Corpse Caregiver

At the far end of the bedroom was a bamboo rattan recliner, the kind that could rock, making a creaking sound when it swayed.

The curtains were drawn tightly shut, but because it was too dark, the guide turned on the lights.

Nightmare felt more than once that his eyes were a prime example of paying money to suffer. If the "truth" were beautiful or even ordinary, it would be fine, but in this absurd Yugi, the terrifying truths clearly outnumbered the rest.

She always sees things that make her nauseous, but she has to pretend she doesn't notice and keep a calm expression, otherwise she'll be torn to pieces by those things.

Just like now, she was led by the guide to a deckchair, where she stared at a corpse that had been decomposing for a long time.

The corpse's face showed signs of withered old age, and its flesh had long since rotted away beyond recognition. It was neatly dressed in a winter cotton-padded coat, but the wriggling maggots and the rotting liquid left behind always made the coat filthy.

"Look, my dad is so sick, he can't walk on his own anymore, but he keeps moving around, and the clothes I just changed for him are dirty again." Gao Yiling smiled at Yan with a troubled expression, a hint of complaint in her voice.

Before the nightmare could respond, she immediately turned to the corpse and pleaded, "Oh, Daddy, I told you it's cold to wash clothes in winter. You can't go around right now, so just lie there and don't move around. When you get better, I'll take you out to play, okay?"

"I'll take you on all the tours I've led at the travel agency. We'll go on a trip and never stay in this freezing town again. But you have to take your medicine and get better first, okay?"

Nightmare stared at the scene in a daze. Gao Yiling's eyes and tone were so sincere, as if she really didn't think that corpses and death had anything to do with each other.

Gao Yiling has gone mad.

"Um, could you please wipe his body down? I want to see your technique and learn from you." Gao Yiling made a pleading gesture to Yan, then obediently sat on the bed and watched from a very close angle.

From the Nightmare's perspective, the bed already bore the marks of a rotting corpse. The liquid was teeming with insect eggs, some of which had already hatched, with tiny worms emerging halfway out and writhing wildly.

If you listen carefully, you can also hear the buzzing and wriggling of the insects because of their large number.

Gao Yiling plopped down on the bed, her black dress stained with dirt. Surrounded by insects, she cast her gaze at the Nightmare.

Nightmare's arms broke out in goosebumps, and even the ground was covered in insect eggs. She felt like she had nowhere to step, so she had no choice but to grit her teeth and walk forward to the corpse.

Most of the viewers who were watching their actions were now gathered in Yan's live stream, because the three of them were acting together, and it was obvious that Yan had triggered the plot.

The two in the living room might be a bit boring, but many viewers would be happy to temporarily check out the plot in Yan's live stream.

The perspectives of the live stream and the Nightmare are shared, so countless viewers also saw a glimpse of the truth.

[Damn, this is so disgusting! I'd rather serve a ghost than share a room with so many bugs.]

[This is disgusting, it's so immersive, I can almost feel bugs crawling on the back of my foot.]

[So the truth is, Gao Yiling is a ghost, and her father is a corpse, right? Does she know this, or doesn't she?]

[There are two possibilities. One is that she genuinely doesn't believe her father is dead and thinks he's still alive; perhaps she's haunted by this belief.]

[Next, the second possibility is that she knew her father was dead and let the Nightmare into the room to help, which was purposeful.]

[I think the person upstairs is being a bit simplistic. The situation in this kind of place depends on the broader context; there are probably countless possibilities.]

[Then there's no point in discussing it anymore; what you said is as good as nothing at all.]

[Ahhh, I'm a fan of Nightmare! Can anyone tell me if she's in danger right now?!]

[It's hard to say. I also find it strange. Gao Yiling's reaction is too ambiguous. I don't know what she's trying to do.]

The thermos on the ground seemed to contain freshly boiled, clean water. Some of it was poured into a round basin. Yan dipped the towel in the basin into the hot water; at least the texture was correct.

She wrung the towel until it was half-dry; she needed to wipe the corpse's face first.

She was right about one thing: she really did work as a caregiver, but it was in another scenario she experienced early on. The contaminated orphanage was filled with all sorts of malicious patients, caregivers, and the director, while the deducers were like innocent flowers who had stumbled upon it.

Those ghost caregivers were diligent and even indulgent towards the patients, but they were nitpicky towards the predictors. If they did anything wrong, it gave the ghost caregivers a reason to kill them.

In order to survive, Nightmare desperately learned how ghost caregivers treat patients. In the midst of the fear that she would be killed by her patients at any moment, she eventually survived.

There were eight people involved in the deduction, and only she and another girl survived and left.

In a daze, he felt as if he had returned to that time.

She wasn't taking care of living people; the danger was unknown. And there was Gao Yiling beside her, watching over her like the ghost caregiver from back then.

Moreover, it's even more difficult now than it was back then. Back then, even though the patients were said to be ghosts, at least their parts were damaged openly and honestly. Unlike this corpse in front of her, whose flesh was rotten, she was afraid that if she wiped it, she would wipe off a large chunk of it.

But Gao Yiling was watching closely, and Yan held her breath and concentrated, using all her patience to carefully wipe it off.

Below the ears, under the chin, on the neck...

When Nightmare does this work, he inevitably has to get very close to the corpses, and the maggots crawling out of the rotting flesh occasionally shake their heads and tails onto the towel.

Compared to the countless tiny insect eggs that had hatched on her feet and bed, maggots were relatively familiar, as she encountered them in many of her deductions. Nightmare gradually became expressionless, and when she realized that Gao Yiling didn't seem to be restricting her movements much, she quickly picked out the maggots one by one and threw them aside.

In some places, there were too many maggots. Sensing danger, they swarmed together and desperately burrowed into the flesh. Nightmare remained unfazed and dug them all out. After a while, at least on the surface, the corpse's head and face looked much cleaner.

Who knows what horrific scene lies beneath his clothes? A flash of inspiration struck Yan Ling, and she turned to Gao Yiling, saying, "It's cold now, he needs to be kept warm. You can't keep taking off his clothes to wipe his body; it will cause the heat he's worked so hard to build up to dissipate."

"What should we do then?" Gao Yiling asked anxiously.

"In this weather, all you need to do is wipe his neck and hands and feet, and then give him a thorough bath in about a week." Yan tried to make the timeframe seem longer, because after a week, she would either be gone or dead, so it wouldn't be her problem.

Just then, Yan suddenly felt her hand being grabbed by another hand.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she turned her head sharply. She saw the corpse's eyeballs move slightly in the empty eye sockets where there was hardly any nerve tissue left. The arm wrapped in clothes rose up, and a hand landed precisely on hers.

The corpse, so rotten it was almost unrecognizable as human, opened its mouth and said, "Thank you. You were supposed to be my daughter's guest... yet you did this."

Gao Yiling immediately added, "Yes, yes, I'm so sorry, thank you so much!"

The corpse stiffly moved its head, emitting a hissing sound, then gripped the Nightmare tightly, its other hand pointing extremely slowly to the pile of maggots that had been picked out on the ground. "Those... you... can see them."

As he spoke, the worms and chunks of meat in his mouth gradually fell out.

Nightmare: "..." Oh, damn it.