Chapter 25

She took a step back.

Teacher Yang: "Tr… tr…"

Liu Zhiyi: "Tr—?"

The figure's head swayed, then wrenched around all at once.

Without thinking, Liu Zhiyi backed several steps.

She saw a crack splitting from the corner of Teacher Yang's mouth, running all the way to behind her ear.

Teacher Yang took a step forward, and with each step the crack on her face widened a degree and her frame grew a size larger.

"Tr…"

—Bang.

The plastic vase dropped from Teacher Yang's body and smashed on the floor.

And the mouth that had split to behind her ear finally opened all the way; a long tongue sprang out of it, and a full word came clear.

"Trash."

The kids' watch buzzed; the task bar updated.

[Welcome to Ankang Hospital.]

[Our medical staff sincerely wish all our patients peace, happiness, and a speedy recovery!]

Liu Zhiyi turned and ran.

The last dungeon had given her some experience; meeting a thing like this, she still remembered, first thing, to take in the layout at a glance, her mind racing through escape routes.

She couldn't go back to the ward — her grandmother was still in there.

The nurses' station was a round, bar-like structure; she could cut straight through it to look for the safe room.

Her novice dungeon had had a safe room; this Ankang Hospital should have one too, surely?

—Fwip.

A chill at her back; reflexively she dropped flat, then set to crawling on all fours — the crawling trick she'd honed matching wits with "mama" in the market dungeon.

The moment she went down, she saw a wet, long tongue stab into the computer at the nurses' station, rather like a chameleon flicking its tongue to catch an insect.

Only this tongue was slick and sticky, saliva dripping off it without pause, hissing where it hit the floor.

The saliva was corrosive.

Liu Zhiyi rolled off to the side, opening the distance.

The tongue stuck in the computer tugged, but wouldn't come — as if jammed.

Liu Zhiyi seized the chance and crawled quickly into the nurses' station.

Teacher Yang: "Lingjun…"

Liu Zhiyi looked back at the word, her hands never stopping their crawl.

Teacher Yang… Liu Zhiyi couldn't even be sure now whether Teacher Yang was still human; her tongue was very long, her mouth taking up almost her whole face.

"Lingjun." The mouth gaped enormous. "You worthless thing — born of a mother but with no one to raise you right — why won't you come and see your own mother?"

Then all manner of curses came spraying out of the mouth.

Liu Zhiyi watched, frozen.

She looked at Teacher Yang's twisted limbs, at the tongue writhing on the computer screen, at the abuse that wouldn't stop.

Not long ago… Liu Zhiyi thought of the flower-printed tissues, the magnolia clip, the plastic vase with its flowers.

A kind of sorrow rose in her chest.

—Thwack.

Teacher Yang pulled the tongue back out.

"Die! Die!"

Liu Zhiyi turned her head and ran faster.

Cat: "Give it a sniff — a two-faced Buddha usually has a smell of sandalwood."

Hearing the cat, Liu Zhiyi drew several breaths in a row.

The disinfectant smell in the hospital was heavy to begin with; she'd nearly reached the end of the corridor before she caught a thread of sandalwood.

All the while she had to keep dodging the tongue Teacher Yang shot at her. Teacher Yang ran slowly, but the tongue was absurdly fast; if not for Liu Zhiyi placing it by sound with all she had and dodging on instinct, she'd never have made it — and even so, the saliva burned a few holes in her shoulder.

Chased the whole way, she noticed Teacher Yang reacted half a beat slow, like some old people — though her running and tongue-shooting were nothing like an old person's at all.

So she meant to make a sharp turn at the end of the corridor.

This too was a trick she'd honed in the market: at the instant of turning, plant one leg against the wall and use the push-back to whip around fast.

She began to speed up, and once Teacher Yang's speed behind her had caught up, she listened hard — forgetting the headphones at home had been a real blunder.

—Fwip.

Hearing the sound, she bent low and rushed the wall, then shoved off with one foot.

Before she'd entered the dungeons, Liu Zhiyi would never have dreamed she could pull off a move this hard so smoothly.

She even passed Teacher Yang shoulder to shoulder in the turn.

In that instant, like a slow-motion replay in a film, the corner of Liu Zhiyi's eye caught the tongue grazing past her shoulder, dragging a gust of wind with it, then stabbing hard into the wall.

Pulling the tongue out took time too.

"…Huff."

Liu Zhiyi drew a breath and staggered forward a few steps, her calf shaking badly.

She'd been so tense that she'd pushed off too hard, and it had cramped.

Liu Zhiyi glanced back, and once she'd made sure Teacher Yang was still working the tongue loose, she limped on tiptoe toward the room with the sandalwood.

The light came on.

The tea room.

Liu Zhiyi looked at the two-faced Buddha in the tea room.

For a moment she didn't know whether to be glad she'd been quick to sense something wrong with Teacher Yang and bolt, or annoyed that if she'd only been foolish enough to walk a few steps forward into the tea room back then, she'd have spared herself all those laps of being chased.

Cat: "Being alert is a good thing — but where the safe room is… sometimes it comes down to instinct."

Liu Zhiyi went in, pulled open the drawer under the two-faced Buddha with practiced ease, and drew out three sticks of incense.

Lighting it, offering it — all in one smooth motion.

Then the Buddha's body lit up.

The cursing outside the tea room gradually receded.

Only then did Liu Zhiyi's braced shoulders sag.

"…Seamless, that transition."

She went limp all over and leaned against the shrine.

Liu Zhiyi: "I thought clearing one dungeon would earn me a few days' rest."

The backpack on her back stirred; Liu Zhiyi pulled the zipper open.

Thank goodness she'd remembered to sling the backpack on when she got off the folding bed to go find Teacher Yang, or she'd be in real trouble now — without Master Cat along, she'd be clueless about a great many things.