Chapter 240

Chapter 240

It was Ludwig who had just taken the initiative to lock the door. After a slightly sticky, hesitant click, the bolt slid fully into place, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. In the quiet, enclosed space, their breathing was uneven, as they nervously listened to the approaching thumping sounds from outside.

The morgue's cooling system was still operational. Amidst the low rumble, slightly sub-zero air was expelled from the vents. The students participating in the competition were mostly clad in ordinary two-piece combat suits. Even with their enhanced interstellar physiques, prolonged exposure to such cold was unbearable, inevitably affecting their bodily functions. Yet, no one voiced a complaint. Under the cold, sterile light, young faces bore expressions of strained endurance.

Further inside, countless metal gurneys stretched into the vast morgue, its end lost to sight. The gurneys were empty, devoid of a single body—at this point, it was unclear whether this was a blessing or an omen.

Silence permeated the darkness until Alice attempted to open a freezer by the wall.

Having been sealed for a long time, the freezer's interior was frozen solid. Alice tugged twice, then yanked it open with a forceful pull. With a loud bang, as if something had been cleaved in two, the door swung outward with difficulty, each millimeter of rotation accompanied by the grating, teeth-chattering sound of shattering ice.

The eerie thumping outside, which had almost receded, seemed drawn by the muffled noise, slowly returning to linger before the door.

Eve couldn't shake the feeling that the thumping wasn't the usual sound of footsteps. It was lighter than a cane's tap, not as sharp as high heels… especially in this environment, it made her think of bones.

This wasn't a horror movie. Eve immediately shook her head, trying to banish the chilling thought.

Upon hearing that the ghastly thing had returned, someone instantly panicked, wide-eyed, gesturing frantically at Alice: "What are you doing?"

"Oh, there aren't any bodies in the freezer either," Alice ignored the person, instead leaning in to carefully inspect before gently closing the door. "Don't you think the disappearance of life forms on this planet is strange?"

No living beings was understandable, but not even dead ones—that was indeed peculiar.

Eve had harbored this suspicion earlier. Still embodying "Lu Qing," she hadn't yet grasped the team's current predicament, so she hoped Alice would offer more of her analysis.

Unfortunately, they had more pressing issues than this anomaly. Alice didn't delve deeper into the question but instead leaned against the freezer door, lost in thought for a moment, before walking back and asking, "Still no signal on the wrist devices?"

"No."

Mu Huanzhu frowned, arms crossed, and whispered, "We can still receive messages from outside, but they can't see ours, even though the wrist device shows the messages were sent successfully. Chief Lorca was just gathering team members to take a headcount. He probably suspects something's wrong on our end and has already asked Senior Ning Yibei to regroup some people to come over."

"Ning Yibei? Good thing it's someone smarter coming. Otherwise, I'd worry the rescue team would just create a bunch of new puppets," Alice chuckled briefly, not dwelling on the topic, and continued, "Since they've already sent reinforcements, let's not waste battery power. We only brought limited batteries."

After all, it was only the second day of the competition. They hadn't accumulated many supplies. Even as an alchemy team, with more members and thus more supplies than other teams, they had only brought five batteries.

Eve's ears perked up at this.

What did she mean by "create new puppets"... Could the thumping monster outside be something they had created themselves?

Only her consciousness had transferred to this data body, with no other memories left behind. Staying in the dark like this wasn't sustainable. Fortunately, the person who had pulled her in earlier was Luo Lin, and the two were standing close together.

Although, from what Alice and the others said, the hospital's magnetic field seemed problematic, preventing outgoing signals, messages from outside could still come in. So Eve didn't dare bet on whether the Star Network was still accessible. She gently tugged Luo Lin's robe sleeve and, under the cover of the alchemist's loose clothing, slowly wrote on the other's hand: "I'm back."

"?" Luo Lin didn't understand at first until she turned her head and saw those bright, shining eyes in the gloom. Her heart skipped a beat, and she tentatively wrote back, "Eve?"

"It's me."

"How did you get through the interference?"

It was a long story, and writing it out finger by finger would take forever. Eve glanced around. Seeing that no one was paying attention to them—unsurprising, since fighting monsters wasn't exactly the alchemists' area of expertise, and with one being quiet and unapproachable and the other floating through tasks like a ghost, everyone had gradually grown accustomed to ignoring the two of them.

While no one was looking, she pulled Luo Lin into a corner. The latter cooperated willingly. Once they were at a distance from the others, Eve whispered, "Qi Ying tried to take advantage of the pre-set holographic simulation by the committee to cheat manually, but something went wrong, and I was transported here. I'm still using the original simulated body—but what's your situation here?"

"You came at the right time," Luo Lin sighed and explained. "This is the Fourth People's Hospital. We thought a hospital would likely be a civilization point, maybe with some genetic samples or something, so we came in. In the internal medicine department, we found human organ samples. After uploading them, we successfully marked the Fourth People's Hospital as a civilization point, but that's when the abnormalities started."

After the civilization point was lit on the map, a gray mist suddenly enveloped the entire hospital like an amniotic sac. Then everyone found they couldn't leave the hospital. If they tried to force their way out, they'd end up circling around in the mist at the edges and returning to where they started, as if trapped by a ghost wall.

The signal disappeared too. Aside from continuing to upload items to deepen the civilization point's exploration, they couldn't send anything out.

"As for the monster outside, it appeared along with the mist. Originally, it was just an unkillable skeleton. But after Mu Huanzhu dismantled it, something terrifying happened: the separated parts each grew into brand-new, identical skeletons," Luo Lin rubbed her forehead irritably, her expression gloomy. "Now, including the original, there are eight skeletons in total. Since then, we haven't dared provoke it."

"Aside from being unkillable, what else is dangerous about the monster?"

Eve felt things couldn't be that simple. If it were just unkillable, they could simply ignore it. For it to force this group into hiding in the morgue, the skeleton shouldn't be weak enough to be dismantled bare-handed by Mu Huanzhu.

"It has a bone blade. Wounds from that blade don't heal and keep bleeding. Huanzhu and the close-combat chief from Imperial University of Science and Technology were grazed earlier and are still bleeding. The most troublesome part is that every regenerated puppet—"

Eve followed her gaze. Though she didn't know who was from Imperial University of Science and Technology, the face pale from blood loss was easily noticeable in the darkness. Mu Huanzhu was slightly better off but still looked grim.

Their worst fears had been realized—getting injured in the competition was indeed troublesome.

But even so, no one had lightly pressed the tiny forfeit button on their wrist devices yet.

"How long have you been trapped here?" Eve withdrew her gaze and asked.

"About half an hour."

Half an hour. She instinctively looked down at her wrist device and worked backward mentally. That was roughly when Yan Ning and Qi Ying infiltrated the riverside building on the other side. If things were really as Qi Ying deduced—that from a certain point, the building had "come alive"—then could there be some connection between the Fourth People's Hospital and the riverside building?

In that case, Qi Ying's mishap wasn't completely accidental. Her simulated body being here was one factor, and the riverside building and the hospital probably shared some kind of passage. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been so smooth to transport her here.

—Wait.

Speaking of which, after those two discovered the map and room layouts were changing, did they go back to check the real bodies they had hidden?

"......"

Perhaps because the problem they faced was too unsolvable, most people, including those from First Empire Academy, seemed somewhat discouraged. After crouching for a long time without hearing any more sounds, the skeleton outside seemed to grow bored and walked away again with its thumping steps. Jessica crouched in the corner, lowered her voice, and asked, propping her chin: "That thing's gone. Can we go out now? I'm getting cold in here."

"Probably," seeing the little princess of the empire even trying to hold in a sneeze, Mu Huanzhu beside her couldn't help but feel a bit of pity. "Hold on a little longer. It probably hasn't gone far yet."

"What does it matter if it's gone? Besides it, there are seven other identical monsters outside. How long are we supposed to hide?" someone else said irritably. "What was the committee thinking? Just doing tasks and finding survival supplies is troublesome enough. Why did they have to plant a landmine here? What's the point of making a league so flashy?"

The fear was that this wasn't something the committee had arranged in advance.

Eve silently thought to herself. Seeing that it was about time, Ludwig intended to slide the bolt open to check the situation outside. She quickly spoke up: "Wait before opening!"

"Huh?"

The consequence of her usual habit of slacking off was that when she occasionally didn't, and prepared to speak up, the person being called took a while to figure out who was calling him. Ludwig stopped his finger and narrowed his eyes at Eve: "Keep your voice down."

What if it attracted the monster back?

"No matter how loud my voice is, it's not as reckless as suddenly opening the door," Eve retorted without thinking, ignoring Alice's raised eyebrow. She pointed at Sinclair, who was standing somewhat awkwardly at the edge of the group. "Sinclair, could you use your spiritual state to check outside?"

"Me?" Sinclair was surprised. "But my ability only lets me see living things..."

A-grade spiritual state Stone Crab, ability Spirit Eye, could see the spiritual traits of living beings. For humans, this was the spiritual state; for non-humans, it was something like energy or life source. Though it had strong penetration and was a powerful scouting ability, since the monster outside looked like a skeleton, everyone assumed it wasn't a living thing. So even Sinclair herself hadn't thought of trying when Eve suggested it.

Eve interrupted her hesitant words, countering: "Then do you think that thing outside counts as dead?"

Well, it probably didn't count as dead either.

Though most people weren't aware of the changes happening to "Lu Qing," the situation was urgent. Seeing that Chief Lu from First Empire Academy seemed to have finally given up her slacking attitude, the champion's bearing of the Five-School League second-round winner resurfaced in everyone's minds—thinking carefully, aside from those negative impressions of her laziness, Chief Lu was once a figure of both wisdom and courage!

Cheng Jinyuan from Capital People's University, who stood closest to Sinclair, immediately patted her shoulder and urged: "Try what Lu Qing said. If we can really observe that thing's traces, it'll be a big help later."

"Give it a try. You're safe inside here. Taking a look won't hurt."

Urged by several people, Sinclair finally summoned her Spiritual State: "Alright, but if I don’t end up being helpful, don't hold it against me."

She wasn’t entirely confident herself, but the moment the girl’s eyes were replaced by pale cyan compound eyes, Sinclair’s expression suddenly shifted.

Eve had already anticipated that the monster outside likely possessed some basic intelligence—knowing someone was guarding this place, it wouldn’t just leave outright. Still, she asked out of formality: "What's it like?"

"I see a blood-red spiritual essence... It must be that freaking thing. It’s definitely not something a normal creature would have. And there’s more than one," the girl’s eyelashes trembled uncontrollably as she spoke, but she persisted, keeping her eyes wide open and unblinking, observing a fourth dimension invisible to others. "Two of them. One is guarding the elevator, the other is guarding the staircase... These are the only two exits from the underground level."

"Only two exits?"

Eve was somewhat surprised. If she were the monster, she could’ve been even more malicious—aside from guarding the exits, she would’ve posted another one right at the door, specifically to ambush anyone trying to leave. After all, with eight clones, losing one or two wouldn’t matter much.

It seemed this imposing skeletal monster wasn’t as cunning as it appeared.

"I can help you deal with these skeletons. When it comes to abnormal things like this, an alchemist always has more tricks up their sleeve than you ordinary people," Eve casually used alchemy as a cover, leaning against the wall beside her, ignoring the surprised looks from the others. She continued, "But before we charge out, it’s best if we discuss properly: if our goal is to break the situation rather than just scrambling to survive, where should we head next?"

A body made of data isn’t afraid of injuries, let alone bleeding caused by wounds.

But even if Eve could deal with the monsters, she lacked the experience and memories of traveling with the rest of the team. To break through this bewildering situation and find a way out, they would have to rely on these young people themselves.

Casually tucking her hands into her sleeves, without any solid basis, Eve felt that this strange hospital didn’t seem to impose many limits on her.