people outside couldn’t see what exactly Xia Bai was doing. As they gradually recovered from their weak, terrified, and nauseous states, Xia Bai had already finished his work.
He carried Meng Qing, who was clean and unblemished, out of the bloody and filthy bathroom.
This was a startling discovery. Xia Bai, who appeared thin and weak, was actually quite strong. He was effortlessly carrying a 1.7-meter-tall woman in a princess hold.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“She’s very clean,” Xia Bai said, describing the late mother who had a slight fixation with cleanliness.
Meng Tianyou, upon seeing Meng Qing in this restored state, had tears instantly well up in his eyes. His voice was hoarse as he cried out, “Mom.”
Hua Haoming tore a sheet from the bed and spread it on the floor. Xia Bai placed Meng Qing on it, and Meng Tianyou stumbled over immediately.
Unfortunately, he only got to hold her hand for a short while before the dormitory supervisor arrived with campus security and forcibly took Meng Qing’s body away.
Meng Tianyou tried to rush forward, but one of the security guards kicked him into the wall.
The dormitory supervisor, her wrinkled face twisted, rebuked, “How can you leave a body in the dormitory? It must be taken away!”
She then scolded them for being in the women’s dormitory when the lights were out and accused them of disrupting the school’s work.
The others didn’t dare to resist them, so they could only watch as they took Meng Qing away, all while Meng Tianyou cried bitterly.
Lin Xiang, crouching by the window and looking outside, said, “They’re taking Auntie Meng towards the direction of the morgue. Could it be that the cadavers in the morgue are really like we guessed? Are they really students and teachers who died at the school?”
At the moment, it seemed that this was a possibility, but it couldn’t be confirmed yet.
“Have you found anything?” Hua Haoming asked Xia Bai, then looked at Wen Qiu.
Wen Qiu had mostly recovered by now, but when she brought up what she had seen earlier, her breath still trembled. “I heard the sound of running water in the bathroom again tonight. When I went to check, she was facing away from me, as if she was sitting on the floor taking a bath. It was only when she turned around that I saw her chest cavity was empty, and there was a pile of bloody stuff in front of her.”
Lin Xiang rubbed his hands, feeling the need for a drink. “Same here, but when I saw her, she had already fallen to the ground, so I got a more… direct view.”
Meng Tianyou was still in a daze, his brain probably unable to function properly.
In the end, all three of them looked at Xia Bai because they knew he had the clearest view, and he had also restored Meng Qing’s body.
It was said that a corpse could speak. Forensic experts could communicate with the deceased through their bodies, to unearth many clues.
Xia Bai was a forensic medicine major. Though he hadn’t officially started his studies yet, based on his current skills, he was already halfway to becoming an embalmer. He might be able to discover something.
Xia Bai indeed lived up to their expectations, stating a hypothesis that shocked all three of them.
He began explaining from the beginning. “I mentioned earlier that she was very clean. That’s because she herself was clean, and not because I cleaned her. She was so clean that even her internal organs were spotless.”
The three immediately thought of the pile of things next to Meng Qing, and indeed, it seemed clean, although each of them had only taken a vague and horrified glance.
Lin Xiang asked, “Xia Bai, y-you don’t mean to say…”
Xia Bai continued, “She was in the bathroom with the shower on, sitting there and cleaning her own internal organs.”
All three of them were stunned, even Meng Tianyou, who had looked up and was staring at Xia Bai in astonishment.
Xia Bai added, “When Wen Qiu heard the sound of running water in the bathroom on the first night, she was likely taking a shower. That night, she was taking a normal shower, but she scrubbed too vigorously, which caused her skin to break and resulted in bleeding.”
How much scrubbing would it take to produce that much blood?
Wen Qiu had the most vivid and frightening experience of this. The bathroom drain seemed to have been blocked that night, and when she went to check the next morning, the bathroom was perfectly clean, without a speck of dirt.
Lin Xiang asked, “But this is completely different from what happened to Song Mingliang. What’s going on?”
Xia Bai revealed the key point, “Did you forget? She had a bit of OCD.”
“Yes,” Lin Xiang recalled how Meng Qing had immediately knelt down and wiped Meng Tianyou’s shoes when she noticed the trace amounts of dirt on them on the first morning. “But it wasn’t such a severe case of OCD. I mean, she seemed to be able to tolerate the grease in the cafeteria.”
Meng Tianyou, still in shock, couldn’t speak, but Wen Qiu, as Meng Qing’s roommate, had the most convincing words. “She did have a mild case of OCD, but it wasn’t that severe.”
“At first, she had a mild case of OCD, and she would wipe Meng Tianyou’s shoes if they were dirty. But later, when she went to the morgue, her OCD intensified. She wanted to use alcohol wipes to clean even a freshly bathed Meng Tianyou. That was during the day, but in the middle of the night, her fixation with cleanliness was no longer normal.”
All three were momentarily stunned.
Xia Bai continued, “Her OCD was magnified and distorted to a horrifying and inhuman level. She felt that it wasn’t just the outside that was dirty; the inside of her body was intolerably dirty as well. So she thoroughly cleaned herself from the outside in.”
Lin Xiang remarked excitedly, “That’s it! Xia Bai, you’re amazing!”
This time, Hua Haoming didn’t mock Lin Xiang internally for being Xia Bai’s fan. This was indeed the clearest and most crucial clue they had discovered since entering the game.
Xia Bai looked at Meng Tianyou beside him one last time, confirming, “Are we right? She had a bit of OCD?”
Meng Tianyou let out a laugh, then started crying again. Crying and laughing, he repeated this process many times before finally lowering his head. “She wasn’t always obsessed with cleanliness. She used to be a waitress in a restaurant, so how could she have OCD?”
“Later, she had a child with a wealthy man who was already married, and even after he divorced his wife, he didn’t marry her. He said she was dirty, and his wife said she was dirty too. That day, she locked herself in the bathroom for over three hours. Since then, she started to value cleanliness.”
“Was that enough to make her clean? Was that all it takes for her to become a clean person with an OCD?” His laughter carried a hint of mockery.
Lin Xiang couldn’t stand it anymore. He stood up and scolded, “Others may criticize her for being a mistress or disdain her for having no morals. We can accuse her of being selfish. But you, as her son, have no right to speak of her like this! Regardless of all her flaws, at the very least, she was a good mother! She has never once let you down!”
They all remembered how Meng Qing had been terrified when Meng Tianyou was first chosen. She had nearly crumpled to the ground. Despite that, she had still selflessly stepped into the morgue on his behalf.
Today, when Song Qiang asked Meng Tianyou if he wanted to go in Meng Qing’s stead, Meng Qing was already acting strangely, muttering to herself that Meng Tianyou couldn’t go, and once again, she entered the morgue.
They didn’t know if the mutated people could think clearly, nor whether they were aware of the fact that they were no longer normal human beings.
Yet they could clearly recall how Meng Qing’s soulless eyes had looked when they gazed at Meng Tianyou after she came out of the morgue the second time.
Meng Tianyou chuckled, “She gave birth to me, and she was good to me, but she did that all because she wanted to marry that man through me.”
Lin Xiang asked, “So she risked her life in a horror game for you? She thought that if she died for you in the game, she would be able to marry him?”
“Let’s not talk about this.”
Hua Haoming had seen similar things and people in the game many times, so he stopped this meaningless conversation. “Since Meng Qing has a distorted form of OCD, what about Song Mingliang?”
Xia Bai thought for a moment. “Possibly voyeurism.”
Lin Xiang exclaimed, “Ah! That’s right, that makes a lot of sense!”
“But wait, where’s Song Mingliang?” He suddenly asked.
Xia Bai replied, “When I went downstairs just now, I found him standing at the door of room 405.”
Hua Haoming glanced outside. “He’s gone now.”
Lin Xiang said, “Last night, he was desperately trying to get into our dorm. Song Qiang was afraid and didn’t come out earlier. He’s still in our dorm!”
The three of them exchanged glances and immediately rushed outside.
“Xia Bai,” Meng Tianyou suddenly called out to him.
“Hmm?” Xia Bai turned around to look at him, puzzled.
Meng Tianyou, who had been keeping his head down, lifted it to meet Xia Bai’s gaze. “That’s what I’ve always thought.”
After saying this, tears once again flooded his face.
Xia Bai knew what that sentence corresponded to. He made a sound of acknowledgement and didn’t say anything else before chasing after Lin Xiang and Hua Haoming.
As they ran, Lin Xiang said, “It’s okay; they should all be fine. If something major happens, there will definitely be noise, like Wen Qiu’s screaming.”
He was wrong.
He had overlooked one possibility: the inability to scream.
Song Qiang’s mouth had completely split open.
In a way that no one could have imagined.
Geez that brought me chills! I thought Meng Qing was bathing in blood or something 😭😭 and the last part about Song Qiang is so creepy
Imagining Meng Tainyou getting kicked into a wall is funny and they really just took the corpse and ran away.! I guess they’re used to people dying in the school..
that novel is really gore and creepy ngl… but i love it 🥺 i wonder how the next arcs will be later
Two people in one day…How many are left? Six?
Ugh….it’s a bit(?) gory for me…..but its so good …. can’t stop reading….the author is really cruel😭
d@mn so after going to the morgue everyone’s ability that they got through a twisted way is intensified to a level of self-harm?