Chapter 64
Chapter 64
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 64
Chapter Title: The Virgin Ghost Yi-hwa and the Evil God Emel (8)
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The funeral home was a large, clean three-story building.
A digital display board in the lobby showed the status of funerals on each floor.
"Oh, looks like you're raking in the cash! Right?"
Emel, who had been staring at the display board, spoke to the staff member guiding visitors in the lobby.
The exotic beauty addressed him, and he looked up at her in a daze, just nodding blankly.
"Where's the wake being held?"
The staff member pointed to the end of the first-floor hallway.
His eyes were still fixed upward on Emel.
"Good boy. If you run far away from here, you might survive."
Emel looked down at the staff member with a bright smile utterly out of place for the situation, then strode toward the wake room, her high heels clicking loudly.
Click-clack.
People had gathered in the wake room to bid a final farewell to the deceased.
Perhaps because the departed had attended church in life, a hymn echoed mournfully.
Emel entered the wake room and pushed through the crowd—people who barely reached her shoulders—walking straight to the casket.
Others assumed she was an acquaintance of the deceased, so no one tried to stop Emel.
The family stood around the casket, saying their last goodbyes.
Emel slipped between them and stood before the deceased's face.
The family looked puzzled by the sudden appearance of this tall beauty, but she flashed them a bright, radiant smile.
It was a smile utterly unthinkable at a wake.
"Um, how did you know our father in life?"
A middle-aged man asked Emel.
Even the church acquaintances who had been singing the hymn stopped and looked up at the exotic beauty.
Soon, everyone in the wake room was staring up at her.
Ignoring the middle-aged man, Emel bent at the waist.
The deceased lying in the casket was a neatly dressed elderly man.
Ignoring all the gazes, she spoke to him in a low but clear voice.
"My servant! Here is your feast, so rise now and tear into it freely. Revel in death and resurrection! I am the one who raises the dead after three days—follow me instead of your hymns!"
Her voice wasn't loud, but it rang clearly through the wake room.
In the bewildered silence of the stunned crowd, her voice echoed even louder.
"Tear the beautiful lips from the lips of the living! Rip open soft bellies and claim fresh entrails! Here are your family and friends, even those who serve God—so lead them to follow me!"
Her words clashed horrifically with the somber atmosphere of the wake room.
"Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
The middle-aged man said, holding back his anger.
Still ignoring him, Emel brought her red lips to the old man's mouth.
Her outrageously rude behavior provoked the crowd.
"What? Is this woman insane?"
The middle-aged man and a young man who looked like his son grabbed Emel's arms from both sides and yanked.
Emel gently shook off their hands, straightened up with an attitude that dismissed everyone around her, and strode out of the wake room, her heels clicking defiantly.
Click-clack.
"Hey, you!"
The middle-aged man called after Emel as she turned to leave.
Crunch.
Behind him, the old man sat up with a grotesque creak of joints.
Gazes that had been fixed on Emel shifted to the source of the eerie sound.
The old man rising from the casket bit into the hand of a poor middle-aged woman standing nearby.
A young man pulled the screaming woman away in shock.
The old man lunged at the young man who had dragged her back and tore into his throat.
Blood sprayed from the young man's neck, and screams filled the wake room.
"Aaaah! Grandpa... p-please... spare me!"
The cramped wake room descended into chaos: people screaming in terror, others scrambling for the narrow door, some trying to pull the old man away.
No one sang hymns anymore.
Emel, now outside the funeral home building, bobbed her head cheerfully to the screams echoing from within.
She was keeping rhythm like it was music.
People burst out from both sides of her, screaming as they fled.
Some with blood on their hands, others with torn pants, some bleeding from the gut, and a few unscathed but screaming anyway as they ran.
They wouldn't get far.
They were heading to the emergency center on the first floor of the main building or the hospital security team.
The sun had already set.
* * *
The ICU waiting room bustled with guardians and passing medical staff.
The virgin ghost Yi-hwa stood in one corner, with a young woman and a little boy sitting beside her.
They were the family of the firefighter who had plummeted out the window with Emel and suffered severe injuries.
Yi-hwa watched over the firefighter's wife and young son.
Why did that evil bitch grab the firefighter and jump?
Yi-hwa felt sorry for them.
The ICU door opened, and the attending physician stood before them.
He explained that the family could observe the resuscitation efforts.
The young wife, holding back tears, took her child's hand and followed the doctor into the ICU.
* * *
Mi-hee heard the commotion outside the hospital and peered out the hallway window.
In the darkening grounds, she saw people bleeding and others yelling at staff in panic.
Stepping back from the window, she thought,
A big accident must have happened nearby.
Mi-hee approached the window again.
The people weren't coming from the main gate—they were from behind the main building.
What's going on behind the main building?
As Mi-hee scanned the area behind the main building, she spotted a smiling woman.
Behind her, bleeding people twisted their bodies as they shuffled quickly forward.
The woman's appearance matched exactly the description of Emel that Baekho and Da-hee had given.
Mi-hee pulled out her phone and called Baekho.
"Oppa, outside right now..."
—I'm watching too.
Baekho cut her off.
—Yi-hwa was right. That evil bitch really is a ghoul. Guess she doesn't plan on possessing anyone anymore. Mi-hee, it looks like we've fallen right into that evil bitch's trap.
* * *
Click-clack.
Emel walked with the sharp sound of her heels.
The early summer night breeze felt cool.
The flower beds around the main building bloomed with vibrant red roses.
She bent down, snapped one off, and looked around.
"What a vibrant, beautiful night. A night that suits red perfectly."
The walking corpses shuffling behind her lurched past on either side and entered the main building.
Those bitten by the old man she had awakened died between ten seconds and thirty minutes later.
Depending on the bite's location and severity.
Those who died in ten seconds got off lightly; the longer it took, the more they suffered being eaten alive.
And finally, those who died from the bites opened their eyes almost immediately in their corpse state and rose.
The risen corpses sought out the living and tore into them until they died.
When people died, they became corpses; the corpses bit people to death.
A simple, rapid spread.
Screams still echoed from the funeral home she had passed, with an endless procession of corpses following.
The main building lobby where Emel arrived rang with the screams of people fleeing the walking corpses.
Emel stepped inside, avoiding the blood and flesh splattered at the lobby entrance.
Before her eyes was a young woman being eaten alive by a corpse.
Among those who died instantly from bites and those devoured in agony, she was sadly the latter.
"Must hurt like hell since you couldn't die quickly."
Emel bent down to peer at her, then stepped over the corpse gnawing at the woman's belly, her long legs spanning its back.
Emel stood in the center of the lobby and looked around.
Corpses gurgled as they entered through the door she had come in.
The vast lobby and spots on the first floor were a hellscape: people dodging corpses, corpses risen from the dead, corpses eagerly tearing into flesh.
Security team staff trying to stop the corpses were visible too.
Poor guy—his wrist below the hand was torn off.
The hospital control room and security team were probably monitoring the lobby.
Soon a bunch of humans will come swarming with weapons. This hospital's bigger and taller than I thought. How many are there? If those idiots hadn't interfered, I wouldn't have had to summon these filthy, useless things. It's going to get noisy.
Emel attempted to possess Jun-hee's body to draw the sword from its sheath engraved with sealing talismans.
The talismans on the sheath prevented her from drawing it herself, so she needed a human hand.
Entering a little girl's body was simple.
An easy plan.
She could guess who had the sword.
"Too bad, but I'll have to discard that kid."
Emel had no attachment to Jun-hee anymore.
She could always find someone else to possess.
She had revised her plan to eliminate the interferers, and so far, though messy, everything was going smoothly.
The only hassle was that the corpses couldn't open doors, so Emel had to unlock the emergency stairwell doors on each floor herself.
* * *
Screams erupted from the ICU where the young wife and child had followed the doctor.
Yi-hwa, who had been listening to the screams rising from the building below, realized they had fallen into a trap when they echoed from the ICU too.
The people in the waiting room peered out the window and murmured uneasily.
Some headed downstairs, others made calls somewhere.
Futile efforts.
"That cunning, vicious bitch."
Yi-hwa stood before the ICU door.
It was an automatic door.
With resolve, she pulled out the hairpin tying up her hair, forming a gleaming silver sword in her grip.
To wield strong physical force, she manifested her body using spiritual energy.
Her long, black hair cascaded to her waist.
The automatic door slid open as someone approached amid screams.
It was the doctor who had taken the young wife inside.
His wrist and face looked gnawed by a beast, flesh torn away with blood flowing.
White bone gleamed through the flowing blood.
Beyond the open door, the ICU ward was splattered with blood and flesh.
The waiting room too became a pandemonium of terrified screams.
Something leaped onto the staggering doctor's back as he emerged.
The doctor collapsed at the door.
The automatic door bumped against his waist and reopened.
The thing that had tackled him was a blood-soaked woman with her ears torn off.
She mounted the doctor's back, biting into his nape.
It was the young wife who had entered with him.
Corpses twisted behind her, approaching.
The doctor looked up at Yi-hwa.
Half his neck was already gone; he couldn't speak.
"You're too late. My apologies."
With those regretful words, Yi-hwa kicked the doctor's body, sending it flying back into the ICU.
The woman on his back flew with him.
Only then did the automatic door close.
Through the closing gap, she glimpsed the supermarket grandma and handsome dad staggering, covered in gore.
"Demons they are."
The guardians in the ICU waiting room screamed in shock.
"Everyone, up! Evacuate upstairs!"
Yi-hwa's booming shout silenced the room momentarily.
"What's happening?"
A young man in his mid-twenties ran up to Yi-hwa and asked.
"Do you truly not know what's happening? Blind even after seeing?"
Yi-hwa barked, and the young man turned and yelled,
"It's dangerous below! Upstairs! We have to go up!"
Yi-hwa nodded at his sturdy resolve, then commanded sternly,
"A spirited lad. I'll hold here—you take responsibility and evacuate them!"
Bang!
The ICU door shook violently.
* * *
Byung-su, dodging swarming corpses as he drove, pulled into the parking lot of Daesung University Hospital and said,
"Damn it! Why's it like this here?"
Corpses approached his SUV.
"Team leader, what are those things? Like zombies?"
Not like—definitely zombies.
Byung-su ignored Dong-jin's question and asked Da-hee,
"You have family here?"
Turning to ask, Da-hee replied tearfully, her eyes red,
"What do we do? My oppa and unnie are in that hospital."
Byung-su had no comforting words for the sobbing Da-hee.
"I'll go. Park reporter, drive somewhere safe. Da-hee, stay with him."
"No. I'm coming too. You don't even know where my unnie and oppa are. I have to go."
Byung-su, thinking there was no time for arguing, said quickly,
"Fine, then follow me closely, Da-hee. Park reporter, watch your back."
As Byung-su spoke hastily, gathering qi in his left arm,
"You want me alone in this car? I'm coming too. Team leader, let me help."
Dong-jin pointed at the corpses crowding around the car.