Chapter 211: Chapter 175: Jin Xueli: The Positions of Friend and Foe Change in an Instant
For a brief moment, both Jin Xueli and Morando were stunned.
Morando hadn’t expected someone to suddenly throw a wrench in the works from outside the door. Jin Xueli, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why Han Liuyue had suddenly dumped this whole mess on her shoulders. ’Has she gone mad?’
Amid the brief silence born of suspicion, confusion, and shock, the first one in the hospital room to react was the slender patient.
Drawn by some nearly inaudible, subtle sound, Jin Xueli looked up just in time to see an arm extending segment by segment through the air, spanning the room. In the blink of an eye, with a SMACK, it pressed firmly against the door.
’Now, even if Han Liuyue were willing to open the door, could she even push it open?’
"so weird so jealous so unfair I want to go outside too how did you get to the human side I can smell you there’s no mistaking that scent what are you some kind of thing from the Nest what are you"
Jin Xueli’s heart plummeted.
’...What’s wrong with Han Liuyue? Did something happen to her in the Nest?’
"This has nothing to do with you. I want that person, Chaisi Monroe."
Outside the door, Han Liuyue said calmly, "Don’t get in my way. As long as you let him out, you can do whatever you want with the other two Hunters. I don’t care."
’Great. So no matter who gives in during this negotiation, Morando and I are screwed either way?’
Lying on the floor, Jin Xueli glanced around and noticed that Morando’s plastic water gun of unknown purpose, which the resident had casually tossed aside earlier, had landed on the floor next to its own hospital bed.
She and Morando exchanged a look.
The slender patient pretended to consider this for a moment, then laughed. "Then why don’t you come in and take him yourself? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that if you return to the Nest, you won’t be able to get out again?"
’...No time to worry about Han Liuyue now.’
Jin Xueli silently made a gun gesture at Morando, then opened and closed her other hand over the "barrel" to mime a spray of water. Then she pointed behind herself. She didn’t actually have much hope that Morando would understand, but to her surprise, she did and even gave her a nod.
Before Han Liuyue could answer, the slender patient spoke again, its voice suddenly much thicker and stickier:
"I’ve decided. All three people in this room are mine... whether they’re Illusions or flesh and blood I want them I want them I want them who cares about you who wants to cooperate with you this world should revolve around me my desire is the most important thing the most important thing"
’Crap, it looks like it’s getting serious.’
The thought had barely formed when the patient’s other arm shot out like a long whip, sweeping across half the room toward Morando in the corner.
As the air split, the skin on its arm also tore open in thin strips.
With a whistling sound, a swarm of tumor-like human faces squeezed out from the cracks in its skin, crying out one after another in the rushing wind:
"why should I share with others I hate other people everything is mine everything is mine all the Illusions money food resources and dead people in the world should be mine to hoard even if I can’t use them even if I waste them all I won’t share a single bit with anyone else"
’This resident... is so very human.’
Morando had also anticipated the patient’s attack. "Go now!" she yelled, diving and rolling onto the adjacent hospital bed. The arm scraped just over her head and struck the wall, making the entire room tremble and shake down dust.
She dodged the arm, but it seemed she hadn’t dodged the faces within it.
Jin Xueli only heard her cry out in pain but didn’t have time to see what had happened. While the slender patient’s attention was elsewhere, she quickly rolled under Chaisi’s bed, grabbed the plastic water gun, and jumped up with the hammer in one hand and the gun in the other.
When she got a clear look, she gasped and cried out, "Morando!"
Morando hadn’t been able to dodge completely. On her back and shoulder, three or four indistinct, tumor-like human faces had sprouted like mushrooms after a rain.
"such pretty eyes such a pretty face such nice skin give them to me give them to me I want them I want them look at me I don’t even have a single hair"
Morando punched the face that was pressing toward her own, knocking it back a few centimeters—but only a few centimeters, because the end of its neck was attached to her right shoulder, having dissolved a patch of her clothing.
But she couldn’t reach the faces that had sprouted from her back and waist.
"Your turn," the slender patient said, one hand still holding the door as its other whipped toward Jin Xueli again.
Jin Xueli couldn’t worry about Morando anymore. She dove between the hospital beds, her shoulder slamming into Chaisi’s bed and knocking it a few feet away.
The resident’s arm swept over her head, snagging the curtain and ripping it from its track. From within the chaotic mess, several more faces tumbled out, pouncing toward Jin Xueli like giant, single-legged mushrooms.
She swung her hammer, sending one pouncing face flying, and kicked another one away. Half-under the bed and half-out, she yelled, "Morando! Are you still holding on? Cancel the connection!"
If they didn’t cancel the connection, with the door blocked, they had nowhere to run. If they canceled it, at least they could escape into the Nest.
"I can’t!"
Morando could at least still speak, though every word seemed laced with pain. "If I cancel the connection, the three of us will be thrown into random locations within the Nest—"
Jin Xueli froze.
If the unconscious Chaisi were thrown into a random spot in the Nest by himself, he’d be basically unrecoverable. But that wasn’t even the worst part.
"These faces are burrowing into my body. I’m out of time. If I get thrown into the Nest now—" Morando couldn’t finish, her words cut off by her own pained, irrepressible cry.
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