Song Nanxing handed over the two sedatives and watched Zhou Xuan inject Shen Du and Xu Lai.
Once the patients were settled, Song Nanxing found the consulting room key in a drawer, locked the door from outside, and the two of them pressed close to the wall, edging carefully toward the stairs. By now, the doctor from the consulting room had already lurched up the steps.
He kept extending and retracting his tongue, making broken, muffled noises. “Patient, where’s the patient…”
Song Nanxing gripped his knife, eyes scanning the doctor from head to toe, looking for a weakness.
The doctor’s green skin was constantly secreting pale yellow mucus, making him look wet and sticky all over. Wherever he walked, the stairs were left slick with two trails of moisture.
Song Nanxing’s gaze swept over a fire extinguisher placed at the stairwell. He signaled to Zhou Xuan, pointing at the extinguisher.
Zhou Xuan didn’t get it at first. Song Nanxing sheathed his knife, crept over, picked up the extinguisher, removed the seal and safety pin, and mouthed, “Frogs are afraid of dehydration.”
Frogs mainly breathe through their lungs and skin. Their lungs are simple and can’t provide all their oxygen needs, so they rely on the dense capillaries in their skin for supplemental oxygen.
That’s why their skin always secretes mucus to stay moist. Once they lose a damp environment and their skin dries out, frogs die easily.
The people mutated in this hospital were very similar to frogs. Using frog-targeted methods might work.
Song Nanxing gripped the nozzle, back pressed tightly to the wall, and nodded toward the doctor nearly at the landing.
Zhou Xuan understood and quietly grabbed another extinguisher.
Both of them held their extinguishers, holding their breath, waiting for the doctor to come up.
Because of his distended belly, the doctor moved slowly, dragging his heavy body up each step like an old man in his seventies or eighties. His scarlet tongue, in sharp contrast to his sluggish body, flicked out nimbly, snapping against the tiled floor and leaving pockmarks.
“Pa-patient, come out…”
The doctor finally reached the second floor. His scarlet tongue snapped back into his wide mouth, and his sluggish head turned toward Song Nanxing’s position.
“Found you, hehe.”
The dull black eyes locked onto Song Nanxing. The doctor opened his mouth wide, the long red tongue curling inside, ready to strike.
On the other side, Zhou Xuan aimed the nozzle at the doctor’s back and pressed down hard.
A blast of white powder shot out instantly.
Song Nanxing skillfully avoided the swirling dust and also sprayed the doctor with a wild burst.
Under the high pressure, the doctor’s heavy body staggered, the white powder coating his wet skin and blocking his oxygen intake.
His tongue, deprived of oxygen, went limp and dangled from the corner of his mouth.
They only stopped when both extinguishers were empty.
The doctor’s entire body was coated in white powder. He showed severe signs of hypoxia, his green skin turning dark and purple, his wide mouth gaping as he gasped desperately for air.
His swollen belly rose and fell with his breathing, and something inside seemed to be pushing against it.
“There’s something in his stomach.” Song Nanxing approached cautiously, took out the folding knife, and flicked the blade open.
He squinted, bent down, and sliced a thin line into the doctor’s distended belly—
Milky white eggs spilled out in a rush.
Each egg was the size of a ping-pong ball, with four-limbed Tadpoles inside.
Exposed to air and powder, the frog eggs quickly dehydrated and dried up, the unhatched Tadpoles inside turning into a puddle of black water.
But one or two eggs did hatch. Greenish monsters pierced their egg membranes with five fingers and struggled out. Their limbs and torsos resembled humans, but their heads were triangular like frogs, skin a moist gray-green, and their throats let out piercing “wa wa” cries.
They looked just like the Frog-headed People Song Nanxing had seen in Room 301.
Zhou Xuan lifted the metal fire extinguisher and smashed the young Frog-headed People who had begun eating the doctor’s corpse, his face darker than ever. “No wonder the contaminated patients’ transformations are accelerating. These parasitic Tadpoles are the real source of the contamination.”
Those mutated into monsters were nothing but food for these Tadpoles.
A loud crash sounded from downstairs. Song Nanxing looked over the second-floor railing and saw the people outside had broken through the main doors, their bellies bulging as they staggered toward the stairs.
Zhou Xuan said coldly, “We can’t let them hatch.”
These people were already hard enough to deal with—if what was inside their bellies hatched, the consequences would be unimaginable.
“I’ll hold them off. You go find more extinguishers. Alcohol works too.”
As Zhou Xuan spoke, he took off his coat, and a layer of black fuzz began to cover his skin. Before Song Nanxing could be surprised, Zhou Xuan had already sprouted eight spider legs, dragging a huge abdomen as he climbed up to the ceiling.
He hung from the ceiling, his upper body still human, but below the waist, he was a giant spider. Using eight legs, he quickly spun a massive web, apologizing to Song Nanxing, “My mutation form is a spider. Hope I didn’t scare you.”
Song Nanxing shook his head and went to search the consulting rooms for anything useful.
He swept through the entire second floor as fast as he could, gathering extinguishers and medical alcohol, and stashed them in the corridor.
Zhou Xuan had finished setting the trap. He was on the ceiling, watching the stairwell like a real spider, patiently waiting for the prey below to enter his web.
Song Nanxing grabbed an extinguisher and pressed himself against the wall.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Song Nanxing held his breath, counting the steps, but a sudden scream interrupted him.
It came from the west side of the first floor—a woman’s voice, mixed with a child’s cries. But after two shouts, it faded, as if someone had covered her mouth.
Song Nanxing and Zhou Xuan exchanged glances. Song Nanxing signaled, “I’ll go.”
Zhou Xuan nodded. White spider silk dropped from the ceiling, and he used it to pull an extinguisher up.
Song Nanxing crept toward the elevator at the other end of the corridor.
He took the elevator to the first floor and, as soon as he stepped out, ran into a lone monster. He reacted quickly, kicking it away and spraying it with the extinguisher.
Luckily, they weren’t quick to respond. Once he was sure the monster was down, Song Nanxing used his knife to cut open its swollen belly.
Sure enough, it was full of milky white eggs.
He disinfected the eggs with the extinguisher, then followed the noise.
The banging came from the end of the west corridor.
Song Nanxing crept closer and saw a monster smashing against a consulting room door. The metal door wasn’t sturdy and had been smashed with the scarlet tongue, leaving holes everywhere and barely holding up.
Faint, terrified sobbing came from inside.
Song Nanxing gripped the extinguisher and slowly approached, the canister much lighter now—he wasn’t sure if it would be enough for this one.
His entire focus was on the monster at the door and didn’t notice the deep shadow spreading beneath his feet, moving like tentacles, silently trailing him.
Song Nanxing crept up behind the monster, raised the extinguisher, and brought it down hard on its head.
The monster staggered, unable to react, and he struck again and again…
Blood mixed with white fluid splattered everywhere. Song Nanxing, face cold and practiced, used his knife to open the belly and did the same with the eggs, neutralizing them with the extinguisher.
When he was done, he tossed aside the empty canister, wiped the blood off his face, knocked on the battered door, and softened his voice. “It’s all right. You can come out now.”
Someone inside seemed hesitant. Song Nanxing saw a woman peer through a hole in the door, and only when she was sure there were no more monsters did she open it with a creak.
A young woman, barely in her thirties, came out, clutching a swaddled infant that whimpered softly.
She looked terrified, her face streaked with dust and tears, as she looked at Song Nanxing with desperate hope. “Are you a police officer? Am I saved?”
Song Nanxing shook his head. “The police will probably take a while to get here. Let’s hide on the second floor for now. My companion is up there—it’ll be safe.”
Hearing he wasn’t a police officer, the woman’s face turned panicked. But she knew she’d be in more danger alone and could only choke back her tears and follow Song Nanxing.
He picked up the extinguisher canister as a weapon, glanced at the baby, and warned, “Keep an eye on your child. Don’t let him cry too loudly.”
The woman nodded, gently patting the baby to soothe him.
Song Nanxing led the way. Suddenly, the baby’s weak cries grew louder.
The “wa wa” echoed in the corridor, shrill and piercing.
Song Nanxing found the sound oddly familiar. Just as he turned to check, a strong stench hit his nose.
In his last moment of consciousness, Song Nanxing saw the woman grin at him, a scarlet, split tongue licking her lips. The swaddling unraveled, and a green-skinned Frog-headed Person jumped to the floor, dragging something like a long umbilical cord still attached to the woman’s belly…
The less-than-a-foot-tall Frog-headed Person stared at the collapsed Song Nanxing with jet-black eyes—unlike the others, its gaze was sharp.
It bit off the cord connecting it to its “mother,” and the woman instantly collapsed, an empty shell. Only her belly remained swollen, something inside straining to burst free.
The young Frog-headed Person glanced at her, then turned toward Song Nanxing, tongue curling as yellow drool dripped from its mouth.
But before it could approach, black tentacles emerged from the shadows, carefully wrapping up Song Nanxing’s unconscious body.
Losing its prey, the Frog-headed Person shrieked in anger, only to be caught off guard as another tentacle pierced its body.
The tentacles seemed unsatisfied, crushing the body into pulp before finally carrying Song Nanxing away.
In frequencies humans couldn’t hear, voices echoed one after another: “Mine.”
“He’s mine.”
“No one else touch.”