The mangled flesh and shattered limbs of the director fell to the floor, slowly dissolving into a thick red liquid. Like spilled paint, it spread rapidly in all directions, soon covering the entire room—even the ceiling.
The office turned an eerie dark red, pulsating slightly as if the entire room had come to life, transforming into some strange living organism.
Next, a bizarre sound echoed from the surroundings, like the churning of water, interspersed with the faint thumping of a heartbeat.
Accompanied by the heartbeat, the entire room began to tremble and contract. Yue Shi watched as a large bulge swelled on the wall.
The bulge was hemispherical, resembling a tumor. Its surface was covered in countless dark red, vein-like protrusions of varying thickness that were rooted deep into the walls.
Something seemed to be growing rapidly inside the tumor, throbbing as it grew larger and larger. The tentacle-like veins beneath it contracted repeatedly, as if desperately sucking up nutrients.
At first, Yue Shi didn't understand what he was seeing, but it soon clicked. The more he looked at it, the more it resembled the development of an embryo.
Back on the second floor, Camera had mentioned a particularly nasty fellow on the third floor called the Breeding Obsessive. Could this be him?
At that moment, the desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and the water dispenser in the office began to dissolve into fluid before evaporating and vanishing. It seemed everything was being converted into nutrients to feed the "new life" inside the tumor.
Protected by his Demon Feather Barrier, Yue Shi was temporarily unaffected, but the barrier's consumption rate skyrocketed. He couldn't stay any longer and moved quickly toward the exit.
However, just as he reached the doorway, the door suddenly shrank and narrowed until it was only the size of a human head, making it impossible to pass through.
He immediately activated his Decaying Talons, striking the wall next to the door. His fingertips met the soft, fleshy texture of skin, and rot began to spread.
But the wall suddenly writhed and contracted violently, forcing the rotted parts to slough off and fall away as a puddle of blood.
Yue Shi immediately followed up with two more swipes, while simultaneously activating his other lethal ability, 【Plague Doctor】.
The pitch-black bird-beak mark on his wrist, hidden by his watch, began to fade as countless diseases were injected into the bizarre organism before him.
As the two abilities worked in tandem, the rhythmically pulsating wall suddenly began to twitch and convulse. The tumor parasitic upon it was forced to drop off, struggling briefly before falling still.
Clump after clump of mold-like growths began to sprout. Accompanied by a pungent stench, holes began to rot into the walls, slowly expanding.
The living room gradually collapsed, descending into an unstoppable decay until it finally dissolved into a floor full of stinking, bloody water.
Only then was the real Director's Office revealed.
Everything in the room had vanished. The walls were pitted and corroded, rotting and stinking, with occasional sizzling sounds echoing through the air.
Yue Shi looked around but saw no sign of a supernatural corpse. Instead, moans of pain drifted in from the hallway outside.
He turned and walked out of the office, heading toward the source of the moans.
The living room might not have been the supernatural entity's true body. The actual entity might have taken advantage of the chaos to flee, though it was likely still suffering from the erosion of his diseases.
As he walked, Yue Shi noticed that the wards on the third floor were different from those on the first and second. Some doors were wide open, revealing empty rooms, while others were tightly shut and silent.
Yue Shi arrived at the third closed ward from the left end of the corridor. The moans of pain were coming from inside.
There were actually two voices, though one grew increasingly weak until it abruptly stopped.
Yue Shi kicked the door open. The dusty, filthy ward was covered in strange graffiti.
Two people were lying on their backs on the floor. One was a woman who looked to be in her forties or fifties. Her hair was disheveled, her body was covered in festering, pus-filled sores, her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was agape—a look of someone who had died without peace. She had clearly just passed away.
A chain was fastened to her ankle, pierced right through her bone and flesh, with the other end bolted firmly to the wall. It ensured she could neither move far nor escape.
Beside the woman was a middle-aged man in a hospital gown. He was curled up, his clothes soaked with pus. His lips were black, his face was pale blue, and his skin was covered in red, swollen pustules, but he was still breathing.
A chain was also fastened to his ankle.
“You were the one pretending to be the director in the office just now?” Yue Shi questioned him, using Raven's Secret Whispers.
The man nodded in terror, then asked a question in return: “Are you married? Do you have children?”
“Huh???” Yue Shi was bewildered, not understanding why the topic had suddenly jumped to marriage and childbearing.
Enduring the intense pain wracking his body, the man advised, “You should have children while you're at the right age. Have a few more while your reproductive health is at its peak. Children born when you're older tend to be weaker and are too much trouble to care for.”
“You're sick,” Yue Shi said, his eyes going flat like a dead fish.
“You're the one who's sick!” the man accused him righteously.
“You're at that age, yet you don't have children or carry on your family line. What use are you? If you don't have kids and he doesn't have kids, humanity will eventually go extinct! Not having children is a roundabout way of promoting genocide. Can you handle that kind of responsibility?!”
“But I'm a super-invincible, world-class piece of human scum. Whether it's a partner or a child, I'd only treat them as pawns to be ground down and bled dry. The closer someone is to me, the easier it is for me to hurt them, plunging them into endless misery that even death can't escape. In that case, do you still want to urge me to reproduce?” Yue Shi asked mockingly.
The man thought for a moment before nodding firmly. “Everything will be fine once you have a child. Once you have one, you'll change those selfish and mean-spirited thoughts.”
Yue Shi was genuinely confused. “I'm not the one physically giving birth, so why would I change? You clearly know I'm the worst of the worst, a bottomless abyss, yet you still insist on pushing others into the pit with me?”
The man looked lost for a moment, seemingly unable to find a counterargument. He only repeated his mutterings: “Everything will be fine once you have a child... once you have a child, you'll gradually understand everything...”
Yue Shi was speechless. He was actually debating such a profound issue with a dumbass supernatural entity.
As expected, supernatural entities were supernatural entities. Even if they possessed intelligence, their logic was incomprehensible to normal people.
“Are all the new ‘patients’ in the sanatorium staying on the fourth floor? And where did the real director go?” Yue Shi steered the conversation back on track.
Rate on N.U.
