After lunch, Jiang Chen took a nap on a sofa on the second floor of the milk tea shop.
He had another class that afternoon. During class, he took out his phone and looked up North Second Road Hospital. It had been around for decades and was located in the East Suburban Old City, where it was the largest hospital.
A few days earlier, a family had carried a man into the hospital with half his face mangled and bloody. The doctor briefly asked what had happened, and the family said falling construction equipment had struck him at a building site.
After learning the nature of the injury, the doctor wheeled the man into the emergency room.
During this process, the emergency doctor noticed something: the man's face and hands were ice-cold. But when he saw the ice packs placed beside the wounds, he thought nothing more of it.
Emergency treatment began, then ended less than a minute later.
Once they hooked him up to the heart monitor, they discovered that the man had long since lost all signs of life.
Not only that, but while examining the body on the spot, the emergency doctor discovered something horrifying. The man's body temperature was below twenty degrees Celsius, and he had been dead for over forty-eight hours. This patient had died long before he arrived!
Every doctor and nurse in the emergency room broke out in a cold sweat.
The emergency doctor was especially shaken. He had clearly seen the man's hands moving earlier and heard faint, agonized groans coming from his mouth.
Something occurred to the emergency doctor, and he hurried outside, only to find that the family who had brought the man in had already left. He immediately notified the Public Security Office, but they could not locate the patient's family at all.
In the end, the hospital had no choice but to send the patient to the morgue. In the process, they discovered another oddity: beneath his ordinary clothes, the patient wore a hospital gown. He seemed to have already been a patient at some hospital.
And this hospital gown was strange. Generally, hospital gowns had vertical blue-and-white stripes, while prison uniforms had horizontal black-and-white stripes. This patient's gown, however, had horizontal blue-and-white stripes. It seemed to carry a deeply ominous meaning.
No one knew what it meant that a long-dead patient had been brought to the hospital. But once the body was placed in the morgue, everyone considered the matter over. The rest could only be left to the Public Security Office.
Over the next few days, however, critically ill patients, doctors, and nurses at North Second Road Hospital kept dying under mysterious circumstances. Only then did the hospital's senior management realize something was wrong. They contacted the Public Security Office again, which reported the matter to the Netherworld and entered it into the Underworld App.
"A patient who'd been dead for ages, a strange hospital gown..." Jiang Chen muttered, noting down some key details.
After class, Jiang Chen took a taxi to the old city. Despite its name, it was actually quite bustling. It was still part of Jiangbei City, after all, and two office towers over thirty stories tall had been built there in the past two years.
As the taxi passed along the street, the shops on either side were crowded. But once it turned onto another road, the surroundings suddenly grew deserted. A sign stood by the roadside.
[Hospital ahead. Drive slowly.]
When they reached the main gate, Jiang Chen got out. The elderly security guard at the entrance glanced at him but did not ask for any identification.
Inside the gate stood a large osmanthus tree on the left and a row of pines on the right. Several trash cans lined the path, giving off a pungent mix of disinfectant and medicinal smells.
The hospital had three buildings. After a moment's thought, Jiang Chen entered the main building.
Working hours were already over. The registration counter was empty, and the doors to the departments on either side were all closed, though the corridor lights were still on. Only when Jiang Chen reached the second floor did he see a nurse on duty, hurrying along with a stack of medical records in her hands.
"Hello, nurse," Jiang Chen called out.
The nurse's hand gave a violent jerk. She turned around with an unpleasant expression and snapped, "It's late at night. Don't call out to people so suddenly! The emergency doctor is on the third floor. Go up yourself."
"Oh, I'm not looking for a doctor. I just wanted to ask where your hospital's morgue is," Jiang Chen said with a smile.
At those words, the nurse's expression froze.
Late at night, someone suddenly came up to ask where the morgue was.
Anyone would have been frightened.
"Could you tell me, nurse? I have some urgent business in the morgue." When she failed to answer, Jiang Chen smiled again, trying to look as gentle as possible.
Little did he know that, to the nurse, his smile only made him look even more sinister.
What urgent business could anyone have in the morgue this late at night?
Was he in a hurry to lie down in there?
"Ah!" Something seemed to occur to her. She screamed and ran upstairs, her footsteps clattering.
Jiang Chen: "..."
He could only follow her upstairs, calling out to reassure her, "Don't be scared, nurse. I have nothing to do with that serial killer in the recent news."
With him shouting and chasing after her, the nurse went pale with terror and ran even harder.
By the time Jiang Chen reached the next floor, he saw her running toward the other end of the corridor. She was probably planning to go down the stairs on the far side to lose him. It seemed this nurse would not dare stay in the hospital tonight.
"Slow down, nurse! Wait for me!" Jiang Chen called again, then shook his head with a smile and stopped chasing her.
There were things he could not say outright, but the hospital was bound to be especially dangerous tonight. Scaring her away was for her own good.
The emergency room on the third floor was lit.
Jiang Chen walked in and saw a middle-aged doctor in a white coat playing on his phone. Apparently noticing someone entering, the doctor looked up. "Here for treatment?"
"No. I wanted to ask where your hospital's morgue is."
The doctor hesitated at those words, then asked tentatively, "Are you here to deal with... that matter, sir?"
Jiang Chen paused. "You know about it?"
"Heh, I signed a confidentiality agreement. The officers from the Public Security Office said someone would come within the next couple of days." The doctor smiled and let out a long breath of relief. "Thank goodness. We've all been living in fear lately."
"Oh, right. My name is Zhang Wenbo."
"Jiang Chen." Jiang Chen nodded. "Take me there."
"Of course. The morgue is beneath the inpatient building. Let's get the key from the first floor first."
The two walked down the corridor.
"By the way, tell me more about what happened," Jiang Chen said.
There was information on the Underworld App, but it certainly could not match the understanding of someone who had experienced it firsthand.
"After Patient No. 18 arrived, the first person to die was one of my patients." Zhang Wenbo sighed.
Jiang Chen knew that Patient No. 18 referred to that strange patient. The number 18 had been printed on his peculiar hospital gown.
"My patient was an elderly man. He'd had a benign soft-tissue tumor removed and had some heart problems as well. With his advanced age, he was considered critically ill. But he'd already been recovering in the hospital for half a month, and his condition was gradually improving. He might even have been able to leave the critical care ward next month," Zhang Wenbo continued.
"But on the third day after No. 18 disappeared from the morgue, the old man was suddenly diagnosed with multiple organ failure. We couldn't save him. Medically speaking, it was impossible. His illness simply couldn't have caused that kind of complication!"
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