Chapter 216: Frog Hospital (8) Embryo

Amidst the clamor of human voices, no croaking sounds were heard.

Qi Si raised an eyebrow slightly: “A red frog?”

Sun Dekuan blinked twice, then incredulously slapped his chubby face: “No, the frog’s gone again… I thought I was seeing things?”

The male voice behind him was still crying self-reproachfully, while a nurse offered tired, insincere comfort beside him.

Qi Si patted Sun Dekuan’s shoulder and continued along their previous path: “Let’s go. To figure out what happened, we need more clues.”

Sun Dekuan snapped out of his daze, withdrew his gaze, and followed behind Qi Si.

The hospital corridors twisted and turned like a maze. Patients in hospital gowns sat by their doors, staring blankly at passersby.

Every time they turned a corner, the corridor ahead looked exactly like the previous one. If not for the changing room numbers, they might have felt trapped in a ‘ghost wall,’ walking in circles.

Sun Dekuan muttered softly: “We’ve walked all this way, and there isn’t even a fire exit. You’d think it was a prison…”

“Perhaps it’s to prevent patients from escaping.” Qi Si chuckled with interest, his gaze following the dirty walls into the distance, seeing no maps, indicator lights, or road signs.

He inexplicably recalled a horror game from his childhood called “Exit 8,” where the character was in a narrow corridor, and if they saw an anomaly, they had to turn back, otherwise they would be forever trapped in the underground passage, unable to leave.

Qi Si noticed that there were no stairwells on the hospital’s fourth floor; the entire level seemed to be isolated in a separate space, independent of the outside world.

Normally, a hospital’s inpatient department and surgical area are separate, because surgical areas usually require high sterility and involve the management of high-risk items like anesthetics and surgical instruments, while the frequently flowing personnel of the inpatient department would undoubtedly negatively affect its safety.

However, all departments of the Blue Frog Hospital were crammed onto the fourth floor. Along the way, Qi Si saw not only wards and operating rooms, but also consultation rooms, the Archives, and laboratories. Though small, it had everything, as if this floor constituted the entirety of the hospital.

Sun Dekuan thought for a moment and asked: “So what do we do next? Try to leave this place?”

Qi Si grunted, having no intention of explaining his plan to his ‘tool-person’.

In the silence, the sound of a radio broadcast came from a ward, seemingly shouting some slogan.

From time to time, a few prominent, high-pitched static noises rang out, sharp and chilling, like someone crying.

Sun Dekuan got goosebumps from listening, and rubbed his chubby arm: “Little brother, I think I might have guessed what this instance is about…”

He roughly recounted the information he knew, which was merely that similar strange tales circulated in his hometown in reality.

The local hospital had too many abortions, and the deceased infants and pregnant women coalesced into vengeful spirits, demanding lives from innocent people, leading to repeated failures in similar subsequent surgeries, with all patients dying from severe hemorrhage.

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Qi Si narrowed his eyes and asked: “Exactly which year was this? Is there anyone named Cheng Ping in the hospital over there?”

He vaguely had a premonition that this instance might be similar to the Su Clan Village, Shuangxi Town, and Red Maple Boarding School.

Although he didn’t know if reality’s eeriness was used as material for the instance, or if the instance’s script was playing out in reality, as long as it could produce oddities like the Statue of the Joyous God and insomnia syndrome pathogens, it was good news for Qi Si.

The deterrent lurking in the shadows could make the Federation wary, but who knew if the decision-makers would harden their hearts and cut off their losses. To be safe, some disruptive chaos was necessary.

Qi Si was more than happy to give the Eerie Investigation Bureau something to do, so they wouldn’t spend all day creating textual garbage around Fu Jue.

“This happened a long time ago, seems like decades. I’m not sure of the exact date,” Sun Dekuan recalled. “‘Cheng Ping’ is a common name. If there really was such a famous person over there, I wouldn’t have no impression at all. If I had to say, there was someone named ‘Cheng Ping’an’…”

…Never mind then.

It seems this instance is similar to the Hopeless Sea, where the background appears related to reality but actually takes place in a parallel world.

The two turned another corner.

This time, the scene finally changed. The winding, intestine-like corridor seemed to have finally reached its end. No longer was there an endless path and wards on both sides, but an empty space of about forty square meters.

An open iron door was embedded in the wall straight ahead. Thick white mist surged outside the door like clouds and waves, and figures flickered in and out of the mist, only their blurry outlines visible.

There was clearly no lock, no obstruction whatsoever, yet just seeing such a sight was enough to make one hesitate, as if behind the door lay an unknown world symbolizing terror, and to step inside meant death.

Sun Dekuan shivered, lowering his voice to ask: “Little brother, should we still go forward?”

If Huang Xiaofei and Lu Zimo were here, being bold and skilled, they might actually go ahead to scout.

But Qi Si had a clear understanding of his own combat strength.

He looked left and right. Iron doors were embedded in each of the side walls, labeled “Morgue” and “Kitchen” respectively.

The iron doors were aligned with each other, facing across the path, hinting at a meaning of “from death to consumption, freshly killed upon order.”

In Qi Si’s impression, many hospitals, considering factors like food safety, cost-effectiveness, and hygiene management, typically do not have kitchens and tend to outsource catering services.

However, in the Blue Frog Hospital, special services like tadpole soup could indeed not be provided by external catering establishments, and could only be handled by the hospital itself.

Qi Si walked directly to the kitchen, skillfully pulling out a thin wire from his wristband and poking at the door lock.

Sun Dekuan watched him, his gaze wandering:…Are university students nowadays all so well-rounded?

Qi Si picked the lock and pushed the door open.

Sun Dekuan scratched his head and followed.

He had been a chef for over twenty years, and the kitchen was like home to him. No matter how bizarre the instance, a kitchen was just a kitchen.

The white acrylic countertop was stained with oil that wouldn’t wipe clean, but the large pot on it was sparkling. The exhaust fan and range hood worked alternately, keeping the indoor air relatively clean.

A covered iron barrel was placed in the corner, out of place with the scene.

Facing the familiar setup, Sun Dekuan’s fear subsided considerably. Seeing Qi Si walk towards the iron barrel, he bravely followed.

As they got closer, they could faintly hear the sound of water rippling, as if something was swimming inside, occasionally bumping against the edge with soft thudding sounds.

Cold sweat seeped from Sun Dekuan’s palms unconsciously. Just as he was about to speak, he saw Qi Si yank open the lid, revealing a barrel full of bloody liquid.

The liquid surged ceaselessly as if alive. Looking closely, one could see dense swarms of tadpoles swimming in the bloody soup, packed together like sesame seeds in a funnel, heads pressed against heads, tails intertwined with tails.

This was more disgusting than terrifying. Sun Dekuan recoiled two steps in alarm, nearly screaming.

Something seemed to be at the bottom of the blood water. Qi Si grabbed a ladle from the corner, reached into the barrel, stirred for a while, and fished something out.

It was a fist-sized lump of flesh, its shape between a tadpole and a frog. Above the tail, tiny claws and a bloodshot head were faintly visible; it was clearly an unformed human embryo.

The embryo’s skin was pitted and uneven, seemingly bitten by tadpoles.

Qi Si blinked. The fetus was gone, replaced by a dead red frog.

Sun Dekuan stared, dumbfounded, at the bloody flesh on the spoon: “We… the tadpoles we eat grow up eating this stuff? What’s their motive?”

“Perhaps it’s to be thrifty, reusing medical waste; perhaps it’s to accumulate resentment, to harm those who consume the tadpoles—who knows?”

Qi Si threw the frog’s corpse back into the barrel, re-covered it, then washed the ladle under the faucet and returned it to its original place.

While he was unhurriedly cleaning up the traces, Sun Dekuan had already sprinted a few steps to the door.

Ever since he saw that barrel of tadpoles, he had an inexplicable feeling that the tadpoles would crawl onto him and bite his flesh. If Qi Si hadn’t still been in the kitchen, he would have fled out the door long ago.

Noticing his ‘tool-person’s’ reluctance, Qi Si obligingly exited the kitchen, pulling Sun Dekuan with one hand and slamming the door shut with the other.

Sun Dekuan suddenly pointed ahead and stammered: “Little brother, when did that get there?”

In the middle of the open space outside the door, an iron bed had appeared at some unknown time.

On the bed lay a pale, emaciated woman, and beside her, an equally pale, half-formed infant corpse.

The blood-stained sheet had been removed, and there was no trace of blood left on the corpse.

Qi Si narrowed his eyes, walked around the iron bed, and lowered his head to look at the number and name on the woman’s wristband.

【S951, Jiang Xue】

There were no nurses around, but the morgue door, which had been tightly locked moments before, had automatically swung open a small crack, spewing out chilling cold air.

In the silence, there were only the two men’s breaths. The lighting in the scene seemed to dim by several degrees, and the shadows in the mist outside the main door began to squirm restlessly.

Sun Dekuan suggested with a trembling voice: “Little brother, why don’t we go back first? This place feels a bit eerie, maybe we should wait for more people…”

Qi Si turned his head to look at him, chuckling softly: “Since we’re already here, do you think they’ll let us leave?”

Sun Dekuan shivered in fright, feeling as if the air was filled with vengeful spirits, staring at him with ill intent.

He said with a mournful face: “I’m not saying this to be mean, little brother, but don’t scare me like that, I’ll take it seriously…”

Qi Si indulged his dark humor, then pushed open the morgue door and walked in.

Near the door were several iron beds with corpses, covered head to toe in white sheets, with only their wristband-wearing arms hanging down at the edges.

The wristband on the corpse closest to Qi Si read 【11027, Zhao Zhu】, clearly using a different coding system than the corpse outside.

Qi Si looked through the numbers on the wristbands of several nearby corpses. Most of the female corpses’ numbers began with an “S,” and the numbers were within a thousand.

Of course, some female corpses had numbers over ten thousand, without an “S” prefix.

Qi Si guessed that the corpses marked with an “S” belonged to pregnant women, specifically marked to distinguish them from other corpses for later use.

But with over nine hundred deaths already, why hadn’t the hospital attracted the attention of relevant authorities?

Also, how did the hospital convince the deceased’s families to leave the bodies in the morgue?

A gust of wind came from behind. Qi Si reacted swiftly, stepping sideways to dodge.

The next second, he heard a “thump,” and a chubby figure fell to the ground.

Sun Dekuan struggled to prop himself up, his voice trembling: “S-someone pushed me…”

His thoughts interrupted, Qi Si stared at Sun Dekuan expressionlessly, saying blandly: “What pushed you was most likely not human.”

He got to see the latter almost faint from fright, as he wished.

He observed for a moment, then grabbed Sun Dekuan’s collar and pulled it down, revealing his oily, plump back.

On the pale skin were two distinct, bleeding small handprints, strikingly obvious.

The iron door of the morgue suddenly slammed shut behind them, making a loud “clang”.

Sun Dekuan quickly rushed over and grabbed the doorknob, but no matter how he turned it, the door wouldn’t budge.

He was almost in tears: “Little brother, this door is locked from the outside, I can’t open it…”

A cold system voice rang in his ear, accompanied by stark white prompt text.

【side quest refreshed】

【side quest (Mandatory): Survive in the morgue for half an hour】