Free Web NovelChapter 1028: Chapter 716: The Key_2
"Dean Huang, a patient has escaped. Doctor Mu asked me to ask you what to do?" Tao Anyun’s voice was urgent, her face filled with anxiety, her acting quite convincing.
"When did this happen?"
"I don’t know, the person... the person was just discovered missing during rounds, the window was open, they likely jumped out of the window and ran." Tao Anyun quickly said.
This was a very clumsy excuse, and it might even bring danger to her teammates staying in the hospital tonight, but at this critical moment, Tao Anyun couldn’t think of a better reason. She was originally keeping watch in the right stairwell, but unexpectedly, Vice Director Huang suddenly appeared; he came out of the elevator, catching her completely off guard.
By the time she realized it, Vice Director Huang was already in the corridor, and it was too late to send a warning. Out of sheer necessity, she resorted to this strategy. free𝑤ebnovel.com
She knew she couldn’t give up Xu Yiqiu. Once Xu Yiqiu was exposed, their plan for tonight would be completely ruined.
This was one of the reasons she was willing to take a risk to rescue Xu Yiqiu.
Fortunately, it seemed that Vice Director Huang hadn’t discovered Xu Yiqiu yet, so everything was still in time, provided she could find a reason to send him away.
A missing patient was a major incident. If an accident occurred, Vice Director Huang, as the actual person in charge of the hospital, would be held responsible. Tao Anyun’s move hit right at Vice Director Huang’s Achilles’ heel.
Sure enough, upon hearing the news, Vice Director Huang panicked, not even bothering to change clothes, he bent down behind the door, rummaged around for a bit, grabbed a cloth bag, and as he walked out the door, he closed it behind him and hurried towards the stairwell.
Tao Anyun followed, but after running down a few flights, she suddenly cried out "ouch," clutching her ankle, squatting on the ground in pain.
"Are you alright?" Vice Director Huang stopped.
"My... my foot is twisted." Tao Anyun furrowed her brow, looking pained, "Director... Director, you go ahead, I’ll catch up."
"Okay, make sure you come!" After giving instructions, Vice Director Huang in front ran down without looking back, his footsteps quickly disappearing in the stairwell.
After confirming Vice Director Huang had left, Tao Anyun stood up and quickly returned to the seventh floor. She hadn’t expected Dean Huang to be so easily deceived, it was truly fortunate.
Arriving in front of room 706, the surrounding was too quiet. Tao Anyun didn’t dare speak loudly and could only knock on the room, but what made her uneasy was the dead silence inside.
"Xu Yiqiu."
"Xu Yiqiu."
Tao Anyun softly called through the door slit a few times, but still received no response. At this moment, Tao Anyun guessed that either Xu Yiqiu had escaped while she led Vice Director Huang away, or something had happened.
But she couldn’t verify it now because she didn’t have Xu Yiqiu’s means, she couldn’t even open the door in front of her.
Afraid that Vice Director Huang, knowing he’d been deceived, would return unexpectedly, Tao Anyun didn’t dare stay long and could only choose to head to the agreed meeting point to find Zhou.
But going downstairs, she was extra cautious, taking a longer detour, changing to the other stairwell, taking a different route back.
Upon reaching the stairwell, she carefully descended, trying not to make much noise, but just as she reached the sixth floor, suddenly, the sound of footsteps came from downstairs.
"Tap."
"Tap."
"Tap."
It was the sound of high heels. Upon hearing it clearly, Tao Anyun breathed a sigh of relief; she had worried it was Vice Director Huang returning unexpectedly.
But thinking about it, it was impossible; running to the hospital, verifying, and running back would take at least twenty minutes, while she had only taken at most five minutes.
However, Tao Anyun didn’t want to run into this unknown woman. She chose to retreat a step, hiding in the sixth-floor corridor, waiting for the woman to leave before going downstairs herself.
But soon, Tao Anyun realized something was off. The footsteps in the stairwell began to get chaotic, in addition to the woman’s high heel sounds, there were suddenly also the sounds of leather shoes.
"Tap."
"Thunk."
"Tap."
"Thunk."
....
The two types of footsteps interlaced, getting faster and faster. Just as Tao Anyun couldn’t visualize the scene in her mind, a twisted figure quickly climbed up the stairs, it was a man wearing a deep blue tracksuit.
The man was on all fours, wearing red high heels on his feet, and a pair of black leather shoes on his hands. The moment he lifted his head, Tao Anyun’s heart stopped.
It was Dean Huang’s face!
The next second, before Tao Anyun could scream, she was knocked down, Dean Huang somehow pulled out a rusty old kitchen knife, straddled Tao Anyun, and madly chopped at her neck.
Until the spinal cord was severed, a head with its mouth wide open, dying with its eyes open, was left hanging by just a bit of skin attached to the neck.
A few minutes earlier, Xu Yiqiu, hiding in the wardrobe, heard a very light footstep outside the door, followed by a knock, it seemed... it seemed someone was calling her name.
But Xu Yiqiu didn’t dare move. Although she didn’t know exactly what was happening, judging from the lack of any alarm, Zhou and Tao Anyun surely faced doom.
Tao Anyun was cowardly and timid, but Zhou was obviously not. The only reason he would abandon his backup was one: he encountered a ghost.
And Zhou’s mission tonight was to follow Vice Director Huang. Connecting all these, the issue became very clear: this Vice Director Huang was most likely not human. Otherwise, how could he have sensed her presence immediately upon her entrance and rushed back, the most crucial point being that he checked the keys first thing.
This was very unreasonable.
What’s more, if Zhou was already finished, then for Tao Anyun, watching outside the door, there was even less reason to survive, so Xu Yiqiu concluded that the footsteps and calling just now were fake; it wasn’t Tao Anyun outside, but the ghost that had killed her.
Once the footsteps completely faded away, Xu Yiqiu quietly pushed open the cabinet door and stepped out. No time to waste, she mimicked Dean Huang’s actions, stepping onto the edge of the bed, tiptoeing to fetch the suit pants from the top of the wardrobe.
Sure enough, a string of ancient bronze keys dangled from beneath the belt. Xu Yiqiu quickly identified the one she needed. This key was with a round hole, very distinctive.
After taking down the key, to avoid alerting anyone, she returned the suit pants back to their original form. But just before leaving, a chance glance revealed a small piece of cloth wedged under the right cabinet door, white, like a fragment of clothing.
Xu Yiqiu slowly opened the right cabinet door, and the next moment, the scene before her made her eyes widen in shock; she saw a twisted female corpse with broken limbs, bound by tape, grotesquely curled up inside the wardrobe.
With exquisite makeup, smooth long hair, pink lingerie, flesh-colored stockings, and a pair of blood-red high heels... the intense visual impact almost made Xu Yiqiu puke, because this was not a woman at all, but a man, a man meticulously dressed up, who was their teammate Lv Jun, missing since the previous night!
Xu Yiqiu no longer dared delay, she grabbed the keys and left room 706. The corridor was quiet, precisely speaking, the entire building was silent, but Xu Yiqiu, being naturally sharp, still sensed a whiff of danger.
She did not choose to descend the way she came, instead taking a longer detour to the other stairwell. Just as she reached the turning platform between the seventh and sixth floors, she suddenly heard a "clang, clang" noise.
The sound was rhythmical, like some kind of impact, roughly every ten seconds two beats.
This sound echoed unmistakably through the corridor, impossible to avoid. Xu Yiqiu marched on despite her nerves. At the sixth-floor corridor, she saw large bloodstains, with splattered blood on the ceiling and drag marks on the floor.
Looking along the blood trails, there was the elevator. The rhythmic banging noise was coming from there. She saw a pair of legs protruding out from the elevator door, dangling limply on the floor, blocking the elevator doors from closing.
These were Tao Anyun’s legs; Xu Yiqiu recognized the shoes she wore.
Some bloody footprints wandered along from the elevator door, winding their way to the end of the corridor. Xu Yiqiu swallowed hard with difficulty. She knew this led to the other stairway, the very route she should have taken.
The blood footprints were chaotic, weaving erratically like those of a drunken person. On closer, there were two sets, one from a man in leather shoes, the other a woman in high heels.
The male ghost was naturally Vice Director Huang, but the identity of the female ghost threw Xu Yiqiu into confusion, even fear.
"Two ghosts..."
