Chapter 434 - 378: Chaisi the Villain, the Veteran, and the Old TCM Doctor

"Brother Chaisi!"

In the gloomy hospital room, a figure suddenly burst through the rectangular doorway, which was bathed in the orange glow of the hallway lights. Han Liuyue seemed startled by the utter mess in the pitch-black room and cried out, "Are you okay?"

Having been pinned down by Fu Tailan's gunfire and letting his prey slip right through his fingers, Chaisi was decidedly not okay. He wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if he was in the middle of having an aneurysm.

But facing Han Liuyue, he could only swallow his frustration and say, "...I'm fine. Fu Tailan just got away, that's all. There'll be plenty of chances later. What were you saying? What's happened to Blackmoor City?"

Han Liuyue glanced around and first picked up the notice sign Illusion by the door. This Illusion was easy to set up, but you had to know the method to remove it.

Turn left three times, turn right once, then press down twice, and the sign would pop up. The technique wasn't complex, but if you didn't already know it, you couldn't possibly figure out how to take it with you in a hurry.

After all, it was something meant to be displayed outside. If just anyone could reach out and grab it, it would defeat the purpose.

"When I went to look for David just now, I found the storage room door open. I'm not sure if he regained consciousness and got out on his own. I was going to ask around to see if anyone had seen him..."

Han Liuyue took a breath, forcing herself to calm down.

"At first, I thought all the pandemonium outside was because people in the hospital had heard the gunshots."

As she spoke, she entered the room and hastily rummaged in the dark, finding a toiletry bag, a backpack, and her phone. "But I quickly realized that was only part of the reason. One of the men yelling for security to lock the hospital's main gates had just rushed in with the crowd. He didn't even know there had been a shooting."

Rushing into the hospital, demanding the doors be locked—Chaisi immediately put it together. "They're taking refuge in the hospital? Did something major happen outside?"

"Yes, but the problem is, no one can explain it clearly." Han Liuyue exhaled sharply. "I only just woke up today myself, so I'm still fuzzy on a lot of things. I just heard them say there's been nonstop torrential rain, and the city is flooding... But even with a flood, why would people need to seek refuge in a hospital?"

Chaisi knew it had been raining all day. But when he woke up this morning, and again when he arrived at the hospital, the downpour had coincidentally let up. It never crossed his mind that it could have caused a flood.

If the whole area was flooded, locking the hospital doors would be pointless. Why the man was still demanding security do it was the first thing that didn't add up. The second was Han Liuyue's expression.

Before tonight, he had almost never seen Han Liuyue look so panicked and uneasy. Even on the day of the Nest recording, she had remained calm and resolute.

"Let's get out of here first," Chaisi said, jerking his chin toward the door. "Tell me everything you saw on our way out."

Han Liuyue's expression faltered for a second. She first agreed, "Okay," but as she reached the door, she suddenly said in a low voice, "I... I don't know if we can even get out."

Chaisi glanced at her.

As if struck by a whip, the words came tumbling out of Han Liuyue. "The hallway was chaotic. I grabbed several people to ask what was going on, but their answers were all incoherent. They were saying all sorts of crazy things..."

She said she had just turned around when she saw a crowd of people rush in from the end of the hallway.

The people in the group didn't seem to know one another; it was as if they had all just happened to flee to the same place. They were flustered and frantic. Every single one of them was soaked to the bone, steaming with a mix of anxiety and panic. They left a countless, chaotic mess of wet, fearful footprints on the floor. A little girl, dragged along by her mother, was wailing and nearly slipped and fell.

"To the rooftop!"

Someone shouted, stumbling past Han Liuyue as if she wasn't there. His yelling seemed to be more for his own benefit. "The rooftop—it can't be on the rooftop—don't go down... It's too late even if they lock the doors now! Too late! It might have already gotten in!"

"What's going on? What did he say got in?"

Han Liuyue grabbed a middle-aged man as he passed. His glasses, still covered in water droplets and fog, had slipped down his nose. He didn't bother to wipe them; his face was a mask of pale terror. "You all just came in, right? What's happened?"

"F-flooding... A lot of the streets are flooded..."

The middle-aged man stammered, his eyes looking right at her but seeming to see right through her, as if he was trapped replaying some scene in his mind over and over. "You have to avoid... avoid the water..."

"Avoid the water?" Han Liuyue was both anxious and confused. "How are you supposed to avoid water?"

"I don't know!" The middle-aged man suddenly snapped, wrenching his arm from her grasp. "Don't try to stop me!"

He just wanted to run, but he didn't seem to know where he was going. Like a lost dog, he just followed the crowd rushing toward the stairwell at the other end of the hall.

Han Liuyue's peripheral vision told her the crowd hadn't fully passed yet. She immediately turned to stop another person—but then she froze, slowly backing away until her back was pressed against the wall.

She watched the man walk past her—face-to-face, all three of their eyes meeting, as he passed right in front of her.

With her back against the wall, Han Liuyue watched as the man sidestepped past her like a crab. One of his eyes remained fixed on her, as if he were completely oblivious to the fact that he was scuttling. As he moved, he asked, "Have you heard what's happening outside?"

'He's human. Definitely human.'

'But why would a human move like that?'

She swallowed hard. "...No."

"All sorts of weird things are appearing out there. You absolutely can't go outside." ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The strangest thing in the hallway right then was this man, who was tightly covering half his face with one hand. The expression on the visible half was slack and weary, as if he were bored.

Yet his tone was filled with anxiety. "Did some high-tech company decide to integrate their special effects into our daily lives? They should be held responsible for causing this much chaos! Those things are so weird..."

By the time he said this, he had already scuttled a good distance away.

Torn between wanting to chase after him for more answers and worrying about Chaisi back in the room, Han Liuyue raised her voice and shouted, "What weird things did you see?"

'A mirror?'

The man abruptly turned his head and pointed behind her. "That."

Han Liuyue's heart leaped. She spun around, but all she saw was an empty hallway, abandoned by the terrified crowd. The very air seemed to ripple with the after-effects of their panic.

'There's nothing here. What did he want me to see?'

When Han Liuyue turned back around, the crab-walking man had vanished from the hallway.

Even for someone as calm and decisive as she was, for a moment, she was at a loss. If everything were as chaotic and bizarre as a Nest, she could act without restraint. But this chaos, perversely, still seemed to be tethered to the mundane world.

After a moment's thought, she decided to go back and regroup with Chaisi.

On her way back, a broadcast announcement echoed from some distant hall. It advised everyone to remain calm, find a dry place to wait for rescue, not to run around, and above all, not to leave the hospital building...

The broadcast paused, then added in a clear, loud voice, "It's too late anyway."

"'It's too late anyway?'" Chaisi frowned.

"Yeah. I don't know if I misheard it or what..." Han Liuyue shook her head. "No one seems to want to go outside, and it's still pouring."

In the few minutes it took her to explain, the two had left the ward and gone down to the first floor. The elevator stopped smoothly, and a female voice announced, "First floor."

They waited, but the doors didn't open.

Chaisi and Han Liuyue exchanged a glance. She jabbed the 'open door' button several times.

The elevator doors remained shut, solid as a sealed wall.

"Please do not force the doors open," the female voice announced in a monotone. "Moisture is intruding. Please be careful."

After the voice faded, the elevator fell silent for a moment.

No one spoke. No one asked what was going on. And no one started pounding on the doors. Both of them, without a word, chose to hold their breath and listen.

Even though Chaisi had never entered a Nest, he knew exactly what strategies and actions to take when encountering strange phenomena within one.

He had rehearsed it in his mind countless times, preparing for the day he might accidentally stumble into a Nest.

He ran drills in his dreams—hypothesizing, rehearsing, and making unexpected discoveries. And now, all that preparation was finally being put to use, not in a Nest, but in Blackmoor City.

'He... He was still in Blackmoor City, right?'

Sure enough, the female voice started up again. It had paused for several seconds, as if waiting to see if the two of them would hang on for its next words.

When the announcement finally finished, the silence from Chaisi and Han Liuyue was no longer strategic. It was born of pure shock.

"How...?" Han Liuyue lowered her head and stared at her own hands as if to confirm they were still there. "I didn't open a Path... This should still be Blackmoor City..."

Chaisi stared at the tightly shut, iron-gray elevator doors. After a few seconds, he spoke her name. "Han Liuyue."

"Sir," Han Liuyue immediately stood at attention. The memories of her military service had clearly never left her.

"Getting in the elevator... whose idea was that?" Chaisi asked in a low voice.