Chapter 34
Chapter 34
Song Qingxiao slowly moved towards the nurses’ station. Since the time had come, she was even more fearful of acting rashly. The nurses’ station that initially faced the corridor was moved by someone else to face another direction.
The nurse on duty, who would have sat with her back facing the wall, had been moved out. Her back casually faced Song Qingxiao. Song Qingxiao pressed herself tightly against the wall of the patient room to the side. The nurse was slumped on the table, and her face was buried in her folded arms. Song Qingxiao did not know if she was dead or alive.
There appeared to be a large shadow to the right side of her feet under the table, as though someone was hiding there. In that situation, even if the nurse was alright, she would not dare to make a sound if someone was threatening her.
Song Qingxiao stood against the wall momentarily. The coolness of the wall seeped through her thin top to enter her limbs. She licked her upper lip and touched the dagger hidden on her waist.
The sweat from her palms caused the handle of the dagger to become wet very quickly. Song Qingxiao gripped the dagger even tighter as she slowly approached the nurse that had her back towards her.
Before she walked up to her, Song Qingxiao reached over to touch the nurse’s head first. As soon as her fingertips made contact with the nurse’s skin, Song Qingxiao was sure that it was not skin that felt like it belonged to a dead person.
The nurse was still alive. For some unknown reason, she had fainted. To prevent herself from being ambushed, Song Qingxiao pulled up the nurse’s collar and forcefully lifted the nurse to shield her own body.
Even though the unconscious person could not resist, her body was still hefty. Song Qingxiao needed to use all her strength to carry the nurse and stop her from falling to one side.
As Song Qingxiao dragged her along, the nurse’s legs were still hooked around the stool. The stool legs made an ear-piercing screech as they scraped across the floor. The sound dragged on for quite a long time. In the quiet environment, the sound seemed to echo. Song Qingxiao was frozen in shock, and goosebumps erupted all over her skin rapidly.
She stopped dragging the nurse and took a step forward. The shadow curled up under the unconscious nurse’s feet and did not move. Song Qingxiao held her dagger in one hand and used her other hand to support the nurse. At the same time, she kicked out her leg quickly to make contact with it.
Just as she expected, someone was hiding there. However, the person hiding there was not a trial participant in the middle of a hunt. The person that the tip of her foot made contact with seemed to lose his balance. Without the support of the nurse’s legs and after being kicked by Song Qingxiao, the person fell limply from under the table. He landed on the ground with a crash and lay there motionless.
The scene was wildly beyond Song Qingxiao’s expectation. She could tell that it was a man from his figure. He should still be alive but merely unconscious, just like the nurse.
The unconscious man lay on the floor, curled up on his side. Under the hazy night light, Song Qingxiao could see that he wore a uniform. It was likely that he was the hospital’s security guard.
The fourth-floor level one intensive monitoring zone would be assigned two security guards every night. Since one of the security guards was unconscious, where was the other one?
In the trial, two participants were locked up on the fourth floor with the identity of a patient. The corpse of the large chap with the gun was still in the patient room, but she did not know where number six was. She had searched nearly every corner of the floor.
When she came upstairs, she had already checked nearly every patient room but had not discovered any places that the other trial participants could be hiding. If someone was really on a killing spree on the fourth floor right under her nose, then where on earth had the person run to?
After the lights went off, nearly everyone in the wards on the fourth floor fell into a deep sleep. Each and every tiny sound seemed to be amplified, especially since she was in a state of extreme vigilance. If someone had escaped through the emergency exit like she had, there was no way that she would not have heard it.
That person has disappeared into thin air. The terrifying thing was that the other security guard on that floor was also missing and might have died without a sound in the building, all while she was still searching the area.
What kind of person could do that? Was it possible that the person could magically travel all places and kill people without form? Huge beads of sweat erupted from her forehead. Her entire body trembled.
The existence of the test space was enigmatic and unfathomable. All the people who completed the task received credits. The credits could be used to redeem many things.
After the first trial, she had used her credits to redeem the Nine-Word Secret Order that she had never heard of before. It would be hard to guarantee that the other participants had not redeemed some extraordinary ability, unlike herself.
As soon as the idea popped into her head, Song Qingxiao quickly tossed aside her guess. It was impossible! Even if such a magical ability existed in the test space, if one of the participants had redeemed the ability of stealth killing, they would not have hidden so patiently for such a long time.
If the killer was really on the fourth floor, then he or she must be hiding in the dark, waiting for another chance to strike. That moment in time was extremely precious to Song Qingxiao. With every passing second, she worried that the prompt in her mind would change once more, representing that someone else had died.
Song Qingxiao was trying to figure out which of the participants had acted. At the moment, the bespectacled guy, number four—the red whip lady—and number six were all top suspects. While she was trying to guess, she suddenly recalled a detail.
Before the prompt appeared to inform her that someone had died, she rushed up to get to the fourth floor. The first thing that she noticed was the surveillance room.
At that point in time, the surveillance door was ajar, and a nurse was slumped on the table. She was in such a hurry to find the person who had attacked that in her rush, she had not entered the room to check. All she did was quickly lock the door.
At the time, she did not check to see who the nurse slumped on the table was. Neither did she spend any time checking to see if anyone was hiding in the room!
It finally occurred to her that she had been quite negligent.
Song Qingxiao carried the nurse in her arms back to the table and prepared to head back to take a look. As she carried the nurse, she noticed the tightly closed elevator doors next to the nurses’ station out of the corner of her eye. Something flew quickly past her mind and disappeared.
When she learned that someone had died from the prompt in the test space, she immediately pushed the medication cart from the second floor and took the elevator to the third floor. On her journey, she noticed that all the nurses on the third floor were busy working, and no one noticed had what she was doing.
As she waited for the lift to head up to the fourth floor, she once again received the system’s prompt that 50 credits had been deducted. In her panic, she gave up on taking the elevator and swapped to take the emergency exit.
She remembered then that the elevator sign showed that it was descending. When she went around the third floor, someone had taken the elevator up to the fourth floor.
Song Qingxiao’s eyelids fluttered. She took a deep breath of cool air. Right at that moment, the red indicator light on top of the elevator, which had been still the whole time, suddenly flickered. It was quickly followed by the unmistakable sound of a ding. The elevator doors that had been tightly shut the entire time opened with a whoosh. The light inside the elevator illuminated every corner of the fourth floor.
She lifted her head as she maintained her action of carrying the nurse.
Whoosh!
The sound of a whip rang through the air. The target was Song Qingxiao!
Number four’s gentle and graceful figure appeared at the elevator doors. The lights made her shadow appear incredibly elongated, causing it to cover nearly the entirety of all the walls in the ward. It looked like an evil demon from hell.
She had come prepared and had been hiding in the elevator the whole time because she had made up her mind to take Song Qingxiao’s life!
The distance between the two of them was small. Song Qingxiao tossed the nurse in her arms aside and crouched to the ground as she went to hide under the desk at the nurses’ station.
She was keenly aware that number four’s whip was shockingly powerful. Thanks to the large chap with the gun, she had witnessed the short tussle between number four and the large chap when she had entered the space. Number four’s red whip must have been redeemed from the test space. When her whip made contact with the gun barrel of the large chap’s gun, it left a mark.
The large chap’s gun must have similarly come from the test space and was not unaffected after receiving a whip from the lady. If even a single whip were to land on Song QIngxiao’s body, even if it was just the tip of the whip that touched her for a fraction, she feared that she would be injured and her ability to move would be significantly reduced.
As she thought about it, Song Qingxiao gripped her dagger tightly. At the same time, she used both her legs to kick the nurse who had slid to the ground unsupported after Song Qingxiao let go of her. With that force, not only did the nurse get kicked by a distance of more than ten centimeters, Song Qingxiao also rolled along with her on the ground.
Her quick thinking was pure luck because, in the next moment, the whip landed on the table at the nurses’ station. All she heard was a loud crack, and the marble countertop cracked apart. The desk was supported by four study wooden table legs. The outer portion was decorated with a thin wooden facade.
As soon as the marble countertop cracked, the table’s base lost its balance and toppled with a loud bang!
The marble shards and wood fragments flew everywhere, leaving cuts all over Song Qingxiao’s exposed cheek and neck. The destroyed table firmly crushed the security guard and the nurse who were lying on the ground.