Chapter 79: A Ghost Nearby

The double ward had only one occupant. She stood blankly on the bed in a white hospital gown.

That was right—she was standing on her tiptoes on the mattress, reaching for the ceiling.

'What is she doing?'

The door to this ward was highly unusual; it could only be opened from the outside. Seeing no one around, I took off my jacket, jammed it into the doorframe to keep it from locking, and pushed my way inside.

Logically, a double ward with only one patient should feel empty and lonely. Yet, the first thing that hit me upon entering was a stifling sense of oppression.

This profound oppressiveness came from the ceiling. When I casually glanced up, my pupils shrank.

The ceiling, which should have been a spotless white, was covered in cruel, bloody drawings and vicious, resentful curses.

"Kill him! Kill him!"

"I'll peel his skin off!"

"Revenge! Give me the knife, give me back the knife!"

"Look, his blood is spilled everywhere..."

Most of the scarlet words were written in lipstick, some in mercurochrome, and a small portion in fresh blood.

Seeing the dense mass of curses and the slew of incomplete human figures on the ceiling, I drew in a sharp breath. The moment I stepped through the door, I even had the illusion that I was in the middle of an Underworld Live Show live broadcast mission.

'Her mind suffered a severe trauma. Could this be a lingering effect from the car crash?'

I walked slowly to her bedside. All ten of her fingers were wrapped in thick bandages, but fresh blood constantly seeped through the tips.

I didn't speak. Instead, I crossed my arms and watched her quietly.

The woman stood on her tiptoes, drawing on the ceiling with her left hand while her right hand was stuffed into her mouth.

After tracing a few more strokes, perhaps because the blood on her left fingertips had clotted, she pulled her right hand from her mouth. Bright blood flowed from the finger pads, and she looked thoroughly delighted.

She had bitten all ten of her fingers until they bled profusely, yet she seemed to feel no pain. Straining to stay on her tiptoes, she continued crafting one bloody piece after another above her head.

'What is she trying to express through these drawings? Indignation? Resentment?' I didn't know how to appreciate art, but I could glean a basic linguistic logic from the hysterical curses above.

That meant the woman hadn't gone completely insane. There was still a chance we could communicate.

"Jiang Shihan."

Hearing her name, the woman stopped what she was doing. She tilted her head and looked down at me.

Most people would probably feel extremely uncomfortable being stared at by such a bizarre woman in a closed hospital room, but I was accustomed to it.

"Do you know Huang Guanxing?"

At the mention of that name, Jiang Shihan's mouth opened wider and wider. Fear quickly spread across her entire face like a drop of ink falling into clear tea.

Her delicate, pretty features became pale and twisted. She pressed tightly against the wall, acting as if I were a vengeful ghost from the Underworld.

"Such a strong reaction? What exactly did you two go through that night?"

She didn't speak. Snatching up the quilt, she covered her head, leaving only her lower half exposed as she trembled in terror from the waist down.

'Did the Underworld Live Show target you two?' Seeing this, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty. This girl was merely implicated by Huang Guanxing; she hadn't done anything wrong herself.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I took out my phone and photographed the bloody drawings and vicious curses above, planning to study them later.

But as I snapped the photos, I suddenly paused. 'These drawings are connected.'

The first drawing was done in lipstick. Though scribbled and simple, I could roughly make out two stick figures surrounded by a mess of chaotic shapes.

They endured various tortures. Finally, one stick figure was sliced in half, while the other was let go by those chaotic shapes.

The next drawing was smeared in mercurochrome. The freed stick figure hid alone inside a large square box, which I interpreted as representing a house.

Many bizarre figures lingered outside the box. Jiang Shihan drew them abstractly—they resembled humans, yet looked far stranger and more hideous.

The drawings after that grew even more baffling. The stick figure opened a wardrobe to find strange people hiding inside, opened a refrigerator and found strange people, and opened what looked like a wok, only to find people hiding inside that too.

These drawings filled up most of the space above my head. I then looked at the drawing Jiang Shihan had just been working on.

A stick figure stood on a bed. And separated by only a thin mattress, one of those strange things was hiding right under the bed!

The drawings crafted in fresh blood carried a visceral, metallic realism. As I studied them, I slowly recalled the scene from when I first walked in: wasn't Jiang Shihan standing right on the bed, drawing above her head?

'The stick figure in her drawing is herself!'

I turned my head. At some point, Jiang Shihan had peeked out from under the covers. She opened her mouth but didn't speak, merely sticking out her tongue to point toward the mattress.

"That thing is hiding under the bed right now?" I instantly grasped her meaning. "But I checked beneath the bed when I came in. Aside from the two of us, there's no one else in this room."

'Could it be?'

Taking out the Underworld Live Show Phone, I opened the camera app. Keeping my eyes glued to the screen, I reached it under the bed.

The scene beneath the bed appeared on the screen: a pair of slippers and a spittoon. The lighting was a bit dim, but nothing looked out of the ordinary.

'No!' I angled the phone in another direction and swept it upward, making a startling discovery.

Clinging to the corner of the bed frame was an emaciated, skeletal infant!

'A Thai Little Ghost!'

The Little Ghost hadn't yet realized it had been discovered. Its toothless mouth was stretched wide open, seemingly feeding on Jiang Shihan's life essence.

"There really is a ghost under the bed. If that's the case..." I looked at the bloody doodles covering the ceiling, my heart skipping a beat. 'All those blurry, bizarre figures in the drawings are ghosts!'

No wonder Jiang Shihan had been driven to madness. She had truly been put through hell these past few days.

'Is this how the Underworld Live Show kills people?' Thinking of this, I shook my head. 'Huang Guanxing had no grudges or grievances with the Underworld Live Show. If the gatekeeper Grandpa Huang was killed because he was about to expose the show's existence, Huang Guanxing hadn't done anything to violate their contract.'

When it came to the unnatural deaths of the livestream viewers, there had always been a logical blind spot.

Did they stumble upon the Underworld Live Show live broadcast because they were already nearing the end of their lives, or were their lives claimed precisely because they watched it?

Even now, I hadn't figured out this cause-and-effect relationship.

'Jiang Shihan is the key to solving this mystery. She can't be allowed to suffer any further.' I called Secretary Zhang in the dead of night, hoping he could handle her hospital discharge procedures and let her stay at Ganding Pharmaceuticals for the time being.

Though Secretary Zhang was surprised, he professionally assured me that he would come to the hospital right away to sort out the paperwork.

Jiang Shihan hid herself back under the covers while I held up my phone, observing the Little Ghost's every move.

'I saw a similar Little Ghost at Jiang Chen's wedding. Both Jiangjin Real Estate and Qian Ding Pharmaceutical Company are top corporate giants in Jiangcheng, and the Jiang family was also among the suspects Secretary Zhang mentioned.'

'Could it be that the ones who killed Huang Guanxing weren't the Underworld Live Show, but the Jiang family?'

I recalled a news report I had read a long time ago. The real estate market had been booming over the past few years, and the deep-pocketed Ganding Pharmaceuticals seemed eager to enter the industry. Backed by their long history and sterling reputation in Jiangcheng, they had already secured several development projects.

'They have plenty of motive to kill. As for the means to do it...' I had seen the Jiang family's Little Ghost with my own eyes. Moreover, Jiang Chen had previously hired Mr. Gu to deal with me; they seemed highly adept at using such underhanded, dark-arts methods to eliminate their problems.

'Looking at it this way, Jiangjin Real Estate becomes the biggest suspect in this case.'

I furrowed my brows. If that was truly the case, everything in Jiangcheng was about to change.

A war between two major corporate factions, once ignited, would affect everyone in Jiangcheng.

'Before obtaining conclusive evidence, I cannot leak a single word of this, or my situation will become even more dangerous.'

Watching the Little Ghost grinning eerily on my phone screen, I fell into deep thought.

Secretary Zhang arrived forty minutes later. The moment he walked through the door, he too was badly startled. A ceiling completely covered in blood-red drawings would be a severe shock to anyone.

He made a few calls to the hospital's directors, but because it involved so many different departments, her discharge paperwork couldn't be processed until dawn.

"Gao Jian, waiting one night shouldn't hurt, right?" Secretary Zhang wore a troubled expression; after all, my demands were indeed a bit excessive.

"That's hard to say." I leaned against the doorframe, looking out at the nurse sitting in the duty station.