Chapter 31

It was much as the cat had said: what the watch could show her, in the end, was the ceiling of her own understanding.

While she was thinking, the "ho, ho" of the breathing stopped.

"…Die."

At that sound Liu Zhiyi dug out the headphones at once and put them on.

Unlike Ma Qirong, Teacher Yang could locate her by sound waves, so she needed to keep behind some kind of cover.

Liu Zhiyi crawled under the beds, following her memory toward the few wards whose doors were ajar.

She kept to crawling behind the clutter under the beds, but that was no guarantee; only once she'd crawled into a ward and hidden behind its half-open door did she raise her arm and use the watch's camera to look out through the small glass window in the door.

The cursing came from far to near; a long tongue hung down from above, but there were no limbs in sight.

Liu Zhiyi guessed Teacher Yang was clinging to the ceiling.

There was no telling what was wrong with these dungeon bosses — they were especially fond of hiding in a person's blind spots.

The tongue would probe under each bed it passed and curse a few times.

Grown craftier, Liu Zhiyi thought; lucky she'd shifted her ground.

She held the fruit knife in her hand.

As it drew nearer, the sound in the headphones grew louder.

Liu Zhiyi found the headphones let her hear fine details she normally couldn't.

"Pat-ta."

That was the tongue turning things over on the floor; being slick and sticky, it made a wet, tacky sound as it pulled away.

Yes — Teacher Yang was still rummaging through the clutter under the beds.

Only, she wasn't too clever; after a full round turned up nothing, the tongue even flipped a bed clean over, as if throwing a tantrum.

At first Liu Zhiyi hadn't been sure, but seeing Teacher Yang's reaction, she understood: Teacher Yang knew she was back in the dungeon.

What she couldn't tell was whether Teacher Yang had some special skill, or whether every dungeon boss could tell which players had entered its dungeon.

Finding nothing, Teacher Yang cursed under her breath.

Liu Zhiyi trained the watch on the ceiling.

She saw a black shape crawl across it, with a muttered "die."

"Click."

Teacher Yang pulled open a ceiling vent and crawled inside.

No wonder she hadn't seen Teacher Yang in the corridor earlier — she'd been shifting position through the ventilation ducts.

Liu Zhiyi waited a while longer, and once she couldn't hear a sound in the headphones at all, sat and waited a few more minutes before slipping out through the gap in the door and taking the headphones off.

Because Teacher Yang caught people by sound, she didn't dare call out either; she could only search this way, quietly, one room at a time.

No knowing whether the safe room was still there; she'd go check the tea room first.

With that in mind she quickened her pace — and suddenly heard someone calling her.

"Zhizhi."

Liu Zhiyi listened closely; the voice was faint, but very familiar.

It was her grandmother!

Without a thought she ran toward the sound.

Its source was inside a ward.

Liu Zhiyi turned and ran for the ward — but who could have known there'd be a few pens at the doorway, impossible to see without looking hard.

She only realized when her foot slipped on one.

But the pen slid into the ward, struck a bed leg, and gave a "thunk."

Liu Zhiyi froze; she was acutely sensitive to sound now.

On reflex her gaze followed the sound, into the ward.

A tongue reached out of the ward's vent, curled up the pen on the floor, and gave off a sound.

"Zhizhi."

Liu Zhiyi went rigid.

She slid a hand into her pocket and gripped the cough syrup.

Her body had already half-turned, and she forced it to stop.

Liu Zhiyi didn't run; she saw many pens laid out on the floor, from the ward door all the way to near the bed.

So many pens proved a fact from another angle: with her eyes, Teacher Yang couldn't see — which was why she'd set this kind of trap.

If she bolted now in a blind panic, she might well give away her exact position.

This was only Liu Zhiyi's guess; she wasn't sure of it, and holding her pose without moving, she broke into a sweat all over her head.

But what Teacher Yang did next seemed to bear the guess out.

The tongue nudged the pens on the floor, and Teacher Yang crawled out of the vent.

Teacher Yang looked nothing like a human being now.

Her head had shed its hair, her nose and ears had all but withered away, her eyes had shrunk to two small dots, and her mouth stretched clear across her face.

Teacher Yang swept those two dot-eyes around the room.

Liu Zhiyi held her breath.

—Fwip.

The tongue shot out.

By a hair.

Liu Zhiyi stared, stock-still, at the tongue-tip before her.

A hair's breadth from spearing her.

Thank god she hadn't gone on forward after stepping on the pen.

It hadn't gone quite as she'd expected, but the outcome wasn't bad — and she'd even found out the tongue's maximum reach.

Higher than the ceiling, yet unable to cross the whole ward.

Somewhere between three and five meters.

Liu Zhiyi saw Teacher Yang draw the tongue back and cock her head; with only two features left on her face, she could somehow still show puzzlement.

It seemed Teacher Yang hadn't judged the distance right; she'd laid the pens a bit too far out.

Next would be that sound-location.

Going by past experience and the watch's descriptions of the props and these bosses, Liu Zhiyi reckoned the sound-location had a distance limit too, and very likely a shorter reach than the tongue.

Otherwise Teacher Yang wouldn't have led with the tongue the moment she came out of the vent.

Teacher Yang laid her head against the floor and opened her mouth.

The sound wave rolled out, but reached only the corner of the bed before reflecting back; then Teacher Yang raised her head a little and called again.

Watching this, Liu Zhiyi came to realize the sound-location worked in a single flat plane — its reach up and down was one thin cross-section; if she happened to crouch below that plane, Teacher Yang couldn't find her.

Having figured out Teacher Yang's skills, Liu Zhiyi crouched down.

She was waiting — waiting for Teacher Yang to move.

Walking in so quiet a place, there was no way to make no sound at all; to be safe, she decided to do as she had in the last dungeon and use the sounds of Teacher Yang's own movements to cover her steps.

First she brought her breathing into line with Teacher Yang's.

—Swish, swish.

Teacher Yang moved; she leapt to the ceiling again, her hands clawing sounds out of it.

Liu Zhiyi turned at once and stepped her right foot out of the room.

But she was a touch too slow; her right foot came down just a second after Teacher Yang's movement had stopped.

Liu Zhiyi held the stepping motion, but lifted her right foot lightly and drew it back beside her left, balancing on the one leg.

—Fwip.

The tongue stabbed into the spot where her right foot had just landed.

So keen on sound.

Liu Zhiyi's back began to sweat again.

This distance was already within the tongue's range.

Liu Zhiyi waited quietly.

Teacher Yang didn't move either; she seemed to have noticed something, and yet seemed unsure.

It was not a good feeling.

Time and again, Liu Zhiyi found her eyes meeting Teacher Yang's.

She knew, rationally, that Teacher Yang couldn't see her; but physically, facing a monster so like a person and so unlike one, her body still trembled faintly, beyond her control.

Because Liu Zhiyi knew all too well that if Teacher Yang caught her, she would absolutely not let her go the way "mama" had.

The watch buzzed a few times; Liu Zhiyi knew her heart rate had climbed.

She listened to Teacher Yang's breathing, caught its rhythm, and only then slowly deepened her own.

Once her heart rate settled, Liu Zhiyi went back over it in her head.

She'd been too hasty just now — moving the instant Teacher Yang moved, without first learning the pattern of the other's movements, made mistakes easy.

Liu Zhiyi roughly reckoned the distance between herself and Teacher Yang; earlier she'd heard Teacher Yang through the headphones, yet Teacher Yang couldn't pin down her position.

And her headphones, outside the six-to-eight window, could hear within five meters.

So Teacher Yang's sound-location range should be around four meters — no more than five.

She had to get out of Teacher Yang's range of perception first.

She couldn't keep waiting; Liu Zhiyi watched Teacher Yang draw the tongue back.

She slid her hand behind her into the backpack; earlier, to avoid the zipper's noise, she'd deliberately left it partway open.

But the shoe was a bit too long.

When she heard the shoe force the zipper with a "zzt," Liu Zhiyi kicked off to the right without thinking, and as she lunged out she flung the shoe in the opposite direction.

And in the instant she went down, she put out a hand and braced it on the floor.

Her palm gave a faint "pat" against the ground, but it was quickly covered by the "tock" of the shoe landing.

Then she felt a rush of wind sweep overhead, with a tight, quick "swish, swish."

Once she'd caught the rhythm of the swishing, Liu Zhiyi got up off the floor and kept running right.

The tea room was right in front of her when another gust of wind came at the back of her head.

Liu Zhiyi dropped into a crouch on the spot.

A ward bed flew over her head and slammed into the tea-room doorway.

The swish-swish-swish swept fast over her head; she saw a black shape drop down from the ceiling and rush into the tea room.

The worst had happened: the safe room was out of commission.

Liu Zhiyi turned and ran.

Teacher Yang located by sound at about four meters, but that didn't mean she couldn't hear sounds farther off.

The moment Liu Zhiyi turned, Teacher Yang was quick to follow.

Once she'd opened up four meters, Liu Zhiyi stopped.

Shaking Teacher Yang off in one go wasn't realistic; open the distance first.

Teacher Yang seemed to realize she couldn't catch her this way; she stopped, and gave up the tongue and the sound-location.

The safe room was gone now. From a rough look around, her grandmother probably wasn't on this floor, and there was little point staying on it.

Ankang Hospital was no small place; finding someone wasn't easy.

There was a bloody handprint on a bed; she turned the watch toward the floor to see whether there were drops of blood.

Searching as she went, she edged toward the nurses' station; taking the elevator now would make too much noise, so she'd have to use the stairs first.

The stairs were to the left of the nurses' station.

Only, the stairwell was shut off behind a fire door, and pulling it open was no quiet matter either.

Liu Zhiyi was working out how to draw Teacher Yang away without letting her sense what she was after.

—Bang.

Another ward bed flew out — its aim not quite true; it grazed the nurses' station and slammed straight into the stairwell's fire door.

The fire door was knocked open, a gap torn in it.

A good chance!

Liu Zhiyi ran for the gap.

She'd barely bent down and squeezed through when the tongue came right after her.

Liu Zhiyi rolled forward several times in a row, and seeing the tongue stab into the stairs leading up, kept turning underfoot and ran downstairs instead.

She ran down one floor, and the swish of the wall-climbing behind her stopped.

Liu Zhiyi turned her head.

Hadn't it followed?

Having seen Teacher Yang set traps, she'd grown much more careful.

She looked upstairs.

—Bang.

A crash came from above, hard enough to shake the whole stairwell.

Liu Zhiyi's shoulders drew in.

So — had she gotten stuck in the gap in the fire door?

The gap really was small; even she'd had to squeeze through it, and a body-warped thing like Teacher Yang would have a harder time still.

Sure she was safe for the moment, she quickened her pace, and pushed open this floor's fire door under the cover of the crashing upstairs.

This floor's overall layout was much like the one above.

Coming out of the stairwell, Liu Zhiyi spotted, at a glance, the lit nurses' station.