Chapter 235: Frog Hospital (27) Borrowing a Knife to Kill

In the dark space, Qi Si retrieved his mountaineering bag from his inventory.

Retrieving items from the inventory doesn’t require direct physical contact; one only needs to send a command with their mind, and the item will appear within one centimeter of the player.

In other words, if a player wanted to, they could even summon an item above their head and hit themselves in the face with it.

The mountaineering bag materialized on the clean ground to Qi Si’s right, pressed tightly against the chair leg, perilously close to the encroaching pool of blood.

Qi Si controlled the Cursed Pendulum to unzipper the backpack, revealing towels, paper, pens, a Candy Jar, and other items packed tightly inside.

The transparent Candy Jar was filled with freshly scooped Tadpole Soup, one pressed against the other, almost filling every gap, their heads and tails still twitching slightly.

Next to the Candy Jar was a cloth bag that pulsed and trembled, containing a frog whose eyes Qi Si had covered with a towel.

“Dr. Cheng… I don’t want to die… please save me, okay?”

A mournful whisper echoed faintly in his ears. On the iron bed before him, the woman’s corpse sat up, her head twisted at an unnatural angle towards Qi Si, her wide-open eyes hollow.

Her body was covered in blister-like bloodstains, like clothing. The touched flesh visibly festered at a rapid rate, and the stench of decay mixed with the smell of blood stimulated his nasal cavity. The fear belonging to Cheng An, his original body, unreasonably filled his heart.

Qi Si couldn’t tear his gaze away, only watching helplessly as the woman decomposed beyond recognition in a few seconds, with thick yellow and oily green putrid water floating like a smoky film on the pool of blood.

His heart felt like it was being squeezed by a hand, every cell stiff and frozen, even breathing became a burden.

Various fragmented images exploded in his mind, floating like willow catkins in spring, lifted high and then fluttering down to settle. His vision was smeared with a thin layer of blood, flashing alternately with exposed white, deepening at a perceptible rate.

His long-dormant Hemophobia resurfaced, his consciousness struggling between lucidity and stupor.

Qi Si realized that the best way to trap someone was to make them lose consciousness.

If he fainted again, he didn’t know when he would wake up, or if he would wake up at all… There was no time for hesitation or indecision. A solution he had long considered, though fraught with risks, had to be put into practice personally.

The Cursed Pendulum quickly shattered the Candy Jar holding the tadpoles, then swept away the towel covering the frog’s eyes.

The dense mass of tadpoles scattered across the towel like black hair, forming speckled patches among the fibers, writhing painfully in place after their moisture was absorbed.

The Blue Frog squatted puffily amidst the tadpoles, its golden eyes fixed on Qi Si, its pale belly contracting and expanding, ready to croak at any moment.

The blood pool crept stickily and slowly across the ground, having already encircled the backpack and beginning to seep into the thickened fabric.

Qi Si used the Cursed Pendulum to gather a clump of tadpoles, brought them to his lips, and poured them all into his mouth.

He had intended to hold them in his mouth, but the tadpoles, without his consent, flowed down his saliva into his esophagus, wriggling in his stomach for a few seconds before falling silent.

“Croak croak croak!”

The Blue Frog witnessed Qi Si swallowing the tadpoles and immediately let out a loud series of croaks.

Immediately after, a chorus of frog calls erupted from afar, initially sounding distant and indistinct for a few seconds, but quickly rolling closer like muffled thunder, exploding with clamor, like drumbeats, like a choir.

The fervent noise dispelled the eerie atmosphere, inexplicably giving a festive and lively feeling, as if celebrating a holiday.

The muddy smell of a pond and water vapor permeated the cold darkness, enveloping him from all directions, even briefly overpowering the original stench of blood.

Green frogs appeared out of thin air in every corner of the room, their red eyes gleaming crimson in the gloom.

“Croak croak croak… croak croak…”

Amidst the croaking, countless frogs hopped and bounded towards Qi Si, bringing with them a sensation of the earth trembling.

Blood tendrils had already clung to Qi Si’s shoe heels, a faint chill tickling the soles of his feet through the plastic, as if searching for a way in.

However, the frogs were faster. They hopped and bounded forward, heedless of their lives, treading through the blood pool.

The seemingly living blood wrapped around the first few frogs. The touched frogs decomposed in a single breath, quickly turning into charred black frog bones, scattered in the blood pool, and disintegrating into fragments.

The frogs behind seemed oblivious to the tragic fate of their predecessors, following one after another without slowing down, fearlessly rushing forward in waves.

The blood splattered on the frogs burned out black spots like acid corrosion. More and more frog carcasses paved the ground, briefly blocking the spread of the blood pool.

An endless stream of blood gushed from the corpse on the iron bed, but it gradually couldn’t keep up with the speed of the frogs’ appearance, showing signs of being absorbed dry.

The blood tendrils trembled as they detoured to the sides, attempting to touch Qi Si, who was tied to the chair, from other directions, but all paths to Qi Si were blocked by frogs.

Finally, the first batch of frogs crossed the blood pool’s blockade and jumped onto Qi Si.

They croaked angrily, just as they had treated Lu Zimo on the first day, desperately tearing at Qi Si’s flesh and clothes.

Most of Qi Si’s body was covered by the straitjacket, and the few exposed areas of skin received small electric currents every two seconds.

The electric shock, not fatal to humans, was a catastrophe for frogs. Many frogs were electrocuted and charred before they could inflict any wounds on Qi Si.

The frogs’ mucus scraped against Qi Si’s body, bringing a slimy, disgusting sensation.

The acrid smell of burnt meat lingered in his nostrils, mixing with the muddy, bloody, putrid, and watery smells to form a heavy, nauseating odor.

Qi Si tried to empty his mind, to ignore the disgusting things on his body that would drive a 潔癖 (germaphobe) mad, but in this situation, all that surfaced from the depths of his mind were even worse memories.

It was a suffocating feeling, being forcibly compressed into a small ball, crammed into an even smaller cavity, and tightly wrapped. Death was before his eyes, yet out of reach, forcing him to continue struggling in the abyss of survival… The living frogs, like a tide, engulfed Qi Si, diligently tearing at his straitjacket.

As soon as the frogs that had bitten through the straitjacket touched human skin, they were continuously zapped by electricity through their meridians, becoming one of the electrocuted frog corpses.

The remaining frogs continued to diligently tear at Qi Si’s restraints; it was only a matter of time before they were electrocuted.

Frogs, as amphibians, are not very intelligent, and being part of the anomaly, they merely follow predetermined procedures according to their inherent mechanisms.

Soon, Qi Si’s straitjacket and belt buckles were completely removed, yet the frogs continued to repeat the process of jumping onto Qi Si, touching his skin, and being electrocuted to death.

With a thought, the Cursed Pendulum resting on Qi Si’s wrist flew out once more, this time picking up the towel and covering the Blue Frog’s eyes.

As if a switch had been flipped, the overwhelming swarm of green frogs stopped advancing. The hundred or so frogs already on Qi Si also stopped moving, as if under a stasis spell.

A second later, all the frogs turned around and hopped away into the shadows from which they came, their clamor subdued.

The Cursed Pendulum returned to Qi Si’s wrist. The young man stood up from the chair, shaking off the charred frogs covering him.

The iron bed in front of him was still dripping blood, but after the frogs’ interference, the blood flow had slowed considerably, as if afraid of being depleted, tentatively extending tendrils and spreading slowly.

Qi Si returned his backpack to his inventory, turned his back on the listless blood pool on the ground, and walked away from the iron bed.

On the previously smooth wall, a doorway had appeared at some point, maintaining the same grayish-black color as the wall, making it hard to notice without careful inspection.

Qi Si held the Pocket Watch of Fate, walked step by step, and entered the doorway… In Room 404, Sun Dekuan used a small knife to cut all the paper chains off Lu Zimo.

Lu Zimo regained his freedom and smiled gratefully at Sun Dekuan: “Thank you, Brother Sun. After we get out of this instance, I’ll repay you even if it means working like an ox or horse.”

These were mere pleasantries; few would truly believe them.

Sun Dekuan chuckled: “Xiao Lu, I’m just getting by. I don’t ask for much. Just don’t treat me like you treated your sister…”

“I wouldn’t dare, Brother Sun. You know so much about me. If I did anything to you, you could totally expose me on the forums after leaving the instance.”

Lu Zimo got off the hospital bed, stretched his limbs, and exercised his muscles, emitting crisp “crack-crack” sounds.

He glanced towards the door and changed the subject: “Brother Sun, after the refresh at six o’clock, we must immediately rush to the surgery area, the faster the better.”

“Ah? Why?”

“Cheng An might not be dead,” Lu Zimo said calmly. “Given his intelligence and suspicious nature, after separating from you, he will definitely suspect the possibility of you being turned by me. He most likely won’t return to the ward.

“You also said that he knows more clues than you, and those clues are very likely the key to te clearance. Whether he chooses to use the instance mechanism against us or abandon us and achieve te clearance himself, it will put us in a passive position.

“To be safe, we must quickly ambush him at the refresh point.”

Sun Dekuan had long accepted Lu Zimo’s “Cheng An is harmful” theory. Compared to risking his own safety, killing someone else was clearly the easier choice.

He nodded, then scratched his head, asking, “With so many operating rooms, how will we know where Cheng An is?… Wait, how do you know he’s in the surgery area?”

“I asked the nurse,” Lu Zimo turned his head to look at Sun Dekuan, his usually watery eyes now showing a hint of looking at an idiot. “Yesterday during the day, you all went out to explore. Of course, I wouldn’t foolishly stay in the ward.”

Sun Dekuan recalled that a day ago, Lu Zimo had looked terrified by the failure rate, half-dead and tearful, and it took Huang Xiaofei half an hour to calm him down.

Precisely because he showed such absolute weakness, the players, out of humanitarianism, did not drag him along to venture outside.

Now it seemed that all his inexperienced behavior in the past few days was faked, not only to mislead Huang Xiaofei but also to secretly investigate Cheng An.

‘He’s got Huang Xiaofei and Cheng An all figured out, would he miss me?’

Sun Dekuan suddenly had this thought, and a chill ran down his spine… The biting cold quickly dissipated after he stepped through the door. Soft light poured down before his eyes, spreading across the entire world.

Qi Si found himself in a small room. A purple office desk was placed in the center, with a replica statue of ‘Pietà’ on it.

The documents on the desk were neatly stacked, completely different from the messy scene in the previous office he visited, undoubtedly more in line with the usual style of a Directors Office.

“Is this the real Directors Office now?”

Qi Si smiled and walked towards the desk.

In the very center was a crumpled notebook, most of its pages stuck together with mucus, only able to be opened from the middle.

All legible handwriting pieced together into two short paragraphs:

【I need corpses, I need the female corpses who died in childbirth. Sacrifice a thousand corpses to (data deleted), and He will descend upon the world…】

【(data deleted) told me that by simply having them eat tadpoles, they would be cursed by the frogs and die from massive hemorrhage on the operating table…】

【I set the cycle time to one day, so no matter how strange the rules I set or how much suspicion they arouse, it won’t have too great an impact…】

The crucial puzzle piece filled the gaps in the deduction, clearly answering three questions.

Qi Si sighed with a smile: “It seems that the female corpses with’S’ prefixes in the morgue are the materials for the Ritual. Only a thousand corpses are needed, and if I haven’t miscalculated, they should already be gathered.

“The matter of tadpoles causing a curse is under the Director’s control. Some patients don’t know about the distribution of Tadpole Soup, and some nurses don’t know that tadpoles are given to patients as medicine, simply because the news didn’t have time to spread widely within a single day.”

【You have completed the clue ‘The Director’s Secret’】

Silver-white text refreshed.

Qi Si lifted his face, speaking with a half-smile to the being in the void: “And, Comrade Cheng An, Wang Ying’s death on the operating table had nothing to do with you. It was the Director’s secret meddling for his own selfish desires, causing her to be cursed by the frogs—”

He suddenly lowered his voice, his smile teasing: “Are you satisfied with this outcome?”

His intuition caught a “click,” as if some barrier had been broken.

At the same time, Qi Si heard a cold electronic voice in his ear.

【You have learned that the patient’s death was not due to your fault, finally resolved your inner conflict, and cured your ‘Hemophobia’】

【Current quest ‘Cure your illness’ has been completed】

“So it’s that idealistic?” Qi Si shook his head, the joy of completing an important task absent from his face.

He glanced at the Pocket Watch of Fate; it was already five-thirty.

In another half an hour, this world would undergo a refresh, and he would wake up in the abandoned operating room, just like on the first day of entering the instance.

“Lu Zimo knows my refresh point. Hmm, that’s a bit troublesome.”

Qi Si’s gaze swept across the office walls.

Theoretically, to ensure that the pregnant women he killed wouldn’t refresh with him, the Director would definitely design a place that could circumvent the refresh mechanism… At six in the evening, Lu Zimo and Sun Dekuan ran all the way to the surgery area and pushed open the door of the abandoned operating room.

The operating bed, which should have had someone lying on it, was empty, with no trace of any human presence.

They turned to leave the room, and a nurse stained with blood approached them, her expression visibly anxious: “Have you seen Dr. Cheng? He’s gone!”

“No!”

Lu Zimo and Sun Dekuan shook their heads in unison.

After the nurse left, they exchanged glances, both seeing a look of relief in the other’s eyes.

—It seemed Cheng An was already dead, and they didn’t have to do it themselves.

By six tomorrow morning, this guy would probably appear in the ward like a puppet, unconscious, along with Huang Xiaofei and the Blue Frog.