Chapter 22: Scalpel

"Xiu! Two minutes!" Zhao Hao interrupted Fang Xiu's climax.

Fang Xiu's expression instantly returned to calm.

"You go ahead and wait a little further away. I'm going to test the power of spirituality."

"So you really have become the spirit master that Wang Zhen talked about?" Zhao Hao said excitedly.

Fang Xiu nodded, and Zhao Hao promptly ran off to the left corridor.

Suddenly, Fang Xiu raised his right hand, with spiritual energy clinging to it.

He looked at the female doctor still eating and murmured, "You'll be the first to feel the pain."

The characteristics of the pain ability pleased him greatly, and he suspected it was no weak ability.

If this ability were in someone else's hands, it would be a weak ability, but in his hands, it was a divine technique!

A one-hit kill!!

Because this punch represented the pain he had endured from dying twenty-one times. Who could withstand that level of pain!?

And as the number of deaths increased in the future, the pain would grow stronger, meaning this was an ability that could be infinitely enhanced.

Boom!

Fang Xiu struck the female physician's head with a punch.

The female physician, who was in the midst of eating, showed no reaction at all.

Thud!

A dull sound echoed.

Roar!!

The female doctor suddenly let out an extremely painful scream, her body crashing to the ground. Her long hands clutched her head tightly, trembling uncontrollably, causing the scalpel in her hand to fall to the ground.

Although Fang Xiu had achieved some initial success, he furrowed his brows. This punch had not yielded the results he desired.

Although the female doctor was in pain, it was clearly not as intense as his own earlier suffering. The spiritual transmission was clearly obstructed, and after that punch, his spiritual energy had depleted.

He could no longer deliver a second punch.

One percent of spiritual energy was still too weak, and the reason the effect was not obvious was likely because the defense had not been broken.

The female doctor's head had no obvious external injuries, only minor damage, which prevented the pain from being fully transmitted.

It seemed that next time, he would have to truly harm the strange entity.

The power of a fist was ultimately limited; it would be best to use a weapon.

But could an ordinary weapon transmit spiritual energy?

At this thought, Fang Xiu suddenly noticed the surgical knife the female doctor had dropped on the ground!

Without a moment's hesitation, he picked up the scalpel from the ground. It felt extremely cold to the touch, like a piece of ice.

The moment he held it, he felt waves of incredibly violent negative emotions surging into his mind, containing the resentment, anger, and hatred of countless people.

Such violent negative emotions were almost enough to shatter one's mind.

An ordinary person would likely be transformed into a mindless killing machine the moment they came into contact with such emotions.

However, Fang Xiu was no ordinary person.

If these negative emotions were compared to ink, they would stain every mind black. But what if the mind was already black to begin with?

Painting black paper with ink still leaves it black.

Thus, these negative emotions did not shatter Fang Xiu's soul; instead, they gave him a sense of kinship.

Gradually, countless fragmented scenes appeared before Fang Xiu's eyes: one after another, half-human, half-monstrous beings were bound to operating tables, their bodies sliced and dismembered by a razor-sharp scalpel.

Suddenly, he understood.

The female doctor had once used this scalpel to conduct experiments on the eerie beings in the mental hospital, so the scalpel had absorbed the怨念 of countless eerie beings.

Later, the mental hospital may have undergone some sort of upheaval, and the female doctor was overwhelmed by the怨念 on the scalpel, transforming into an eerie being herself.

This meant that the true strange entity was the scalpel itself, and the female doctor had merely been influenced by it.

Now that I possessed the scalpel, could I kill the female doctor?

Swish!

A bright silver flash of light streaked toward the female doctor's pale neck.

Clang!

A crisp metallic clang echoed, followed by sparks flying everywhere.

The female doctor's neck remained unscathed.

Fang Xiu paused in surprise.

This is impossible!

A scalpel capable of slicing through countless eerie entities—how could it fail to cut the female doctor?

Unless... it's spiritual energy!

He realized it instantly!

This scalpel required spiritual energy to function, and since his own spiritual energy was depleted, the scalpel couldn't unleash its full power.

It seemed he couldn't take revenge for now.

Without a moment's hesitation, Fang Xiu turned and ran.

He feared the female doctor would recover soon, stop feeding on Wu Dahai's corpse, and turn to attack him.

Zhao Hao, who had been waiting in the left corridor, saw Fang Xiu running toward him and immediately began to flee alongside him.

As they ran, Fang Xiu exited the corridor and entered a large hall. The hall was completely empty, and there he once again encountered the two colleagues he had seen earlier.

The two colleagues were currently hiding behind a large pillar in the hall.

Originally, Fang Xiu couldn't see them, as the pillar blocked his view. However, since awakening his spiritual senses, his five senses had become increasingly sharp, and he easily heard their rapid breathing and anxious heartbeats.

The hall had four doors—east, south, west, and north—and no one knew what lay beyond them.

"Xiu Ge, there are four doors here. Which way should we go?" " Zhao Hao asked.

The two colleagues hiding behind the pillar heard the voices and immediately stepped out from behind it.

"Thank goodness, you two are okay."

"Fang Xiu, lead the way."

Zhao Hao was startled: "Damn it, you two were hiding here? You ran pretty fast earlier, and now you want Xiu Ge to lead the way?"

The two men smiled awkwardly, said nothing, and instead turned their pleading gazes toward Fang Xiu.

Fang Xiu ignored the two men and calmly said, "It's simple, try them one by one."

Zhao Hao and the others were taken aback.

In this strange realm where time was of the essence, who had time to try them one by one?

Just as everyone was about to劝告, Fang Xiu had already started walking toward the westernmost door.

The others had no choice but to follow.

But just then.

Roar!!

A non-human roar echoed throughout the entire area.

Immediately afterward, the ceiling began to tremble, as if something were running above it.

Everyone was instantly terrified.

"The Gui! The Gui has caught up!"

"How is that possible? Wang Ziting and Wu Dahai are two people, how could they be so fast?"

Fang Xiu quickly realized that it was likely due to his attack on the Gui, or perhaps because he had seized the surgeon's scalpel, disrupting the female doctor's killing pattern.

"Let's go!"

He growled, then pushed open the westernmost door and ran inside, followed by the others in single file.

The westernmost door led to a staircase, so everyone began rushing up the stairs.

The fastest among them was Fang Xiu. Though his spiritual energy was depleted, the bonus from having activated his spiritual energy remained, allowing him to mobilize most of his muscles and unleash astonishing strength.

But no matter how fast he was, he couldn't outpace the eerie woman. The female physician seemed to have no special abilities, but her only talent was her exceptionally long legs, allowing her to climb swiftly.

In mere moments, she appeared at the top of the stairs, completely ignoring the others, and lunged directly at Fang Xiu.

Fang Xiu couldn't dodge in time and was immediately knocked to the ground. The female physician's long limbs clamped down on his limbs like iron clamps.

Roar!

The female doctor let out a furious growl, opened her bloodthirsty mouth, and bit down viciously on Fang Xiu's neck.

Pfft!

Blood spurted out.

Fang Xiu was dead!