Chapter 332: Rumors

The scene before me was incredibly bizarre. The children seemed to know the female streamer and I would enter this room; they had been waiting outside to ambush us.

Pressed tightly together, they stood side by side, their pale, grayish faces twisting into incomprehensible expressions.

Their features were scrunched together and their gazes venomous with hatred. Their slightly parted lips looked as if they were whispering something.

A sharp gasp sounded beside me. The female streamer's eyes were wide as saucers, her mouth slowly dropping open.

"Don't panic!" Hand still holding the Underworld Live Show Live Broadcast Phone, I clamped my palm over her mouth and dragged her backward out of the room.

Her skin felt icy and soft against my fingertips as I forcefully hauled her out of the ward.

"It's past midnight; it's not safe here anymore," I said, releasing her and shutting the door.

"Th-those children were so strange..." Chen Xiaocang stammered, her voice breaking. "Are they from a nearby village? Won't their parents be worried if they don't go home to sleep this late?"

I sneered, shooting the female streamer a sidelong glance. "Haven't you always wanted to see a ghost? I hope you got a good look just now."

"Ghosts?! You're saying those children are ghosts? Impossible." Chen Xiaocang shook her head resolutely. Perhaps reality was too far from what she had imagined, causing her to refuse to believe my words. "Those kids just have weird expressions. Their eyes, noses, and eyebrows are exactly like a normal person's. They're just homeless orphans who live around here, right?"

"You really have a knack for rationalizing things." When people encountered something beyond common sense, they habitually leaned on their life experience to find a logical explanation. Sometimes, even if they brushed shoulders with a real ghost, they wouldn't believe it, choosing instead to deceive themselves with false psychological reassurances.

"Think about the printer earlier. Wasn't the image of that baby inside it also 'perfectly normal' and clear as day?" I grabbed the Great Divine Mantra of the Big Dipper and hauled Chen Xiaocang toward the third floor. We couldn't afford to waste any more time.

"Let go of me!" She suddenly jerked her arm away in agitation, glaring at me warily. "No, you're the one behind all this! That self-operating printer and those children are all tricks you set up in advance! Every time I made a sound, you were always the first to arrive. And at the corner on the second floor, with so many rooms in the hallway, how did you know I was hiding in the storage room? I bet you were hiding on the other side of the corridor the whole time!"

"You're being unreasonable. I only saved you to repay the karma of this talisman. Keep throwing these tantrums, and I absolutely will leave you to fend for yourself." My voice was ice-cold, and I spoke nothing but the truth.

Chen Xiaocang was already terrified, and my words only left her more flustered. Today's paranormal stream felt completely different from her previous ones, though she couldn't quite put her finger on what exactly had changed.

"Little brother, I've been streaming a lot longer than you have. Did you really think a cheap trick like this would scare me into submitting to you?" After a second or two of thought, the female streamer made her decision. Baring her canines, she shot me a vicious glare and spun around to push open the ward door I had kicked open earlier. "Those kids are just actors you hired. I'm going to expose you right now—unmask you in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers!"

Holding her phone up, she pushed open the door. The room's layout hadn't changed at all, but there was one key difference:

The children who had originally been standing outside the window were now all inside.

They stood side by side next to the bed, their beady little eyes locked dead on the female streamer.

"How did you get in here?" Between the door closing and opening again, barely three or four seconds had passed. Not only had the children outside the window managed to get inside, but even their standing postures hadn't changed in the slightest.

A subtle change crept over the female streamer's face. She looked toward the windowsill. The window was shut tight, and the paper seal over it showed no signs of being torn or peeled back.

"The seal is intact, and the window was never opened. So where did these children come from?"

"Run!" I grabbed Chen Xiaocang's arm and, without another word, sprinted upstairs.

She was already scared witless. The phone slipped from her palm and dropped to the floor, her mind completely filled with the echo of my earlier words. 'Are... are there really ghosts in this world?'

The female streamer and I dashed forward, a bone-piercing chill steadily closing in from behind.

"Where are we running to?" Chen Xiaocang was gripped by anxiety and despair. She didn't trust me in the slightest, viewing me as some despicable, filthy pervert. She wanted nothing to do with me, but the children trailing us were clearly far more terrifying. By comparison, she had no choice but to let me drag her along.

'Wolves before me, tigers behind me, and I lost my phone. Chen Xiaocang, oh Chen Xiaocang, you've really hit a dead end tonight,' she sighed inwardly, following me up to the third floor.

With the chill closing in on our heels, I didn't even look back as I yelled at Chen Xiaocang, "Give me the Talisman Paper!"

She thrust her satchel toward me. As I reached the third-floor stairwell, I reached inside and blindly grabbed a thick handful of talismans. Circulating the pitiful, thread-like sliver of Pre-Heaven qi in my body, I flicked my wrist and hurled them behind me.

The pure Pre-Heaven qi generated by the Profound Truth Mental Method synergized with the Profound Truth Dao Heavenly Master Talismans. Although they were just low-grade talisman papers, the Daoist resonance within them was successfully activated. Streaks of golden light burst forth like the leaves of a thousand-leaf parasol tree, swirling with righteous energy. The Little Ghosts struck by the talismans let out piercing shrieks, their bodies smoking as if they had been branded by a red-hot iron.

"Is this magic?" Chen Xiaocang was dumbfounded. She had tried throwing those talismans plenty of times before, but no matter how she threw them, she had never produced such an astonishing effect.

"Go! Let's hide first!" With my Pre-Heaven qi exhausted, my face was somewhat pale. Taking advantage of the Little Ghosts' fear, I found a random office and shoved us inside.

Closing the door, I took a quick look around. Once I was sure it was safe, I sat cross-legged on the floor, quickly entering a meditative state to circulate the Profound Truth Mental Method.

Two Major Heavenly Cycles later, the Pre-Heaven qi coalesced, reappearing in my dantian like a babbling brook.

"This strand of Pre-Heaven True Qi really does have endless uses. It is the true foundation of Daoist cultivation." I opened my eyes, a sharp glint flashing across my pupils.

The way Chen Xiaocang looked at me had changed. While I was cultivating, my aura had shifted dramatically—no longer scheming and guarded, but pure, natural, and aligned with the Dao.

"Are you a Daoist priest?" After pondering for a long time, she finally couldn't hold back her curiosity and asked.

"I guess you could say I'm half of one." I nodded. No one was guiding my cultivation path, and I didn't belong to any lineage, so I couldn't be considered a true Daoist priest.

Chen Xiaocang was curious as she stared at the Large-Screen Phone in my hand. "A Daoist priest livestreams? Isn't that a bit too trendy?"

I could tell there was less hostility in her voice now. Ignoring her, I walked to the door and pressed my ear against it, listening closely. Then, I flipped the switch on the Brooch, slid it under the door gap, and switched my perspective to survey the corridor outside.

"It's safe. The Little Ghosts didn't follow us." I let out a sigh of relief, opened the door, and retrieved the Brooch, pinning it back onto my chest. "You probably aren't getting out of here anytime soon. Stick close to me and do exactly as I say. That's the only way you'll survive."

This female streamer was actually slightly older than me. To go from a complete nobody to a top-tier anchor with over a hundred thousand viewers in such a short amount of time, she had to have some genuine ability.

I counted the remaining talismans in the satchel. I hadn't been paying attention earlier and had thrown out more than half of them in one handful; only a third were left.

"Enough for one more use." I pocketed the talismans and handed the satchel back to Chen Xiaocang.

"No matter what happens next, stay calm. Don't scream, and absolutely don't run away blindly," I instructed. I stepped out of the room, preparing to check the other departments.

'Why are all the rooms on this floor unlocked? Could someone have been coming in and out of here frequently while the hospital was shut down?'

The two largest departments on the third floor were the Maternity VIP Ward and the Neonatal Disease Screening Center. I didn't find much during my search, save for several medical records of newborn patients inside the Neonatal Disease Screening Center. According to the consultation ratios, roughly one in every four babies born at this hospital was diagnosed with a congenital illness. A twenty-five percent affliction rate was simply absurd.

Looking at these medical records, I suddenly remembered some online rumors about this hospital. Someone had claimed that during prenatal check-ups, the hospital would deliberately tell mothers that their babies had various diseases. If the mothers insisted on giving birth anyway, the staff would steal the healthy baby and swap it with a prematurely deceased infant, telling the mother that her child had tragically passed away.