Hospital 444
Chapter 283 - 19 Intricate Complexities

Chapter 283: Chapter 19 Intricate Complexities

No...

To be precise, what’s written here is "No. 666 Hospital".

There wasn’t a single Chinese character on the business card.

He Yun picked up the business card, flipped it over to the back, and it too was filled with English.

His eyes became somewhat sharper...

...

"A cold? How’s Ruping doing?"

Ge Niancheng immediately grew worried upon hearing these words from his father, Ge Pingyan, who was wearing a mask and kept a certain distance from him.

"She hasn’t shown symptoms of the infection yet, currently only Jiang Shan and Dai Wei are exhibiting symptoms of a cold. I’ve had He Yun check them, and for now, we’re just isolating and observing them. As long as everything is fine, I’ll let them return."

"Him?" The mere mention of He Yun’s name made Ge Niancheng’s face twist with distaste, "Can his diagnosis be trusted? Besides, even if it’s just a cold, there’s no need to isolate them in the village guesthouse, right?"

"There are too many elderly in the village, I’m also considering safety. Even for He Yun, a doctor, I had him isolate at home for the time being since his house is far from the village and there are no elderly people at his home."

"Hmph!" Ge Niancheng’s hatred for He Yun, naturally, stemmed entirely from Shen Lisheng. He and Shen Lisheng had been good friends since childhood and had long since assumed that He Yun was the murderer. But only because his father insisted on protecting He Yun, he couldn’t avenge Lisheng.

Especially the incident with Lei San back then, it was a perfect opportunity to kill He Yun to avenge Lisheng and save the village with one stone. But his father still insisted on sacrificing Lei San, insisting on the reason that He Yun was a doctor, unwilling to harm him.

"Then I’ll go check on Ruping when it’s daylight..."

"No! Your and Ruping’s second child is just over a year old. If you get infected and pass it on to the child, the consequences would be unthinkable!" Ge Pingyan’s reasoning was sound, which left Ge Niancheng unable to retort.

"That’s true... Dad, don’t you need to be quarantined?"

"I only had brief contact with them, so the risk is small, but just to be safe, you shouldn’t come near me for now either."

"Alright, I understand..."

"You should go to sleep. If anything changes, I will notify you immediately."

"Then Dad, you should also go to bed early."

Ge Pingyan returned to his room.

His wife had already fallen asleep because she couldn’t stay up late due to hypoglycemia. She had been resting at home all this time, and he hadn’t yet told her about her brother Lin Tai’s situation.

He sat alone by the bed, lifting his hand to rub his forehead.

How could Ge Pingyan sleep at a time like this?

More than ten years ago, when Ge Pingyan first became the village chief, he was full of vigor. His son was the village’s most educated college graduate and had found a respectable white-collar job in the city.

He worked tirelessly for the welfare of the village, running to the county offices countless times to get the village recognized as impoverished, all in the hope that one day, the village could prosper and the children could get better education.

Finally, help came from above to alleviate poverty, and it seemed the village was on its path to proper development.

Everything had the chance to thrive...

Back then, he had decided that once the village was out of poverty and well-off, the first thing he would do was to change the village’s name. He would certainly pick a lucky, pleasing name.

And it was at that moment that the sudden fog engulfed Nanmian Village.

"What should I do, Shufen?"

Looking at his sleeping wife, Ge Pingyan let out a helpless and fearful expression.

In fact, fear had been extreme in his heart all along.

Only he knew just how terrifying the bloodshed brought by the Lei San incident was to the village. And now... it had returned!

What he was doing now could only cover things up for a short time. If they couldn’t find the extra "person" soon, people in the village would begin to die.

If it were possible, he really wanted to set up surveillance in the guesthouse, monitoring those nine people 24/7, but clearly, that was impossible.

Moreover, by doing so, the spread of the fog into the interior of the village would start again, and it was simply impossible to hide it.

So, he feared he might have to, like the Lei San incident back then, choose to sacrifice someone.

But the problem this time was that if Dai Wei was telling the truth, then Li Jun couldn’t be considered the captain at all but someone whose memory had been altered. If Li Jun were the captain, he couldn’t possibly have forgotten Lin Tai’s death. If not the captain, killing him on the grounds of dereliction of duty obviously wouldn’t be appropriate.

Moreover, Lei San had no relatives, which is why there had been no objections to his death within the village. But now things were different; all nine of these people had relatives in the village, and most importantly, one of them was his daughter-in-law. If he chose to sacrifice someone else, the villagers would say, "Why didn’t you sacrifice your daughter-in-law?" Especially Li Jun, who had more than twenty relatives in the village! Jiang Shan’s father was the village peace preservation officer, and Li Dongshan didn’t have as many relatives in the village, but he was warm-hearted when he was young, and he had too good a connection with the village folks.

No matter who was chosen for the sacrifice, their relatives would be out for blood! Others had relatives, and so did he!

Therefore, the best course of action was to figure out which one was the "extra person"!

But how to find them?

Ge Pingyan was certain that this tenth "person" emerging from the fog possessed an incredible power, capable of easily altering people’s memories.

"If this continues, all the people in this village will die!"

Whether they were murdered or waited until the fog covered the whole village, everyone in the village was doomed to die, with no one left to survive.

With this realization, how could Ge Pingyan possibly fall asleep?

...

Dai Wei woke up early in the room of the guesthouse.

After sitting up in bed, his first reaction was not to realize he was lying in the village guesthouse.

"This..."

Only then did he remember the terrifying experience he had the night before.

An "extra person" had infiltrated their group. Yet, he couldn’t distinguish who it was!

"Mom and Dad, as well as Dylan, must be very worried, right?"

At this time, he looked out the window to find it was still pitch dark outside.

"What time is it now?"

Those participating in the patrol would all wear a watch, as watches were among the most common items people in the village requested from the temple, given the significant role an accurate watch played in patrolling.

"Only a little after four?"

He had only slept for such a short while?

But that was no surprise... In such circumstances, being able to sleep would have been odd. Even though the village head must have arranged for people to watch outside, he couldn’t feel at ease himself.

In fact, what Dai Wei was most concerned about now was how the village head would decide.

No one knew where Uncle Lei San had gone, but one thing was certain: he must be dead.

Would the village head make another sacrifice to achieve his goal this time?

"Will the fog spread further into the village?"

This was his biggest worry.

"Who is it... Who among those eight could it be?"

Li Jun, Li Ruping, Li Yanping, Xia Meng, Li Dongshan, Jiang Shan, Chang Min, Su Wenqing.

Which one of them could it be?

If one had to say who among these eight was the most suspicious, it would undoubtedly be Su Wenqing. But being slightly late in counting off wasn’t enough to prove it was him.

And as for whom he trusted the most, without a doubt, it was Jiang Shan. Or rather, he hoped least it would be Jiang Shan. He had always idolized Jiang Shan, the basketball athlete racing across the courts, hence why from a young age he had played basketball with kids from the neighboring villages.

"It can’t be Jiang Shan... right? If this person didn’t exist before last night, there’s no way I would have ever thought of playing basketball."

Basketball was his biggest passion from childhood to adulthood; he simply couldn’t believe it was fake.

"Li Ruping couldn’t be fake either, could she? If she was fake, where would the two kids she had with Elder Brother Nian Cheng come from? And Uncle Li, he has a son too!"

"And Li Yanping..."

Among these eight, Li Yanping was the one he knew the least about. Li Yanping had a hot temper and was rather forthright, and on top of that, being the village head’s in-law, most people didn’t dare to offend her, so he rarely interacted with this woman, and had spoken to her the least as well.

But precisely because of that status, she and her sister were the two people the village head was least likely to sacrifice!