Chapter 1159: When I Encounter Darkness, I Walk Right Into It (2 in 1)
“A small h.e.l.l?” Chen Ge kept his eyes on the taxi until the last bit of light from the taillight of the taxi was also swallowed up by the darkness of the night. The countryside of Xin Hai was extremely deserted; there were barely any people on the road. Flipping through the comic, Chen Ge had all his employees remain ready, and then he placed the white cat on the ground. The white cat, which was naturally cautious, perked its ears perked up. Its heterochromatic eyes were filled with intense anxiety. It stuck close to Chen Ge and showed more than once that it would crawl underneath Chen Ge’s clothes if it could.
“You also feel the danger in the air?” Scratching the white cat on the back of its head, Chen Ge took a deep breath. He moved away from the main street and trekked deeper into the countryside on the smaller path. Walking through the series of abandoned buildings, the surroundings became quieter and quieter. The sound of the insects chittering had disappeared, as did the last speck of light.
“This piece of land consists of mostly unfinished residential buildings. How come the construction was stopped only after the sh.e.l.ls of the foundation were built?”
Using Yin Yang Vision, Chen Ge saw the many different cra.s.s words that were written on the outer walls in red paint. It appeared like there was a riot among the employees due to the delay in the construction company paying their salary. They desecrated the unfinished building to force their bosses to surrender to their demands, but something else had happened.
Not far away from the unfinished residential area was a large site of an abandoned factory area. There were chemical factories and medical factories, but most of the factories did not specify what kind of factory they were. The rust on the fences showed that they had been there for a long time already. They lacked cleaning, and various large machines had become garbage that was impossible to deal with. The Xin Hai countryside was larger than Chen Ge antic.i.p.ated. The taxi driver basically dropped him at the edge of the countryside; the man did not intend to drive Chen Ge in any further.
To prevent the possibility of an ambush on the main road, Chen Ge did not dare use the paved street. He could only slowly seek out his own path this day. The interaction that he had with the Xin Hai police proved useful at a moment like this. It was not completely useless. At least when he visited the police station, he managed to gain a more detailed understanding of the building layout at Xin Hai’s countryside. The countryside had been abandoned for so long that the location of the various abandoned buildings and factories were only marked down at the map used by the police force.
“Residential areas, various factors, cinemas, supermarkets, small parks, and the types of abandoned building at this countryside sure are numerous. It is basically like a forgotten city.” Chen Ge had been wondering why the cursed hospital situated deep inside the countryside would be called Xin Hai Central Hospital, but he believed he had found the answer. If the entire Xin Hai countryside was seen as an abandoned city, then the cursed hospital was indeed placed at the center of this city. “The mission requires me to arrive at Xin Hai Central Hospital before midnight. I am on a time crunch. Looks like I’d better pick up my pace.”
If Xin Hai was the cursed hospital’s territory, Xin Hai countryside was their old lair. Chen Ge reminded himself that he had to be extremely careful with his every step here. At around 11 pm, Xin Hai Countryside, which was surrounded in darkness, suddenly had a flash of light cut through it. Chen Ge looked toward the source of the light. It looked like a car that was driving down the main road. “Wait, isn’t that the car from Jiujiang Medical University? Could that be Ol’ Wu and Zuo Han?”
Chen Ge knew how dangerous the cursed hospital was, so he immediately took out his phone to call Ol’ Wu. “Ol’ Wu, you have come to Xin Hai Countryside as well?”
“It was Zuo Han who drove the car away! I parked the car in the original parking spot at the apartment, and then I brought Zuo Han with me to check in at a hotel in the middle of the city. But half an hour ago, when I went to take a shower, Zuo Han grabbed my keys! He’s now missing, and he is not answering my calls!”
“Zuo Han is not the kind of person to act so rashly. Take a close look around the room. See if he has left any clues behind for you!” Chen Ge was a bit desperate. The battle between the haunted house and the cursed hospital was on a completely different level. No matter how clever Zuo Han was, if he was dragged into this battle, there was only one ending.
Death.
“When I went to take a shower, I believe he was reading a book… Hmm, yes, found it.” The sound of pages being flipped came from the other side of the line. Ol’ Wu suddenly said, “Hmm?”
“Did you find something?”
“Some of the words on this page have been circled in pencil,” Ol’ Wu said softly. “Room, someone, the, is, in.”
“Someone is in the room?” Chen Ge widened his eyes. “Someone is in the room! Ol’ Wu, leave the room immediately! Now!”
By the time Chen Ge shouted that order, the other side of the line had already gone quiet. No matter how loud he cried, there was no response.
“The cursed hospital has already made their move, so what exactly do they wish to take from these people around me?” Chen Ge shared a very normal relations.h.i.+p with Ol’ Wu. There was basically nothing that Ol’ Wu knew about Chen Ge, but even so, he was not spared by the cursed hospital. The memory that Ol’ Wu might have when he accompanied Chen Ge in leaving Xin Hai had already been wiped away by Zhang Yi. The cursed hospital would not find any valuable information on him. That could be considered the only good news.
“Have they targeted anyone related to me? The hospital is most familiar with curses. Is it possible that they are attempting to put a curse on me through the many individuals who are related to me?”
For most curses to work, they required a medium. The scarier and harsher the curse, the more significant the medium needed. A very bad feeling overwhelmed Chen Ge’s heart.
“Time is needed to complete a curse. They have just taken Ol’ Wu, so if I am not wrong, their curse cannot have been completed just yet.”
Chen Ge looked at the car that sped into the darkness, and he moved faster than before. At 11:30 pm, Chen Ge finally arrived at the perimeter of Xin Hai Central Hospital. This abandoned hospital was situated at the middle of Xin Hai’s countryside. Several buildings were joined together to form an inverted cross. It gave off a sense of death, like a zone of h.e.l.l.
“This is the place where my parents gone disappeared, huh?” Chen Ge did not use the front door. He summoned the red high heels and Xue Rong while he observed the hospital from the outside. Xue Rong did not expect that she would once again return to this place where her nightmare originated after she tried so hard to escape from it. The curse in her body was evoked. If not for the suppression from the red high heels, she would have gone berserk.
“Have you lost your mind? Why would you voluntarily come here to seek death? Can’t you just live your life peacefully in Jiujiang? What is so bad about that?” Xue Rong tried her best to maintain her rationality.
“Stop wasting time. You were a night doctor at the cursed hospital before, so you should be very familiar with the inside of this place.”
“I am not going back into this place. There is no way you can convince me!” Xue Rong was on the verge of breakdown. Chen Ge had the red high heels add new curses on Xue Rong.
“The cursed hospital has captured my employees, and they are threatening with the lives of many other innocent people. I am not asking you to do me a favor here. If you do not want to help me, then I will have my employees swallow you up right this moment.” Chen Ge’s tone was sharp and icy. At a moment like this, hesitation and kindness would not help. It would only delay his plan. The black lines on Xue Rong’s body continued to increase as the red high heels applied more and more curses on Xue Rong. When Xue Rong was treating the red high heels, she too had placed many curses on the red high heels. In a way, this was a cycle in and of itself.
“Stop! Fine.” Xue Rong’s eyes were bleeding. Black blood vessels surfaced on her skin, and she was in extreme pain. “The cursed hospital will not capture people for no reason. There are only two kinds of people that they will capture—doctors who are worth investing in and humans who possess the unique properties to become patients! When the doctors are tricked into joining the hospital, they will start their work as a day doctor, but the patients are not so lucky. They will be kept inside the quarantine area. If they can survive for three days, they will gain a new number, which will replace their name.”
“Quarantine area?”
“Yes, all the new patients will be locked up there.” The black blood vessels on Xue Rong’s skin disappeared. She glanced at the red high heels fearfully. Her once patient had become a very scary monster. “The central hospital is very big, and the quarantine areas are at the deepest part of the hospital. I hope you will reconsider what you are doing.”
“I think you might have misunderstood me. I am not going to the quarantine areas to save people.”
“Then, what are you planning to do?” Xue Rong was a bit confused.
“My plan is to completely destroy this hospital and clear out any humans or ghosts who have already fallen for the curse. After cleansing the whole hospital, naturally, I will be able to rescue the people that they have kidnapped.” Chen Ge waved his arms. “Bring us into the hospital. Lead the way.”
Since she was basically no different from a hostage, Xue Rong had no choice. She led Chen Ge to the left side of the hospital.
“This here is the side door. It is relatively safer because only the hospital staff know about it.”
After Xue Rong said that, both she and Chen Ge saw the car that was parked beside the side door.
“Why would the car from Jiujiang Medical University be parked here? Did Zuo Han enter the hospital from the side door? But didn’t you say that only the hospital staff know about the existence of this door?”
“But that’s the truth!” Xue Rong was clueless as well. “I have no reason to lie to you. I will end up worse a thousand times if I am recaptured by the cursed hospital compared to being captured by you. Therefore, I will unconditionally side with you!”
“If the hospital staff know about this place, then doesn’t that mean that they will predict me using this door? This route is not as safe as you think.” Chen Ge shook his head. He chose a window that was even more out the way. At 11:54 pm, Chen Ge officially entered the cursed hospital. Xin Hai Central Hospital was supposed to have been abandoned for a long time already, but the inside of the building reeked of disinfectant, and there were occasional footprints and shoe prints on the ground as if people still wandered these halls.
“When Captain Cai called me earlier, he told me that there was no trace of any recent human activity at the hospital. Why would he lie to me? Was something standing next to him when he made that call?”
With the aid of Yin Yang Vision, darkness posed no trouble for Chen Ge. He carefully moved down the corridor. Without moving that far, Chen Ge saw someone had used a red paint to write the following on the wall of the corridor—’This is a sickened world, why not destroy it?’
The ghastly handwriting combined with bright red paint, it stood out even in the dark. Chen Ge frowned slightly. He continued to move forward. The real maddening side of this hospital was slowly being exposed to Chen Ge. Yellowed death notices appeared on the ground, and black and white pictures of doctors were hung upside down on the walls. Some of the pictures had scratch marks from fingernails, and the white coats were poked through with needles. “The owner of the cursed hospital is the hospital director, and the doctors… why would they allow such vandalism of the doctor’s pictures?”
The situation was more complicated than Chen Ge thought. The corridor that he had been walking along appeared to reach down into the endless darkness, and every door seemed to hide a monster behind it. Every corner of the hospital showed signs of the patients’ struggles. The walls had been repainted layer after layer. The surface looked white as snow, but the inner layers were already corrupted, and the new layer did nothing to cover up the rotting smell.
“This whole place does not feel right, but strangely enough, I cannot sense the presence of any monster or ghosts.” Chen Ge had superhuman senses. Ever since he entered the hospital, he did not sense any danger. He only felt strangely uncomfortable, like he was dropped inside a pool of quicksand. The white cat, which was highly alert when it was outside the hospital, started to relax once inside the hospital. It strode next to Chen Ge and sometimes turned its head around to observe things out of curiosity.
“Do not let your guard down. The night at the cursed hospital has always been like this. You should be lucky that you have not run into any patients or night doctors. Every single one of them is scarier than the last.”
Even though she was already a Red Specter, when Xue Rong thought back to these things, she was still afraid.
“Are you sure? How come it feels like all the ghosts have already decided to leave tonight?”
Chen Ge pushed open the door of the sickroom. He saw the handwriting left behind by the patient on the wall next to the bed—’Who can bring me away from this sickened world?’
“Why does everyone here think the world is sick? The truth is that because they themselves are sick, and that is why the world look sick from their perspective, isn’t it?”
There was plenty of similar handwriting, scratch marks, and paper notes that had the same message. Chen Ge had a feeling the cursed hospital was doing this on purpose. A normal person was led into the impression that they were living inside a sickened world, and then the cursed hospital used many crazy methods to show them how sick the world was to get the normal person to approve of the world’s sickness. Once that impression was made, the normal person would officially become a patient.
“No matter what, I cannot allow my conviction to be shaken. No matter how imperfect this world might be, it exists in reality!” Just walking down the corridor, the sickened world had already appeared before his eyes who know how many times already. Chen Ge finally understood why he felt so uncomfortable when he arrived at this place. Xin Hai Central Hospital was different from the outside world. In fact, one could say that the whole of Xin Hai’s countryside was different from other places. This place was the real sickened world. “They appear to have the aim of forcing madness on everyone that enters the hospital, be it the patients or the doctors.”
The scariest part of the cursed hospital was not the fact that they would kill people but that they would do everything in their power to change a person, like with the ghost fetus. What the shadow was looking for was bliss. He was desperate for love and being loved, but after he ran into the cursed hospital, the shadow’s worldview was corrupted. The child, who originally had a chance at salvation, was turned into a Demon G.o.d in the world of the dark fog. He had committed many erroneous crimes and had been made to suffer the most painful and the most despairing curse, and the culprit behind everything that had happened to him was the cursed hospital.
Chen Ge had no idea why the cursed hospital would do something like that, but he knew that what he needed to do now was ensure that he was not influenced by the cursed hospital. From the moment his employees were kidnapped, the cursed hospital appeared to have initiated their plan. Chen Ge wanted to destroy the cursed hospital, and the cursed hospital wanted to turn Chen Ge into a patient. The history behind the two parties had started more than twenty years ago; it crossed the line of life and death and two cities. It involved many forces. Many ghosts and people were waiting for this moment.
Walking out from the reception hall, Chen Ge entered the ICU. When Xue Rong and his employees were not paying attention, Chen Ge silently brushed against the wedding ring on his finger. Xiao Sun was located somewhere underneath the hospital. Chen Ge was very close to him. Chen Ge did not head directly to Xiao Sun but continued with his original plan. Along the way, he did not run into any living person or any ghost. He moved smoothly and arrived at the door that led underground.
“The first quarantine zone is underneath this door. I need to remind you, this place is very dangerous.” Xue Rong’s expression became quite strange. Black lines started to appear in her blood red eyes. “The atmosphere is indeed rather unusual at the hospital tonight. You’d better remain on alert.”
Looking at the dark corridor, Chen Ge rushed into it without any hesitation.