Bai Yu didn’t want any further entanglements with Lu Liangting, primarily because his identity was too sensitive. Before, she had worried his identity might affect Zhao Mingyue, the female lead. Now that concern was gone, but another problem had taken its place.
Considering the existence of the other game participants, she could only try her best to avoid contact with Lu Liangting.
To the other game participants, Lu Liangting was like a reverse scale—their hope for clearing the game was pinned on him.
They probably all knew she had taken over Zhao Mingyue’s identity. Because of this, they might refrain from targeting Zhao Mingyue directly, but they absolutely would not tolerate Zhao Mingyue having any further contact with Lu Liangting.
There was always the “what if.” One in a million, but still a possibility.
The faintest hint of such a development, and these game participants would attempt to eliminate Zhao Mingyue, even if it meant making an enemy of her.
Although Bai Yu knew that this kid Lu Liangting’s thoughts weren’t primarily on Zhao Mingyue anymore—the male lead seemed to have strayed off course somewhat.
What she didn’t know was that Lu Liangting had already arrived at the Fourth Hospital before her.
Meanwhile, inside the hospital.
“Be careful. There are quite a few ghosts hiding here.” Shen Shuyun moved forward cautiously, carefully observing their surroundings.
They were currently on the first floor of the hospital’s Inpatient Building No. 1, the building directly facing the main entrance.
Inside the hospital, shadows of ghosts lurked, visibility near zero.
According to the intel Lu Liangting had gathered, this hospital had been abandoned for ten years. It was said to have originally been a psychiatric hospital, later expanded and converted into the current hospital for various reasons. Ever since, strange incidents had plagued the place.
There was a case where a patient vanished without a trace from their ward, despite the windows having security bars.
The surveillance footage didn’t even capture the patient leaving. The only thing left in the ward was a black humanoid shadow on the wall. The other three patients were too terrified to say anything, only repeating that “those things” were coming for them. No one could get a clear answer on what exactly was coming.
After the hospital suppressed the incident, less than a week later, the same ward had another incident. Another patient vanished into thin air, leaving behind a human-shaped black shadow on the wall that couldn’t be scrubbed away no matter what.
The hospital checked the surveillance footage and only saw the ward door handle turn automatically at exactly 1:00 AM. The problem was, no patient inside came out.
Besides this, there was a bizarre incident involving a nurse here. Because the hospital needed to transport bodies, it had an elevator, going three floors above ground and three below. That night, the nurse needed to go to the third basement level to retrieve something. That happened to be the morgue.
But when she entered the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor, the display showed the fourth basement level instead.
This eerily appearing floor terrified the nurse, but she couldn’t stop the elevator.
When the elevator finally stabilized and the doors opened, the nurse discovered that the layout of this so-called fourth floor was almost identical to the third-floor morgue. There seemed to be some differences, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on them. She just assumed the elevator display had malfunctioned.
After stepping out, she finally realized what the problem was.
The bodies in the morgue… had all disappeared.
Even the morgue drawers were open, the corpses inside gone without a trace.
Clear footprints, a whole string of them, marked the floor. Items on the counters had been knocked over. The white sheets from the morgue beds were tossed on the ground.
Everything around her assaulted the nurse’s senses. She let out a scream. The lights in the morgue suddenly went out, leaving only the dim glow of the emergency lights.
She wanted to flee, but found the elevator doors had already closed. What was more terrifying was that in the previously silent corridor, the sound of numerous footsteps began to approach from outside.
The nurse was petrified. She used the morgue drawers to barricade the door. Soon, whatever was outside began banging on it.
Fortunately, the elevator doors finally opened, allowing the nurse to escape just before the door was smashed open. Otherwise, Lu Liangting wouldn’t have even seen this story.
There was a small detail: when the nurse left, the elevator was clearly empty, yet it displayed an overloaded status.
Too many incidents like this ultimately led to the hospital’s closure.
Inside the hospital, Lu Liangting and his two companions held flashlights. Almost all the equipment had been cleared out, leaving only some desks, chairs, patient gowns, and some bedding used for inpatients.
They hadn’t explored much of the first floor before heading straight to the second, mainly because of a medical record.
“Room 206. This is the one.”
Lu Liangting held his flashlight as he entered. The moment the three of them stepped inside, the door behind them slammed shut. From under the bed, a pale arm reached out and grabbed Lu Liangting’s ankle. An icy, bone-chilling sensation shot through him. Startled, Lu Liangting quickly shook off the hand and retreated two steps.
Shen Shuyun and Gardenia looked over. Lu Liangting aimed his flashlight at the space under the bed. Frowning, he glanced at his ankle, then slowly crouched down, bending over to look beneath the bed.
Something was under there.
As soon as he lowered his head to look, he saw a ghost with pale, festering skin curled up in a ball.
Their eyes met. This ghost’s reaction was even greater than Lu Liangting’s. Its face instantly contorted with sheer terror as it shook its head desperately. Its lips moved, but no sound came out. However, in the next instant, a withered, cracked hand with nails like dried branches emerged from behind the ghost’s head and covered its mouth. In the mere blink of an eye, the ghost was dragged into the darkness.
Lu Liangting’s pupils constricted. That ghost just now seemed to be saying…
‘Run. They’re coming.’
“‘They’? Who is ‘they’ referring to?” Lu Liangting remembered something and checked the time. “Seven o’clock sharp…”
Seven o’clock sharp in this hospital was exactly the time the nurses distributed medication.
As soon as he finished speaking, footsteps sounded from outside the door. Worse, the footsteps were rapidly approaching their location.
Three seconds later, BANG! The ward door shook. A distorted face, features twisted beyond recognition, pressed against the small glass window of the ward door, rolling its white-tinged eyeballs to scan the room.
At that moment, Lu Liangting and his companions were pressed against the wall right beside the door, perfectly out of sight.
Lu Liangting’s expression was grave. He could be certain that the thing standing outside right now was a Red-Clothed Ghost.
After an unknown amount of time, the black smoke seeping through the door crack gradually dissipated. The footsteps receded into the distance.
Lu Liangting let out a sigh of relief, stood up, and turned his head to peer out the small window. In the next instant, his breath caught in his throat. He was practically face-to-face with a rotting, distorted visage. The distance between the two faces, one human and one ghost, was only the thin layer of glass between them.
“Damn.”
· · ·
Zhao Mingyue entered the hospital building, carrying her backpack slung over one shoulder. One hand held a flashlight, the other clutched her Magical Girl Wand.
“This hospital used to have a partnership with the criminal police unit. Some case-related corpses or unclaimed bodies were supposedly stored here. The information I found online suggests this place was once a mass grave. Then they built a psychiatric hospital on top of it.”
“And finally, on the basis of the psychiatric hospital, it was remodeled into a general hospital.”
“People online say this psychiatric hospital abused its patients. Some were even tortured to death. These deceased patients turned into Fierce Ghosts, wandering this hospital.”
Zhao Mingyue was internally explaining the situation to Bai Yu inside her mind. Mainly, talking to someone helped muster some courage.
She couldn’t cling to the rabbit doll at all hours, and she felt she shouldn’t overly rely on the courage it provided. Only through tempering herself could she truly become strong. Besides, once she built up her own courage, holding the rabbit doll would give her a super double boost.
The hospital lobby was extremely empty. A single sweep of Zhao Mingyue’s gaze only caught a few chairs, a hospital bed, and a wheelchair.
Dust and cobwebs were everywhere. The doctor portraits hanging on both walls seemed extraordinarily eerie. Stripped of their original colors, these portraits looked like memorial photographs with eyes wide open, staring fixedly at you the moment you entered the lobby.
Stepping forward, Zhao Mingyue didn’t find anything useful.
The medical records and patient information scattered on the floor were mostly yellowed, decayed, and illegible with age. Only the faces, names, and patient numbers on them were visible.
She stopped before the wheelchair in the center of the lobby. Shining her flashlight on it, she gently brushed a finger across the armrest and couldn’t help but frown.
This wheelchair was very clean. At least, compared to the environment of the entire lobby, it was clean. There was only a very thin layer of dust, as if it had been placed here just a few days ago.
“What’s this?”
Zhao Mingyue reached out and picked up a slip of paper from the wheelchair.
Unlike the wheelchair, this slip of paper had clearly been here for some years. It was already yellowed, but fortunately, the words written on it in red ink were still legible. It looked like it had been torn from a notebook.
“Dr. Sun is looking for me again. He told me that if I don’t actively cooperate with the treatment, he’ll take me to ‘that place’.”
“No, I absolutely cannot agree to this demon’s demands. He wants to harm me, to kill me. He must want to kill me so he can be with my wife. My child was born from my wife’s illicit affair with him. I know it. I’ve known it all along. Don’t try to fool me!”
“No, wait. Who is my wife?”
“My wife…”
“It seems like I don’t have a wife.”
“No, these are all illusions. I have a wife who loves me very much!”
“Should I take those demonic medicines? What will I become after taking them?”
“But I’m even more afraid of going to that place. After Chen Hua went, he never came back. And Wang Xian too.”
“…”
“I won’t compromise!”
“Dr. Sun wants me to take medicine at 7, have a meal in my ward at 7:30, read from 8 to 9:30, then come out to exercise until 11. At 11, he will come again to supervise my medication…”
“After 11:30 is free time. I must seize this chance to escape.”
“At midnight, there are the fewest people outside. Those nurses aren’t in their rooms.”
“Damn it, they must have guessed my plan. It’s too dark outside. I can’t find the way out at all.”
“They are all Fierce Ghosts in human skin. I’m going to die here.”
“Dr. Sun lives in the office at the very end of the first floor. I must strike first and gain the advantage, or he and that damned woman will conspire to kill me. I’ve discovered their secret affair!”
“I don’t have a wife. Who are you? Don’t talk to me!”
The contents of this paper seemed somewhat crazed. Zhao Mingyue couldn’t imagine what kind of mental state this person was in when they wrote it. Yet, despite the apparent madness, the handwriting was remarkably clear and neat, betraying no sign of chaotic or disordered thinking.
Especially the last two sections. Zhao Mingyue began to doubt whether this daily schedule was for the day, or the night.
At first glance, it looked like a normal daytime routine: take medicine, wash up, eat, then read and exercise after eating, followed by more medicine and waiting for lunch.
But this person also said that after midnight, there were the fewest people outside. If it was high noon, in a hospital, noon would be the most crowded time. Only at midnight would there be few people.
Then he also said that after escaping, the outside world was too dark and he couldn’t find his way out. This further confirmed the suspicion that it was nighttime.
Between the lines, Zhao Mingyue felt this patient didn’t realize his life had its days and nights inverted. But how was that possible? Staying in a hospital, even if it wasn’t hermetically sealed, he couldn’t have been completely cut off from the outside world, right?
Did these doctors have nothing better to do, thinking their patients’ conditions were too mild, so they went out of their way to do this kind of thankless, troublesome thing?
“Dr. Sun, first-floor office…”
Zhao Mingyue put away the yellowed paper and looked towards the corridors extending to the left and right of the lobby.
Left or right?
“This hospital is too strange. Let’s pick left. Process of elimination.”
Making up her mind, Zhao Mingyue got up and walked toward the left corridor, also checking the time. It was already 7:20. According to that patient’s schedule, it should now be mealtime, when the hospital staff delivered food.
As soon as this thought crossed her mind, Zhao Mingyue entered the left corridor and saw something swaying unsteadily at the far end, moving toward her.
It was a small cart carrying something, pushed by a Ghostly Monster. Its head was lowered, its body so bloated that its white work uniform seemed to have merged with its swollen flesh and blood.
There were eight rooms in total. This ghost pushed the little meal cart, emitting a creaking sound that was particularly grating in the silent hospital. Its movements were slow and steady. In front of each ward, it placed a saucer of some unidentifiable substance. No more than ten seconds after the item was set down, a pitch-black arm would reach out and snatch the saucer into the ward.
Zhao Mingyue stood her ground, waiting as the small cart creaked closer, gripping her Magic Staff tightly in her palm.
Her heart was beating very fast right now. This hospital really wasn’t giving her any time to adapt—just an immediate heads-on situation.
She was even wondering if this place would be similar to the front part of Pingshan Village.
Could these rows of wards be the cells of a Ghost Domain, used to raise Fierce Ghosts?
If that were the case, how many ghosts would there be in a real fight?
It was, to say the least, quite terrifying…
Bai Yu probably couldn’t eat that many.
“Bai Yu, how’s your appetite right now?”
“Alright.”
