Chapter 141 - 131: Key Point

Bai Qiang read the danger in Yin Zhen’s eyes. Instinctively, she deployed a Spiritual Barrier behind her back—a physical reflex drilled into her during her time in the Red Corpse World.

The Spiritual Barrier failed to stop the Ghost Nurse. She phased right through it, but at the exact moment the barrier was breached, Bai Qiang sensed the Ghost Nurse’s silhouette. She spun around, raising a hand to block the Ghost Nurse’s wrist.

The instant they made contact, yin energy froze her fingers like solid ice. Still, Bai Qiang gritted her teeth and refused to let go. The syringe hovered directly above her eye. It was incredibly thin and sharp, and Bai Qiang could clearly see a tiny strip of dried soft tissue still clinging to the needle’s tip. She got a clear look at the Ghost Nurse’s face. Her charred skin was peeling back, her lips completely burned away to expose her tooth roots and gums.

In the nick of time, Bai Qiang could only condense her spiritual power and slam it directly into the Ghost Nurse’s brain.

The moment her spiritual power crashed in, Bai Qiang saw a hallway billowing with thick smoke. She was running against the flow of people, heading deeper into the ward. Someone grabbed her arm and shouted, "Don’t go! The fire is too big!" She shook them off, saying there was still one child unaccounted for—a severely ill child abandoned even by their own parents.

She pushed open door after door, but every bed and every corner was empty. The child wasn’t there. Her pace slowed as she navigated the heavy smoke. She leaned against the wall, coughing so hard she couldn’t stand up straight, yet she refused to turn back. Bai Qiang felt her anxiety, urgency, and panic, as well as her unyielding obsession to never give up.

Thick smoke swallowed the final stretch of the hallway, and a shrill scream shattered the vision.

Snapping back to reality, Bai Qiang saw Yin Zhen gripping the broken half of an IV stand and viciously stabbing it into the Ghost Nurse’s back. A faint layer of black light coated the stand. That was the Strength Yin Zhen had extracted from her Inheritance, but it wasn’t enough to kill the Ghost Nurse outright.

The Ghost Nurse convulsed. Yin Zhen yanked Bai Qiang up and dragged her into the nearest ward, slamming the door shut and locking it.

Pressing a hand against her throbbing head, Bai Qiang scanned the dark, dilapidated room, but she didn’t see the head nurse.

"The head nurse is in the room next door," Yin Zhen said while inspecting every corner of the ward. So far, she hadn’t spotted anything unholy.

Walking over to the door, Yin Zhen peered through the grime-covered glass and discovered that the Ghost Nurse outside had vanished as well. The Ghost Nurse definitely wasn’t dead. Every floor in the inpatient building had a strict rule against lingering outside the wards after ten o’clock. That was undoubtedly meant to ward off this very Ghost Nurse; she was one of the most powerful ghosts in the entire building.

"Why were you able to hurt her?" Bai Qiang whispered to Yin Zhen.

"The Strength of the soul. Zoe taught it to me. You won’t be able to learn it," Yin Zhen replied bluntly.

Bai Qiang was speechless. She had just asked for an explanation; did she really have to belittle her too?

"The event progress increased. It’s at twenty percent now. It seems that nurse was an important ghost." Yin Zhen also glanced at the event progress; she and Bai Qiang were perfectly synchronized. "What did you do?" she asked Bai Qiang.

Bai Qiang recounted the vision she had just seen to Yin Zhen, adding, "The nurse’s obsession is finding the child who slipped out of the ward during the fire. It’s exactly because of this that she harbors such intense murderous intent toward anyone who disobeys the rules and leaves their room without permission at night. Going by classic horror movie tropes, if we help her find that child, we should be able to resolve her obsession and make her vanish for good, right?"

Yin Zhen thought about it. "Not necessarily, but it’s worth a try."

"There’s also the Ghost Doctor and the ghost security guard I ran into. It’s highly likely they’re important ghosts too," Bai Qiang said slowly as she pondered. "The obsessions of the nurse and doctor are easy to understand. But when I encountered the ghost security guard, he was carrying a fire axe and hacking at the chains on the stairwell door. That part is incredibly strange.

"I remember the news saying the hospital fire back then was caused by a patient’s family member smoking in the second-floor stairwell. The cigarette butt ignited some temporarily stored clutter. At that time, the hospital shouldn’t have had any Kaidans, nor should there have been any need to specifically lock the stairwell doors. Why was that security guard hacking at the chains? Who locked it?"

[Event Progress: 45%]

Realizing the event progress had suddenly spiked, Yin Zhen looked at Bai Qiang. "You found the key point!"

Bai Qiang lifted her chin slightly, sporting a smug expression that practically screamed, "I’m just that smart."

Yin Zhen said, "That patient in the ICU is most likely Yu Dahai, the man sentenced for arson back then. The news reported his prison term was seven years, and the fire happened ten years ago. The timeline matches up. I have a feeling the truth behind this shouldn’t be too complicated."

Bai Qiang nodded. "Oh right, I also noticed something else. Although spiritual power doesn’t work on these ghosts, whenever these things touch my deployed Spiritual Barrier, I can clearly sense their silhouettes and fluctuations. You can keep your spiritual power scattered around you, and you’ll know exactly where the ghosts are and if they’re approaching."

Yin Zhen remained expressionless. "No need. I can see them."

Bai Qiang bared her teeth. Why was this girl so infuriating?!

Yin Zhen recalled the situation from moments ago and added, "The instant a ghost is about to kill you, you can touch and see it. If your reflexes are fast enough, you can dodge."

Earlier, when the female ghost had grabbed Yin Zhen’s leg in the hallway, Ying had pounced but missed completely, yet Yin Zhen’s own hand was able to press against the female ghost’s face. It was the same for Bai Qiang just now; when she was attacked, she managed to catch the Ghost Nurse’s hand.

"Oh," Bai Qiang replied, deliberately keeping her face cold.

Yin Zhen pressed her ear to the door and listened for a while. Once the dead silence returned outside, she slowly pulled the door open. Dust drifted through the dark hallway, carrying the stench of charred flesh. She crept out cautiously and made her way to the adjacent ward. "You can come out now, ma’am."

The moment she pulled the door open, the head nurse yanked Yin Zhen to her side and poked her head out to check both ends of the hallway. After the three reunited, Yin Zhen explained the situation in the stairwell. A pile of corpses was blocking the middle of the stairs leading to the fourth floor. It was obvious that a lot of things were trapped on the third floor, making it undeniably difficult to head up.

The trio explored down the corridor. The wards were empty, as were the nurse’s station and the resident doctors’ office. The head nurse casually picked up an inpatient medical record and opened it, only to be instantly startled.

"How... how is this possible?"

Yin Zhen and Bai Qiang leaned in close. Not being particularly tall, Yin Zhen stood on her tiptoes and saw that the date on the medical record was from ten years ago. The two exchanged a glance. It was completely unsurprising—a classic horror movie trope.

Bai Qiang quickly flipped through the medical records. Just as Yin Zhen was considering whether to use the Half a Book to replicate other abilities and see if they worked on ghosts, a sound suddenly echoed from the end of the corridor.

DING—

It was the sound of an elevator!

Bai Qiang and the head nurse went wide-eyed. All three of them immediately snapped their gazes toward the source of the sound.

Accompanied by the CLANG of the elevator doors sliding open, dim yellow light spilled out from the gap, casting a skewed rectangular patch of light onto the dust-covered floor tiles. While Bai Qiang was still hesitating, Yin Zhen raised her flashlight and walked toward the elevator.

The elevator was ancient. The interior walls of the car were covered in scratches and blackened stains. Yin Zhen waited for the head nurse and Bai Qiang to catch up before stepping inside. All the buttons were sunken in, and none of the indicator lights were on.

"There was never an elevator here before," the head nurse said, a trace of panic in her voice.

"Get in. We don’t have a choice."

Bai Qiang pulled the head nurse along as she stepped inside, still clutching one of the medical records in her hand. Yin Zhen raised a questioning eyebrow.

Bai Qiang waved the medical record. "I have a theory about that Ghost Doctor. We might be able to use this later."

The elevator doors slowly closed. The incandescent light overhead BUZZED and flickered a few times before the entire car began its sluggish ascent. A short while later, the elevator shuddered to a halt. As the doors slowly slid apart, a red number was revealed on the opposite wall.

14.

The head nurse gasped. "Our hospital doesn’t have a fourteenth floor! Everything above the thirteenth floor is considered the fifteenth floor. When the old building caught fire starting from the second floor, the people upstairs were forced all the way to the top by the smoke. In the end, they all died on that exact floor—and that floor was the fourteenth floor!"

The elevator shuddered. The three hastily stepped out, but just as they found their footing, the light behind them abruptly vanished. They whipped their heads around. The elevator was gone, leaving nothing behind but a bare, solid wall.

The head nurse’s legs went weak, and a cold sweat broke out across Bai Qiang’s back. They knew this was just a standard horror movie trope, but being caught right in the middle of it was still terrifying. It was like going into a haunted house—even knowing all the ghosts were just actors in costumes, a sudden jump scare would still trigger an intense physical reaction.

Yin Zhen raised her flashlight, sweeping its beam across their surroundings.

"It’s labeled as the fifteenth floor, but it’s actually the fourteenth. Makes no difference. Lead the way. Let’s head to the ICU."