Out of control-where are your manners?

At his words, the patient stopped, lowering her deep, pool-like eyes to gaze silently at him, at his bandaged broken arm and his lame leg encased in plaster. Her gaze seemed to say: nothing happened here, but are you all right?

Zhao Yi coughed and explained, "A minor injury on a mission."

Any ordinary person hearing that should have realized he was a field operative from the Ability Control Bureau, and he naturally assumed the patient had understood too.

Nothing seemed to have happened on this floor. That faint sensation earlier seemed to have been only his imagination, but out of caution, Zhao Yi still told the patient, "If anything happens, run downstairs. I'm in room 211."

Ye Jiang watched her lame fellow patient take the elevator downstairs, then tilted her head and continued toward the room next door with the books in her arms.

The patient next door was out, so she piled the books outside the room.

She had finally figured it out: the patient next door had swiped these books from various doctors in the hospital.

She had to tell her fellow patient that she had no desire whatsoever for it to steal books to cultivate her into a poet.

If she absolutely had to sing the praises of something, it would definitely be: lying flat was good.

Even this "literary type" used very ordinary modifiers.

Chapter 5: Out of control-where are your manners?

Now that Ye Jiang was out, she did not particularly want to go back. There was nothing worth watching on television today, just too many commercials, and she really disliked commercials. Whenever they came on, she emptied her mind and spaced out.

She wandered around the floor. At the end of the corridor, several nurses were chatting at the nurses' station. She did not know what they were talking about, but their expressions were tense and their voices very low.

Ye Jiang did not make a point of listening. She glanced over and did not see the nurse who checked her room every morning and evening. That was the only nurse she knew well. Her name was Ding Xuan, and she had given Ye Jiang candy that morning.

Speaking of candy, Ye Jiang caught sight of a fruit platter on the inquiry counter at the nurses' station. It held candies in that familiar shiny wrapping.

Were those the wedding candies Doctor Lin had given out?

Ye Jiang stared at the candies, wanting to go over and ask for some, but she recalled Nurse Ding's lessons on getting along in the world and stopped herself. After thinking for a moment, she went over and asked the nurses at the station, "Where is Doctor Lin?"

Once she found that Doctor Lin who had gotten married and congratulated him, wouldn't she get wedding candy?

That was her plan, but no one answered her question.

She blinked and raised her voice. "Excuse me..."

"Oh! You startled me!" The nearest nurse abruptly looked up, patting her chest in fright. "When did you get here? How come you walk without making a sound?"

The other nurses all looked up too, staring at Ye Jiang in surprise. None of them had noticed her arrival.

One nurse recognized Ye Jiang. "Oh, you're the patient in bed 312."

She smiled as she looked Ye Jiang over. "You can get up and walk around now? That's great. You're recovering well. You should be able to leave the hospital soon."

Then she added, "You have a very good friend. She's come to see you every day for three years. I can't imagine how heartbroken she'd have been if you hadn't woken up."

The story of the vegetative patient in intensive care and her friend was well known throughout the hospital. Now that the nurse had met the person herself, she could not stop expressing her feelings. The other nurses joined in, all talking at once. Fortunately, they did not forget Ye Jiang and asked why she had come. When they heard her ask whether there was a doctor surnamed Lin in the department, one of the nurses repeated in some surprise, "Doctor Lin?"

She seemed not to understand why Ye Jiang had mentioned this doctor and was about to say something when the lights at the nurses' station suddenly flickered. The bulbs hissed, startling the nurses into silence as they looked up at the ceiling.

A wave of icy

air suddenly swept in. The space around them seemed unstable, the walls and floor rippling and twisting like water.

"Ah!" Unable to keep their footing, the nurses clung to one another and cried out, "What's happening? What's going on?"

The unstable floor shook the nurses into a huddle, and sounds of vomiting rose one after another. A few steps away, Ye Jiang stood steadily by herself, seemingly in a different space from them, entirely unaffected.

Drip.

Water dripped from the ceiling.

Drip, drip.

The drops fell like a sudden downpour.

One nurse reached for the telephone on the desk, but halfway there, her arm suddenly went limp. Then her body crumpled limply to the floor. Once one fell, the others fell in succession.

Ye Jiang tilted her head, not understanding why the nurses had all suddenly collapsed. She was about to check on them when her gaze suddenly shifted toward the corridor. At one end of it, the patient from next door abruptly appeared, watching her from far away with two black holes. Then, just as abruptly, her fellow patient turned and left.

Like a hurried farewell.

The chill receded, space returned to normal, the overhead lights stopped flickering, and the floor became dry again. Only a few streaks of water remained on the corridor floor, forming several fading words-

[I've remembered.]

[I'm leaving.]

The water quickly dispersed without leaving a trace.

Downstairs in room 211, Zhao Yi had just lain down on his hospital bed. Before he could take out his phone to relax with a game, a fierce chill enveloped him, its presence so powerful that it felt like steel needles stabbing his brain.

This was...

He sprang upright, all ten fingers flying as he swiftly sent his captain a message: [At the hospital!]

Then he rolled out of bed, tore off the bandages hampering his hand, and rushed upstairs.

It hadn't been his imagination. That Polluted had definitely appeared just now!

By the time he reached the floor above, its presence had already receded. Several nurses lay sprawled across the floor. His heart went ice-cold, and he hurried forward to check-

They were only unconscious.

His heart settled back into his chest, and warmth slowly returned to his blood.

He breathed a small sigh of relief, but that strange feeling struck him again. This terrifying Polluted that had appeared in City A, it...

It seemed to retain a shred of reason.

That was strange. Far too strange. Polluted had no reason, because the moment they were contaminated and became Polluted, they were already brain-dead. All that remained was murderous intent and malice toward humans. But what was going on with this Polluted? It had passed up his life when it was there for the taking, even though he had been a lamb awaiting slaughter. It had not killed these nurses, only knocked them unconscious, even though they were merely ordinary people with no power to fight back. Compared with other Polluted, this Class A Polluted was exceptionally... merciful, making it seem as though it still possessed reason.

Could a Polluted like that exist? Could it?

A storm surged through his heart.

But there was no time to ponder it at leisure. He still had to check whether anyone elsewhere had been killed, and track down where that Polluted had gone!

At that thought, he stood and turned his attention to the rooms on either side of the corridor. Just then, he abruptly froze. Only now did he notice a patient in hospital clothes standing by the window at the end of the corridor, silently gazing outside. Noticing his gaze, she slowly turned her head to look at him.

Frail and pale. It was that literary type.

Had she been here all along?

Then had she witnessed that Polluted?

How lucky!

Zhao Yi called over to her, "Ma'am, did you see where the Polluted went?"

Ye Jiang: "?"

Ma'am?

Was he calling her?

What was a Polluted?

She shook her head lightly. She did not even know what a Polluted was.

She hadn't seen it?

Zhao Yi felt disappointed. Right, if she'd faced the Polluted, how could she still be standing here unharmed? That frail little frame looked like a gust of wind could knock it over!

He quickly composed himself and said, "It's fine. Never mind if you didn't see it. I was just asking."

Then he instructed her sternly, "Which room are you in? Go back and stay there. It's..."

Before he could say "dangerous," his phone rang. His captain was calling to ask about the situation at the hospital. Zhao Yi broke off his conversation with the patient to report to his captain over the phone. "Several nurses passed out. Nothing serious happened. I was just about to check the rooms. The Polluted's gone. I can't sense its presence. Most likely it ran off again. Tsk, it really knows how to run!"

Zhao Yi spoke rapidly as he checked the rooms one by one. Inside, every patient had fallen unconscious from mild contamination, without exception.

After checking the last room and stepping back into the corridor, he suddenly stopped as something occurred to him-every medical worker and patient on the floor had passed out, so how had that literary type remained conscious?

He looked toward the window in surprise, but the patient was already nowhere to be seen.

Ye Jiang was walking out of the hospital alone. It was her first time leaving it.

The world outside the hospital was a little different from what she had expected. It was very quiet, without a single pedestrian in sight.

Standing at the deserted hospital entrance, she looked left and right before choosing a road and following it at an unhurried pace. She walked alone along the empty street, and even the darkening sky did not stop her.

At dusk, the setting sun spilled across the silent city, ominous as blood.

Suddenly, a car horn shattered the silence.

Then another.

One after another.

In a residential building with its doors and windows tightly shut, someone quietly lifted a corner of a curtain and saw several modified vehicles speeding down the street below. It was the familiar convoy of the Ability Control Bureau. Judging by the direction they were heading, that was...

The outskirts.

Had something happened in the outskirts?

An hour before the setting sun appeared, at the Zhou Family estate on the outskirts.

Darkness was always more frightening than daylight. The head of the Zhou Family ordered the household servants to recheck every sealed door and window, then personally inspected the estate's security system to confirm it was working normally. He counted the ability users in the household again, making sure they had all been assigned to his and his son's rooms without anyone being missed. Only then did he shut himself in his room.

He rambled on in his room.

"I shouldn't have let those people leave."

"How could I have let them leave?"