Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Pierce, Proofreader-adjective
The monster, with one foot cut off, quickly flipped over and jumped. It seemed unaffected by the loss of its foot and used its remaining three limbs to grab the railing, leaping over the remaining section of stairs and landing on the first floor.
At this moment, Ji Dong also arrived by Ren Jianmo’s side and looked down over the railing.
The monster landed on the ground on its hands and foot, while its chest and abdomen were facing upwards, like a three-legged spider, retreating at a certain distance.
Ji Dong looked horrified——Wasn’t this the classic appearance of the evil spirit from The Exorcist?!
“Is it over there?”
Ren Jianmo couldn’t see the humanoid monster in patient clothing, but he could see the first arrow that Ji Dong shot off-course. After a few bumps, it quickly moved about 30-40 meters away.
Ji Dong nodded.
He had been staring at the foot left behind by the monster.
In just a short half a minute, the severed foot underneath the creature’s pants regenerated, resembling that of a gecko’s tail, sprouting a new bud of flesh.
Although it didn’t have the shape of a “foot” yet, from its outline, it was almost the same size as the missing one.
Ji Dong finally understood a bit of what the protagonists in horror movies felt when they faced Jason and Freddy. The horror of these monsters was that they couldn’t be “killed” in a physical sense.
Even if you slashed off their heads, legs, and bodies, they would regenerate like a starfish at any time. Then, when you thought you had successfully escaped and had your guard down, they would emerge again and mercilessly kill you.
At this moment, the humanoid monster retreated to the edge of the first-floor outpatient hall and quickly disappeared into the shadows.
Ji Dong finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“What happened?”
Seeing Ji Xiao’niao’s pale face and trembling body, Ren Jianmo had his dagger reverted into a ring and playfully ruffled his curly hair.
“What did you see?”
“His severed foot is about to grow back again.”
While Ji Dong answered, he lowered his head to search for the monster’s right foot that Ren Jianmo had just sliced off.
The foot rolled into a corner and got stuck on the railing.
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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——————–
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Ji Dong opened it and saw a middle-aged man with a frowning face and pursed lips, looking very distressed. It was the same person in a patient’s clothing who had attacked him multiple times!
“This person’s name is Zhong Bin, a deranged murderer!”
Fan Hemian and Fan Luming were currently in the medical archive on the top floor of the hospital.
After Tzu Chi Hospital was abandoned, the medical record cabinets in the medical archive were left untouched and locked for over a decade.
Upon learning the monster’s name, the Fan siblings pried open the cabinets and searched through all the death records, page by page, until they quickly found the basic information about this patient.
After combining the information they gleaned from the medical records, they did some online research and the person’s true identity became clear.
In simple terms, Zhong Bin was completely antisocial. He had no family or connections, and he was lazy and irresponsible. After being fired from his job due to poor performance, he believed that all of this was society’s fault.
So, twelve years ago, he stormed into a group of high school students who had just finished school and stabbed three female students one after another.
At that moment, a boy stepped forward, disarmed him, and stabbed him in the abdomen.
Later, the perpetrator and the victims were taken to the nearby Tzu Chi Hospital. The three high school girls who were attacked were lucky enough to survive after receiving treatment and were no longer in danger.
However, Zhong Bin, the one who initiated the attack, ended up dying on the operating table due to multiple organ ruptures and excessive blood loss.
After that, rumors of the hospital being haunted started circulating.
Within just a year, several young boys died in various bizarre accidents inside the hospital, which put immense pressure on Tzu Chi Hospital, forcing them to eventually shut down.
“So, you’re saying…”
Ji Dong put his phone on speaker, allowing everyone to hear the information summarized by Fan Luming over the phone. After listening, Mo Tiangen stroked his chin and said, “Zhong Bin, filled with resentment after being killed, turned into a vengeful ghost. And now, he specifically targets high school boys like Ji Xiao’niao, who appear delicate and innocent, in order to seek revenge?”
Fan Luming on the other end of the phone agreed with Teacher Dagen’s speculation, saying, “That seems to be the case now.”
He thought for a moment and added, “I guess the triggering mechanism for this strange phenomenon is to target the youngest person in the group that entered this place, as a substitute for the high school student who killed Zhong Bin.”
Ji Dong furrowed his brows and said, “But even if we know its true identity, we still don’t know how to deal with it…”
He then told the siblings about the scene he witnessed earlier, where the monster’s foot regenerated.
“My guess is that using physical means alone won’t be able to kill that monster, even if we cut it into pieces.”
Generally speaking, according to the pattern of supernatural events, when the deceased became a vengeful spirit, it was often because they died with grievances and unresolved resentment.
At that point, as long as they fulfilled their wishes for them and could bring justice to their grievances, they could help them move on. However, the monster they were facing now was a socially deviant individual with twisted values from his previous life. They couldn’t just let him kill Xiao’niao in order to fulfill “his” wish.
“Yes, we haven’t found a way to deal with it yet.”
The voice of Fan Hemian came through the speaker, “So we must have missed some crucial clues!”
She said to her three companions still in the outpatient building, “Quick, think! What other hints are there?!”
After the girl finished speaking, Ren Jianmo and Mo Tiangen looked towards Ji Dong, since Ji Xiao’niao was the only one who could see Zhong Bin’s true form. If there were any other clues to provide, it would rely solely on him.
Ji Dong felt uneasy being scrutinized by his two companions and could only frown and ponder deeply.
——The reverse-worn patient gown, the identity strap on the foot…
——The strange joints that could twist in various angles…
——A person with antisocial personality disorder, no family or reasons, tried to kill three female students, and was then killed in retaliation…
Ji Dong forced himself to stare at the ordinary and distraught face of the man on the phone, trying his best to recall every detail he could remember.
——Right…
Although they had the same face, the monster he saw was different from the man in the photo. If he was to point out the difference, it was actually quite easy to distinguish them.
The man in the patient gown that he saw had a waxen yellow skin tone, with a moist sheen on the surface. His face was withered, and his features were all wrinkled and shriveled, especially the lips, which had shrunk and turned outward, revealing two rows of teeth…
Although Ji Dong had only seen the appearance of the deceased when he attended a funeral for an elderly relative a long time ago, he had never seen other dead bodies since then.
But when he saw the appearance of that monster for the first time, he knew it definitely wasn’t a living person.
“Hey, Xiao Lu, listen to me.”
Ji Dong organized his thoughts and described what he had seen to Fan Luming as much as he could.
Then he concluded, “I feel like it’s a corpse, but it hasn’t decayed and looks completely different from a living person… What do you think, what’s going on here?”
After a moment of silence on the phone, Fan Luming suddenly shouted, “I know! I know what’s going on!”
——————-
Ten minutes later, Ji Dong, Ren Jianmo, and Mo Tiangen ran through the courtyard and headed towards the administrative building behind the outpatient building.
According to the clues found by the Fan siblings, after Zhong Bin’s death, none of his relatives were willing to claim his body.
Following the protocol for unclaimed bodies, it was donated to an educational institution.
So Fan Luming speculated that his body might have been dissected and preserved as specimens in this Tzu Chi Hospital, which led to the horrifying rumors of haunting.
Back then, this Tzu Chi Hospital was affiliated with a local medical school, so the administrative building had two floors specifically for students to use in class, including a dissecting room.
Fan Luming suspected that Zhong Bin’s body, or at least parts of it, were likely still in that specimen room.
It was already 4:05.
Ji Dong and the others went straight up to the fourth floor and arrived at the door of the specimen room.
Mo Tiangen wiped the dirty window glass with his sleeve and peered inside. The specimen room was pitch black, with no light from the corridor able to penetrate. He could only see some bottles and jars on the cabinets near the window, but he couldn’t make out what exactly was inside them.
“Never mind, let’s go in and take a look!” Mr. Dagen said as he picked up his folding cane stool. He smashed the door lock with a loud bang, causing the door to become crooked and twisted.
He took two steps back, did a flying kick, and sent the entire door panel flying.
At that moment, Fan Hemian and Fan Luming also arrived, running all the way.
The five of them successfully gathered and quickly found the light switch next to the door. They pressed it, and the lights in the specimen room flickered for a moment. After a buzzing sound of electricity, the light bulb went out with a “pop.”
There was no choice but to take out flashlights and shine them into the room. The specimen room was spacious, able to accommodate about a hundred or so people in class. There were several tables lined up, as well as stacks of folding chairs.
Additionally, there were rows of cabinets around the room, containing numerous jars with specimens, including some human bones.
However, most of them were covered in dust due to lack of care, and the liquid in the specimen bottles had evaporated, revealing large chunks of limbs immersed in them, with many even growing mold.
They felt disgusted and sniffed carefully, still able to smell the pungent scent of formaldehyde lingering in the air.
“Alright, let’s search,” Fan Luming said, shining the flashlight around the room.
He sighed, “I wonder if we can recognize which ‘parts’ belong to Zhong Bin—Woah!”
Before the younger Fan could finish speaking, his whole body flew backward without warning and hit the door frame behind him.
