Invitation Card

"Quick, get someone over here!"

Two nurses pulled a gurney, running one after the other as they rushed into the hospital. The man on the gurney was covered in blood to the point where his wounds were indistinguishable.

Chaos reigned in the emergency room. A sudden chain-reaction traffic accident had filled the area outside with waiting family members.

Several intern doctors hurried over, but their hearts sank as they looked at the patient on the gurney. There were simply too many casualties this time, and all the attending physicians were currently in the operating rooms.

Just as they were at a loss for what to do, a figure leaped past them. No introduction was necessary; the pristine white coat already caused the patient's family members to clear the way.

"Abdominal ten-centimeter open wound, left third through eleventh rib displacement, closed chest drainage required, partial bowel and greater omentum exposure..."

"Xu, my boy!"

The elderly woman trailing alongside could no longer hold back and burst into loud wails, calling out her son's childhood nickname. Her mournful cries brought tears to the eyes of the other family members.

"Prepare for surgery immediately!" The man raised his head. His face was hidden behind a mask, making his true features unreadable. Ignoring the grief of the relatives, his gaze swept over the name tag on Jiang Li's chest as he said, "You'll scrub in as first assistant."

"But..." Jiang Li, the intern, was stunned at first. For an intern like her, the work usually consisted of holding retractors, managing camera scopes, and suctioning blood. Whether she could even get into an operating room in the first place was still a question.

More importantly, who was this doctor before her? Why didn't she have any recollection of him at all?

However, before Jiang Li could finish speaking, the man's gaze instantly turned stern. "This is no time for hesitation, saving lives comes first!"

"Oh... Yes, sir!"

Startled by the man's stern gaze, Jiang Li and the others hurriedly nodded and called for the nurses to push the patient toward the operating room.

As for the family members, they were naturally kept outside.

"I'm an attending physician who was just transferred here, and my surname is Xu. Remember, when working in the emergency room, you must never panic. First and foremost, you have to be confident and keep your composure."

As he spoke, he rapidly checked off items on the emergency checklist, saying, "Draw venous blood for immediate complete blood count, blood typing, and coagulation profile."

Perhaps it was the calm and orderly confidence emanating from this Doctor Xu that infected Jiang Li and the others, as the emotions of the several interns quickly steadied.

"Five hundred milliliters of Ringer's solution!"

"Fifteen milliliters of omeprazole!"

"Normal saline..."

Under his methodical direction, hemostatic forceps, scalpels, and retractors passed through their hands like a flowing stream, only to be tossed back into the disinfection tray.

Time ticked by second by second, though Jiang Li and the others had no idea how long had actually passed. It wasn't until the vital signs on the monitor began to stabilize step by step that Jiang Li and the rest finally let out a breath of relief.

"The patient's symptoms have stabilized, prepare to transfer him to another department." With that, Doctor Xu stepped down from the operating table.

Looking at the departing back, Jiang Li felt somewhat dazed, an indescribable feeling welling up in her heart.

"Who authorized you to perform this surgery?!"

Suddenly, the doors of the operating room were pushed open by someone once again.

Yet the person who walked in was not Doctor Xu, who had just left, but their familiar Director Wang from the emergency department.

"What?! Who did this?!"

Looking at the already-sutured wound, Director Wang cast a puzzled look at Jiang Li and the others.

Jiang Li and her companions exchanged glances, and a bad premonition instantly arose in their hearts. She said in a low voice, "It was the newly transferred Doctor Xu. He was in charge of this surgery."

"What Doctor Xu?! Why have I never heard of him?!" Director Wang's expression turned even uglier. Realizing the severity of the matter, he no longer had time to waste words with Jiang Li and the others. "Quick, call security! Don't just stand there, hurry outside and find him. You must find him for me!"

"Oh, oh, right!"

The group could not care about much else and rushed out of the operating room. However, the hospital hallways were packed with people, and trying to find that Doctor Xu was no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.

Scanning her surroundings, she suddenly saw two police officers and a few security guards discussing something nearby. Seeing this, Jiang Li hurried over, wanting to ask if they had seen the so-called Doctor Xu.

Yet just as she approached, before she could even speak, a police officer stepped forward and handed a photograph directly in front of her. "Have you seen this person?"

Jiang Li started, her gaze focusing on the photograph.

It was a thin, fair-faced visage with an upturned curve at the corners of the mouth. Although there was no mask on the face, wasn't the expression between the brows the very same Doctor Xu they were looking for?

"It's him!" Jiang Li's heart tightened, and that bad premonition grew increasingly intense.

"You've seen him!"

Seeing the look of utter shock on Jiang Li's face, the police officer hurriedly pressed on, "Are you sure it's him? Look closely, this person is very dangerous."

"Dangerous?!" Jiang Li's heart tightened, and she couldn't help taking a step back, her expression growing even more bizarre.

Another police officer saw Jiang Li's demeanor starting to destabilize and quickly stepped forward to explain, "Don't get excited. He's a patient who escaped from the psychiatric hospital just today. He suffers from severe delusions and always imagines himself in other roles, but generally speaking, he won't actively attack others."

Hearing this, Jiang Li's legs went weak, and she grabbed the wall beside her for support. When she realized that the Doctor Xu who had just performed surgery was actually a lunatic, a bone-chilling coldness surged from the soles of her feet straight to the top of her head.

Thank goodness the surgery was a success. If it had failed and the patient had died on the operating table, intern doctors like them...

Shivering violently all over, Jiang Li felt goosebumps erupt across her arms.

"He...!" Jiang Li opened her mouth, but with the words on the tip of her tongue, she pointed a finger down the western hallway. "He went that way. I just saw him, wearing all black."

"Alright!"

The two police officers nodded and, taking several security guards with them, rapidly pursued the direction she pointed.

Watching the departing police, Jiang Li stood frozen in place for a dozen seconds before hurriedly heading back toward the operating room, having already made up her mind to make the director cover up this matter no matter what...

On the street, Xu Tong, dressed in a white lab coat, turned his head back with a smile to watch the hospital lights gradually fading in the distance.

Under the dim yellow streetlights, his pace grew lighter.

Inside a taxi waiting for passengers by the roadside, an English song was playing.

"Artist The Sounds."

Slender fingers gently plucked the surgical mask from his face, index finger and thumb pinching the mask as it snaked upward, then a loose flick sent the mask drifting away like a blown dandelion, seemingly floating on air.

"How come you taste so good."

The buttons of the lab coat were undone one by one, rippling in the air as he spread his arms.

"Something sweet or something strong."

A gust of wind blew, causing the lab coat to flutter in the night sky.

"I gave my heart to rock 'n roll."

His hands danced lightly, the exaggerated dance moves perhaps not pretty and even somewhat grotesque, yet they vented that strong sense of satisfaction and excitement deep within his heart.

The taxi driver was lying in the driver's seat, enjoying the momentary leisure brought by the music, completely unaware of the madman dancing wildly beside his car.

It was already late in the evening, and occasional passersby who walked past cast strange glances at this bizarre character.

But...

He didn't care.

His wantonly twisting hands writhed and slashed through the empty air, moving slower and slower, and beneath his slightly drooping eyes, the corners of his mouth curved up in satisfaction.

Just like a gourmet who had just finished a hearty meal, savoring the lingering taste of the delicacy on the tip of his tongue.

Until he placed one hand over his chest and bowed in a respectful curtain call to the empty street before him, only then seeming to step out of his own world.

"Wailing siren noises."

Watching a police cruiser roar past not far away, the fanaticism deep within Xu Tong's eyes gradually receded; he wasn't worried the hospital would call the police.

At most, he would just be dragged back to the psychiatric asylum, while this Grade 3 Class A hospital renowned throughout the city would end up making front-page headlines because of this incident, and by then God knows how many people were going to be in deep trouble.

Only, where should he go next?

He walked aimlessly down the street; it was nearly midnight and pedestrians were sparse, even the lights in the residential buildings were few and far between.

"Vroom!!"

At that moment, the roaring thunder of a motorcycle echoed across the empty road, and before people could even see it clearly, a motorbike sped past like a phantom blur.

Yet just as the vehicle reached the intersection, a large truck suddenly turned in from the corner.

"Screech~~~!!" The urgent sound of brakes was already like the tolling bell of tragedy.

Accompanied by a muffled crash, that speeding motorcycle instantly spun into the air, carrying scattered debris as it rotated before smashing heavily onto the ground.

"Bang!!"

And the rider, having completed a tumbling maneuver with it that even a gymnast would find difficult to execute, slammed headfirst straight into the guardrail in front of Xu Tong.

Several snapped railings pierced directly into the rider's chest, and fresh blood instantly stained the ground red.

Looking at the rider who had died right before him, Xu Tong merely raised an eyebrow, noticing that the rider's hand was still gripping a card.

What was this??

He walked up and slowly squatted down before the rider's corpse, extending two fingers to gently pinch and pull the card out from there.

Embossed on the black card was a white mask; at first glance it looked human, but upon closer inspection it didn't resemble a human at all, its brows emanating an indescribable and unnameable eeriness.

The back was stamped in silver-white foil with the three characters for Invitation Card, while underneath, a clear line of small golden characters marked an address.

"Oh!!"

Looking at the address above, he leaned over with his head tilted sideways, raised his head to take a look, and saw that right across the street, a line of large characters was flickering on and off amidst the dim neon lights... [Script Murder Experience Hall]

After publishing the post yesterday, I looked at it carefully again and, after much consideration, still made some revisions, changing the protagonist's name from Xu Feng to Xu Tong.

Added the car accident plot to make the story more complete and reasonable.