122: Chapter 114 Thirty-Seven Steps

The fire door pushed open without a sound.

Behind the door was a set of concrete stairs. The light tubes were embedded in the walls, emitting a dusty white light with the same lifeless color temperature as the floor above.

The smell of disinfectant vanished.

In its place was a cloying, sickly sweet scent of decay. It was like the water in a vase that hadn't been changed for three days, with the stems completely rotted inside—a sweetness trapped deep in the nasal cavity.

Pei Duo stepped onto the first stair.

The jade pendant on her chest gave a sharp jolt.

It wasn't a warning.

It was counting.

Silver silk threads—completely invisible to the naked eye, but the jade pendant could "hear" them. Every single thread was emitting a minute vibration at a frequency close to ultrasound; hundreds of them together created a low hum, like a layer of mosquitoes trapped outside a window screen on a summer night.

She hadn't even gone down half a flight of stairs.

The humming intensified tenfold.

It went from hundreds of mosquitoes to thousands.

The density was skyrocketing.

At the bottom of the stairs, the fire door to the first basement level stood wide open.

Pei Duo stood by the doorframe and glanced inside.

Her feet felt as if they were nailed to the floor.

It wasn't a parking lot.

Nor was it the radial structure with five corridors that Xu Mo had described.

It was a ward.

The entire first basement level had been converted into a maze built from hospital beds and IV stands.

The white hospital beds were linked end-to-end, forming narrow paths just wide enough for one person, winding endlessly out of sight. IV stands were poked into the ground on both sides of the paths, but they didn't hold medicine bags—instead, they held transparent plastic collection bottles.

The bottles were mostly filled with a dark red liquid.

At a rate visible to the naked eye, the liquid level rose drop by drop.

Reverse infusion.

It wasn't being pumped into the bodies. It was being drawn out.

A person lay on every hospital bed.

Their postures were the same as the "patients" upstairs: lying on their backs, mouths slightly agape, eyes moving at a constant speed—from left to right, then right to left.

But the people on this floor had a different kind of paleness.

They were so white their lips were tinged with blue, so white that the layer of blood vessels beneath their temples looked like painted blue lines, each one clearly countable.

Silver silk threads pierced through the bedboards from the base of each person's spine, densely rooting into the ground—like thousands of mercury-colored roots tunneling deeper into the earth.

"Living signposts" stood at the intersections of the paths.

They wore hospital gowns, were barefoot, and faced various directions. Some faced left, some right, and some faced the wall.

Their lips moved in unison, silently chanting along with an ancient Greek funeral dirge rising from beneath the ground.

Pei Duo crouched down, picked up a small piece of loose concrete from the base of the wall, and flicked it into the nearest narrow path.

The fragment flew over a hospital bed.

Between two silver threads—a gap about two fists wide—the fragment passed through the opening.

It didn't touch anything.

It hit the floor.

But as soon as the sound of it landing spread, the entire maze gave a muffled hum.

The rhythm of the subterranean chanting changed.

It switched from 4/4 time to 3/4 time.

The next second.

The hospital bed right in front of Pei Duo moved.

The wheels weren't locked.

The entire bed seemed to be pushed by an invisible hand, sliding slowly and precisely to the left until it locked head-to-tail with the bed next to it.

The narrow path that had been open was now sealed.

At the same time, two beds on the right silently separated, opening up a new path.

The IV stands shifted accordingly. The network of silver threads rewove itself.

The puppets at the intersections turned.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The sound of joints echoed in the empty basement, like someone winding up a tin toy.

The puppets stood still, facing their new directions.

The whole process took less than five seconds.

The maze had changed its face.

Lin Sa sucked in a breath of cold air and lowered her voice. "How often does it change?"

Pei Duo glanced at her phone. Xu Mo's previous voice message had mentioned that the chanting rhythm cycled every five minutes.

She raised her hand, spreading her five fingers.

Lin Sa understood.

Her expression turned grim.

Crossing this entire area in five minutes without touching a single silver thread—touching one was equivalent to snapping a human life.

This wasn't a maze.

It was a tripwire woven from the lives of hundreds of living people.

Meng Tian's voice emerged from the shadows.

It was brief.

"Move aside."

Pei Duo took half a step to the side.

Meng Tian didn't manifest. However, an extremely restrained killing intent seeped out from the base of her shadow, spreading silently across the floor like an invisible snake, quietly slithering into the depths of the maze.

Three seconds later.

The killing intent withdrew like a receding tide.

"Five Change Formation."

Meng Tian's voice was still muffled within the shadow, but his tone carried a hint of clear disdain.

"The Xiongnu used this too. The core logic is the same—movable corridors in livestock pens, used to drive prey into an encirclement."

He paused.

"Crude."

Pei Duo asked, "Can we pass?"

Meng Tian went silent for less than a second.

"After the first change, cut right for three steps. Before the second change, pass under the fourth bed on the left. At the third change, do not move; wait in place—it will bring the path to your feet. At the fourth change, move in reverse; when it tries to drive you east, go west instead. During the fifth change, a three-breath window will open in the middle path. Dash through it to reach the entrance to the lower level."

He paused for a beat.

"Thirty-seven steps in total. This general shall mark the path from the shadows."

Pei Duo stood up straight and loosened her wrists.

"Let's go."

—

**The First Change.**

The chanting rhythm switched. The hospital beds hummed as they slid.

Pei Duo didn't hesitate, squeezing sideways into the narrow path on the right.

Silver threads were stretched horizontally between the beds on either side, the narrowest gap being less than a fist wide. She sucked in her stomach, turning herself as thin as a sheet of paper, her back almost brushing the bed frame.

A silver thread passed just three centimeters in front of her nose.

The sickly sweet scent was so thick it almost poured into her mouth.

The eyes of the person on the bed suddenly turned toward her.

They were inches apart.

Their eyes met.

There was no consciousness in those eyes, only an empty shell program running at a constant speed.

Pei Duo didn't stop.

**The Second Change.**

Lin Sa followed behind. Her movements were much more agile than Pei Duo's—turning, bending, and passing through in one fluid motion.

But every time she passed a puppet, she would tilt her head slightly, avoiding those opening and closing lips.

In three years of horror instances, she had seen all sorts of disgusting things. This was the only kind she feared.

They looked like living people.

Yet they weren't.

**The Third Change.**

Meng Tian said not to move.

So Pei Duo didn't move.

A meter away from her feet, four hospital beds interlocked. The IV stands creaked, and silver threads sliced through the air, making a hiss as thin as a strand of hair.

The reconfiguration was complete.

A new path appeared at her feet.

A very soft snort came from deep within the shadow.

It had been delivered to their feet.

**The Fourth Change.**

Pei Duo turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Lin Sa followed.

The two of them moved against the flow along the base of the left wall.

Three puppets "walked" toward them in the corridor.

Barefoot and silent, the hems of their hospital gowns dragged on the floor.

Their faces wore that standard-issue smile—eight teeth showing, the curve as precise as if they were cast from the same mold.

Pei Duo passed between them.

Her shoulder brushed against a hospital gown.

It was ice cold.

**The Fifth Change.**

The chanting suddenly spiked in pitch.

All the hospital beds slid simultaneously—the middle path was thrown open like a zipper being pulled.

"Three breaths!"

Meng Tian barked.

Pei Duo took off at a sprint.

Lin Sa followed close behind.

One breath.

Two breaths.

At the end of the narrow path was an iron door, slightly ajar. The light leaking through the crack was several times more intense than above—a dark gold, carrying a heavy air of decay.

Three breaths.

The two of them burst through the iron door.

Behind them, the hospital beds interlocked again, and the narrow path snapped shut with a click.

The humming returned to 4/4 time.

Pei Duo leaned against the wall, catching her breath, and glanced back at the completely sealed iron door.

Thirty-seven steps.

Not a single step more.

—

Behind the iron door was a short corridor.

The end of the corridor connected to the stairs leading to the second basement level. A glass observation window was embedded in the left wall, behind which was a small monitoring room—several screens inside were lit, showing a bird's-eye view of the bed maze they had just left.

Pei Duo intended to walk straight past.

But her footsteps faltered.

In the bottom right corner of the glass window.

A person was sitting in a wheelchair.

A young woman. In her early twenties. Wearing a hospital gown. She was in the same posture as all the puppets outside—leaning back, mouth slightly agape, eyes moving.

But the frequency of the movement was different.

The puppets outside were constant. Left to right, right to left, steady and even, like a pendulum, precise enough to calibrate a watch.

This woman's eyes were trembling.

It wasn't a constant sweep.

It was a rapid, irregular twitching.

Left, left, right.

Left, right, right, left.

A pause.

Left, left, right.

Repeat.

Pei Duo stared at those eyes, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

It wasn't a mechanical program.

It was Morse code.

"Lin Sa." Pei Duo kept her voice as low as possible.

"I see it."

Lin Sa had already pressed herself against the glass window.

Left, left, right. Left, right, right, left. Pause. Left, left, right.

Pei Duo rapidly cross-referenced the code in her mind.

S-O-S.

Then the trajectory of the eyes changed.

It became longer and more complex. Set after set, interspersed with pauses of varying lengths.

Pei Duo pulled out her phone and recorded every shift.

Lin Sa didn't wait for her to ask what to do.

For the first time in three years, she spoke up of her own accord.

"I'll cover you."

She drew her daggers, the blades facing both ends of the corridor.

"You decode it."

Pei Duo didn't look up, her fingers flying across the screen.

The eyes stopped moving.

The woman's lips no longer moved in rhythm with the chanting.

Using the last shred of strength in her remaining consciousness—

She squeezed out a single tear.

Pei Duo looked at the translated content on her phone and remained silent for exactly three seconds.

Then she turned the screen toward Lin Sa.

Four words.

**Channel 3.**

There was another line below it.

**The main pulse is in Channel 3. Cut it. No one will die.**

After Lin Sa finished reading, she looked up through the glass at the woman in the wheelchair.

The eyes had resumed their constant movement.

Left, right, left, right.

Just like all the other puppets.

But that tear still hung on her cheek.

It hadn't dried.

—

Pei Duo put away her phone and turned toward the stairs leading to the second basement level.

Dark gold light surged up from below. The sound of chanting grew closer and clearer, every syllable as heavy as a stone dropped into deep water.

Deep underground, Thanatos's projection was still feeding greedily.

Countdown—one hour and forty minutes remaining.

"Channel 3."

Pei Duo stepped onto the first stair, her voice very soft.

In the shadow at her feet, Meng Tian's spear turned silently.

The spear tip pointed directly downward.

A very low thud came from the end of the corridor.

Like some massive heart skipping a beat.

The lights in the entire building—

Went out simultaneously for a second.

The lights went out for a second.

When they came back on, the color temperature had changed.

From a dusty white to a dark yellow. It was the base color of an old photograph, with an indescribable layer of grime.

There was no door at the entrance to the second basement level; it stood open.

Looking down, the corridor was exactly half as wide as the floor above. The walls had switched from white ceramic tiles to bare concrete, with water stains seeping through and trickling down irregular cracks.

The smell in the air had also changed. The sweet rot had receded, replaced by something dry, cold, and metallic.

Like licking an iron railing in winter.

Pei Duo stepped onto the first stair.

The jade pendant didn't react.

She paused for a beat and glanced down at her chest. The black-gold patterns lay quietly on the jade surface, the nine coiled dragons motionless.

It didn't mean it was safe.

It meant that the things on this floor weren't significant enough to make it ring.

Meng Tian's voice rose from the shadow, his tone very flat: "No aura of living things. No formation fluctuations."

He paused.

"There is paper."

Pei Duo walked twelve steps down the corridor.

A sign for Channel 3 was nailed to the left wall, white with red lettering, looking exactly like the floor guides in an ordinary hospital. The arrow pointed straight ahead.

But half a meter to the left of the arrow, there was a side door. It was half-ajar.

An A4 paper was taped to the door, with four printed Chinese characters—

**Medical Records.**