The middle-aged woman wore a long, brightly colored floral dress. Her hair had been permed into big waves, and she wore gold earrings. She was dressed like a typical middle-aged woman, and by now she was already looking a little impatient.
The young man had a crew cut and wore a T-shirt. He looked like an athletic type.
"What is this place? A hospital? Do you work here? Why did you bring me here? You left me there without anyone to look after me. Are you people going to take responsibility or not? Where's my husband?"
"Hey, bro, are you a police officer? I was at the mall earlier. Could you give me back the shoes I bought? They were the new release. I saved up for ages to buy them..."
Both of them spoke urgently. They looked completely normal, and they were full of energy.
That is, if you ignored their dilated pupils.
I shouldn't have taken this night shift. Lao Zhang had set me up...
Li Fan swallowed and quietly pressed the alarm button beside him, only to find that nothing happened.
Psychic radiation interference!
He immediately opened the gun cabinet beside him and took out a riot shotgun, then hurriedly grabbed a protective suit. As he put it on, he said calmly:
"Auntie, this is the Anomaly Bureau Southwest Branch. Something's happened to you, so you've been brought to our bureau temporarily while we look into the situation. Please don't worry. We've already notified your family."
The middle-aged woman furrowed her brow and snapped:
"What kind of place is the Anomaly Bureau? You just leave people sitting around without helping them? How can a government office be so irresponsible? Let us go home at once! Otherwise, I'll expose you!"
She spoke faster and faster, her eyes rolling about. Corpse fluid even seeped from her eye sockets, as if she were crying.
Li Fan had quickly finished putting on the protective suit. Gripping the riot shotgun, he felt a little more at ease.
"The full name of the Anomaly Bureau is the Anomaly Incident Handling Bureau. We specialize in dealing with anomalous incidents. This is only my first day on the job after training, so there's a lot I don't know either. How about I check with my supervisor? Don't worry. We'll give you a satisfactory answer."
He picked up the phone, only to find that he couldn't get through on that either.
The young man was much more polite. "Auntie, don't worry. You should trust the police."
Then he turned and patted his belly, which was hanging open with his intestines exposed, and said to Li Fan:
"Is there a place to rest? Auntie and I can sit for a while. Is there anything to eat? I'm a little hungry. Also, what exactly happened to us?"
Although he looked normal, his words were already becoming jumbled. It was a sign of impending madness.
Li Fan glanced at the Psychic Radiation Counter. The wavelike line of readings kept fluctuating, spiking upward like a series of needles. The peak had already passed 200!
Staring at the two "people" outside the window, Li Fan said slowly:
"You're already dead."
The middle-aged woman and the young man froze for a moment. Then their expressions turned violent, and they began smashing their heads against the duty room's glass window and cursing furiously.
"What are you, telling people they're dead!? Where's your supervisor? I want to see your supervisor! I'm filing a complaint!"
"Hey, that's not funny at all. You've got no manners. I'm posting this on Weibo!"
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The duty room window was bulletproof glass, but it quickly filled with dents like spiderwebs!
Both their abdomens had split open, and one after another, the same kind of shells found during the autopsy today began crawling out of them.
Black shells spilled from their mouths in a stream, rushing across the ground toward the stairs!
They resembled the shells Li Fan had found in the Root Infection's mouth that day. They were all ancient shell currency, but now they seemed alive, scuttling across the floor.
Looking closely, it seemed there was rotting shellfish meat inside the black shell currency, wriggling rapidly.
The readings on the Psychic Radiation Counter were now jumping wildly, like a sewing machine. At their highest, they even reached 300.
Li Fan was on the verge of tears.
This wasn't how things had sounded in the Dissection Department when they talked about it over drinks!
What the hell were these things?
Glancing at the black shell currency that had already flowed down from the elevator, Li Fan suddenly realized something.
Oh no!
He looked up at the surveillance monitors. The black shell currency, which seemed both alive and like a phantom, had long since traveled down the elevator shaft to the morgue on Basement Level Two and the formalin pool on Basement Level Three!
On Basement Level Two, the things flowed upstream and burrowed into the tightly shut morgue drawers.
On Basement Level Three, they poured into the formalin pool and crawled into the mouths of the floating corpses.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The morgue drawers on the monitors shook violently.
"Splash! Splash!" On Basement Level Three, the battered corpses in the formalin pool slowly rose to their feet, waving their stiff limbs!
"Pop!" The surveillance system shorted out and burned up.
There was no time to wait!
Li Fan gritted his teeth, still wearing his protective suit, and charged out of the duty room with his pistol raised, wrenching open the heavy metal door.
If he didn't leave now, it would be too late!
When the middle-aged woman and the young man saw Li Fan rush out, they stopped banging on the glass. Their eyes bleeding, they turned toward him.
"You've got some nerve coming out! I want to see your supervisor!"
"Complaint! Complaint! Complaint!"
Li Fan immediately saw Wang Haitao, the Root Infection with only half a head left, lying on the ground. He held up his "hands"—the middle-aged woman, Wang Cuie, and the young man, Gao Zixuan—and screamed at Li Fan.
It was like a puppet show.
When Wang Haitao saw Li Fan come out, even with only half a head, he still grinned at him.
Faced with this maddening scene, Li Fan shuddered, then abruptly pulled the trigger.
Two gunshots rang out. At such close range, Li Fan managed to outperform himself, landing a double headshot and knocking down the middle-aged woman and Gao Zixuan before sprinting toward the office building's entrance.
When he reached the door, he was stunned to find several dripping-wet figures standing in the darkness outside.
Some had only half a head left. Some were missing half their bodies, while others had strange limbs growing from their backs like spiders.
Even more absurdly, one of them was covered from head to toe in tiny mushrooms.
The heavy smell of formalin drifted in from outside. Every corpse stared at Li Fan with ghastly pale eyes.
These were the corpses that had crawled out of the formalin pool!
How had they reached the entrance so quickly!?
This made no sense at all!
Fortunately, thanks to his Anomaly Bureau induction training, and the Psychic Radiation Detector buzzing away, Li Fan understood that this was a sign of infection by anomalous psychic energy.
He spun around and ran for the stairs.
The entrance was blocked, and he couldn't go down to the basement. His only option was to head upstairs.
When the corpses outside saw Li Fan turn and run, they seemed to be startled. They jerked their heads up, flung the door open, rushed inside, and chased after him.
"Ding!" Just as Li Fan reached the elevator, its doors suddenly opened. Inside were dozens of corpses packed tightly together, all looking up at him.
Li Fan didn't hesitate for a second. He charged up the stairs, firing behind him as he ran and cursing them out.
"Let me tell you, I'm the top criminal in the underworld! You'd be scared to death if you knew how powerful I was! Don't come any closer!"
Third-floor dorms! Third-floor dorms!
The corpses behind him were so close that Li Fan didn't even have time to reach the second-floor office area. He rushed into a dorm room on the third floor and immediately locked the door.
The long-unoccupied dorm room was pitch-black and reeked of mildew. It held only four metal bunk beds, and as he ran inside, a spiderweb smeared across his face.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The corpses outside began pounding on the door.
Li Fan didn't even bother turning on the lights. He reached out and grabbed a bed, intending to use it to block the door.
First, he'd try to contact the Investigation Division. If that didn't work, he'd have no choice but to jump out the window.
Why was this bed so heavy?
In the darkness, Li Fan gave it a hard tug, but it didn't budge at all.
Then his hand touched a leg covered in slime.
In the darkness, the four battered corpses on the beds sat up at the same time and pounced. They grabbed Li Fan's limbs and held on tight.
One of the corpses got up and opened the dorm room door. The horde outside immediately filed in and hoisted Li Fan up, supporting him with their many hands.
Li Fan looked utterly defeated. The corpses' strange stench had overwhelmed him, and tears of humiliation ran from the corners of his eyes.
That wasn't how things had sounded at the dinner table yesterday...
Before long, the crowd of corpses had carried Li Fan into the lobby on the first floor.
At some point, a pillar had been assembled from a water dispenser, tables, and chairs. Li Fan was tied to it.
A group of battered corpses with bizarre forms surrounded him. Strange footsteps echoed through the room.
The Amalgam had arrived.
The middle-aged woman and the young man, both shot in the head, now hung limp from the Amalgam's arms, still talking nonstop.
"I'm suing you! Get your supervisor over here! Get your supervisor over here!"
"What kind of customer service is this!? I'm posting this on Weibo!"
Looking at the battered corpses around him, Li Fan actually calmed down. He looked up at the Amalgam, which had only half a head left, and said timidly:
"Does messing with corpses make you feel good? Do you know who I am? I'm warning you: you still have one last chance to surrender!"
The Amalgam grinned. All the corpses knelt at once, and a piercing scream suddenly rang in Li Fan's ears.
Psychic radiation contamination!
Everything around him seemed to change. In a haze, he saw figures dressed in strange ancient clothing appear over the corpses.
Ugly women, brutish men with fleshy faces, frightened children.
They were all calling out in prayer.
He himself was tied to a bronze pillar, while a figure holding a sharp blade stood nearby, ready to cut him open as a sacrifice.
Before him, the Amalgam had transformed into a bizarre creature with a tiger's head and a human body. Scales covered its legs, which ended in crocodile claws. Its arms were two giant pythons, their jaws spread wide as they writhed.
Its tiger eyes were full of savage violence, and blood still stained the sharp teeth in its gaping mouth.
Li Fan understood that a powerful anomalous infection was affecting his mind.
A psychic phantom.
The monster stared at Li Fan with cruel amusement and slowly approached.
This was the being to whom Li Fan was to be offered as a sacrifice!
"What the hell are you?" Li Fan shouted at it. "A ghost from the Gutuo Kingdom?"
At a moment like this, instead of being afraid, he was overcome with anger and yelled at it.
He'd fight to the bitter end!
The tiger-headed monster merely grinned cruelly. Its two python arms bit down hard on Li Fan's shoulders. Then it opened its tiger jaws and lunged to bite him!
At the critical moment, Li Fan suddenly felt a searing heat in his chest. The dagger-like Bronze Key had somehow turned bright red, and the lines of text on it were glowing too.
The restraints around him loosened. Gritting his teeth, Li Fan wrenched his right hand free, grabbed the Bronze Key, and drove it into one of the tiger-headed monster's eyes!
A shrill scream rang out. The world before Li Fan's eyes suddenly went black, as if a curtain had been torn open!
Before you continue