If Dr. Liu did not lie in his log, then Lao He has already been killed by him.
But he neither resurrected nor turned into a monster, so where is Elder He, the prison warden?
Chapter 17
☪ True Plague Prison
Lu Shi narrowed his eyes. Although the conditions for passing the level had been told to him, he was not in a hurry.
Finding the warden is indeed important, but before that, Lu Shi wants to understand everything that is happening in the prison.
After all, if he wants to pass the test, it's not enough to just find Lao He; he also needs to be told about his experiences in the prison.
Although Lu Shi had only cleared one dungeon, he could tell from the details that the people who sent him into the dungeon genuinely wanted them dead.
Lu Shi snorted. He was afraid that if he found Lao He Shi and leaked any information, he would be punished.
That's considered mild!
In the worst-case scenario, Lu Shi feared that he would be trapped here forever along with these monsters and the group of prisoners downstairs, whose identities were unknown.
After calming down, Lu Shi began to compare the dates on Dr. Liu's murder videos.
A not-so-unexpected discovery was that the date of the last murder video matched Dr. Liu's diary entry, in which he remarked that it was "the most peaceful and warmest month in prison."
After that, Dr. Liu's log was not updated for a long time.
The logbook was blank for three months, and the videos were the same.
Lu Shi sighed regretfully; he really wanted to know what had happened during those three months.
This should be the key reason why Dr. Liu made a second deal with the devil.
...
Lu Shi is becoming more and more proficient at using computers. He has searched through all the folders he can open, but still cannot find any information related to the "disappeared" three months.
However, this is not hard to guess.
Lu Shi closed his eyes. If he were this heartless Dr. Liu, what would drive him to collapse?
He had already killed all those prisoners; from his perspective, it must have been an act of justice.
One could kill without restraint and not be held accountable. Lu Shi thought that even in the cultivation world, this was an extremely tempting convenience.
But Dr. Liu was not a real demon after all, and Lu Shi could guess his psychological changes with just a little thought.
He has no one else to kill, so he must feel empty.
Dr. Liu must have considered leaving this place, perhaps to continue being an enforcer of "justice" in another prison. Or perhaps to try a different way of life.
But he found that he couldn't get out.
When he realizes that the devil has deceived him, Dr. Liu will definitely break down.
Lu Shi slowly strolled through the laboratory, where every inch of air once carried the scent of Dr. Liu.
This crazy, obsessive man is not a cultivator; he is just an ordinary person.
Lu Shi squatted down and hugged his knees.
He thought that if he were Dr. Liu, he would be terrified when he thought about the criminals he had killed in the middle of the night.
Lu Shi once met a cultivator at the Golden Core stage. Logically speaking, with his level of cultivation, ordinary ghosts would be unable to harm him.
What Lu Shi didn't expect was that this cultivator had a habit of pasting talismans to ward off evil spirits on his door before going to sleep.
Lu Shi once asked him, "Are you afraid of ghosts?"
The monk nodded reluctantly: "I killed many people in my younger days, and I can't sleep at night whenever I think about it."
Since even cultivators who possess magical abilities are afraid of ghosts, it makes even more reasonable for Dr. Liu to be afraid of ghosts.
Under the dual pressure of being erased from the public eye and being relentlessly haunted by the vengeful spirits of the perpetrators, it would be normal for Dr. Liu to break down or even go insane.
While squatting in the corner, Lu Shi was not only reconstructing Dr. Liu's actions, but also observing the room from different angles.
Then he noticed a detail he had just overlooked.
There are actually quite a few scratches on the white wall.
He walked over slowly, and the height of the scratches was so low that he wouldn't even notice them when he stood up.
It's easy to imagine that Dr. Liu was on the verge of collapse, squatting on the ground, during one sleepless night.
In the end, he could only frantically claw at the wall to release the fear that had accumulated in his chest.
As Lu Shi placed his hand on the scratches, he heard a man's murmur in his ear:
"No, don't come any closer!"
"I did kill you, that's true, but it was because you killed others. I... I was acting on behalf of Heaven!"
"Get away from me! You filthy things, even if you become ghosts, don't you dare touch me!"
"I want to get out! I want to leave this place! Why, why can't I get out, why!"
The sound grew louder and louder, transitioning from a tinnitus-like murmur to a desperate scream.
Clearly, these voices came from Dr. Liu. It seems Lu Shi was right about his condition; this man has truly gone mad.
Lu Shi just didn't expect that he would actually see a ghost.
Dr. Liu's shouts stopped abruptly, and the scratch marks on the wall disappeared as well.
That's amazing.
After Lu Shi discovered this feature in the room, he immediately began a thorough search, even looking for something on the floor.
However, viewers also noticed that even when Lu Shi was squatting on the ground looking for something, he was very careful about his posture and would never do anything like lying on his hands on the ground.
Clearly, this is a new streamer who is extremely concerned about maintaining a good image.
Hard work pays off, and Lu Shi did indeed reap the rewards.
He found a dark red bloodstain on the leg of a table.
How small was that bloodstain? Only the size of a fingernail. No wonder Lu Shi didn't notice it.
Just like the scratch marks, the moment Lu Shi's hand touched the bloodstains, it was as if he was grabbed by an external force and thrown into another dimension.
The laboratory remained a laboratory, dark and gloomy, with even the computer screen off.
A gaunt man was kneeling on the ground, his hands gripping the table legs, the trembling of his muscles causing the table to creak slightly.
His knees were worn raw, with black scabs covering the exposed skin.
However, what impressed Lu Shi the most was this person's face.
If he hadn't connected it to the plot, he would never have recognized Dr. Liu. The Dr. Liu who was so radiant and spirited when punishing criminals in the videos.
He looked decades older; his pale, loose, and wrinkled skin seemed to hide countless grievances within each fold.
His once somewhat fierce eyes had degenerated into a pair of lifeless, hopeless fish eyes, set in motion on his face like decorations.
His lips were chapped, and his mouth was slightly open, with only a few intact teeth remaining.
Suddenly, those two dead fish eyes shrank into black dots! Dr. Liu's body began to tremble violently from head to toe.
That's a sign of panic and fear.
Lu Shi was unable to make a sound in this state and could only follow Dr. Liu's gaze, but he did not see anything that might frighten him.
Immediately afterwards, Dr. Liu began to bang his head against the table leg forcefully, each time making a louder sound than the last.
Even though Dr. Liu's forehead was scraped and bleeding, he seemed to feel no pain at all and kept banging his head against it.
Meanwhile, Dr. Liu kept saying, "Don't hit me! Don't hit my head! Stop! Why won't you stop!"
His urgent roars and increasingly frantic head-banging made even the well-informed Demon Lord Lu Shi feel uncomfortable.
How did Dr. Liu stop? Because he fainted.
Drops of blood from the table leg fell onto Dr. Liu's face... and then he finally smiled.
Lu Shi returned to the instance, and just like before, the bloodstains disappeared.
It seems that Dr. Liu was tormented by these unseen ghosts so much that he eventually started self-harming.
Lu Shi could guess what the demon would do next with a snap of his fingers.
Just as Dr. Liu's mind was about to completely break down, that demon appeared once again.
"I can grant you one more wish." Demons never reveal their appearance to their followers; only endless imagination is the most beautiful and majestic.
Dr. Liu lay prostrate on the ground, gazing devoutly at the demon, the demon's seductive voice echoing in his ears.
"Get them out of here! Make all these dead people disappear, and stop torturing me!"
With a hint of pity in his eyes, Lu Shi said to the audience, "Dr. Liu, who killed the criminals, is not doing well."
"He was haunted by guilt and unseen ghosts, and he was constantly thinking about leaving this place."
"Then he discovered the first surprise the devil had given him: they couldn't get out, and he would be trapped here forever, with these dead people."
“Nightmare, self-harm,” Lu Shi’s face was as beautiful as the words he uttered were terrifying: “Dr. Liu finally broke down. He made a second deal with the devil.”
“The dead are gone, so naturally there are no ghosts.” Lu Shi smiled sarcastically. “But the devil deceived Dr. Liu again. Because he gave those prisoners the ability to come back to life.”
Lu Shi walked step by step into the laboratory, to the only transparent glass tube that looked like an experimental device.
A green liquid was flowing inside this glass tube.
Coincidentally, it was the same injection Dr. Liu had given them, just as the prisoners remembered.
Everything became clear: the devil had given Dr. Liu this vial of magical liquid.
Dr. Liu must have found those corpses while enduring disgust and fear.
Four months should have passed; the body should have decomposed long ago. However, with the demon present, restoring the body to its former state is not a problem.
“Our Dr. Liu injected the drug into each of the corpses.”
“The dead prisoners came back to life.” Lu Shi paused, then put it another way: “To be precise, a new self was born from their corpses. A self without memories, without crimes, a completely innocent self.”
Silver Hall