Chapter 273: Hospital (7)
“Pshk… pshk pshk…”
On Basement Level 1, in front of the emergency exit door, Everly held a folding knife high in the air, completely focused as she continued stabbing down at Mike below her.
Of course, it wasn’t a real knife.
It was a prop knife used for filming. And the blow that knocked the actor unconscious wasn’t the stab to the chest at all—it was a chop to the neck that Everly delivered while standing in a surveillance blind spot. After all, a prank was one thing, but if she actually got someone killed, she would be held responsible. She had her whole life ahead of her; it wasn’t worth throwing it away and ending up in prison because of a bunch of scumbags.
The prop knife in Everly’s hand contained a spring-loaded mechanism. When it made contact with a person’s body, the blade tip would automatically retract into the handle, activating an internal device that squeezed fake blood out through the blade.
As for why she happened to be carrying something like this around—
Well, it was a coincidence. Earlier that day, she had stopped by downtown Mikano City and visited Rebecca to replenish her supply of new props. This knife was one of the classic pieces of fashionable junk she had just picked up from Rebecca.
[Retractable Realistic Knife]: A cursed prop knife. In 1998, a young man named Dennis used this knife to stage a fake suicide in front of his lover in an attempt to win them back. Due to a mechanical malfunction and excessive force, the blade accidentally pierced his chest, causing him to bleed to death.
Since then, the resentment of the deceased has clung to the knife, allowing it to endlessly produce cursed tainted blood. Anyone stained by the blood will experience phantom pain at the corresponding location on their body for half a month, tasting the heartbreak Dennis felt after the breakup.
That was the brief introduction to this particular piece of classic fashionable junk.
At first glance, it looked like a completely useless knife—and in reality, it more or less was. Aside from being used for pranks, the thing couldn’t do much else. As for the so-called phantom pain, when Everly first got the knife, she tested it on her fingertip and found that it was really just ordinary pain.
Who could have guessed that she would pick up the knife in the morning and “kill” someone with it that very night?
By a twist of fate, this little piece of junk had actually found a use in Everly’s hands.
“Huff… huff… hahaha…”
Serves him right for trying to scare people. Look where that got him now!
Gripping the knife handle, Everly mechanically repeated the motion of stabbing downward. Surprisingly, the repetitive poking was rather stress-relieving. No wonder some people found needle-felting relaxing.
Stab, stab, stab… and keep stabbing…
Tom, who had been guarding the emergency exit, was one of Mike’s closest friends. He had spent a long time crouching in the stairwell, torn by an internal struggle. In the end, he couldn’t bear the torment of his conscience. Ignoring everyone’s attempts to stop him, he resolutely pushed open the emergency door and charged into the corridor.
The moment he saw what was happening at the far end of the hallway, he froze.
She was laughing.
Despite committing something so cruel and bloody, the corners of the girl’s lips were raised high. Her eyes curved slightly with enjoyment, and an unhealthy flush colored her pale cheeks.
Thick blood splattered across her face, staining it red and adding a strange, sinister beauty to her delicate features. As she laughed out loud, the scene was both beautiful and mad, enough to make one wonder whether the figure before him was truly human—or a bloodthirsty witch that had crawled out of the depths of hell.
The fake blood inside the prop knife seemed endless. Every downward thrust produced another gush of dark-red blood from the wound. The accumulating liquid pooled beneath Mike’s body into a spreading lake of crimson. Occasionally, when a stab landed with extra force, Mike’s body would even twitch slightly.
After being stabbed so many times, he was obviously beyond saving.
Tom had come running out fueled by nothing but courage. But now, the person he had hoped to rescue was already dead, and standing before him was such a vicious murderer. The courage in his chest burst like a punctured balloon, deflating in an instant.
I shouldn’t have come…
I never should have come!
Mike had been beyond saving from the start. By running out at a time like this, Tom had only delivered himself straight into the witch’s line of sight.
Finally realizing how reckless he had been, Tom began trembling uncontrollably. Keeping his footsteps as light as possible, he hurried toward the emergency stairwell to the side.
It would have been a perfect escape—if not for the fact that his companion, Edron, had panicked and locked the emergency door from the inside.
Bang!
The ghost’s entrance sound effects had long since ended, and Basement Level 1 was now eerily quiet. Apart from the girl’s manic laughter and the occasional squelch of flesh being stabbed, there was almost no sound.
Because of that, the sharp noise of the emergency door slamming shut was like a bonfire suddenly igniting in a pitch-black forest. It instantly attracted the attention of the female killer.
The motion of her stabbing abruptly stopped.
She raised her head, her gaze as precise as a predator hunting prey, immediately locking onto the sealed emergency door—and Tom, who stood before it in complete panic.
“Ah… I’ve been spotted.”
Curling her lips into a smile, the girl tilted her head sideways with a sharp click. Looking toward the camera—and therefore toward Tom—she revealed a bloodthirsty grin and let out a chilling sigh.
A shiver swept down the backs of everyone’s necks like a cold breeze. Both inside and outside the camera frame, everyone who witnessed the scene couldn’t help but tremble.
“Open the door! Open it! Let me in!”
Seeing that Everly had fixed her attention on him, Tom shouted desperately and began pounding on the emergency door with all his strength.
But Edron, having caught a glimpse of the bloody scene through the crack in the door, had already been scared out of his wits. No matter how Tom shouted or cursed, the heavy metal door remained firmly shut, not opening even a sliver.
“Over here!”
At the critical moment, one of the morgue staff members hiding inside finally couldn’t stand by and watch any longer. He quickly cracked the door open, grabbed Tom—whose face was smeared with tears and snot from terror—and yanked him inside before slamming the door shut again with a bang.
“Ha… hahaha…”
“Don’t think you can escape.”
Naturally, Everly had no intention of letting them go.
In the livestream, the girl gripped the blood-soaked folding knife and rose from the actor’s gore-covered “corpse” like a stiff-jointed marionette. Her knees bent inward awkwardly as she swayed to her feet. Then she leaned forward, kicked off the ground, and shot toward the tightly shut morgue door like an arrow released from a bow.
Bang! Bang! Bang bang bang!
“Open the door! Open the door right now!”
“Come on… I won’t hurt you… Just be good and open it…”
A series of increasingly frantic impacts echoed through the corridor.
Though she appeared to be nothing more than a thin, frail young woman, the girl’s strength was astonishing. When she gave up knocking and started slamming her shoulder into the door instead, the heavy metal door actually dented inward. Dust rained down from above in a steady shower.
[AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!]
[They’re just actors, but her acting is absolutely terrifying!]
[I feel so bad for the staff—they must be scared to death LOL]
[Dr. J is way too creative. I can’t believe he came up with this! Though his employees are really suffering for it hahaha…]
Ever since Everly had “stabbed Mike to death” with a single thrust, the livestream chat had been exploding nonstop. The barrage of comments was so dense that it nearly covered the entire screen. When Everly stood up with the knife in hand and appeared ready to hunt down the others, another massive wave of comments flooded in.
“There are more and more people joining the stream. The footage is so intense that clips are definitely going to spread afterward. Are we really not shutting down the broadcast?” the man with the lip piercing asked anxiously, chewing on his fingernail as he watched the viewer count in the corner climb higher and higher.
“Shut down the stream, and then what?” Dr. J roared at his subordinate.
“The viewers aren’t idiots. If we suddenly cut the broadcast right when the stream is at peak popularity, they’ll definitely start questioning whether it’s real. And if some busybody decides to call the police, we’re finished!” he shouted viciously.
“We can’t interrupt the stream. It has to keep going!”
“Only if the broadcast continues will the audience believe that everything is under our control—that all the killing they’re seeing is nothing more than part of the show.”
“But…”
“Just listen to me and keep it running!” Dr. J snapped.
“They’re inside the morgue, protected by a steel door. They’ll be fine. We just need to wait a little longer. Once that lunatic gives up, the viewer count will drop, and we’ll be able to end the stream naturally. After that, I’ll have my parents send some trusted security personnel over to deal with that crazy woman.”
The man with the lip piercing opened his mouth several times, wanting to argue. But when his eyes landed on the viewer count in the livestream, the words died in his throat.
58,635 viewers.
For an entire year, he and Dr. J had run this channel together. They had stayed up countless nights brainstorming ideas, yet the stream’s performance had always been mediocre. At its peak, they had never attracted more than five thousand viewers.
But now—
Nearly sixty thousand people had packed into the livestream.
And the number was still climbing.
They had made it.
They had finally gone viral.
Just thinking about the sponsorship deals, brand partnerships, and enormous donations that would follow a breakout success made his breathing quicken.
Money.
All of that was money.
Dr. J came from a wealthy family. He ran the channel for fame and attention and didn’t care much about the revenue it generated.
But he was different.
He desperately needed money.
Money, money, money.
He wanted money.
Besides, Mike was already dead.
Since there was no undoing what had happened, why not squeeze a little more value out of Mike’s death?
As Mike’s good friend, he and Dr. J would take care of Mike’s remaining family. And besides, Dr. J was right—keeping the incident quiet would be better for everyone…
The rims of the lip-pierced man’s eyes reddened as the fear and guilt inside him were gradually overwhelmed by his greed.
Just then, the pounding against the door abruptly stopped.
“…What’s happening?” he asked.
He blinked, his gaze unfocused for a moment, before forcing his attention back to the livestream.
On the screen, the girl had somehow stopped slamming against the door.
She stood silently in the doorway like a hanged ghost—head lowered, back perfectly straight—motionless for a few seconds. Then, suddenly, she opened her mouth and began humming a strange lullaby.
“Long long ago, a tale was born.
In the mist, monsters roam…”
It was an utterly bizarre children’s rhyme.
Her soft, clear singing voice carried a grainy texture, like it was drifting through layers of fog. In the empty corridor, the eerie melody spread like a poisonous mist. The unsettling tune slithered up the listener’s spine like a snake, leaving a bone-deep chill and a lingering sense of unease.
“A land of mystery, a hunting ground.
Welcome to the witch’s swamp…”
Still humming, the girl turned around and walked toward a nearby pile of miscellaneous junk. She casually picked up a metal IV stand and gripped it at both ends.
Then she bent it.
There was no visible exertion. Only a slow, creaking “squeeeak—” of metal groaning in protest. A solid stainless-steel frame, thick as an adult’s finger, folded like a thin cracker, its ends meeting neatly together.
[!!!]
[That prop looks so realistic!]
[So close—I almost thought she was actually that strong. Turns out it’s just props lol (sweat emoji)(sweat emoji)]
No.
Don’t be fooled by her delicate appearance—this woman was genuinely that strong!
The man with the lip piercing screamed internally.
He had once heard that when patients enter manic, hallucinatory, or delusional states, extreme physiological arousal can sharply increase adrenaline and cortisol levels, allowing them to exhibit strength far beyond normal limits. Perhaps that was why this madwoman in the livestream was so monstrously strong—so strong that even a security door required two grown men to restrain it.
She picked up the IV stand… what was she planning to do with it? Smash the door? But there was no need to bend it like that if she just wanted to hit something…
The man with the lip piercing watched the woman’s movements, full of confusion.
“Darling, don’t run. I’ll never hurt anyone.”
The evil witch’s lurking around…”
Accompanied by the dark, twisted children’s rhyme, the madwoman carried the bent IV stand to the entrance of the morgue. Then she used it like a bolt, wedging it into the center of the curved door handle.
“…What is she do—”
“F**K! She’s locking the door!”
Dr. J cut off the lip-pierced man’s question and rushed forward, grabbing the walkie-talkie and shouting into the public channel:
“Damn it! Tom! Robert! Everyone in the left morgue, listen up—get to the other entrance immediately! She’s locking this door! Go through the other entrance and find them!”