The Female Doctor Appears

"Just as well. One step closer to the truth," Fang Xiu murmured. He had never intended to leave; he wanted to explore Green Mountain Psychiatric Hospital.

The two continued forward and soon discovered two large pools of blood a short distance down the corridor.

The blood loss was staggering. Much of it had splashed onto the surrounding walls, and scattered over the pools were scraps of flesh, bone fragments, and shredded sales office uniforms and security uniforms.

The scraps of flesh and bone looked like leftovers from someone's meal, marked with tooth impressions and signs of tearing.

Looking at the familiar clothing before him, Fang Xiu knew perfectly well that these were the colleague and security guard who had gone to check the power earlier.

Clearly, the Ghost had eaten them both.

At the sight, Fang Xiu instantly understood why the Ghost only reappeared three minutes after a man disappeared.

For a woman, it took only two minutes.

It turned out that the interval between the Ghost's appearances depended on the amount of flesh.

Almost none of the female employees at the sales office were unattractive. At the very least, they had regular features and slim figures, as the industry demanded, so they had considerably less flesh than their male colleagues.

The Ghost took about three minutes to eat a male colleague and about two minutes to eat a female one.

"Xiu! Th-they were eaten by the Ghost?!" Beside him, Zhao Hao was pale and trembling all over.

Fang Xiu ignored him and carefully examined the shredded clothing instead. The cuts were extremely clean, clearly made by some kind of sharp blade. Connecting this with the Ghosts he had seen earlier in Green Mountain Psychiatric Hospital, the Female Physician's figure immediately came to mind.

Cuts like these were most likely the work of the scalpel in her hand.

Just then, a flurry of footsteps sounded behind Fang Xiu and Zhao Hao.

They turned to look and saw Wang Ziteng and his group emerge from the dark corridor.

"My God! What is this place? Isn't this supposed to be the sales office?"

"This looks like a hospital!"

Wang Ziteng and the others cried out, their eyes filled with panic and disbelief.

Indeed, no one could have imagined that, after walking down a corridor in the sales office, they would emerge to find that the familiar surroundings had become a hospital.

"Fang Xiu, Zhao Hao, you two came out first. Did you find anything? Have you seen Zhao and Li?" Manager Wu Dahai asked shakily.

"Zhao and Li, they..." Trembling, Zhao Hao pointed at the two pools of blood on the floor.

Wang Ziteng and the others followed his finger, and their pupils immediately contracted.

"Blood! So much blood!" Li Feifei screamed uncontrollably.

"Those are... Zhao's and Li's clothes!" Wang Ziteng's expression grew uglier, cold sweat streaming down his face as though some horrifying image had occurred to him.

"They were eaten..."

Those words sent a chill through everyone.

"Young Master Wang! Hurry, let's get out of here! I want to go home! Sob..." Li Feifei burst into frightened tears, tugging at Wang Ziteng's arm and pleading incessantly.

Wang Ziteng abruptly snapped out of it. "Right, right! Let's go, now!"

He was about to lead the people behind him forward, but when he looked at the unfamiliar, empty hospital corridor ahead, he could not bring himself to take a single step.

Who knew where this corridor led? What if the Ghosts' lair was up ahead?

Wang Ziteng was under tremendous pressure, like the person at the very front of a group visiting a haunted house.

Yet everyone insisted on treating him as their pillar of support, all cowering behind him.

Fortunately, Fang Xiu soon relieved him of his predicament.

Fang Xiu had finished his examination and started moving.

He calmly walked deeper into the corridor, with Zhao Hao following close on his heels.

Seeing someone clear the way ahead, Wang Ziteng stopped hesitating and headed straight forward.

However, he did not follow as closely as Zhao Hao. Whether out of pride or for some other reason, he kept a distance of about three meters between them.

Tap, tap, tap...

Their clustered footsteps echoed through the empty corridor, deliberately muffled, as though they were terrified the Ghost might hear them.

Suddenly.

The footsteps stopped dead.

Fang Xiu, who was at the very front, had stopped. Like a lead sheep, the moment he halted, Zhao Hao behind him stopped too.

Then Wang Ziteng and the other colleagues followed suit.

Wang Ziteng desperately wanted to ask Fang Xiu why he had stopped, but his pride kept him from speaking.

If he asked, wouldn't that make it seem as though he was afraid to move unless Fang Xiu led the way?

"Fang Xiu, why did you stop?" Li Feifei's voice was full of panic.

The woman had already been scared out of her wits, losing all the shrewdness she once possessed as an accomplished white-collar professional. Seeing Fang Xiu stop, she instinctively questioned him in her desperate desire to leave.

Fang Xiu did not answer. Instead, he glanced at his phone, then said after a moment's silence, "Time's up."

"What do you mean, time's up?" Li Feifei asked reflexively.

The others were equally bewildered.

Only Wang Ziteng understood. His expression changed drastically, and he hurriedly raised his left hand to look at the expensive watch on his wrist.

"It's been three minutes!"

Everyone instantly realized what he meant, their faces blanching in alarm.

Just then, a series of clicks and cracks sounded behind them.

The sounds were crisp, like joints rotating.

When everyone turned around, terror nearly drove their souls from their bodies.

A Female Physician in a white coat hung upside down from the corridor ceiling, her hair disheveled, her limbs long like a spider's, and her eyes nothing but white.

The clicking and cracking came from her turning her neck.

Because she hung upside down from the ceiling like a spider, her face was the opposite way up from theirs, with the top of her head below and her chin above. But as her head rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees, her face finally aligned with theirs.

Wordless terror began spreading like a tide.

Before the Ghost appeared and after she appeared were two entirely different things. When she was right in front of you, staring straight at you, even a man made of iron would tremble inside.

The Female Physician stared fixedly at them. The next second, her limbs thrashed wildly, and she crawled toward them like a human-shaped spider.

"Aah!!!"

Li Feifei's scream acted like a starting signal, and everyone bolted like mad, running for their lives.

This time, no one needed anybody to lead the way. They even resented the people ahead for blocking their path.

The psychiatric hospital's corridor was narrow to begin with. In their desperation to escape, they instinctively yanked hard at anyone blocking them, trying to save themselves.

Some of the physically weaker people were shoved straight to the floor.

Li Feifei, for instance.

As a delicate beauty, she had kept clinging to Wang Ziteng's arm for protection. But the moment danger struck, Wang Ziteng was the first to fling her to the floor and run for his life.

Wang Ziteng reacted quickly. He was the first to flee and the one running at the very front.

At that moment, Fang Xiu and Zhao Hao stood directly in his escape route.

But neither Fang Xiu nor Zhao Hao ran.

Zhao Hao was simply frozen with fear, while Fang Xiu was observing.

Just as he had suspected, the killer was indeed the Female Physician he had seen earlier in the psychiatric hospital.

After all, most of the Ghosts in Green Mountain Psychiatric Hospital were locked in their own wards. Although some ward doors had been opened, he had not encountered those Ghosts while exploring earlier. The only one he had encountered was this Female Physician. She was not a patient but a doctor, so she had not been locked up.