Chapter 138 - 128: Ghost Realm

A child, standing among a group of adults, said she knew how to get downstairs.

The man with crutches said in an annoyed tone, "Stop messing around, kid. Go find your mom."

Yin Zhen ignored the man and turned to leave. Wei Yang raised an eyebrow and followed her.

The nurse called out twice from behind. Seeing Wei Yang leave as well, she hesitated for a moment before gesturing for the others to follow. Since no one had a better idea right now, they might as well go and see.

Yin Zhen stopped in front of the fourth-floor elevator doors. "The hospital rules state that we can’t take the elevator, but we can climb down the elevator shaft, just like in the movies."

The adults froze, looking at each other in dismay.

"Will... will that work?" a patient’s family member questioned.

The man with the crutches also frowned. "It’s pitch black in the elevator shaft. What if someone falls?"

Wei Yang’s eyes gradually lit up. "This kid is really clever," she thought. The east staircase had disappeared, there was clearly a vicious monster in the west staircase, the windows couldn’t be opened wide, and all the other passages were locked dead. As things stood, the elevator shaft was their only way out.

"Everyone, lend a hand. Let’s pry the elevator doors open first," Wei Yang said, calling on a few family members to help her.

The nurse asked hesitantly, "But we have patients with broken bones. How are they supposed to climb?"

"That’s your problem," Wei Yang said, gripping the door with one hand.

The elevator doors were forcefully pulled open. Wei Yang poked her head in to take a look. When the power went out, the elevator car had stopped on the 15th floor. Below it was pitch-black; nothing could be seen.

Wei Yang didn’t go down herself. She turned and scanned the four family members—three men and one woman. Her gaze landed on the men. "Find a rope. You guys go down first to check and pry open the elevator doors on the first floor."

The male family members looked at each other, none of them daring to step forward.

Just then, the elevator doors on the floor above were also opened, and the light from a cell phone shone down from above.

"Zhang Yueqin!" Yin Zhen shouted upward. "Is that you?"

It was quiet up there for a moment, and then Bai Qiang’s head popped out from the elevator doorway. "Hey! Mom is right here!"

Yin Zhen’s eyelids drooped. "At a time like this, she still doesn’t forget to take advantage of me!" she thought.

While the people on the fourth floor were still hesitating, Bai Qiang had already found a rope and thrown it down. She nimbly climbed from the fifth floor to the fourth to meet up with Yin Zhen.

Wei Yang looked Bai Qiang up and down. Seeing that she was fine, Wei Yang took off her neck sling, removed her cast, secured the rope the nurse had found, and entered the elevator shaft.

Bai Qiang was covered in black ash and blood. The two of them returned to the ward, found Zhang Yueqin’s original clothes in her locker to change into, and had some of the water and bread they had bought yesterday.

Yin Zhen asked about Bai Qiang’s experience last night. Bai Qiang answered vaguely, "Nothing much. I just had the Ghost Doctor take a look at my brain, that’s all."

Yin Zhen waited for a long time, but Bai Qiang just ate her bread with relish and said nothing else.

"What do we do next?" Bai Qiang asked. "Do we hole up in the ward for three days, or take the initiative and work with the others to find a way out?"

Yin Zhen pondered and said, "I’m afraid the system won’t let us just hide here indefinitely. If we really try that, we might get teleported separately to other dangerous places at night. It’s better to be proactive, find a way out, trigger various events, and get more rewards."

At the mention of rewards, Bai Qiang took out a roll of Blood-stained bandage from her pocket. "My reward for escaping last night."

[Blood-stained bandage]: A one-time-use Item. A used bandage naturally cannot be used to dress wounds, but it has a certain attraction to some Special entities. If you drop the Blood-stained bandage, that Special entity will be drawn to it for 15 seconds. You’d better run somewhere it can’t see you within those 15 seconds.

Yin Zhen looked at it and returned it to Bai Qiang. "Keep it yourself. Take this Amulet too. You’re unluckier than me."

"And whose fault is it that I became this unlucky?" Bai Qiang retorted, but she didn’t refuse the Amulet Yin Zhen handed over, casually slipping it into her pocket.

After eating and drinking their fill, the two returned to the elevator shaft. Hearing the commotion, the people on the floors above and below had also opened the elevator doors on their respective floors, using ropes to assist the patients and their families in moving to the first floor.

"Let’s go down too," Bai Qiang said.

Yin Zhen nodded. The two entered the elevator shaft one after the other. After climbing down a few steps, a crisp CRACK echoed from above.

Yin Zhen and Bai Qiang both broke out in a cold sweat at the sound. Immediately after, the noise of steel cables snapping one by one grew denser and faster. Finally, all the noises merged into the screech of metal scraping against the walls, pouring down from very high above.

The elevator car was falling!

Bai Qiang was ready to curse. "This damn system is really sparing no effort to kill me!" she thought.

"Jump!" Yin Zhen shouted, letting go of the rope. Every time she grabbed a cross brace, she used it to break her momentum.

The wind was forced down into the shaft by the plummeting car. Screams rang out one after another as several people from the upper floors fell, slamming into the walls of the elevator shaft with short, muffled thuds before continuing their plunge.

SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!

Like plastic bags full of water thrown from a height and bursting on the ground, the stench of blood instantly overpowered all other smells.

The elevator doors on the first floor were open.

"Hurry!"

With Ying’s secret help, Yin Zhen and Bai Qiang pushed off and dashed out through the elevator doors one after the other. The instant Yin Zhen’s body cleared the elevator shaft, the car smashed down right behind her.

In that split second, Yin Zhen felt as if an invisible fist had viciously smashed into her back. The bottom of the elevator shaft exploded, and the resulting blast wave sent Yin Zhen and Bai Qiang flying.

BOOM!

The car smashed half a meter deep into the ground. Its bottom suffered a complete Transformation, and a large amount of blood slowly seeped out from the crevices beneath it.

Yin Zhen lay prone on the corridor’s floor tiles. Her ears were ringing with a constant buzzing, and it took several seconds before she could hear her surroundings again. Bai Qiang had collapsed beside her. She had knocked her knee rather hard, and a dark ring of blood was seeping through her pant leg.

"...Are you okay?" Yin Zhen asked.

Bai Qiang didn’t answer. She was just glad that Yin Zhen had replicated a Structural Repair ability for her last night. She would just find a place to secretly repair her injured knee later.

At this moment, a group of people had gathered at the first-floor elevator entrance of the inpatient department. There were about twelve or thirteen of them, all lucky enough to have survived climbing down the elevator shaft.

Yin Zhen helped Bai Qiang to the lobby and found that the main doors of the inpatient department were open. Outside was a stretch of dark red, like thick fog, obscuring everything from sight.

Just as Yin Zhen was about to ask Wei Yang beside her if they could go out, she heard a scream coming from outside. A person in a hospital gown, covered in blood, was running back. Just as they were about to reach the main doors, the sound of flesh being cleaved violently rang out. The patient’s entire body stiffened, and they pitched forward stiffly.

Everyone vaguely saw a twisted dark silhouette retreat into the blood mist. The sound of an axe being dragged across the ground made their skin crawl. Everyone in the lobby shrank back; no one dared to leave the building anymore.

Wei Yang sat on a bench, readjusting her left arm. She said slowly, "We’re trapped in a Ghost Realm. Even if people from the Abnormal Investigation Bureau came, their only option would be to enter the Ghost Realm and break it from the inside. But don’t count on that. The Abnormal Investigation Bureau’s usual practice is to seal off the Ghost Realm’s area and wait for it to dissipate naturally."

The head nurse asked urgently, "Then how can we get out?"

Wei Yang sighed. "To break a Ghost Realm, there are two methods."

Everyone looked toward her.

"First, feed it." Wei Yang held up a finger. "The more people who die inside, the ’fuller’ the Ghost Realm becomes. Once it’s full, it will naturally recede. However, no one can predict exactly how many people the Ghost Realm needs to consume to be full."

A chorus of sharp gasps echoed as most of the people turned deathly pale.

"What about the second method?" the head nurse asked.

Wei Yang said, "There must be a reason why the Ghost Realm was triggered. Find that reason, and we can find a way to break it."

Yin Zhen suddenly thought of something. "I was woken up by the sound of an ambulance last night. I checked my watch, and it was nine... nine forty-seven PM."

A few nurses exchanged glances, and the on-duty nurse nodded. "An ambulance did indeed bring in a burn patient last night."

"Where is the patient?" Wei Yang asked.

Another nurse said, "That burn patient was in critical condition when brought in. After emergency treatment, they were transferred directly to the ICU for observation on the top floor—the fifteenth floor."

Bai Qiang chimed in, "The elevator ultimately stopped on the fifteenth floor as well, so this patient was the last person to enter the inpatient department last night, right?"

The head nurse immediately began searching through the crowd. "No one came down from the fifteenth floor."

Those currently gathered in the lobby were basically all from the fifth floor and below. Any higher up and the floors were too far; the patients and nurses up there wouldn’t necessarily have the courage to climb down the elevator shaft.

"So what do we do now?" someone asked.

Just then, Bai Qiang stepped forward and said, "I have an idea. I don’t know if it’ll be useful, but do any of you know Feng Shui?"