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The choices fade away, leaving behind –
[A. Take the skull away]
Time begins to flow again.
And immediately, the door to this side suite closes up by itself, even when there was no wind nor anyone else here. They all look at each other, and Du Yixin says, worried, “I’ll go take a look.”
Approaching the door and putting his hand on the handle, Du Yixin tries to turn, but it would not budge, as if the door has been held in place by a mysterious force, making it seal tight against the wall.
He turns his head around to his companions, and before he can say a word, Ying Sheng grabs him and drags him away.
Where he was just standing is now occupied by an arm. A thin, bony arm that looks to have been charred black, with flakes of black skin tissue falling off by the second.
Another second too late and Du Yixin’s heart would have been pierced.
And all around them, the room is changing as well.
There are visible piles of gore and guts oozing out. The ceiling, and windows and the furniture are all melting, or rather, molting, threatening to fill the entire room up with pus and flesh.
Staying would mean ‘death’ at this point. Given these things are happening because they are trying to take the skull away, it must be the hospital itself trying to stop them.
So the key really is to destroy the skull.
Meanwhile, the skull is almost sinking into the gorey mess in the closet. If they lose it at this point, it’ll be a tragedy.
“The skull!”
An Wenhui, quick on his feet, hastily grabs the skull and manages to retrieve it forcefully, dragging red lines of still connected goo out with him.
And before Du Yixin can even praise him, the pus suddenly lurches out from the closet door and opens up wide, consuming the person whole.
It all happened so quickly that they are at a loss for words. The young man’s curly hair, clean features and slim body have all been consumed by the disgusting mess in an instant, dragging him into the wall. The only thing still left is the pale hand extending out from the crimson blob, holding onto the bloodied skull.
Du Yixin takes the arm and tries to drag him back out. Yet the flesh is holding onto him tight. If not for the arm, one could scarcely imagine there being someone trapped inside.
Suddenly, the opposing force is gone and Du Yixin almost falls to the floor from it. His vision regains focus to see he has successfully dragged the arm out.
Just the arm out.
A bloodied arm with the bones and tissues looking as if melted at the other end. Without any force holding onto the skull anymore, it falls onto the ground.
Du Yixin has blanked out.
“Quit dozing!”
This time, Ying Sheng has picked up the skull on the ground. As soon as he did, the revolting hematic mass lunges to try to envelop Ying Sheng as well, who, mentally prepared, jumps and lands elsewhere.
Du Yixin slaps himself back awake. This is no time to sit idle.
An Wenhui’s bloody arm on the floor is also consumed by the flesh, and the last reminder of the person is also gone.
Ruri then drags his shirt to get his attention. He looks where she’s pointing as she says, “the door is open.”
It probably did so after they retrieved the skull.
Yet, there are lots of chicken legs-like (TL’s warning: Potentially graphic imagery) hands growing out of the door. In the short amount of time, dozens have filled the entire surface of the door. It seems they can sense the fresh meat in front of them as well, as they are trying to force their away towards the group.
They must deal with it somehow before even being able to get out of the door.
“I…” Ruri seems like she wants to say something when someone walks right past her.
Ying Sheng doesn’t seem fazed by the arms at all, as he begins to smash the arms with the skull, snapping the long arms by the bones. The door is also less sturdy than it looks, falling off from its hinges after Ying Sheng’s skull whacking.
“Let’s go,” Ying Sheng leaves first.
Du Yixin asks Ruri, “were you saying something?”
“… Nevermind,” Ruri shakes her head.
When they are outside of the director’s office, they realise it wasn’t just the suite or the office, but the entire hospital undergoing a sort of transformation. It’s dark, bloody, sticky, and smells of the rust of blood everywhere. It’s as if they are devoured within the digestive tract of some sort of monster, and any delay might end up with them digested full.
Du Yixin is hurrying along while yelling, “let’s break the skull first and see if that stops the hospital’s frenzy.”
“That wouldn’t work. This thing is cursed,” Ying Sheng throws him the skull.
Du Yixin catches it and looks, and realise that despite all the whacking and knocking Ying Sheng has done with it, it hasn’t cracked at all. Skulls might be the hardest bones on the human body, but this thing should have been brittle after all this time already.
The notebook says to ‘destroy the skull,’ but how do they do it when the skull is this resilient?
Du Yixin begins reworking through the clues they have got.
… This skull belongs to the director.
The hospital is refusing to let them take it away at all.
The corpses of the disaster is buried here; while the patients are buried in the Liu Family village 10 minutes away.
“…”
He has got an idea.
What if they took the director’s skull to the ashes of the dead patients?
It’s a largely baseless thought, but it’s not like they can just dawdle to look for more clues in the hospital either. If they have to leave the hospital behind anyway, they might as well just go to the village instead.
Obviously, the elevator is out of the question. The trio go for the emergency stairs.
The ground is covered up in a thick layer of mud-like flesh. Every step they take leaves behind a deep footprint. The annoying hands are everywhere, from the ceiling, from the walls, from whatever furniture there remained, trying to obstruct their way forward.
Ying Sheng, opening the path for them ahead, drags another charred hand attacking them out, where, instead of a person, a heart is exposed, directly connecting to the hand itself. Ying Sheng throws it onto the ground, and it begins to squirm like some kind of malformed grotesque worm.
Then Ying Sheng crushes it dead beneath his boot.
Compared to the annoying but largely weak maggots that are the hands, the omnipresent layers of flesh and walls of tissue are much more dangerous. They might be quietly lining the ceiling and floor and everywhere in the corridor, but what happened to An Wenhui is a clear indicator of what would happen if they suddenly lunge at a hapless victim – instantly consumed, not leaving even a strand of hair behind.
The chains have long since melted into the pus as well, and the stairs are open. They manage to fight their way to the second floor when they have to stop.
The nurses are here, in all their misshapen, inhumanly contorted glory. They are barely able to walk with funny, improbable steps despite their vague attempts to imitate their former forms in life. One by one they ascend the stairs.
This is the only path right now. They would either have to distract the nurses somehow, or whack them out of the way.
Having had to deal with arms the entire time and now the undying cockroaches are back is making Ying Sheng on the edge of his patience.
“Tch, damn pests!”
“Well, blame whoever made the Instance,” Du Yixin is staring daggers at the monsters. There’s nowhere to even run in the transformed hospital, so he says, “let’s go, we’ll rush through.”
Ying Sheng says, “I’ll open up the way forward. Stay here and don’t get in my way.”
“We’ll do it together.”
“Dumbass, you trying to get yourself blown up?” Ying Sheng dismisses the suggestion altogether.
“I’ll stay far enough away. I know how to take care of myself.”
All this time he only thought he would drag Ying Sheng back given his seemingly unlimited strength, so he would follow whatever orders Ying Sheng said.
But having been through the game over scenario before, he is acutely aware of how dangerous this strategy is.
True, Ying Sheng is strong, but he’s not invulnerable, especially in such a dangerous, high-level Instance. Any slip of focus and they’ll be gone.
“You…” Ying Sheng still wants to shoo him away when he spies the nurses beginning to rush at them out the corner of his eye, and stops blabbering and rushes at them himself.
Well, Ying Sheng sure is as uncooperative as ever, but Du Yixin is also going to do by himself, and says, “Ruri, follow me closely.”
With a gigantic explosion, the nurses spanning several metres out in radius centred at Ying Sheng are all down for the count. Their heads are flying in all directions, or there’s barely any limb left. Yet, in spite of this, the pieces are still all wriggling around, trying to stand back up.
The black, petroleum-like liquid is gushing out from all the orifices, covering the nurse monsters’ body parts. They look like they’re going to regrow and reduplicate soon enough.
Compared to strong monsters, these undying annoyances spell more trouble.
Ying Sheng stomps on and splatters another head while throwing a powerful fist at a largely unhurt nurse lunging at him. Meanwhile, lots of charred arms are still trying to grab at them.
What a mess.
“It’s just endless, isn’t it,” suddenly, a male voice says right next to him, who is also preventing an arm from leaping up on the ground with his foot firmly planted on it.
Ying Sheng looks pissed off to see him, yelling, “you dumbass stay b——”
“Watch out!”
The temporary distraction has allowed for an attacker to close in on Ying Sheng. Yet, without even turning his head around, Ying Sheng uppercuts with his arm behind him and it lands squarely into the enemy’s jaw, shattering it in the process.
“I don’t need your help!” He angrily scolds him, “who the heck told you to come here!”
“My brain told my legs to come,” Du Yixin waves Ying Sheng’s hand trying to push him back away, and says, “I told you I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
Ruri, on high alert, warns them, “the black liquid is making them recover. We have to hurry.”
“I fucking know that!” Ying Sheng feels like they’re underestimating him, and smacks the hand away to go forward.
… Quite the awkward tsundere, isn’t he.
Du Yixin sighs and follows him closely.
TL’s notes: I’m pretty sure you’re the only person that would call Ying Sheng a ‘tsundere,’ Du Yixin mate.
Oriental Rabbit 
Cute, and aww it seems that AWH was just a normal weirdo
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