Chapter 597: Why Is Everything In The Hospital White?

Putting the driver's license back, I found some printed "flyers" tucked into the pocket of the car's sun visor.

"Gu Tongtong?" I took a closer look and realized these so-called flyers were missing person notices bearing a photo of a cute infant girl.

'A baby couldn't have just wandered off. When a child goes missing, a normal person's first reaction is to call the police. Why print missing person flyers and search for her themselves? Is she not their biological daughter? Or is her existence something they can't expose?' Suspicions began to surface. I rummaged through the storage compartment left of the steering wheel and found a few photos alongside a commercial performance contract.

'Che Chili? This woman is a celebrity?' I rarely watched television and knew little about the entertainment industry. I just vaguely recognized her. The surname Che was also rare, which made her stick in my memory.

'This is getting interesting. The baby goes missing and they don't call the police, but instead drive out to the wilderness to make a deal after getting a ransom call? There's definitely some dark secret here.' I recalled the optional tasks for the Underworld Live Show. Rescuing an innocent person rewarded ten points, exactly the same as killing a live show streamer. But thinking carefully, how was "innocent" defined? What kind of person counted as innocent?

Everyone had a dirty side. Strictly speaking, the only truly innocent person in the hospital would be that infant girl.

"Her name is Gu Tongtong." I returned everything inside the car to its original place and got out, meticulously sweeping the surrounding area for traces. I took out my phone for a light, which was when I spotted the shoeprints the woman had left behind.

Tracking the shoeprints, I found the trail ultimately vanished into a small grove of trees.

'This woman didn't enter the hospital? The shoeprints are messy. She ran away in a panic, then disappeared into the woods. What did she see inside the car?' There was no blood or shredded flesh around. The woman should still be alive, but her direction of flight baffled me.

The woman's abnormal behavior quietly suggested one thing: the terrifying entity she saw might have appeared directly inside the car.

Only that could explain why she would abandon the vehicle and flee.

'I paid attention when the man left. The windows were all rolled up, and there was no third person inside. It seems the problem occurred during the brief time I was away.' I had tracked the man for over a hundred meters, which couldn't have taken more than three minutes.

"An ordinary person wouldn't be able to get inside without breaking a window or a door. Did she see something unclean?" Just murmuring the words "something unclean" made me shiver. It wasn't that I was a coward; the environment was simply far too eerie, severely testing my courage.

'Running into a ghost right at the start of the broadcast... this pacing is a bit fast!' I suppressed my unease, memorized those three names, and headed back the way I came.

It was almost midnight. To complete the broadcast mission, I had to enter the hospital. I couldn't delay any longer.

'She didn't even understand the principle of do not enter when encountering a forest. This woman probably met a grim fate.' I returned to the wooden ladder, vaulted over the perimeter wall, and officially entered the hospital.

'Killing a live show streamer rewards ten points. If I don't want to be exposed, I'd better invent an identity.' Thinking of this, I couldn't help but smile bitterly. "Running to this godforsaken place in the middle of the night, no cover story is going to hold up. Forget it, I'll just play it by ear."

To maintain the popularity of my broadcast room, I didn't take off the Brooch. I merely pinned it to an inconspicuous spot where I could easily pluck it off at any moment.

Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital was massive. It had three main buildings, each connected by corridors. Even without using the main entrances, a person could move back and forth between the three structures, and there was more than one route to do so.

For someone at a disadvantage in strength like me, this was actually good news.

Thinking about it carefully, it made sense. If the terrain wasn't complex, the hunt would lose all its "fun."

The inside and outside of the perimeter wall were two completely different worlds. Although the outside was overgrown with weeds, you could at least hear the chirping of insects and the flutter of bats. Inside the hospital, however, it was terrifyingly quiet. It seemed even the bugs refused to linger here.

The concrete road had long since cracked after over a decade of exposure to the elements. Weeds grew stubbornly from the fissures, and among their stems, I could occasionally spot discarded syringes, IV fluid bags, and other non-biodegradable medical waste from inside the hospital.

'This hospital is dead silent; even breathing feels oppressive.' I was a Ghost Cultivator. Normally, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable even in a hazard node filled with Yin energy. But in this hospital, my entire body felt wrong—like a fish dumped into a pot of slowly heating water.

'Perhaps it's because the aura of death here is simply too dense.'

Although hospitals wore a halo of "healing the sick and saving the dying," they were the places ordinary people hated the most. The older generation would wash their hands repeatedly after returning from one. In some regions, there was even a custom: after returning home from a major hospitalization, one had to bathe twice and drink a small cup of white liquor from the offering table.

If normal hospitals were like this, one could only imagine a Cancer Research Hospital with its staggering mortality rate.

'Why did this hospital relocate in the first place? What was the reason?' I pieced this together with the clue the Live Show Examiner had given me: "Why is everything in the hospital white?"

'Does white refer to the color, a specific person, or some kind of object?' I shook my head, unable to come up with an answer. Using my Judging Eye, I pressed forward through the darkness.

After a person spends a long time in the dark, their vision becomes extremely sharp, often capable of catching the faintest shifts in light.

'Gu Bei is just an ordinary person. If he entered the hospital without using his phone for light, he would barely be able to move a single step. But I can't see any trace of light right now. Where did that guy run off to?'

I slowly approached the hospital buildings. Finding Gu Bei's shoeprints in this environment would be incredibly difficult, and I didn't have time to check every single building. The hospital was simply too large; just walking around its perimeter would probably take half an hour.

'The terrain is complex. For the kidnappers to arrange a deal here, they aren't ordinary people either.' Since I had lost track of Gu Bei, the kidnapping lead was essentially a dead end. However, knowing about their presence in the hospital ahead of time was still an advantage.

'Gu Bei probably isn't a live show streamer...'

I reached the end of the concrete road and arrived at the nearest Outpatient Building. The glass on the main doors had been shattered, making the entrance look incredibly bleak, as if it had been ravaged by war.

Shards of glass littered the ground, unswept. Dead leaves and mud were scattered everywhere.

'No shoeprints at the entrance. Gu Bei probably didn't enter this building.' I peered inside. The Outpatient Building was pitch-black, chilling me just looking at it.

'Ghosts aren't the scariest part; it's the fear that other streamers are already lying in ambush inside and have set up deadly traps.' I hadn't officially entered the hospital until midnight. Among all the streamers, I was undoubtedly the last to arrive.

'That clue from the Live Show Examiner is crucial. It has to be related to the hospital. I need to figure it out soon; only by grasping its key point can I turn the tables and secure a victory tonight.' The clue was tied to the hospital itself. The only way to decipher its meaning was to step inside.

Stepping through the shattered main entrance and into the Outpatient Building, I found that the interior walls, the ceilings, and even the floor tiles were entirely white.

'The walls and rotting ceiling have been painted with a layer of white, and the floor is paved with white tiles. It's exactly as the Live Show Examiner said.' I reached out and scraped the wall. The paint had several layers—some cracking, some peeling into dry flakes. What intrigued me, however, was that the wall beneath the paint was also white, as if the exterior coating had seeped straight into it.

'Was repeatedly applying several layers of paint meant to cover something up?' It was impossible to scrape off every inch of paint to check. Shaking my head, I brushed the residue from my hands and walked deeper into the building.

'There are only a few live show streamers in total. I couldn't possibly be unlucky enough to run into one right away, could I? I need to hurry up and find some clues. Being overly cautious will only lower my chances of survival.' I hadn't gone more than a few steps before my ears picked up a peculiar sound—a bubbling, gurgling noise, like bubbles rising from underwater.

'I heard this sound over the phone before the broadcast started. Is this another clue from the Live Show Examiner?'