"Grandpa, I was wrong! Grandpa, I'm calling you Grandpa. Won't you answer me?"
The young man hugged a green trash can, sobbing bitterly. His expression was so tragic and his embrace so affectionate that Xu Ye couldn't make sense of it.
"Grandpa, am I hugging you too tightly? Why has your face turned green?"
The young man jumped in alarm, hurriedly picked up a nearby garbage bag, and put it inside.
"Grandpa, don't be angry. Your grandson is giving you something to eat."
"Grandpa, why has your face turned blue? Do you have food poisoning?"
The young man began hugging a blue trash can, shaking it hard, kowtowing and apologizing.
"Grandpa! Grandpa!"
"Why has your face turned red? Did I make you angry again?"
Xu Ye stood to one side, watching dumbfounded as the man embraced a red trash can next. He felt as though his entire worldview had been shaken.
All by himself, the man managed to sound like all seven Calabash Brothers.
Impressive!
Just then, Meng Chengfei's warm, resonant voice came through his earpiece.
"Since the Wasteland Era began, many people have developed psychological problems. Everyone who has been contaminated develops a second personality, and we can detect those in the early stages."
"That's why we at the Dawn Blade built this hospital. After all, we're the professionals."
"We leave ordinary patients to the regular medical staff, but once a patient is suspected of contamination, they're transferred to the hospital's special clinic."
"The man in front of you is one of them."
"Li Kang, male, twenty-five."
"No steady occupation. He makes a living in Night Spirit City through fraud, gambling, and profiteering. He occasionally makes small trades in medical supplies with scavengers from outside the city."
"He had a younger brother named Li Ran, who died yesterday."
"What you need to do now is learn the specifics of his situation and determine whether he's been contaminated."
"Don't worry. The medical staff here are all our people."
Meng Chengfei guided him over the call.
Xu Ye understood that Captain Meng was a busy man. He would probably only walk him through this once; after that, Xu Ye would have to handle things himself.
"Grand-"
Li Kang tried to call out for his grandpa again, but a nurse injected him with a sedative. His entire body went limp, and he collapsed facedown on the ground.
The madness faded from his eyes, leaving only bloodshot whites and trembling pupils.
His whole body convulsed, his limbs went weak, and foam spilled from his mouth.
"Doctor, I'm not sick. There's just a ghost trying to kill me. Please save me! I'm really not sick."
Xu Ye: "..."
"Let's take him back first," Xu Ye said upon seeing this.
The nurse glanced at the badge on Xu Ye's chest and nodded.
Soon, they carried Li Kang into a consultation room.
Xu Ye slipped on a white coat and sat across from the patient.
Only Xu Ye and Li Kang remained in the consultation room.
With trembling hands, Li Kang lifted a cup of hot water and took a sip, then looked suspiciously at Xu Ye. "You're really not my grandpa, right?"
One look told Xu Ye that something was very wrong with the man's condition, and he shook his head.
"There are residual spiritual energy fluctuations on this man." Alice emerged from between Xu Ye's eyebrows and looked around.
Xu Ye pushed Alice's head back in and smiled sincerely. "I'm a doctor, not your grandpa. If something's troubling you, you can talk to me."
Li Kang took a deep breath, hunched his shoulders, and looked around before getting up to close the curtains. After a moment's hesitation, he finally spoke. "Doctor, I'm not much good at anything. I just scrape by in this world, earning enough to eat. Every day, I stroll around the red-light districts. Let me tell you, there are a few girls in the East District who are real beauties... hehehe..."
"Xu Ye, what is all this filth in your head? Stop it!" Alice shrieked.
"Ahem..." Xu Ye coughed twice and glared at Li Kang. "Get to the point!"
"Right, right. I've been tormented so badly lately that I haven't been in ages. My mind just wandered..." Li Kang ducked his head and gave a sleazy chuckle.
"Here's what happened. Half a month ago, I ran out of money, so I thought I'd find some work. You know how people like us are. We're used to making quick money. We don't want to go tighten screws in a factory. That day, my brother and I happened to see a missing person notice."
Li Kang took a piece of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it out.
Xu Ye glanced at it.
[Missing person notice: Zhou Yang, male, eighteen years old, mild intellectual disability... If anyone has seen this person, please contact his family... Reward: 50,000.]
"Go on," Xu Ye said.
"When my brother and I saw it, we wondered if we could make that money. My brother wanted to go look for him, but I stopped him."
"I called the number on it and found out it was an old man."
"Doctor, you know how it is. People in their seventies or eighties are the easiest to fool, especially when it's about their grandson."
"I never intended to look for anyone. I was going to pretend to be his grandson and scam him out of the money. He was old, right? He didn't have long left anyway. All I had to do was humor him and let him rest in peace."
"It went smoothly. We fooled the old man, telling him I was his grandson, Zhou Yang. He hugged me and cried his heart out, just like he'd found his real grandson."
"We hadn't expected the old geezer to have so much money. So we carried him up the mountain, then threw him off a cliff. Made quite a haul. You could say we fulfilled his grandson's filial duties for him. After all, someone called him Grandpa before he died."
Xu Ye inwardly sucked in a cold breath.
People like this truly deserved to die. They were parasites on society. If a sewage truck drove past downstairs, someone like Li Kang would probably go take a few gulps.
"But then things got a little strange."
Li Kang's expression changed, his features drooping. "The next day, we saw another missing person notice."
"It was another old man looking for his grandson. We didn't think much of it and did the same thing again. Took his money, fulfilled his grandson's filial duties, and threw him off the cliff. After all, in times like these, what family hasn't lost someone?"
"But on the third day, we saw another missing person notice."
"When the person arrived, we discovered it was a young, beautiful woman. She also said she was looking for her grandson."
Xu Ye frowned. "So you threw her off too?"
"Not right away. She was a woman, after all." Li Kang grinned. "I called her Grandpa while we had some intimate relations. Only after that did I carry her up the mountain and throw her off."
"But on the fourth day, we saw another missing person notice, still looking for a grandson. My brother and I finally felt something was off, so we didn't dare take the job."
"But that night, a rat climbed onto my bed with that missing person notice in its paws and told me to call it Grandpa. I was scared out of my mind..."
"If I didn't, it would bite me. It wanted to bite me to death, saying I was unfilial, saying I was an outrageous rebel."
"I had no choice but to call it Grandpa. I couldn't bear to take it up the mountain, so I roasted it and ate it."
"Later, I couldn't take it anymore and went to ask a fortune-teller. She read our fortunes and said this calamity was destined, that we couldn't escape it. I killed her with one slash. She hadn't even foreseen her own death that day, and she had the nerve to tell us our fortunes? Still, she was pretty tough. Even with her head cut off, she didn't make a sound."
Xu Ye: "..."
She would have liked to make a sound.
"But on the fifth day... the ninth day... the thirteenth day... every day, something would hold up a missing person notice and frantically call me its grandson."
At this point, Li Kang's voice grew shrill, and wave after wave of goosebumps rose on his hands.
"Doctor, can you imagine it? Cockroaches, owls, babies, televisions, bicycles... they all wanted to be my grandpa!"
"Then yesterday, my brother held up a missing person notice and said he'd finally found his grandson-me."
"Fuck! I'd spent all these days being everyone's grandson, and now that little bastard wanted to be my grandpa too. I wouldn't even let my own father do that. I lost my temper and killed him too..."
Suddenly, Li Kang's hoarse voice cut off.
His blood-red pupils fixed on Xu Ye. As his mouth opened and closed, his jaw made a clacking sound of bones striking together. At the same time, his head suddenly twisted a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and he smiled eerily. "Grandpa."
Before you continue