The temperature in the morgue was naturally kept very low to prevent the corpses from decomposing.
As soon as Ru Jiao and Lin Zhen reached the morgue entrance, a chill swept over them.
The two cautiously made their way inside. Ru Jiao opened the door to the first room, but nothing seemed unusual.
There were three mortuary rooms arranged side by side along one wall.
After inspecting the first room, Ru Jiao and Lin Zhen moved on to the second. There was still nothing unusual, and the wolf pup showed no reaction either.
They then came to the last room. Its door stood wide open, and the room was completely empty.
The two exchanged a glance. It seemed there was nothing unusual here either.
The wolf pup showed no reaction, so they looked down at it, only to discover that it had buried its entire head inside the carrier. Lin Zhen reached into the carrier to check what was wrong, but felt the wolf pup’s body trembling slightly.
Lin Zhen immediately sensed that something was wrong, and Ru Jiao became alert as well. She released her divine sense, spreading it around the two of them.
The corridor grew colder and colder until goosebumps appeared on Ru Jiao’s arms.
Something was wrong! The hospital had lost its electricity long ago. Even if the basement was colder than the upper floors, could it really be this cold? With no power supply and the apocalypse having begun during the height of summer, the corpses in the basement should have started decomposing long ago, giving off a foul stench. Yet since entering the basement, neither of them had smelled even the slightest trace of decay!
Ru Jiao strode into one of the rooms and lifted the white cloth covering a corpse. The corpse’s head was already missing!
Her pupils contracted. Lin Zhen had seen it too. The two immediately withdrew from the room. The wolf pup was trembling more violently now, and the temperature throughout the entire basement was dropping rapidly!
Lin Zhen took two down jackets out of his space. The two put them on, and he also wrapped the wolf pup in a towel.
There was no doubt that this was the monster’s lair! But where exactly was it hiding?
When they had entered the three rooms, Ru Jiao had already used her divine sense to investigate everything, including the rooms and the ceilings, but she had found nothing unusual.
Ru Jiao released her divine sense once more. This time, she did not limit her search to the interiors of the rooms. She extended it through the walls and the floor as well.
At last, she discovered something.
There was actually another small basement directly beneath their feet, and the monster was inside it! The chilling air filling the morgue was coming directly from the creature.
Through her divine sense, Ru Jiao saw a gigantic, pitch-black mass of flesh standing in the center of the underground room. The entire space was covered with the corpses of various animals and insects, along with pools of blood.
The mass of flesh rose and fell slightly, as though the monster were fast asleep.
Ru Jiao quietly withdrew her divine sense without disturbing it. She then asked Lin Zhen whether the hospital had another basement and where its entrance was.
Since her divine sense had passed straight through the floor, she had not been able to locate the entrance herself.
Lin Zhen took out the hospital’s floor plan that they had found earlier and studied it carefully. After a while, he pointed to a location.
“Yes. There’s a basement beneath the morgue. It’s used to house the electrical boxes and store various tools.”
Ru Jiao’s eyes lit up. “Can you find the entrance to that basement?” After a brief pause, she added, “Be careful and open it quietly.”
Lin Zhen nodded slightly and began examining the corridor. At last, he stopped in front of a fire hose cabinet. Somehow, he managed to pull it open as though it were a door.
The two looked inside and saw a sloping staircase leading down into the basement. In the dim light, the monster’s enormous body could clearly be seen standing in the center. The room was covered in corpses and bloodstains, while the electrical boxes and tools that should have been stored there were nowhere to be found.
The monster was asleep, making this an excellent opportunity to kill it. The two had already collected enough alcohol, so they immediately changed their plan and decided to set it alight right then and there!
To avoid any further complications, they quickly took out the alcohol and stacked the cartons in preparation. Ru Jiao silently recited the cultivation technique, and flames began to appear in her hand.
Lin Zhen opened the scattered bottles of alcohol Ru Jiao had taken out and poured their contents down the stairs into the basement.
Meanwhile, Ru Jiao circulated her cultivation technique. Its power was immense, but it also required a considerable amount of preparation. She needed five full minutes to complete it.
Fortunately, the monster had not awakened. This was the perfect opportunity!
Lin Zhen worked quickly. Within two minutes, he had poured all the loose bottles of alcohol into the basement. He also took out a towel, soaked it in alcohol, and prepared it as kindling.
He tried changing the destination for taking alcohol out of his space to the basement floor itself, and it worked quite well.
He then placed another seven or eight cartons inside, each containing twenty-four 500-milliliter bottles of alcohol.
Three and a half minutes had passed. A rough shape resembling a fire arrow had already formed in Ru Jiao’s hand, while the monster in the basement began trembling violently, as though it were about to wake up.
At the four-minute mark, the monster finally awakened. Upon seeing the two people at the entrance, it began waving its tentacles and tried to crawl out of the basement to kill them!
Ru Jiao could not stop casting her spell, or all her efforts would be wasted. A ball of wind energy appeared in Lin Zhen’s hand. He used his Tang Sword to sever the tentacles reaching out of the basement, then launched the wind ball in an attempt to knock the monster back inside.
The wind ball had little effect. Lin Zhen took several large pieces of furniture out of his space and used them to block most of the entrance, preventing the monster’s body from emerging. He then dealt with the tentacles from the other side.
The monster was enraged and let out a piercing shriek. The sound was so sharp that both of them were overcome with splitting headaches. Lin Zhen was momentarily careless, and one of the monster’s tentacles pierced straight through his shoulder!
Gritting his teeth, Lin Zhen chopped off the tentacle. Despite the excruciating pain, he continued defending himself against the monster’s attacks. Dull thuds echoed from the corridor outside as zombies began gathering!
Several zombies reached the entrance. At last, five minutes had passed. Sweat covered Ru Jiao’s forehead as she shouted to Lin Zhen,
“Move!”
Lin Zhen immediately dodged out of the way and simultaneously stored the furniture blocking the entrance back into his space.
The monster seized the opportunity to crawl out, but Ru Jiao leaped forward and kicked it hard in the head, sending it back into the basement. At the same moment, her fire arrow plunged straight into the monster’s gaping mouth!
Lin Zhen immediately threw several bottles of alcohol inside. The already powerful flames of the fire arrow grew even more intense with the alcohol feeding them, until the monster’s entire body was engulfed in fire.
Its shrieks grew increasingly piercing. The two threw five or six more cartons of alcohol into the basement, and soon the flames filled the entire room. The monster’s body was hidden behind the blazing fire. All they could see was a vague shadow writhing and rolling within the flames, desperately trying to crawl back up!
Ru Jiao made a decisive move, shutting the door and taking an iron cabinet out of her space to brace it shut.
By then, dozens of zombies had already gathered. The two dealt with several that approached them before retreating into one of the mortuary rooms.
As soon as they entered, the corridor filled with zombies drawn by the noise. They searched everywhere for the scent of living humans, but the smell of the burning monster and the corpses in the basement masked the two people’s scent.
The two crouched beside the door, not daring to let their guard down for even a moment as they watched the corridor closely. Lin Zhen took out alcohol and bandages, then gritted his teeth and pulled the tentacle that was still embedded in his shoulder. Ru Jiao immediately disinfected the wound, stopped the bleeding, and bandaged it. She then used a fireball to burn the tentacle and the bloodstained gauze.
An hour passed. Half of the zombies had wandered off elsewhere, but the flames in the basement were still burning. The monster’s cries had stopped half an hour earlier.
Thick smoke filled the entire corridor, and some of it had entered their room. The two lowered themselves closer to the floor, took out towels, soaked them in water, and covered their mouths and noses.
Ability users had stronger physiques than ordinary people before the apocalypse, so they could endure these conditions for as long as three hours.
Another half hour passed. Only a few scattered zombies remained in the corridor. The two left the room and eliminated them. By then, very little smoke was still coming out of the basement. Nothing remained inside except some corpses and the monster. Ru Jiao’s fire cultivation technique was immensely powerful. The moment its flames touched a corpse, it was reduced to ashes. Only the monster itself, with its formidable strength, had managed to withstand the flames for so long.
The iron cabinet had been warped by the intense heat, but fortunately, it had not fused to the door. Ru Jiao stored it in her space, then used an iron rod to pry the door open.
A wave of scorching heat rushed toward them. Everything inside had been burned black. Fortunately, there were no other flammable materials, and with the room completely enclosed, the fire had finally died out.
Lin Zhen picked up a nearby fire extinguisher and sprayed the room again. He continued until both fire extinguishers were completely empty.
Everything inside the room had been reduced to ashes. With the monster dead, the temperature around them suddenly rose and returned to normal.
Just as the two were preparing to go down and investigate, the wolf pup suddenly jumped down. It picked something out of the ashes with its mouth and placed it in Lin Zhen’s hand. It was a dark green Crystal Core.
Ru Jiao used her divine sense to examine the room and confirmed that the monster had been completely reduced to ashes. She and Lin Zhen then went to the underground parking lot, took a vehicle out of their space, and quickly left the hospital.
As soon as they got into the vehicle, Lin Zhen spat out a mouthful of black blood!