Free Web NovelChapter 1041: Chapter 723: Crying Sounds
The body lay flat on an iron bed, covered with a white cloth, beneath which vaguely outlined a human silhouette.
The sudden appearance of the body gave Yang Xiao a very ominous premonition, and at this moment, the sound of a Ghost Bell quickly approached along the dark corridor. With a fierce resolve, Yang Xiao stepped into the cold storage room, gently closing the door behind him.
He could roughly confirm that the infant corpse was here; the temperature was extremely low, and the environment was complex, making it an ideal place to hide a body.
He quietly waited behind the door for a moment, and the bell sound gradually faded away as the female ghost left.
Raising his flashlight towards the corpse on the iron bed, Yang Xiao mustered the courage to approach. He didn’t want to check closely, but he had no choice — first out of curiosity about the body’s identity, second... he worried that the corpse itself might have issues.
The cold storage room’s environment was complex, with many blind spots in the view, and without lighting. Allowing an unknown body to quietly lie where he couldn’t see it made Yang Xiao shiver with unease.
As a scriptwriter, Yang Xiao had a vivid imagination, and suddenly an image flashed in his mind: just as he reached out to lift the white cloth, a cold hand suddenly grabbed his wrist the next second.
Or something like this — after lifting the cloth, the corpse beneath turned out to be Captain Zhou, and in Captain Zhou’s hand was a pager tightly clenched.
"Hiss—"
The more Yang Xiao didn’t want to imagine further, the more strange and bizarre images forcefully flooded his mind, a rare innate talent.
He was born a writer of ghost stories, but at this moment, such talent became a burden.
Walking past a tin box, Yang Xiao casually pulled out a hollow steel pipe, swung it around; it felt just right in his hand.
Approaching the iron bed where the body lay, Yang Xiao extended the pipe, attempting to lift the cloth covering the body, but made a mistake. The rough edge of the pipe caught the clothing, and the next second, the body’s arm fell down. freёwebnovel.com
Yang Xiao’s brow furrowed sharply; the body wasn’t dressed in a patient’s gown but a white coat — this was a medical staff!
As if the unease in his heart was confirmed, Yang Xiao slowly lifted the white cloth from the body’s face, and the next instant, a pale face appeared before his eyes.
Startled, Yang Xiao inadvertently bumped the pipe against the head, and the head actually rolled off the mortuary bed, hitting the ground with a "thud," rolling two or three meters before stopping, perfectly facing Yang Xiao.
The deceased was an unfamiliar young woman in her twenties, head separated from body, and the seam at the neck appeared to have been sawn through, muscles dislocated, neck twisted; Yang Xiao immediately recognized the neck was broken, dismembered after death.
It was Wu Qiao, who coordinated with him last night. Yang Xiao quickly confirmed her identity.
Neither Captain Zhou nor the others mentioned how Wu Qiao’s body was handled, nor did they warn him, indicating they too were unaware of this matter.
The body wasn’t transported by them, Vice Director Huang was the prime suspect, but Yang Xiao couldn’t confirm it at this moment.
Wu Qiao’s eyes were slightly open, with a dead silence within; her expression wasn’t one of pain, for her neck was broken by the Bald Ghost unknowingly, an event Yang Xiao witnessed terrifyingly.
"I’m sorry for your death. If your spirit is watching over, help me, help us all." After confirming the body posed no further issues, Yang Xiao covered it back with the white cloth.
The head remained on the floor, exposed with clots of blood and muscle, a horrifying scene. Yang Xiao found another cloth to cover the head, then turned on his flashlight, heading towards the dark green metal cabinet not far away.
If there was anything more noticeable in the cold storage room besides the body, it was undoubtedly these rows of metal cabinets. These cabinets, situated in a cold, damp underground for years, had mostly rusted.
The metal cabinets were neatly arranged in rows, occupying much of the cold storage space. Some doors were ajar, others were closed, unsure if they were locked or could be opened.
Judging by the preservation state of the cabinets, it seemed no one had cleaned here for a long time; he speculated the infant corpse was hidden in one of the compartments of these cabinets.
He slowly moved forward, flashlight sweeping all around. The environment here was complex, with many dead ends between the cabinets and other piled-up debris, inexplicably giving Yang Xiao immense pressure — if nothing happened in this ghostly place, it would indeed be eerie.
Yang Xiao moved cautiously, constantly alert to the surroundings. Fortunately, the ghost bell hadn’t rung for a long time, and the female ghost was nowhere to be seen.
Leaning down, Yang Xiao gently pulled open a half-open cabinet door. Inside were only an old piece of clothing and two bars of soap; no discovery, but the old cabinet door left his hand stained with rust.
As Yang Xiao absentmindedly wiped the rust on the clothing, suddenly, he seemed to hear a strange sound.
It was a soft scraping noise, like something being dragged on the ground, yet the next second, when Yang Xiao focused intently, the sound vanished, like a hallucination under extreme tension.
However, in Yang Xiao’s dictionary, there were no words like "illusion" or "coincidence." He heard it; he definitely heard it. The first time the sound appeared, it was some distance away, direction... probably behind him.
Clutching the flashlight, Yang Xiao immediately turned and headed back. After walking past the rows of metal cabinets, the flashlight beam illuminated the relatively spacious area. Yang Xiao first checked the door; the cold storage room door was closed, so it wasn’t the female ghost.
Yet at the instant the flashlight swept over the mortuary bed, Yang Xiao’s worst fear came true. At that moment, there was no longer any shadow of a body on the mortuary bed, only the white cloth fallen on the floor.
The body... had vanished!!
A chill spread through his body, and Yang Xiao quickly checked around the mortuary bed, but found no corpse.
Even more eerily, it was just the corpse that was missing, while the solitary head remained in its place.
"Zzz... zzz..."
The pager on Yang Xiao suddenly lit up, and crackling electric noises came from the speaker. Soon, some strange sounds mingled with the static. Yang Xiao steadied his mind, held his breath, and listened carefully to the low, hoarse sounds that came in waves... They were... they were cries of a person.
And the voice was quite familiar to Yang Xiao. It was unmistakably Wu Qiao’s voice, yet she was already dead.
Her head was not far from his feet.
Vice Director Huang is a Ghost, and patients used as scapegoats can also become Ghosts. Adding the female ghost into the mix, even the dead teammates could turn into Fierce Ghosts. The ghost presence in this mission seemed way too high, catching Yang Xiao off guard.
Every ghost’s abilities and habits are different, which means he was now facing a brand new ghost, and at that, trapped in a confined cold chamber along with it.
The pager malfunctioned, emitting bursts of terrifying cries. If it were someone with lesser mental fortitude, they might have already been scared half to death and thrown the pager away, but not Yang Xiao. He detected something odd in the crying.
It wasn’t a single person’s cries; if you listened carefully, you could hear faint, brief, yet sharp sobs.
Like... like a baby’s.
It seemed the pager was on the same frequency as the Ghost Baby’s world. Now, there were three in the cold chamber.
To be precise, it was him, and two ghosts.
Wu Qiao and the Ghost Baby, and soon, the female ghost, who had wandered off somewhere, would undoubtedly come too. Three ghosts and one person, enough for a game of mahjong.
Things were getting lively now.
The current situation was too complicated for Yang Xiao to handle alone; he thought of driving a wedge between enemies. First, get out himself, lure the female ghost in, and let the three of them fight inside the cold chamber.
Once the female ghost took out Wu Qiao, he would re-enter and reap the benefits, helping her find the Ghost Baby.
In this world, the female ghost had no friends. Whether it was Captain Zhou and those "medical staff," people brought in like him by accident, or patients in the hospital—if they turned into ghosts upon death—it didn’t matter. Anyone who met or was touched by the female ghost had to die.
Wu Qiao, who had turned into a ghost, would be no exception.
The cry of the Ghost Baby was sometimes loud, sometimes soft, with a sense of direction. However, Wu Qiao’s cries interfered, preventing Yang Xiao from determining the exact location accurately.
At this moment, Yang Xiao realized he had to silence Wu Qiao to find the Ghost Baby. He needed to eliminate this blocking ghost.
While contemplating all this, Yang Xiao resolutely walked toward the door, but when he approached, he was dumbfounded. The heavy iron door had disappeared, leaving only a bare concrete wall.
Yang Xiao incredulously pounded the wall, but it remained unmoving, with a chilling coldness seeping through it. fгeewebnovёl.com
"Damn it..."
Yang Xiao retreated, realizing he was trapped, and it was Wu Qiao’s doing. At the same time, the crying from the pager became more and more piercing and harsh, almost entirely drowning out the Ghost Baby’s cries.
"Scritch—"
"Scritch—"
Yang Xiao whirled around, shining his flashlight at a pile of clutter, but saw nothing unusual.
Yet he was certain he had heard it, the sound of something dragging on the ground, like... like someone crawling.
It was the Ghost Baby!
This thought flashed through Yang Xiao’s mind instantly. The female ghost could not be counted on anymore, and Wu Qiao would probably soon attack him. His only hope now was the Ghost Baby.
But first, he had an important task—to determine whether the crawling thing was indeed the Ghost Baby or Wu Qiao’s headless corpse. His survival depended on it.
Yang Xiao headed to the mortuary table, picking up a white cloth with a stench of corpse, using himself as bait, stood on the table. Sure enough, the rustling crawls approached him and soon reached in front of him.
At a critical moment, he pinpointed the crawling sound’s position, and with a swift motion, flung the white cloth. In the next second, Yang Xiao’s pupils dilated as the cloth seemed to hit something and suddenly outlined a human shape.
It had no head.
