Adorable Little Things

So it was the morgue, a place ruined by horror movies?

Cheng Shuili twitched the corner of her mouth, stood up, and glanced at Su Rui. "Shall we go?"

"Go where?" Lang Yu asked from behind.

Su Rui replied irritably, "To the morgue, where else?"

Xiong Ji stood up silently. He was still confused about the current situation, but there was one thing he had to clarify: "You're taking the gold vial with you, right? It won't be coming back!"

Cheng Shuili stopped in her tracks. She turned around, looked at Xiong Ji, and replied very seriously: "We might bring it back, so I suggest you take this time to get your safe repaired."

But if the modification succeeded...

Cheng Shuili didn't say much, and Xiong Ji had no idea what the item would be used for after its effects were altered.

Therefore, as far as he was concerned, as long as this trouble could be dealt with, it was a good thing.

Lang Yu led the two of them downward, passing by the rabbit nurse's triage desk along the way.

Cheng Shuili took a special look; that fellow was still slacking off.

Truly outrageous!

She silently retracted her gaze, becoming increasingly hopeful that today's trip would be a success.

Once the hospital's business improved, this fellow wouldn't be able to slack off anymore, right...

Of course, that was secondary.

The main reason was that this item was a divine artifact. With it, it wouldn't matter who got injured in the future.

Cheng Shuili shook her head and walked with long strides behind Lang Yu.

Pushing open the metal door of the morgue, a pungent odor mixed with disinfectant and rotting flesh rushed toward them.

Cheng Shuili wrinkled her nose, her fingertips unconsciously stroking the patterns on the gold vial.

Ever since they entered the basement, the temperature of the bottle had been rising; it was almost scalding to the touch now.

"Logically speaking, the morgue should be very cold..." Su Rui held her breath, her voice muffled: "But it's as hot as a steamer in here. Is your hospital even functional? Won't the families of the deceased file complaints if the bodies are kept like this?"

The question she asked was very reasonable.

But Lang Yu was terrified; he didn't have the presence of mind to answer that question.

His ears were pricked up in alarm, and the fur on his tail stood on end: "It wasn't like this last time... When I came to collect specimens last Wednesday, there were still ice shards here. How did it become like this? No wonder the people who delivered bodies last time said the bodies were decaying especially fast!"

Cheng Shuili's gaze swept across the neatly arranged metal morgue cabinets, some of which were vibrating at an extremely slight amplitude, emitting tiny clicking sounds.

It could be said to be a very terrifying environment.

But...

This was the Highway Survival Game; there was no such thing as ghosts. If something strange happened, something must be causing it.

Cheng Shuili shook her head and asked calmly: "How is this place cooled?"

Lang Yu looked blank; he was a doctor, so of course he didn't know these things.

Cheng Shuili looked at Lang Yu's blank expression, her mouth twitching slightly. She took a deep breath, suppressing her speechlessness, and tapped her fingers against the gold vial in a rhythmic pattern.

"Step one of troubleshooting the cooling system," her voice was as calm as if she were debugging code, "check the power supply and the compressor."

"How does the boss know this?"

Su Rui asked subconsciously, then immediately understood and gripped her spear: "Does the boss mean that this abnormal temperature is man-made?"

If it wasn't beast-made, then it must be a monster.

But Cheng Shuili didn't correct her.

She walked toward the nearest morgue cabinet, her palm hovering three centimeters above the metal surface. The cabinet was hot enough to fry an egg; one could feel the heat just standing there.

She noticed that all the vibrating cabinet doors followed the same frequency pattern, and furthermore, her fingers could feel a cold breeze, which meant...

"Something is vibrating, but people can't feel it. This thing is just above the ground, so the floor is vibrating along with it."

Also... the cooling system wasn't broken, so where was the heat coming from?

Cheng Shuili crouched down and ran her fingertips along the seams of the floor tiles, and sure enough, she felt the heat.

"The heat source is from underground."

Cheng Shuili stated this conclusion calmly.

Hearing this, Lang Yu's tail puffed up even more: "Under... underground? But below is..."

"The foundation?"

Su Rui frowned. Weren't foundations laid before building a house? What kind of messy things could be down there?

But that was human thinking, not beast thinking.

This group of beastmen obviously didn't understand anything.

"It's the incinerator!" Lang Yu's voice suddenly rose: "The old crematorium incinerator used to be directly under the morgue! But that thing was decommissioned twenty years ago!"

Meaning...

Was this incinerator working and releasing all this heat?

Are you kidding me?

The two of them couldn't help but shudder when they heard this.

But more importantly: "You built a morgue on top of an incinerator?"

No, the hospital was already eerie enough.

It was bad enough that these beastmen built a hospital on a crematorium, but they intentionally put the morgue over the incinerator?

It was too dark! It was dark to an absurd degree.

Cheng Shuili even suddenly understood why the hospital was cursed.

If you don't curse them, who else would you curse?

But Cheng Shuili didn't believe in these things. That stuff had been buried in the dirt for over twenty years; the metal might not have rotted, but everything else definitely had. Besides, there was no air down there, so how could it catch fire?

One must believe in science and not scare oneself!

There must be something down there...

Cheng Shuili shook her head, crouched down, and moved her fingertips along the tile seams, finally stopping at a slightly raised tile.

She exchanged a look with Su Rui, who immediately understood and inserted the tip of her spear precisely into the gap.

"Three, two, one!"

They exerted force at the same time, and the tile was pried up completely.

A wave of scorching heat carrying a charred stench rushed out, revealing a pitch-black passage below, with traces of something crawling on the dirt.

Cheng Shuili let out a sigh of relief. Together with Su Rui, she pried open a few more tiles, revealing more of the passage. The traces of the thing crawling were very clear.

It was just that so far, they hadn't seen any monsters.

The two looked at each other and were about to continue expanding the search area when they suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from the depths of the passage.

Cheng Shuili immediately made a gesture for silence, and both held their breath.

Lang Yu covered his mouth tightly, fearing that he might accidentally scream and drag the two humans down.

"Squeak—"

A sharp cry tore through the silence, and immediately after, a fiery red figure darted out of the passage.

It was a lizard covered in sticky mucus. Its body was fiery red, and its tail was topped with a cluster of flames, like a walking torch.

It was clearly stunned when it saw the light, then it spat out a small cluster of sparks with a "poof" and turned to run.

"Stop!"

Cheng Shuili was quick-eyed and nimble; she grabbed its tail tip.

It was extremely hot!!

But Cheng Shuili's speed was lightning fast; she pulled the creature out, and Su Rui immediately followed up, pinning its escape route with her spear.

Cheng Shuili switched her grip to the base of its tail and finally caught the monster.

It let out "squeak" protests, its four short legs paddling wildly in the air. It tilted its head, eyes fixed on Cheng Shuili, seemingly wanting to spit a mouthful of fire, but whether from nervousness or something else, it only puffed out a mouthful of smoke.

It was actually quite cute.

It didn't seem to have any lethality either.

Cheng Shuili thought for a moment and decided to use Insight on it.

【Insight Successful】

【Gregarious Fire Lizard】

【Description: A small reptilian creature capable of creating high-temperature environments on its own. Its body is covered in heat-resistant dark red scales, and its skin secretes flammable mucus. Its tail undergoes spontaneous combustion in the presence of oxygen to form a brief flame, usually used to deter natural predators or compete for mates. They live in groups near special devices. If you find these things, take note; there must be a device with a unique function nearby.】

【Weakness: A very cute little creature; not recommended to kill.】

Oh?

So there are times when the Abyss Ring thinks things are cute?

"So it wasn't haunted at all..." Cheng Shuili poked the fire lizard's bloated belly with her finger, "You little things made a nest underground and tried to turn this place into a high-temperature environment, and then the heat traveled through the floor to the morgue, paralyzing the cooling system?"

The fire lizard spat out a trail of sparks with a "poof," as if protesting.

"So that's how it is." Lang Yu breathed a sigh of relief.

Su Rui suddenly struck the ground heavily with her spear shaft. Amidst the metallic vibrations, countless rustling sounds surged from the depths of the passage.

She sneered: "Boss, we've poked a hornet's nest."

Dense red dots lit up in the darkness, and countless fire lizards were surging along the passage. Their scales scraped against the overheated tiles, making a grating sound that set one's teeth on edge.

Pairs of eyes were fixed tightly on Cheng Shuili—or more accurately, on the fire lizard in Cheng Shuili's hand.

Now the vibration could be explained.

With so many little things moving together, the commotion they made was not small.

Cheng Shuili turned to Lang Yu and asked: "What are they saying?"

Lang Yu: "......"

He was just an ordinary beastman, so of course he couldn't understand.

Su Rui guessed: "They probably want us to let their companion go, right?"

Cheng Shuili guessed that was the meaning too, but she didn't release the fire lizard immediately. Instead, she stared at the other fire lizards that were staring at her and said: "I can let it go, but you have to help me find where the special device is underground."

The fire lizard group suddenly froze collectively.

The ones in the front row tilted their heads, their flaming tails wagging in confusion, and sparks fell onto the ground with a patter.

The one being held by Cheng Shuili was even more stunned; it forgot to struggle, its little claws hanging in mid-air, its mouth slightly open, and then it "hiccuped" out a wisp of blue smoke.

The entire morgue fell into an eerie silence.

Five seconds later, the lizard group suddenly exploded into chaos.

"Squeak squeak squeak!"

"Poof poof!!"

"Hiss! Hiss!"

They began to trample each other frantically; some whipped their companions' heads with their tails, some spun in circles spitting fire, and two even crashed into each other and began to brawl, their scales grinding together to spark blinding flashes.

"Boss..." Su Rui's spear tip trembled slightly, "Are they... arguing?"