That's Not How You Talk at the Drinking Table

The middle-aged woman wore a brightly colored floral dress, her hair styled in large, permed waves, and gold earrings dangled from her lobes—the standard attire for a woman of her age. At this moment, her face was etched with impatience.

The young man wore a crew cut and a T-shirt, looking every bit the athletic youth.

"What is this place? A hospital? Are you a staff member here? How did you bring me here? You left me lying there without a soul to look after me; are you people even responsible? Where is my husband?"

"Hey brother, are you a police officer? I was just at the mall earlier. Could you please return the shoes I bought? They were a new release, and I saved up for so long..."

Both were speaking urgently, appearing entirely normal and full of vitality.

That is, if one ignored their dilated pupils.

I shouldn't have taken this night shift; Lao Zhang set me up...

Li Fan swallowed hard and quietly pressed the alarm button nearby, only to find it completely unresponsive.

Psychic radiation interference!

He immediately pulled open the gun cabinet beside him, grabbed a riot shotgun, and quickly snatched up a protective suit. As he put it on, he kept his expression neutral and said:

"Ma'am, this is the Southwest Branch of the Anomaly Incident Handling Bureau. You've run into some trouble, so you've been brought to our bureau for questioning. Please don't worry; your families have already been notified."

The middle-aged woman frowned and spat viciously:

"What kind of place is the Anomaly Bureau? You just leave people hanging here without doing anything? Is a government agency this irresponsible? Let us go home right now! Otherwise, I'll expose you all!"

Her speech grew faster and faster, her eyeballs rolling incessantly. Even corpse fluid began to seep from her eye sockets, as if she were weeping.

Li Fan had already finished donning his protective suit. Gripping the riot shotgun, he felt a slight sense of stability:

"The Anomaly Bureau stands for the Anomaly Incident Handling Bureau; it's a place specifically for dealing with anomalous events. This is my first day after training, so there's a lot I don't quite understand. Why don't you wait while I go ask my supervisor? Rest assured, we will definitely give you a satisfactory answer."

He then picked up the phone, only to find that it, too, could not make calls.

The young man was much more polite. "Don't be impatient, ma'am. We should trust the police."

He then turned and patted his stomach, which was split open to reveal his intestines, and said to Li Fan:

"Is there a place to rest? I've been sitting with the auntie for a while, is there anything to eat? I'm a bit hungry. Also, what exactly is the problem we're having?"

Although he looked normal, his speech had begun to descend into incoherence—a precursor to madness.

Li Fan glanced at the screen of the Psychic Radiation Counter. The wave-like numerical line was fluctuating violently, spiking upward like needles, having already broken through 200!

He stared at the two "people" outside the window and said slowly:

"You are already dead."

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged woman and the young man froze for a moment, then their expressions turned violent. They began to slam their heads against the duty room's glass window while screaming madly:

"What are you? How dare you curse people to die!? Where is your supervisor? I want to see your supervisor! I'm going to file a complaint against you!"

"Brother, that's not funny at all. You have no manners; I'm going to post this on Weibo!"

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The duty room window was made of bulletproof glass, yet it was quickly dented with spiderweb-like cracks!

Their abdomens had both split open, and those same shells discovered during the autopsy earlier were crawling out in droves.

Black shells emerged from their mouths like a flowing stream, rapidly moving across the floor toward the stairwell!

These shells were similar to the ones Li Fan had retrieved from the root of the infected body earlier; they all resembled ancient Shell Currency, but now they moved as if alive, scuttling across the floor.

Looking closely, it seemed as though there was rotting flesh inside each black shell, propelling them forward at high speed.

The numerical line on the Psychic Radiation Counter was jumping frantically, moving like a sewing machine needle, peaking at 300.

Li Fan felt like crying.

The situation at the autopsy department was nothing like what they'd discussed at the dinner table!

What on earth were these things?

Glancing at the black shells flowing down toward the elevator, Li Fan suddenly realized something.

Oh no!

He looked up at the monitors. Those black shells, appearing both like living creatures and phantoms, had already made their way down the elevator shaft to the morgue on the second basement level and the formalin tanks on the third!

On the second basement level, these things flowed directly against the current, drilling into the tightly sealed morgue cabinets.

On the third basement level, they surged into the formalin tanks, burrowing into the mouths of the suspended corpses.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" The morgue cabinets on the monitor were shaking violently.

"Splash! Splash!" In the formalin tanks on the third level, the mangled corpses waved their stiff limbs and slowly stood up!

"Snap!" The monitor short-circuited and burned out.

He couldn't wait any longer!

Li Fan gritted his teeth, clad in his protective suit and holding his shotgun, and yanked open the heavy metal door of the duty room, charging out.

If he didn't leave now, it would be too late!

Seeing Li Fan rush out, the middle-aged woman and the young man stopped slamming the glass. With blood streaming from their eyes, they turned toward him:

"You finally have the nerve to come out! I want to see your supervisor!"

"Complaint! Complaint! Complaint!"

Li Fan immediately saw that the Amalgam Wang Haitao, now reduced to half a head, was sprawled on the ground, holding his "hands"—which were actually the middle-aged woman Wang Cuie and the young man Gao Zixuan—high in the air as he shrieked madly at Li Fan.

It was like a grotesque puppet show.

Seeing Li Fan emerge, the half-headed Wang Haitao even grinned at him.

Faced with this maddening scene, Li Fan shuddered, then abruptly pulled the trigger.

"Bang! Bang!" Two shots rang out. At such close range, Li Fan performed beyond his usual limits, landing a double headshot that knocked the middle-aged woman and Gao Zixuan down before he bolted toward the office building's main entrance.

Just as he reached the door, he was shocked to find several dripping figures standing in the darkness outside.

Some had only half a head left, others were missing half their torsos, or had strange, spider-like limbs sprouting from their backs.

Even more absurd was one covered from head to toe in dense clusters of mushrooms.

A heavy stench of formalin wafted in from outside, and these corpses all stared at Li Fan with pale, dead eyes.

These were the corpses that had crawled out of the formalin tank!

How had they reached the door so quickly!?

This wasn't scientific at all!

Fortunately, having undergone the Anomaly Bureau's initial training, and with his Mental Radiation Detector buzzing incessantly, Li Fan understood that this was a manifestation of anomalous psychic infection.

He spun around and sprinted toward the stairs.

The entrance was blocked, the basement was off-limits, so he had no choice but to head upstairs.

Seeing Li Fan turn to flee, the corpses outside seemed startled; they jerked their heads up, threw open the door, and surged inside in pursuit.

"Ding!" Just as Li Fan reached the elevator, the doors slid open to reveal a cabin packed tight with dozens of corpses, all of which looked up at him in unison.

Without a moment's hesitation, Li Fan charged up the stairs, firing shots over his shoulder as he ran while shouting insults:

"I'm telling you, I'm the number one figure in the criminal underworld! It'll scare you to death if I say who I am, I'm incredibly dangerous! Don't you dare come any closer!"

The third-floor dormitory! The third-floor dormitory!

The corpses behind him were too close; before Li Fan could even reach the second-floor office area, he had already dived into a third-floor dormitory and slammed the door shut, locking it tight.

The long-abandoned room was pitch black and smelled of mildew, containing only four iron-frame beds; as he ran in, a spiderweb plastered itself across his face.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The corpses outside began to hammer on the door.

Li Fan didn't even bother to turn on the lights; he reached out to grab a bed, intending to barricade the door with it.

He'd try to contact the Bureau's Investigation Division first, but if that failed, he'd have to jump out the window.

Why was this bed so heavy?

In the darkness, Li Fan pulled with all his might, but it didn't budge an inch.

Immediately after, he felt a leg covered in slime.

In the darkness, four mangled corpses on the four beds sat up simultaneously, lunging at him and grabbing his limbs in a death grip.

One of the corpses stood up to open the dormitory door, and the horde outside swarmed in, carrying Li Fan away with their many hands.

Li Fan wore an expression of utter despair, his spirit crushed by the foul stench of the corpses, tears of humiliation streaming from the corners of his eyes.

That's not what they said at the dinner table yesterday...

Soon, Li Fan was carried by the throng of corpses into the first-floor lobby.

A pillar made of water dispensers and tables and chairs had been erected there, and Li Fan was bound to it.

A group of bizarre, mangled corpses surrounded him, their strange footsteps echoing through the hall.

The Amalgam had arrived.

The middle-aged woman and the young man who had been shot in the head now hung limply from the Amalgam's arms, still chattering incessantly:

"I'm going to sue you! Get your supervisor here! Get your supervisor here!"

"What kind of customer service is this! I'm posting this on Weibo!"

Looking at the mangled corpses around him, Li Fan actually calmed down. He looked up at the half-headed Amalgam and said with a defiant sneer:

"Does playing with corpses give you some kind of thrill? Do you have any idea who I am? I'm warning you, this is your last chance to surrender!"

The Amalgam grinned, and the corpses all knelt on the ground in unison as a piercing, shrill scream suddenly rang in Li Fan's ears.

It was mental radiation pollution!

Everything around him seemed to change; vaguely, he saw figures dressed in strange, ancient attire manifesting over the corpses.

Ugly-faced matrons, burly men with ferocious expressions, and children filled with blank terror.

They were all shouting and praying.

He himself was bound to a bronze pillar, while men holding sharp blades prepared to cut him open for a sacrifice.

Before him, the Amalgam's form shifted into a monstrous entity with a tiger's head and a human body, its legs covered in scales and ending in crocodile claws, while its arms were two giant pythons, their blood-red maws agape and writhing.

The tiger eyes were filled with cruelty and savagery, and bloodstains remained between its sharp, jagged teeth.

Li Fan understood that this must be the influence of a powerful anomalous infection taking hold of his brain.

A spiritual phantom.

The monster looked at Li Fan with a cruel, mocking gaze as it slowly approached.

This was the entity to whom Li Fan was to be sacrificed!

"What exactly are you?" Li Fan glared at it and shouted, "Some lonely ghost from the Gutuo Kingdom?"

At this point, his fear had vanished, replaced by a surge of anger that prompted him to lash out.

He prepared to fight to the death!

The tiger-headed monster merely smiled cruelly; its two giant python arms clamped down hard on Li Fan's shoulders before it opened its tiger maw to bite down on him!

At the critical moment, Li Fan suddenly felt a searing heat in his chest. The dagger-like Bronze Key had turned crimson at some point, and the lines of text upon it were glowing.

The restraints around his body loosened, and Li Fan gritted his teeth to break his right hand free, grabbing the Bronze Key and plunging it straight into one of the tiger-headed monster's eyes!

A shrill scream pierced the air, and Li Fan's vision suddenly went black, as if he had ripped through a curtain in an instant!