Chapter 1 The Heart of the Hospital

Countless blood vessels and tendons converged here, surging along the door seams and even piercing through the walls into the dean's office. If the entire hospital were compared to a living creature, this would be its vital heart.

"Creak—"

"Creak—"

A harsh scraping sound came from inside the dean's office. Tang Qisheng became more vigilant. The sound was like that of furniture groaning under unbearable weight.

Gently pulling aside the dense blood vessels in the door seam, Tang Qisheng leaned down and looked inside through the exposed gap. The dean's office was very large. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, but it was now enveloped in dense, vine-like blood vessels, emitting only a dim light.

But this was enough for Tang Qisheng. What truly surprised him was the environment inside the dean's office. Everything here was rotten and twisted. Bookshelves were embedded in the walls, extending all the way to the ceiling. There was also a huge, five-meter-long desk and a three-meter-tall, wildly gesticulating potted plant...

The facilities in the room were far larger than normal. The enormous size made Tang Qisheng feel dizzy, as if he had been shrunk.

"Crack—"

"Crack—"

The thing making the harsh scraping sound was slumped in the executive chair behind the desk. It was a huge mass of rotten flesh, covered in muscle and festering sores. It took a lot of patience to barely make out a human shape.

The humanoid mass of rotten flesh had a deformedly large head, and the face was a bloody mess. In place of eyes were two holes, the eyeballs gone, with rotten flesh wriggling disgustingly inside the holes.

And on the chest of this humanoid mass of rotten flesh hung a blue name tag. The characters on it were blurred with blood, but Tang Qisheng squinted for more than ten seconds before making out the two largest and most obvious characters: Dean.

"This mass of humanoid rotten flesh is the dean. But what exactly happened in this hospital to turn a perfectly normal person into this, and to create these bizarre doctors and nurses?"

Before Tang Qisheng could think further, a sudden chill enveloped him. He realized he had been discovered, because the rotten flesh dean was charging toward him in a strange posture.

"Bang!"

The four-meter-tall black iron door was smashed open. The rotten flesh dean turned its body, its two rotten, pus-filled arms groping around, and after finding nothing, it squirmed toward the children in the distance.

But what it didn't know was that Tang Qisheng was hiding above it.

A moment ago, the instant the dean charged over, Tang Qisheng had decisively grabbed the flesh and blood tendons on the wall and climbed upwards, all the way to the top of the door frame, barely managing to avoid disaster.

At this moment, Tang Qisheng held his breath, his whole body trembling uncontrollably. Because of his position, he could see the deformed head of the rotten flesh dean from above, and that the massive head had actually been hollowed out.

Because of the collision just now, many blood vessels in the door seam had been torn, and yellow and white pus splattered everywhere. Inside the blood vessels wasn't blood, but something more like brain matter.

Soon, miserable wails came from the children near the activity room, along with the sound of whipping and abuse. Tang Qisheng didn't know if the rotten flesh dean was venting its anger on the children.

But he couldn't worry about that now. He quickly climbed down, then quietly slipped into the room. This was the dean's office, and he might find some key clues here. He at least had to figure out why this hospital had become like this.

His primary target was the drawers of the dean's desk, but before he could take a few steps, his leg froze in mid-air. The next second, Tang Qisheng's pupils constricted, and his newly adjusted breathing became rapid.

A hair-thin silver wire was suspended one centimeter from his foot. If it weren't for the mucus on it, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Following the silver wire, he saw a bell hidden under the leaves of a potted plant in an inconspicuous corner.

"That was close!"

This rotten flesh dean was much more vigilant than he had thought. Although it had no eyes, it had connected bells to the traps set up in the office, so that once an intruder accidentally triggered a bell, the dean would immediately know.

Tang Qisheng carefully avoided one silver wire after another, came to the desk, and after confirming that there were no other traps, he lowered his head, concentrated his attention, and gently pulled open the first drawer.

He could see that there were some paper documents inside, but they were now soaked in pus and blood, rotten and completely unrecognizable.

The second drawer was the same, except that it contained some pens, pencils, a stapler, and the like.

Silently praying for good luck, Tang Qisheng pulled open the third and last drawer. But disappointingly, this time there were even fewer things inside, only a box of glass beads.

He remembered these glass beads, the kind that the children in the activity room were fighting over. It seemed that these were the tools the rotten dean used to control the children.

Grabbing one to look at, Tang Qisheng was surprised to find that these glass beads were actually engraved with characters, all surnames, Qian, Wang, Zhao, Li, and so on. He didn't know if they had some kind of meaning.

Thinking that he had to pass through the children's territory on the way back, Tang Qisheng casually took a few, just in case.

Abandoning the desk, Tang Qisheng began to search around the room. He listened carefully, and from the distance of the corridor, he could still hear roars from time to time, as well as the children's painful screams. The abuse was still continuing.

Soon, Tang Qisheng noticed something very strange in the chaotic dean's office. The various blood vessels and tendons extending in from the corridor all converged in one place, behind a dark green, almost wall-high iron storage cabinet.

Cautiously walking forward, Tang Qisheng tentatively pushed it lightly, and a surprising scene appeared. The iron cabinet actually slid to the right. Fortunately, Tang Qisheng was quick-witted and controlled it when it was about to touch a silver wire. The iron cabinet was now half-open, revealing an iron door behind it.

"There's actually a secret room here!"

The door to this secret room hidden in the dean's office looked like a prison. There was an observation window above the door, with several iron bars, and countless blood vessels and tendons were burrowing inside along the observation window and the door seams.

No, that's not right, Tang Qisheng quickly realized his judgment was wrong. The blood vessels weren't burrowing inward, but rather they were all coming out of the secret room. The secret room was like the root of a tree, and the blood vessels and tendons that covered the hospital's underground world were like the roots that grew out of the tree.

"What exactly is this place?"

Filled with intense curiosity, Tang Qisheng tore open the disgusting blood vessels, stood on tiptoe, and looked inside through the observation window. Underneath a dim yellow lamp, he saw hundreds of glass jars densely arranged on the walls, each containing floating brain tissue.