Chapter 1000: Tremor

Zhou Mingrui stared at the elevator descending until the doors sealed shut.

He suppressed his inner urge and chose not to take the elevator now to investigate the underground area of Mushi Hospital.

He needed more information.

Zhou Mingrui withdrew his gaze, walked toward the elevator exit, and planned to pretend as before by visiting a nearby public restroom.

Suddenly, he glanced toward the side corner, as if something lurked within the darkness there.

Zhou Mingrui stared for a while but detected nothing unusual.

He continued forward at an angle, turning into the public restroom.

A few seconds later, he hid within the shadows, merged with the darkness, circled back to this area, and silently began observing.

After patiently waiting nearly five minutes and confirming no possible watchers lingered in the corresponding corner, he returned to the public restroom, feigned having just finished a vital personal matter, and walked out slowly toward the emergency blood-drawing station.

Only after Zhou Mingrui’s figure entered the brightly lit zone did the silhouette of Lu Mi—long black hair cascading, strikingly beautiful—appear on the metal surface of the elevator’s surgical-use doors.

He wore a light gray T-shirt, a coat lighter than water-black, and pale trousers that rode up slightly due to his height, revealing the edges of his socks.

“Such strong spiritual sensitivity, such sharp intuition… this isn’t like a mere Sequence 9 ‘Assassin’…” Lu Mi murmured.

He knew perfectly well Zhou Mingrui could not be merely a Sequence 9 “Assassin.”

Just now, he had hidden in that corner using “Invisibility”; had Zhou Mingrui moved toward the hospital’s underground area, he would have immediately intervened.

Fortunately, he was not only a “Hunter” and a “Witch”—a single “Flash” allowed him to shift position and vanish entirely within the metal mirror formed by the elevator doors.

Lu Mi stepped out of the elevator, intending to move stealthily along the dimly lit hall toward the emergency center, when he suddenly felt a vibration beneath his feet.

It was like a faint earthquake, or perhaps a moderate explosion deep underground.

Lu Mi stopped, lowered his head, and stared at the tiled floor.

“Has something changed in the underground area?” Lu Mi muttered to himself.

…………

Seeing the wooden door swing open behind her, Flanka pulled Rosan and slid swiftly into the shadow cast by the dim lighting.

Then she merged with the shadow, pressed Rosan against the wall behind her, using her own form as superior cover.

Simultaneously, Jianna activated “Invisibility.”

In the blink of an eye, before the wooden door fully opened, all three were hidden.

Again, a nurse in light blue scrubs and a white mask wheeled in a gurney.

But unlike before, the gurney held a patient covered by a thin blanket.

The patient, a woman in her twenties, wore a loose blue-and-white striped gown; her golden hair lay softly on either side, her forehead neither wide nor narrow, smooth and beautiful, her eyes emerald green, her demeanor melancholic and calm.

Her most striking feature was her massively swollen abdomen—she appeared more than seven months pregnant.

Transporting a patient… where are the wards or examination rooms down here?… Flanka muttered inwardly.

Of course, she knew that in the place where dream-subconscious psychological shadows fused with the abyssal symbol of the “Mother Tree of Desire,” logic was a rare commodity.

This foreign pregnant woman on the gurney might well be a psychological shadow of Mr. “The Fool” or that Archdivine!

Rosan, hidden behind Flanka, only saw the foreign pregnant woman after the gurney passed their hiding spot.

Her gaze froze instantly.

That was—the woman she had seen in her dream just now!

Though the woman’s eye had been gouged out and dangled near her socket, her face scarred with deep, fleshless grooves, and fleshy red tumors like heads growing from both shoulders, Rosan recognized her at once.

Rosan bit her lip, stifling any sound of shock.

At that moment, a baby’s cry erupted from the pregnant woman’s swollen belly:

“Wah!”

Flanka’s hair stood on end:

You’re not even born yet—why the hell are you crying?

This cry triggered the buried fear in Flanka, Jianna, and Rosan simultaneously, forcing uncontrollable movements.

Flanka broke free from the shadow; Jianna could no longer maintain “Invisibility.”

In an instant, the nurse’s hollow, vacant eyes turned toward Jianna; the foreign pregnant woman sat up and stared at Flanka and Rosan.

Fight! Flanka gritted her teeth and vanished.

Her plan: temporarily drive back the nurse and the pregnant woman, then seize the chance to escape through the swinging doors into the next area.

Based on their prior experience, the “monsters” in this area would not leave their territory.

The next second, the nurse’s sclera grew more prominent, radiating a chilling aura; he took one giant step and stood before Jianna.

Jianna vanished again, leaving the nurse’s lunge empty.

Instantly, her figure materialized behind the nurse, driving her sharp dagger into his lower back.

Thud!

Her dagger struck as if piercing metal and ironwood—only piercing the fabric, unable to penetrate the skin.

Jianna did not flinch; quiet, sinister “Witch” black flames surfaced on the blade and surged into the nurse’s body.

Whoosh! The nurse, now more inhuman than ever, erupted in “Witch” black flames from within, screaming soundlessly as his spirit and life bled away rapidly.

Meanwhile, Flanka also activated “Invisibility,” and Rosan sprinted away, vanishing over ten meters in a flash.

Flanka appeared before the gurney, a mirror materializing in her hand, reflecting the foreign pregnant woman’s image.

Almost simultaneously, she pressed her palm, coated in quiet black flames, against the mirror’s surface.

Throughout this, the foreign pregnant woman reacted slowly, like an ordinary person.

She saw black flames rising from within her belly, heard the baby’s cry grow louder.

She shrieked in agony and pain, vanishing from the gurney.

But when she reappeared in the direction Flanka had planned to flee, the sinister black flames still burned on her, growing fiercer.

Pop, pop, pop—her flesh seemed to melt, chunks falling one after another to the ground.

Feeling her aura rapidly dissipate and seeing the nurse collapse motionless, Flanka felt a strange, unreal disbelief.

Was that it?

Was that giant mushroom man just an exception? Had the “monsters” of Mushi Hospital’s underground been suppressed to Sequence 7?

No—don’t think like that; tempting fate is wrong…

Before Flanka could correct her thoughts, she saw the foreign pregnant woman collapse, her abdomen splitting inch by inch, as if something sought to crawl out.

Simultaneously, the chunks of flesh that had fallen from the pregnant woman underwent transformation.

Some fused with floor tiles, forming womb-like shapes that gave birth to infants with eyes and brows—but square-shaped; others touched the gurney, causing its blue-tinted metal surface to bulge violently, spewing forth one after another small beds with human heads and wheeled limbs; still others splattered onto the ceiling, making the energy-saving lights blaze suddenly, birthing dozens of children with human bodies and fluorescent-tube heads…

Flanka and Jianna instinctively retreated seven or eight steps toward the giant mushroom man, their minds utterly stunned.

Is this the psychological shadow of a Great Being?

No wonder—it’s the psychological shadow of a Great Being!

Don’t come closer!

I don’t want to give birth!

In terror, Flanka drew her iron-black “Gun of Inevitability.”

She realized the foreign pregnant woman was not yet dead—still secreting more flesh, which writhed, seeking new mothers or fathers, endlessly birthing, endlessly birthing.

Meanwhile, the pregnant woman’s abdomen had fully split open; the fetus within was about to crawl out.

Flanka forced herself to calm down, aimed at the pregnant woman’s abdomen, and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

A bullet emitting a dim bluish-green glow shot forth, piercing through the grotesque infants, striking the target, and drilling into the pregnant woman’s abdomen.

“Inevitable Death!”

The baby’s cry within the pregnant woman turned fierce and venomous—but vanished in an instant.

Likewise, the pregnant woman ceased secreting flesh; all previously spawned offspring, after birthing one new fetus, withered away.

Good—“Inevitable Death” worked… Seeing this, Flanka exhaled quietly.

At that moment, Flanka, Jianna, and Rosan felt the ground tremble.

The tremor lasted only one second, yet all three saw the new corridor beyond the swinging doors crumbling inch by inch—walls, rooms, ceilings collapsing into an unseen abyss, thick with dense blackness.

This collapse slowly spread toward their current area.

Flanka and Jianna sensed it—Flanka looked upward, Jianna turned toward the area blocked by the wooden doors where the giant mushroom man lay.

Flanka saw the ceiling above her also falling—not crashing onto them, but vanishing directly into the bottomless, dense darkness; Jianna saw the same collapse emerging from the giant mushroom man’s area, advancing toward their position.

“Did killing the foreign pregnant woman trigger the underground area’s transformation?”

“No—this is likely the true form of Mushi Hospital’s underground: the dark abyss embracing all psychological shadows… what we walked through and saw before was merely a facade shaped by the dream-city—corridors and some rooms symbolizing safe zones…”

Flanka suddenly understood.

“W-what do we do now?” Rosan finally broke free from her terror.

She had been traumatized by the hundreds of monstrous infants and their birth process, and now realized they had no escape.

(End of Chapter)