49: Forty-nine.

Completed 49: Forty-nine.

Completed Lu Li decided to temporarily climb back to the surface to find something to jam the elevator.

The sickly white light suddenly burst into brightness in the sky outside the hospital, illuminating the entire corridor as if it were daylight, lasting for several seconds before fading away.

The terrifying lightning heralded a new round of rainfall, and at the same time also signified… the thunder would be very loud.

A bad premonition rose in Lu Li’s heart.

Without hesitation, he let go of his grip, allowing his body to slide back into the elevator.

And at that very moment, the thunder exploded.

Boom – thunderous roars approached from not far away, the windows buzzed, the pebbles and debris on the ground trembled, and the already shaky elevator quivered with them.

The sound of thunder became the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Bang—

Above the hollow and deep elevator shaft, a sound of something breaking echoed, followed by a whistling sound, as a rope as thick as a baby’s arm fell from above the elevator.

The elevator suddenly descended.

In an instant, just as Lu Li’s feet had just touched the ground and before he could stabilize himself, the elevator plummeted, and a sense of weightlessness enveloped him—

Clang!!!

On the first underground floor, out of nowhere, an elevator came crashing down, creating a huge noise that echoed in the empty underground space.

The fall of the elevator stirred up large clouds of dust.

Amidst the spreading dust cloud, a glimmer of light flashed and then abruptly disappeared, plunging the surroundings into intense darkness.

In the last trace of light, a silhouette could be seen slumped at the edge of the elevator, head hanging down.

“Cough, cough, cough, cough…”

Before long, coughing sounds emerged from the elevator.

Lu Li raised his head, shaking off the stagnant air in his chest, and looked out into an expanse of thick darkness.

Something was brewing in the darkness, gestating.

Lu Li’s trembling hand reached into his bosom, taking out matches.

But due to the shaking caused by adrenaline secretion, with a rustling sound, the matches spilled out.

Whether it was an illusion created by the darkness or not, Lu Li faintly saw a pair of even blacker withered claws stretching out towards him from the shadows.

Without caring about the dust on the ground, Lu Li swiped his hand across the cold floor, grasping a handful of matches and striking them against the wall of the elevator.

Fsssh—

The easily ignited phosphorus matches came to life, their light spreading out and dispelling the shadows surrounding him.

And the withered claw, which seemed an illusion, disappeared as well.

Was that something in the darkness?

Lu Li temporarily pushed aside his doubts, finding the oil lamp that had fallen to one side before the bundle of matches in his hand had burnt out.

Fortunately, the oil lamp was intact except for a few cracks in its glass shell.

Lu Li took off the glass cover and lit the wick.

The faint flame flickered for a few moments before coming back to life.

The light drove away the darkness, and the uncomfortable dust, like a mist, spread around the elevator.

It was so dense that the glow of the oil lamp could only illuminate a small area outside the elevator before proving powerless.

Lu Li frowned, tossing the handful of hot matches into a corner, and slowly took a breath as he climbed out of the elevator car.

He was covered in a considerable amount of dust, which made him look quite disheveled.

His calm gaze penetrated the dust, looking up toward the top of the elevator.

The elevator exit was fitting snugly with the entrance above, and there was no safety hatch on the top, cutting off Lu Li’s possibility of returning the way he came.

Was the way back cut off?

There must be other places that lead to the surface…

“Cough, cough…”

Lu Li couged involuntarily, took a moment to consider, and then walked out of the elevator with the oil lamp.

The quiet and gloomy underground corridor saw dust particles appear like noise within the range of the oil lamp.

As Lu Li walked through, he stirred up whirls of dust.

The wallpaper had peeled off, revealing the dark gray cement walls behind, while the yellowed floor tiles beneath were covered with a layer of unrecognizable black substance.

Rusty hospital beds and trash were haphazardly piled along the corridor.

And then there was the main attraction of the basement level: those hospital room iron doors in the depths of the hallway, some swung wide open, others tightly shut.

Lu Li might have been the first outsider to set foot here in years, most likely.

Lu Li briefly held the Spirit-Calling Gun, but did not feel the presence of any spirits around—though there was an abundance of malicious auras.

He walked on, ignoring the patient rooms on both sides.

The priority for Lu Li was to find a way up to the surface.

As Lu Li delved deeper underground, the temperature around him steadily dropped, and the corridor began to change.

Blood-like scratch marks, patterns, and chaotic text started to appear on the walls.

Black plastic bags that seemed to contain unknown contents were messily piled up in the corners.

Crushed cans and water bottles were scattered everywhere—as if a group of people had lived here for a while after the hospital had been abandoned.

This might correspond to the urban rumors: after the hospital was discarded, the patients with serious conditions were left behind.

Walking twenty meters along the corridor, past nearly six crisscrossing patient rooms, the dark floor ahead suddenly became uneven.

A black bag lay flat on the edge of the corridor, a bag commonly known by another name: a body bag.

The appearance of a body bag in an abandoned psychiatric hospital seemed to gradually shift the surrounding atmosphere towards the eerie.

Lu Li stopped in his tracks, glanced back at the corridor, where there was faint whispering—or perhaps it was just a ringing in his ears—then crouched beside the body bag.

The black shroud faintly outlined a human form.

Lu Li found the zipper at the head, placed the oil lamp on the ground, and reached out with both hands to grab the two zippers.

In the deathly still and dimly lit corridor, a figure emotionlessly began to unzip the body bag that obviously contained something.

It was hard to describe whether it was the atmosphere or the figure itself that was frightening.

The body bag was partially unzipped, revealing freshly washed black hair.

But the zipper got stuck at the shoulder.

Lu Li didn’t bother to check if the body bag was intact any longer, and tore it open violently.

A pale arm fell out from the body bag.

The arm was cold and stiff; as Lu Li touched it, it felt completely like plaster—a sculpture.

Lu Li lifted the entire body bag to discover that both the head and the torso were made of stone.

The only aberrant and unsettling feature was the sculpture’s eyes, which expressed an air of despair and malice.

No sculpture should have eyes so lifelike; in fact, most sculptures didn’t have eyes at all, including the one in his own home.

With no logical clues and no auras detected, Lu Li chalked it up to the work of a deranged psychiatric patient.

Hastily covering up the body bag again, Lu Li picked up the oil lamp and continued on his way.

Not far ahead, to the right, there was a hospital bed covered with a stained yellowish and filthy white sheet.

Just like the body bag, a human-shaped outline was visible beneath the sheet.

Lu Li approached the bed and, without any warning, casually lifted it.

The moment the sheet was pulled back, an indescribable stench of decay flooded the narrow corridor.

It was a clearly human middle-aged man.

His dark blue skin was covered with splotches characteristic of a corpse, his eyes half-open as most deceased were.

He appeared to have been dead for no more than a week.

Lu Li’s dark eyes narrowed slightly; at that moment, the situation had changed.

Without hesitation, Lu Li gripped the Spirit-Calling Gun, capable of exorcising spirits and harming humans alike, while preparing to shout for Anna, who was standing guard outside.

Suddenly, a gust of wind sounded behind his head!

Thump—

Intense pain radiated from the back of his skull, his brain rattled as if his soul had been struck out of his body.

Lu Li instantly lost all sense of direction, falling forward onto the hospital bed and knocking it over.

Clang—

A mix of red and white spilled all over the ground.