Chapter 81: do not close your eyes when the sky turns dark (2)

From the hospital's top floor, the late hour did nothing to cool the city's heat. Traffic flowed endlessly down the streets in a sea of flashing lights, while lonely silhouettes drifted through the dazzling neon.

"Yeah, it's dark now." I closed the door and walked toward Jiang Shihan. Separated by a single pane of glass, Ward 9114 and the outside world felt like two entirely different worlds.

The woman stood barefoot on the hospital bed. Wherever I moved, her eyes followed, as if scrutinizing me.

"I know you've probably seen some unbelievable things over the last few days. They showed up out of nowhere and smashed your life like a sledgehammer. I understand how you feel, and I know exactly what state you're in." Raising both hands, I sat down on the edge of her bed.

She lowered her head, staring at me with wide eyes, as if trying to memorize every detail of my face.

"A sudden upheaval like this makes a person doubt themselves. Deep down, you probably think you've lost your mind, that everything you're seeing is a hallucination." I pulled out a cigarette and clamped it between my lips. "But it's not. You aren't crazy. Those weren't hallucinations; they actually exist."

A bright flame bloomed from the lighter. It brought a different kind of light than the lamps—a searing heat the body could actually feel.

A long-lost warmth radiated from my hand. Jiang Shihan slowly crouched down, and like a child catching crickets in the summer countryside, she actually reached out to grab the flame.

I lit the cigarette and withdrew the lighter, so Jiang Shihan only ended up touching my hand.

Warm and soft—that was my first reaction. I believed she could feel my body heat, too.

"Understand?" I said. "I'm human. Someone who wants to help you."

She must have suddenly remembered something. Jiang Shihan snatched her hand back, pulled the blanket over herself, and shrank against the edge of the bed.

She hid her head under the covers, clearly refusing to communicate with me.

"Looks like it's not time yet." To recreate what really happened right before Huang Guanxing died, I had to ask Jiang Shihan. She was the sole eyewitness.

Smoking in silence, I was trying to figure out how to get through to Jiang Shihan, when the sound of a child playing with marbles suddenly echoed from the ceiling directly above me.

"What's bound to come, comes," I whispered.

Ward 9114 was on the top floor. Who would go up to the hospital roof to play with marbles at midnight?

This was a hospital, not a center for abnormal human research, so the answer was obvious.

I looked up. The sound of dropping marbles was incredibly grating, but even more terrifying were the bloody, horrifying pictures that immediately caught my eye. Even knowing they were mostly drawn with lipstick and medicinal iodine, a sense of terror still crept involuntarily along every nerve in my body.

"Has the game begun? I'd like to see what kind of tricks you have, if you actually dare to take a living person's life right in the middle of the city." Having survived three broadcast trials on the Underworld Live Show, my psychological endurance was far beyond that of a normal person.

The sound of the marbles overhead hadn't stopped before the wooden door of Ward 9114 was suddenly slapped.

All my attention had been focused on the ceiling; I didn't know who had slapped the door.

I crushed out my cigarette, turned on the Underworld Live Show Phone, and walked toward the door.

"Judging by the sound just now, it must have hit the center of the door. That height is a bit low for an adult; whoever slapped it should be a child."

I peered through the glass window in the door and looked out at the corridor. Past midnight, most of the hallway lights had been turned off; only a single lamp remained lit over by the nurses' station.

"No one at all?"

Just to be safe, I raised the Underworld Live Show Phone and scanned the area again. The corridor was completely empty. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"The door can't be opened from the inside. Whoever designed this ward was a total weirdo." I checked the lock once over. Short of using violence, neither Jiang Shihan nor I could hope to get out.

"First the marbles overhead, then the inexplicable slapping at the door. You're deliberately creating a terrifying atmosphere to make me nervous, so it's easier to make your move, aren't you?" These seemingly scary tricks were insignificant compared to my experiences in the Underworld Live Show. "Looks like you're going to be disappointed."

I looked back. Jiang Shihan, who had been perfectly fine just a moment ago, suddenly threw the blanket open. Her exposed feet hooked backward in agony as she lay with her back to me, shivering violently.

"What's wrong?" I rushed over to her and pulled the blanket aside, only to find her grabbing her own hair and forcefully yanking it downward. The force was immense, visibly distorting her scalp.

I first checked with the Underworld Live Show Phone. There were no unclean things around the woman.

"Jiang Shihan! Jiang Shihan!" I shouted her name loudly. Ultimately left with no other choice, I had to physically restrain her.

Strands of forcibly torn hair remained tangled in her fingertips. Her scalp was flushed and swollen, her eyes darted around erratically, and her mouth gaped open as she gulped down large mouthfuls of air.

She looked like a drowning victim drifting further and further from the shore, desperately flailing her arms, her head constantly shaking, and her teeth clamped down hard on the bedsheet.

"There are no ghosts around. Is she under some kind of evil arts?" Their ability to remotely trigger a breakdown exceeded my expectations.

It took a full fifteen minutes before Jiang Shihan finally returned to normal. Utterly drained, she collapsed onto the hospital bed, her eyes swimming with terror.

"Did you see something?" I asked softly. I hadn't really held out hope that she would answer, but to my surprise, she raised an arm and pointed at the door.

"Outside?"

I looked up. There was nothing outside the door.

But I knew things wouldn't be that simple. Recording with the phone, I caught a withered old face flashing past the glass window of the ward door.

"Who is it!" I shouted reflexively. When I looked again, there was already nothing left on the screen.

"Face full of wrinkles, barely a few strands of hair, someone that old definitely wouldn't be hospital staff..." I covered Jiang Shihan with the blanket, grabbed the Seven Astral Talisman, and hid by the door.

"Whether you're man or ghost, don't let me catch you." With the phone's camera aimed at the window, I kept my eyes glued to the screen, terrified of missing anything.

More than ten minutes later, the door was suddenly slapped. Just like the first time, there was absolutely no warning.

"Strange." The Underworld Live Show Phone's screen showed absolutely nothing. "Am I overthinking it?"

I continued waiting. The slapping sound rang out at regular intervals, incredibly punctual.

"It rings out about every fourteen minutes, give or take ten seconds, and every time the slapping sounds, the noise of dropping marbles overhead stops." I pulled out my own phone to start a timer. Thirteen minutes and thirty-something seconds after the previous knock, the marbles overhead abruptly fell silent.

"Is it coming?" I stared at the phone. When it hit fourteen minutes, I stood up from the wall.

"Now!" Without hesitation, I lifted my leg and kicked the lock open!

"Bang!" The tremendous crash could be heard clearly down the entire corridor. I was already prepared to receive complaints from the patients in the surrounding rooms—or rather, I had made a huge racket on purpose to attract the attention of more living people. "Who's out there?!"

The ward door slammed heavily against the wall, shattering glass all over the floor. The lights from Ward 9114 shone into the somewhat dim corridor.

Right in front of me, sitting outside the door with his hand raised, was a little boy with an abnormally pale face.

He was terrified. His raised hand had yet to fall, and the expression on his face froze like plaster.

"You're the one who's been knocking on 9114's door? Little guy, isn't your prank taking things a bit too far?" I narrowed my eyes and crouched down in front of him.

The boy sitting on the floor burst into loud wails. A moment later, the door to a room at the end of the corridor opened, and a middle-aged woman ran out.

"Lu Jie, get back here right now!" she scolded loudly with a stern tone. Weeping, the little boy hugged the middle-aged woman's hand without saying a word.

I quietly watched this bizarre mother and son pair, waiting for the adult to give me an answer.

But who would have expected that, after scolding the child, the middle-aged woman would act as if she couldn't see the shattered glass all over the floor. She simply turned her head, preparing to drag the boy back to their room.

"Your kid came over and knocked on our door several times. Are we just going to let this go?" Refusing to drop the matter, I reached out to grab the middle-aged woman. In response, the little boy suddenly ran over like a madman and bit right into my hand.

"Fuck!" The little guy must have used every ounce of strength he had for this bite; the teeth marks were incredibly deep.

"Lu Jie! Let go!" The middle-aged woman hurriedly pulled the little boy aside. With an apologetic look on her face, she stared at my bleeding palm. "I'm sorry, I didn't raise him right. I'll make him apologize to you right now!"

The middle-aged woman pulled the little boy in front of me. "Hurry up and say sorry to the mister."

The little guy glared viciously at me, not saying a single word.

"Hurry up and apologize!"

"I won't!" The boy had a stubborn look in his eyes, just like a young beast with nothing left to lose.

"I told you to apologize!" The middle-aged woman's voice gradually rose, but the boy simply refused to bow his head.

Seeing them locked in a dispute, I was just about to say forget it when the mother raised her hand and slapped the little boy heavily across the face!

"Smack!"

The sound was extremely loud. Not just me, but even the little boy clutched his face, tears welling in his eyes as he looked at the middle-aged woman in utter disbelief.

"You've never hit me before..."

"Lu Jie, apologize to the mister!!" As soon as she said that, she started crying herself. The mother and son stood like that in the empty corridor, wrapping their arms around each other and weeping bitterly as if no one else was there.

"I'm sorry." The boy finally lowered his head to apologize. Then, hugging the middle-aged woman's hand, the two of them walked back toward their room together.

"Hey, I really don't mind..." Once the boy had bitten me, I knew that at the very least, this little boy was definitely a living person.

"I've caused you trouble. It's all because I didn't raise him well." The middle-aged woman stroked the boy's forehead. Staring at my bleeding hand, she hesitated for a long time before finally saying, "Tonight, it's best if you do not close your eyes when the sky turns dark."

"What does that mean?" I wanted to press further, but the middle-aged woman had already led the little boy back into their room.

"Something doesn't feel right." I turned my head and looked at Jiang Shihan. Finding that she was staying quietly on the bed, I walked out of Ward 9114 and went over to the room the mother and son had just entered.

Looking inside through the glass, I saw the little boy sitting all alone on a stool, wiping his tears. As for his mother, she lay on the hospital bed as if deeply asleep, her body covered in feeding tubes.

"It's just the two of them in the room." Taking a step back, I looked at the name of this ward—ICU Intensive Care Unit.