Hospital 444
Chapter 104 - 17: The Shadow

Chapter 104: Chapter 17: The Shadow

Lu Yuqing pulled out a tissue and calmly wiped the coffee off his face.

"Dr. Dai, I advise you to be more rational."

After the initial shock, Lu Yuqing quickly regained his composure, "I’ve simply opened a coffee shop next to your parents’ residential area. I won’t do what you’re worried about, you can rest assured."

"So, you really want to please Han Ming that much?"

At this, Dai Lin’s tone became colder than ever before.

While wiping the coffee-stained fringe with a tissue, Lu Yuqing said, "Believe it or not, Dr. Dai. Anyway, please make sure to retrieve the Devil’s Cursed Object. I can reveal a secret to you, its existence concerns the entire Hospital 444."

Just as Dai Lin was about to hang up the video call, suddenly...

Because he could check out three-dimensional spaces through the flat-screen video, he saw two people sitting at a table in the distance behind Lu Yuqing.

Those two people were two foreign Caucasian men.

These two men both wore hoods that completely covered their foreheads, but their faces were still clearly visible.

The two men looked quite like those incredibly handsome, bloodsucking vampires from gothic literature, with skin eternally pale.

And the reason Dai Lin noticed these people... was that he always felt that these two Caucasian men looked familiar, as if he had seen them somewhere before. But he just couldn’t recall...

They both ordered the purest American coffee.

Everything seemed normal.

Could it be that he was overthinking it?

As Dai Lin pondered, the video call was disconnected.

"How did it go?" Lu Yanran came up, asking anxiously, "Dr. Dai, what did Dr. Lu say?"

"At six o’clock tonight, a ghost will knock on the door." Dai Lin said this and quickly added, "There’s no need to worry too much. With me here, and the protection of the Cursed Flesh, most likely the ghost won’t be able to get in."

"That’s good..." Lu Yanran patted her chest and said, "Dr. Dai, thank you... By the way, now that Zhang Bei is gone, how much will your house call fee be?"

"Let’s settle the fees after everything is over, your situation is quite special."

"How much will it be... ah?"

Lu Yanran didn’t think Hospital 444 could use health insurance.

"Like I said, you don’t need to worry. Let’s talk after you survive tomorrow night."

Dai Lin evaded the question, which made Lu Yanran start to feel more uneasy. Could it be that the medical fees were going to be very high?

She was actually thinking about giving Dr. Dai a red envelope if it was affordable, but with such paranormal doctors, she was unsure of the fee standards and had no idea how much would be appropriate.

"Also, you need to be careful about the kitchen window. I have already shown it to Dr. Lu, and she said..."

"Ah, yes, I’ve seen a shadow there before!" Lu Yanran interjected.

Afterward, Dai Lin and Lu Yanran went to the kitchen.

This time, Lu Yanran noticed that Dai Lin’s eyes began to open very wide, firmly fixated on the window in front of him.

"I think I’ll stay here all day today." Dai Lin turned around and said to Lu Yanran, "The problem now is, Dr. Lu is not sure when the ghost will invade through the window. I’ll feel more at ease standing guard here."

"The whole day?"

"Yes. It would be troublesome if a ghost came in."

For Dai Lin, only with ghosts was he completely confident he could manage.

If it’s a Resentful Spirit, then it’s quite a tricky situation. As for a vindictive ghost, if one truly encounters one, it’s absolutely a dead end.

He could only stay here to ensure that the ghost couldn’t get in. As long as it didn’t enter, he could still be protected by the Cursed Flesh.

Once it entered... then he could not guarantee anything; he could only fight for his life.

For Han Ming, even if he couldn’t reclaim the cursed object this time, it would probably be a gain if he could die here. As for Lu Yuqing opening a café next to his parents’ neighborhood, that was also a kind of "motivation."

Of course... taking action against family members is something Han Ming presumably wouldn’t do unless absolutely necessary. It’s a line-crossing move, and neither you, Han Ming, nor your faction is alone in the world; what you can do, Yin Wuque can also do.

But while this is the principle, when it comes to the safety of his parents, Dai Lin couldn’t afford to be the slightest bit negligent.

He must survive and bring the cursed object back with him.

Next, Dai Lin found a small stool and sat in front of the kitchen window, keeping watch.

Lu Yanran, on the other hand, was chopping vegetables to prepare lunch.

She placed the washed tomatoes on the cutting board, and as she chopped, she looked at Dai Lin and asked, "Paranormal Doctor, I want to ask you a question... how many people in this building are... ghosts?"

Lu Yanran now recalled the expressionless neighbors she had met after moving in.

They probably couldn’t be considered human anymore, right?

Dai Lin’s answer was, "I’m afraid that you and your husband are the only two living residents in this building."

"When we moved in, was this already a ghost apartment...?"

"Yes."

The memory of those neighbors, all ghosts, was enough to send chills down Lu Yanran’s spine.

"Then why, before Zhang Bei first went to your Hospital 444, didn’t the ghosts come to kill us?"

"Ghosts are not like in horror films where they can kill as they wish. For an evil spirit to kill a living person, there needs to be a gradual process of eroding the victim’s soul with a curse; the victim can only be killed when their soul is corrupted to a certain extent by that curse."

"Corroded to a certain extent?"

Dai Lin gave an example, "There’s a concept of ’yang energy’ in folklore. Under normal circumstances, ghosts cannot kill humans as their souls have a kind of immunity, similar to a normal person’s immune system. This process is quite slow, and success is not guaranteed. During this process, you may receive a business card distributed by the hospital director, and then you could enter Hospital 444 for treatment through the card."

"So it’s like that..."

Lu Yanran hadn’t expected that there was so much to the curses of ghosts.

"Of course. Human horror tales always portray ghosts as exaggeratedly powerful. If they were really that terrifying, living people would have been exterminated by the dead long ago. Unless it’s some particularly powerful curse force."

"This building isn’t one of those situations, is it?"

"No. The source of the curse in this building lies in a ferocious ghost upstairs. The other Resentful Spirits are also under the manipulation of that ghost. With the Devil’s Cursed Object keeping it in check, that ghost temporarily can’t come downstairs to deal with us, but it can also prevent us from escaping the building."

As Dai Lin spoke these words, he kept his eyes on the kitchen window.

Thankfully, nothing has happened so far.

"Paranormal Doctor, do you have any dietary restrictions?"

"None."

Dai Lin looked back briefly, then turned his head away again.

But he immediately saw...

An extra shadow had appeared on the window!

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