The sky was so dark that it was impossible to tell the time. Thick black clouds pressed down with low atmospheric pressure, and irregular drops of rain fell onto the garden rooftop of Enxi Hospital.
Bai Chunian crouched casually on the rooftop railing, holding a large taro leaf above his head as a makeshift umbrella.
Beside him lay an elderly man wearing a hospital gown. The man reclined on a bamboo lounge chair with his eyes closed. A sun umbrella was stuck beside the chair, and rainwater dripped down along its ribs onto the ground near the old man’s feet.
The old man gently rocked on the chair. He picked up a metal cigarette case from beside him. Inside was the last hand-rolled cigarette. His aged hands trembled slightly as he took it out, lit it with an old-fashioned lighter, and exhaled comfortably.
After finishing the cigarette, he crushed the butt and went back to resting with his eyes closed. After a while, he reached for the metal case again—but now there were no cigarettes left inside.
The old man froze.
Almost immediately, his skin began to rot and bleed before the naked eye. His eyes snapped open, revealing crimson eyeballs without pupils. The corners of his mouth split apart from an exaggerated grin.
Grinning hideously, he lunged at the only living person beside him—Bai Chunian—opening his huge bloody mouth to bite into Bai Chunian’s throat.
Just as the frenzied infected patient rushed forward, a cold gun barrel suddenly pressed against his forehead.
After the looping virus takes effect, the infected gain enhanced strength. Yet even with such a violent charge, Bai Chunian—still crouched on the narrow railing—did not sway in the slightest.
He merely turned halfway around. Still holding the leaf above his head with one hand, he pulled the trigger with the other.
A deafening gunshot rang out.
The infected patient was shot through the head and fell backward, becoming nothing more than a corpse.
Bai Chunian stuffed the rain-shielding leaf into the corpse’s hand, barely covering the bleeding head. Then he stretched out and lay down in the lounge chair beneath the umbrella.
He spoke casually to the body.
“I’ve been waiting for you forever. Hogging the chair and refusing to move.”
The communicator flickered with a signal again. Ying’s voice came through.
“I already checked Ward 1. The monitor in Ward 1 shows the symbol under their own bed—it’s the big joker. That means Wards 2 and 4 must both be little jokers. I’ll go to the window and tell them now.”
“Tell them to take a different escape route.” Bai Chunian nudged the corpse beside him with the tip of his shoe. When he rolled it over onto its stomach, he noticed a strange injection device embedded in the back of its neck.
The device had a small electronic screen. It appeared to be controlled through some kind of terminal to administer injections. The device itself was opaque, so it was impossible to see the state of the drug inside.
Bai Chunian drew the tactical knife strapped to his outer thigh. He dug the injector out of the corpse’s neck. Then he cut off a piece of the patient’s hospital gown and wiped the device clean. Breathing lightly onto it, he polished it against the light until it gleamed, wrapped it up in the cloth, and slipped it into his pocket.
Ying tore a page from Doctor Han’s notebook and wrote “Use the Joker card.” He pressed it against the glass on the window of Ward No. 4, then hurriedly pulled Doctor Han along and ran toward the surgery-only elevator.
The surgical elevator was wider than the passenger lifts and had doors that opened on both sides. The two of them stepped in quickly. As the doors slowly closed, they realized the inside of the elevator had been completely covered in spray-painted graffiti.
The paint was extremely saturated, the colors bright and harsh to the eyes. Most of the graffiti revolved around the four card suits—hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Among them were crude clown portraits smiling eerily, their expressions identical to those of patients in the late stage of infection.
After pressing the elevator buttons and getting no response, Han Xingqian raised his hand and touched the paint on the wall, rubbing it between his fingers.
“It’s not dry yet,” he said. “We’re in trouble.”
Ying noticed some scattered objects in the darkest corner of the elevator. He crouched down to take a closer look and called back over his shoulder.
“Doctor Han, look—there’s a golden scale here.”
A small golden balance scale about thirty centimeters long had been screwed to the floor. Both trays were empty, and the indicator needle pointed directly to the center at 0.
Beneath the scale lay twelve playing cards arranged in a straight line:
3 of Hearts, 3 of Clubs, 3 of Diamonds
4 of Hearts, 4 of Clubs, 4 of Diamonds
5 of Hearts, 5 of Clubs, 5 of Diamonds
6 of Hearts, 6 of Clubs, 6 of Diamonds
Ying crouched down and tried to pick up the cards, but for each number only one card could be lifted. The others were glued to the floor and couldn’t be moved.
“These cards are heavy,” Ying muttered.
He tried to contact Bai Chunian through his communicator, but ever since entering the elevator the signal had weakened. After calling for a long time, there was still no response.
Holding the 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Hearts, Ying tried placing them on the scale. He first split them into two piles at random, weighing them roughly in both hands before placing 3 and 5 on one tray and 4 and 6 on the other.
With a crisp clink, the scale suddenly tipped sharply to the right.
“Ah—did I mess up?” Ying hurried to fix it, quickly removing the cards from the scale.
But it was already too late.
The elevator began to descend.
Han Xingqian frowned. “The lower floors are full of infected patients. That’s where we came from.”
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. Even before it fully halted, they could hear the infected gathering outside, drawn by the sound, their hoarse howls filling the hallway.
Han Xingqian pressed the close door button as hard as he could, trying to prevent the doors from opening.
But the close button only worked temporarily. Every so often the doors would automatically open again, and he had to release and press it repeatedly to keep them shut.
After about ten seconds, the elevator door opened a crack. Han Xingqian quickly pressed the button again, but the infected patients’ hands were already reaching inside. The elevator had sensors—if the door caught anything, it would immediately reopen for safety.
Ying shouted, “Doctor Han, turn around and cover your eyes!”
Han Xingqian had already become quite practiced at loading Ying’s pistol. Hearing the little guy say that, he turned his back and raised his sleeve to cover his eyes.
Two muffled bangs sounded.
Through the narrow gap of the elevator doors, two round bombs were tossed out. They detonated among the infected crowd. A blinding flash combined with a mild explosive shockwave instantly drove the infected away from the elevator.
Firefly gland J1 differentiation ability: Flashbang.
It could temporarily block an opponent’s senses—including those without vision—and also carried a small explosive impact.
The elevator doors closed again for the moment, but the infected soon surged back, frantically crowding around the doors. Terrifying blows slammed against the metal, accompanied by chewing and roaring sounds. Only a single door separated the two of them from the chaos outside.
Sweat poured down Ying’s face. Holding the cards, he forced himself to think calmly.
“So it’s not weight… then maybe the numbers? Three plus six equals four plus five…”
He tentatively placed the four cards back onto the scale trays again.
This time, the scale suddenly tilted sharply to the left.
The elevator shot upward, though they had no idea which floor it would stop on. Han Xingqian told Ying to guard the door while he crouched in the corner and weighed the cards in his hands.
Although the cards looked identical, their densities were drastically different. It was easy to feel that the 6 of Hearts was the heaviest, followed by the others in decreasing weight, with the 3 of Hearts being the lightest.
He glanced at the remaining cards stuck to the floor, then placed 3, 4, and 5 of Hearts on the left tray of the scale, and 6 of Hearts on the right tray.
The scale swayed left and right. The motion gradually grew smaller, until the needle slowly settled at 0.
The elevator buttons finally unlocked.
Han Xingqian stood up and pressed the top floor button.
Ying held his submachine gun, the muzzle aimed cautiously at the narrow gap of the elevator door. His chest rose and fell violently as he asked in a trembling voice:
“Is it… done?”
“Yes.” Han Xingqian picked up the silver briefcase by his feet again. “It’s an equation of sums of cubes. You can think of those four numbers as the edge lengths of four cubes with the same density.”
Then his gaze drifted downward for a moment and landed on Ying’s frightened, glowing backside, and he chuckled softly.
“If I don’t tell Xiaobai, you might get scolded a little less.”
Ying covered his butt in embarrassment, his gland releasing a wilted, dispirited pheromone.
The elevator stopped at the top floor. There was still a staircase leading up to the rooftop.
Ying carefully led Doctor Han to the stairwell safety door and peeked through the peephole to check the situation outside.
But the peephole seemed to be blocked. All he could see was a patch of dark red.
“The door’s locked. I’ll try to open it. Doctor Han, step back.”
Ying swiftly took out tools from his backpack and jammed them into the lock, prying hard.
Click.
The latch popped open, and the safety door slowly swung inward.
Ying froze.
A chilling coldness poured from head to toe.
An infected patient stood outside, still holding the pose of peering through the peephole with one eye closed. As soon as the door opened, his face instantly rotted away, and his mouth tore open grotesquely, splitting all the way to his ears in a horrifying grin.
Behind him, countless infected patients were packed tightly together.
The moment they saw Ying, they all simultaneously ripped their mouths open into the same exaggerated, eerie smile.
After a few seconds of stillness, the massive horde roared and surged through the safety door. Blood-stained hands grabbed at Ying’s body as their mouths opened greedily and madly, ready to devour fresh food.
Ying quickly pulled off his backpack and threw it to Doctor Han, who hadn’t yet reached the safety door. Then he desperately braced himself against the door while spraying the infected around Doctor Han with his submachine gun.
“Get in the elevator!” he shouted.
“Doctor Han, hurry and hide inside!”
Ying’s submachine gun was almost out of bullets. In his mind he calculated quickly—if he saved one last round for himself, would the remaining ammunition still be enough to cover Doctor Han’s escape?
Suddenly, a force began pulling the safety door from the other side.
Ying had no time to think. He simply braced himself harder against the door to keep the infected from pushing through. Then the safety door suddenly locked shut. The heavy counterforce caused Ying to stumble forward, nearly falling. The abruptly closing door sliced the infected who were still crowded in the doorway cleanly in half.
After a brief silence, the thick metal door slowly bulged outward. The swelling metal suddenly ruptured with a crack. A hand wearing black fingerless tactical gloves pushed through from the other side, casually snapping the hydraulic lock from the inside before forcing the door open.
Bai Chunian stepped through the doorway.
A bandolier was strapped tightly across his chest, and he carried a red-flame–painted M98B sniper rifle. A streak of blood had splashed across his pale cheek, and behind him lay a wide trail of scattered corpses.
He grabbed the still-shaken Ying and dragged him to his side as casually as if hauling a nursing animal cub, then jerked his chin toward Han Xingqian.
“Reinforcements haven’t arrived yet. Follow me first.”
“If you’d come any later, your trainee would’ve been eaten clean,” Han Xingqian said with relief, pushing up the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose. Beneath the hair covering his forehead, faint white keratinized horns had begun to emerge in the rush of the emergency.
“My bad. Almost made a scholar get his hands dirty.” Bai Chunian slung an arm across Doctor Han’s shoulders, then glanced back at Ying. With a rough, gloved palm, he wiped messily across Ying’s tear-streaked face and smirked in warning.
“Cry again and I’ll toss you downstairs. Quit embarrassing me.”
Ying choked back his sobs, his face turning red from the rough wipe.
Han Xingqian calmly removed Bai Chunian’s hand from his shoulder.
“Keep your distance. You smell like a male lion in heat.”
Most of the hospital’s upper-floor wards were VIP suites. A few stiff, sluggish patients and nurses wandered through the corridors.
Bai Chunian walked ahead carrying the M98B, strolling as casually as if out for a walk. Clearing the patients in the hallway took almost no effort. Blood spread across the marble floor wherever he passed, leaving behind a trail of careless red footprints.