Chapter 232: Trade
In the video, no one could be seen. However, the hospital was crowded in their eyes. When Lee Ding connected this to what the doctor said earlier, his back was instantly drenched in sweat. Was there no living human at all in this hospital?
The four walked faster. They thought it was safe in the day, but they encountered something so ‘exciting’ the moment they arrived. The cold tiles reflected their pale faces. When the four of them were about to reach the front door, Old Sao suddenly paused. He held his heart and had difficulty breathing.
“Hurry!”
“No. There’s danger at the front door. Don’t go there.” Old Sao grabbed the people around him. “Act normal. We need to line up at the payment booth now.” Old Sao was not making a request but giving a command.
Su Mo and the others had no other choices. They changed their direction and tried to move to the payment booth as soon as possible.
They adjusted their angles. Old Sao and Xiao Mo saw a patient grab some drugs from the pharmacy. His nervous expression instantly softened up, and he happily walked towards the door. Just as the cheap shoes stepped out of the front door, the patient was dragged into the shadows by something. A living man disappeared just like that. The only thing that remained was a pool of blood on the ground. The strange thing was the fresh blood slowly leaked through the wall like someone was slowly sucking it through the straw. Soon, everything returned to normal.
“Fuck! What is outside the door?” Lee Ding’s hands trembled, but he still had to pretend to be normal.
“Under the influence of the horror story, this hospital might have started to operate under a new rule. Every patient here is busy. They seem to be busy trying to survive.” Old Sao was very scared, but he was very good at observation. The fact that he was able to steal from a haunted house was the evidence of that.
“Shubai, how did you figure out the front door was not safe?” Su Mo was curious. He felt like his friend was not simple.
“My parents divorced very early. That made me very sensitive since I was young. During this year’s Hungry Ghost Festival, I had a high fever, and my heart was so heavy that I couldn’t even speak. That night, I almost died at the hotel, but after I survived that, I realised I became even more sensitive to danger.” Old Sao didn’t hide anything from his brothers. “Whenever my heart started to race for no reason, it meant that danger was close. You can call it my sixth sense.”“I understand that theoretically, but why were you at the hotel on the night of the Hungry Ghost Festival?” Brother Xiong calmed down. He was the eldest of the group, so he felt like he had to anchor the group.
“Stop focusing on the strange parts. We need to focus on trying to remain normal. Ghosts will disguise as ghosts in the morning. As long as we follow the rules, we should be able to leave this place alive.” Old Sao opened his phone. The phone had the hospital rules that he had collected from all kinds of places. “Remember these things. Don’t violate them.” After sharing the rules with his friend, Old Sao realised the internet connection was still working. He thought of another idea. “We don’t have the number’s advantage. We should leave the professional problems to the professional solvers.”
Old Sao posted their experience at the hospital on the internet anonymously.
“Won’t this affect innocent people?” Su Mo frowned. He was friends with Old Sao, but that didn’t mean he agreed with everything he did.
“Why do you care?” Old Sao shrugged. “You live your life too carefully.”
The queue at the payment booth slowly moved forward. When there were only six people left in front of Old Sao, there was an argument at the window. A middle-aged man pulled out all the money from his jacket pocket, but he still couldn’t pay the bill. The people behind him thought he was taking up too much time. In the process, they accidentally knocked his daughter over. The man removed his jacket and covered his daughter with it. He stood in front of her and acted angrily.
Old Sao wanted to move away, but he accidentally scanned them with his recorder. He realised the little girl was showing up in his video.
“The man’s kid is still alive?!” Old Sao didn’t feel any discomfort, so he walked over confidently to break up the fight. “Things are hard for everyone. Brother, how much do you lack? Do you need help?”
“No!” The middle-aged man panicked. He picked up his daughter and headed down the corridor. Old Sao shot his friends a look, and they chased after the father and daughter. The middle-aged man was clearly protecting the girl. Old Sao wanted to figure out how to survive in the hospital from the man. The middle-aged man couldn’t run fast with his daughter. He eventually stopped at the corner of the third-floor burnt victim's ward.
“Calm down. To be honest, we also just want to live.” Old Sao didn’t sense any danger. He acted sincerely. It was how he managed to get so many girlfriends.
“Live?” The middle-aged man hugged the girl tightly.
“This is my brother. His mother is very sick. The four of us gathered our money to get the medicine for his mom, but we didn’t expect to run into something like this.” As a womaniser, Old Sao was a very good actor. With Old Sao’s great acting skills, the middle-aged man started to empathise with them.
“Don’t think about leaving after you’re in here. It’s lucky that you can even survive one night.” The man touched the girl’s head, his eyes shining with heartache. “I can’t remember when I came here. Xiao Xia was suffering from such a high fever that she was not making sense. I was so worried. I didn’t notice anything else. After Xiao Xia recovered, I only realised this hospital was rather…”
“Rather what?”
“Do you believe in transmigration? I feel like this hospital has fully transmigrated to a world of ghosts.” The man lowered his voice. “This is not the place to talk. Come with me.”
They entered the corridor. A few seconds later, the curtain of the burnt victims’ ward was pulled back, and a man with singed skin stood behind it. He looked like he had just learned how to walk. His eyes were very round and large. He swayed around.
“At first, the hospital only has living humans. But, dead bodies started to join them.” The man spoke as he moved, “The corpses are not the scariest. At night, many strange things will appear. To survive to the next day, you’ll need to search and collect enough items to trade. You have to do that during the day.”
“Items?”
“Like this medicine.” The man took out an empty bottle. “The Soul Transfer Medicine can temporarily distract the attention of the corpses and give you the time to escape. You should go and find them. There are many things in the hospital that can help you survive the night.”