Chapter 8: Zhou Tai
Yu Xian's spirits lifted instantly. "Finally!"
To his ears, the sound of gunfire was as heavenly as celestial music. Reinforcements meant he no longer had to worry about what came next. All he needed to do now was kill without restraint and wipe out every last Aberrant Parasite in the school.
However, just as he was about to head downstairs, a pained groan reached him, causing him to stop in his tracks. Wondering if there were any survivors, he immediately turned and entered one of the classrooms. There, in a corner littered with mangled remains, was a survivor whose breathing was faint and weak.
***
At Cangshan Psychiatric Hospital in Silver City, countless Aberrant Parasites were frenziedly devouring the medical staff while Director Chen Qingsong cowered inside a cabinet in his office, not daring to make a sound. He had never imagined that the parasites would have already infected so many patients in the hospital.
Compared to the ones inside ordinary humans, the parasites inhabiting psychiatric patients were visibly more violent. Not only were they less sensitive to pain, but their mobility far surpassed that of typical Aberrant Parasites. The hospital's armed security guards had only managed to fire a single shot before the parasites killed them. Now, Chen Qingsong had placed all his hope on the reinforcements from the authorities.
The office door was violently shoved open. A gaunt man in a patient's gown strolled inside with relaxed, unhurried steps. He searched around, saying in a low voice, "Director? Director? Where are you? It's me, Zhou Tai."
The man stopped in front of the cabinet and gently knocked on its door. "Are you in there? Are you not? Are you in there? Are you not?"
After a moment, a hint of disappointment washed over him. He murmured under his breath, "Looks like the director really isn't here. What a shame. I wanted to share a massive secret with him."
As the man turned and walked away, Chen Qingsong's eyes widened, and he quietly let out a breath of relief. Zhou Tai was the most dangerous patient in this hospital. He suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder. The problem was that, aside from his primary personality, every one of his alternate personalities was horrifying, ranging from murderers and skinning "artists" to compulsive finger collectors and cannibalistic maniacs. He had been confined to the hospital and kept restrained almost twenty-four hours a day.
Chen Qingsong could not begin to imagine how Zhou Tai had broken free from his restraints, nor why the parasites didn't attack him. But no matter whether Zhou Tai was still human or had already become one of the parasites, Chen Qingsong wanted nothing to do with him.
Unfortunately, things didn't turn out the way he wished. Just as he thought Zhou Tai had left, the cabinet door was yanked open.
Zhou Tai stood there, smiling at Chen Qingsong. "Found you, my dear Director!"
He pulled Chen Qingsong into the office chair and sat down opposite him across the desk.
Panicked, Chen Qingsong stammered. "What do you want? Y-you'd better not do anything reckless, or... or—"
Zhou Tai chuckled and cut him off. "Or what? Lock me up again? Hahahahaha! From this moment on, no one can lock me up anymore!"
Suddenly, his expression shifted. The madness faded, replaced by a hint of weakness and uncertainty. "Director, am I sick? Take a look for me. Check my pulse!"
He placed his hand on the desk and looked at Chen Qingsong expectantly. Chen Qingsong did not make any rash moves. Zhou Tai didn't seem to care either. He muttered to himself, "Director, isn't this world fascinating? A parasite tried to infect me. I was so scared... so, so scared. But I never expected it would choose the most useless personality to devour. After it replaced our boss, the rest of us ended up parasitizing it instead! This feeling... this feeling is truly magnificent! Its body is just too powerful!"
Chen Qingsong's eyes widened in shock. "Are you saying that an Aberrant Parasite replaced the consciousness of your main personality, but the other personalities instead parasitized that parasite's consciousness and even managed to suppress it?"
Zhou Tai nodded repeatedly. "Exactly! As expected of you, Director. You've perfectly summed it up in just a few words."
"Then tell me, are you human, or are you an Aberrant Parasite?" Chen Qingsong couldn't help but ask, cold sweat pouring down his forehead.
A smile slowly spread across Zhou Tai's face. One by one, tentacles wriggled out from his facial features. With their help, his eyeballs were forced forward, almost pressing up against Chen Qingsong's face.
One of the tentacles split open and spoke. "I am, of course, human!"
Chen Qingsong stared at the horrifying scene before him with trembling pupils. In the end, he was so frightened that his mind snapped and he died on the spot.
Zhou Tai clicked his tongue in disdain as he slowly withdrew the tentacles and looked at the director's lifeless body. "Boring."
As if suddenly remembering something interesting, he smiled. "There's still some time left. I should go find that little brother and have some fun."
As he spoke, his expression kept shifting. In the end, he looked at Chen Qingsong's corpse with a look of greed. Clearly, another personality had taken over the body.
Had Chen Qingsong still been alive, this sight would have undoubtedly led him to a chilling realization. Perhaps these Aberrant Parasites possessed something like a "consciousness network," and Zhou Tai's personalities were like a malicious virus, exploiting this very consciousness network to infect every single Aberrant Parasite! At any moment, these personalities could seize control of any parasite's body or even hide within the network itself and issue commands to all of them.
***
Back at Silver City Third High, Yu Xian carried a student with a broken leg back to the rooftop. He carefully put the injured student down, then turned around. "Zhang Shou, you and the other boys help out. I've taken care of all the parasites on the sixth floor. There are quite a few injured students who need our help."
Zhang Shou nodded. "Alright!"
The other boys gritted their teeth, steeling their resolve to head down and help as well.
Chen Ling spoke up. "I'm going too. We only need two people here to look after the wounded."
Feeling that she should also do something, Nora said, "Then I'll go as well."
Yu Xian did not object. There were a lot of injured students, so one more person meant one more helping hand.
However, as the other students reached the sixth floor and stepped into Class 6 of Grade 12, many of them could help but turn and rush back into the corridor to vomit. The scene inside the classroom was simply too gruesome.
Some students had been devoured by the parasites until only half their bodies remained. Others were left with nothing but half a face. It was, quite literally, a living hell. The students, being nothing more than young, naive high school students, had never seen anything so horrifying in their lives.
Nora watched Chen Ling and the others with a trace of worry in her eyes and turned to Yu Xian. "Are they going to be alright?"
He shot her a slightly surprised look and chuckled. "I figured they'd react this way. But I'm amazed you didn't throw up."
Rolling her eyes at him, she replied, "I'm a vampire. I can't even vomit."
Only then did Yu Xian realize that even though he found the scene in the classroom extremely brutal and terrifying, he hadn't experienced any physiological discomfort. It was probably because he was also a vampire.
At that moment, an Aberrant Parasite rushed up the stairs from the fifth floor. Yu Xian immediately flicked his finger, and a silver thread shot out, instantly slicing the incoming parasite clean in two. He had allowed Zhang Shou and the others to come down and rescue the injured students precisely because he was confident he could protect them.
Nora's eyes widened instantly. As she stared at the silver thread, then at the parasite's corpse on the ground, a wave of shock crashed through her mind. "Silver Blood!"
This was the major ability her father had awakened at the age of one hundred and fifty. Why had it appeared in Yu Xian's hands? She looked at him in disbelief, her mind completely in chaos.
Nora actually did not know much about Silver Blood. Her father had never once shown her the act of him consuming silver. All she knew was that Silver Blood was an ability capable of forming silver threads. Otherwise, she would have connected the dots when she had seen Yu Xian eating silver earlier.
After a short while, the group finally recovered from their shock. Yu Xian led the way into the classroom. Zhang Shou gritted his teeth and followed, and the others quickly did the same.
Yu Xian quickly found a new survivor, a girl who had lost both her arms and legs, with half her face bitten away. "This way. She still has a heartbeat."
Everyone fell silent, their expressions growing heavy. Before this, the Hibiscus City Tragedy had been nothing more than a headline to them. Many of them could not truly understand why it was described as a tragedy. But now, witnessing the horrific fate of their schoolmates, they felt that even the word "tragedy" was no longer enough to describe the horror of this disaster.