Chapter 53: The Old Man

"Run!"

Zhang Xiaofan shouted the command without hesitation. The other three reacted instantly, bolting toward the exit. To their surprise, the door they had entered through suddenly swung open, and an elderly man stepped inside.

He was dressed in white, but unlike the others, he wore blue disposable surgical gloves. He seemed to have just removed his face mask, as faint imprints were visible on his cheeks. He glared at the group with a grim expression and said coldly, "All of you, out!"

Feeling as though they had found a savior, the four rushed out of the room. The old man promptly slammed the door shut. Looking at the four, who were gasping for air as if they had just escaped death, he asked coldly, "Why did you break in here?"

"We came to look at the corpses and stumbled in here by mistake. What exactly are those things?" Zhang Xiaofan asked.

The old man walked slowly, staring deeply at Zhang Xiaofan. "You don't look like ordinary people. What is your objective?"

"It truly was a mistake," Zhang Xiaofan insisted, bracing himself.

"Hmph. Very well, leave," the old man said with a flick of his hand. "If I find you here again, I will make you pay the price!"

The four exchanged glances. Jiang Jiewei whispered, "Old man, are you really just going to let us..."

"What? Do you want to stay?"

"No, no, we're leaving now!" Zhang Xiaofan nudged Jiang Jiewei, and the four hurried to the corner of the corridor. Jiang Jiewei frowned and whispered, "This is trouble. I didn't expect there to be so many zombies here. What do we do now? Finding the female ghost's corpse is going to be impossible." He looked at Zhang Xiaofan and sighed, "I told you, you shouldn't have stopped me. If I had just explained things to him, maybe he wouldn't have been so difficult."

Zhang Xiaofan suddenly smiled. "I pushed you away because I noticed a staircase at the end of the corridor. That’s where the old man just came from."

"You mean..." Hu Xiaotian asked.

"The old man was wearing blue disposable surgical gloves—those are for surgery. And look at his white coat; it was covered in bloodstains," Zhang Xiaofan analyzed.

"Oh, I get it. He’s a corpse too," Hu Xiaotian said.

Zhang Xiaofan rolled his eyes. "He’s not a corpse; he’s an ordinary human. Judging by his familiarity with this place, he’s been here for years. He’s clearly a skilled surgeon, though he walks with a limp."

"You're right," Zhou Jian recalled. "When he came out of that room, he didn't walk very fast."

"We can use this to our advantage. Let's head to the second floor. I checked the morgue earlier; it held corpses numbered one to fifty. I suspect the second floor houses numbers fifty-one to one hundred," Zhang Xiaofan reasoned.

"Let's go then." Hu Xiaotian led the way. The area was deathly quiet; once the old man had entered the room, there wasn't a sound to be heard.

As they climbed the stairs, the surroundings felt eerie and the temperature dropped sharply. Upon reaching the second floor, they immediately spotted another morgue.

*Thump, thump, thump...*

A strange noise echoed from within the room, as if something was pounding against a surface.

Hu Xiaotian shivered. "What's that? Is it those ghost things again?"

Zhang Xiaofan didn't answer. He walked to the door, pressed his ear against it, and listened. "It’s a single sound. It sounds like someone is inside."

He tried pushing the door open. To his surprise, the lights were still on, but the room was completely empty. Rows of freezers stood like pull-out drawers. The temperature was even lower here, and the air was thick with the stench of decay, making all four of them wince.

"Quick, find number ninety-eight," Zhang Xiaofan commanded.

"Fifty-one, fifty-two... sixty," Hu Xiaotian counted along the last row. Jiang Jiewei and Zhou Jian searched the adjacent row.

"Huh? Ninety-six, ninety-seven..." Jiang Jiewei stopped in front of a freezer. "That's strange. It ends at ninety-seven," he said, shocked.

The four gathered around. Suddenly, the cabinet began to shake violently.

*Thump, thump, thump...*

They retreated in haste. Hu Xiaotian looked pale. "Is this the cabinet Li Ting talked about? The one holding her body?"

Zhang Xiaofan leaned in and saw that the label at the top of the cabinet had been ripped off. "No wonder we couldn't find number ninety-eight. Someone tore the tag off."

"So... open it?" Jiang Jiewei asked.

"Open it. The spirit of the ghost Li Ting must be connected to her physical body. She can sense us here, so she won't harm us," Zhang Xiaofan said.

Zhou Jian didn't hesitate. He warned the others to be careful and pulled the freezer open. A blast of icy cold air hit them. Inside lay Li Ting.

Her face was twisted, her body unclothed. Her skull was flattened as if crushed by something, and her eye sockets had been hollowed out and filled with two large black spheres. Her chest was caved in, and her limbs were bent at unnatural angles; it was clear she had suffered immense torture before death.

Suddenly, the corpse of Li Ting smiled. Her mouth curled, and she whispered, "You found me. Do it."

Zhang Xiaofan nodded. "After this is done, I hope you stop haunting us."

He pulled out a dagger and stabbed it into the chest of the corpse. Because it had been frozen for so long, the body was as hard as stone. It took a great deal of effort for Zhang Xiaofan to carve an opening. He swallowed hard; dissecting a corpse was truly nauseating, but there was no turning back now.

He pried the chest cavity open and peered inside, curious about what Li Ting wanted him to retrieve. Because the lighting was dim, he had Hu Xiaotian aim his phone's flashlight. When they saw the interior, all four gasped—the organs had been completely hollowed out, and even the ribs had been removed.

"Xiaofan, look, there's a piece of cloth near the heart," Jiang Jiewei pointed out.

Zhang Xiaofan nodded, suppressed his revulsion, and reached in to pull out the red cloth. As they pulled it out, they were surprised to find something wrapped inside.

As soon as the object was removed, Li Ting’s corpse settled back into place, becoming nothing more than a cold, inanimate body.

"We've got it. Let's go." Hu Xiaotian looked around in terror, unwilling to stay a second longer. Zhang Xiaofan nodded, tucked the cloth-wrapped item into his shirt, and opened the door. His expression shifted instantly, and he quickly pulled the door shut.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Jian asked urgently.

"We're in big trouble..."