Hospital 444
Chapter 684 - 16 Knowledge of the Quasi-curse Spirit

Chapter 684: Chapter 16 Knowledge of the Quasi-curse Spirit

Although memory can be shared, the impartation of conceptual understanding is not so simple. Otherwise, education would merely require issuing textbooks to everyone, so why the need for teachers?

Renees Dailun hoped to teach Dai Lin more things.

He could almost grasp some of the most advanced paranormal medical knowledge now.

"Quasi-curse spirits are a theoretically distinct category of curses, completely different from ferocious spirits in terms of symptoms, diagnosis, and curse theory, yet they are not true cursed spirits."

Dai Lin nodded and said, "I know this."

"You don’t know. You don’t sufficiently understand quasi-curse spirits and cursed spirits."

Renees then looked towards the curtain and continued, "In your previous education in mysterious medicine, you must have heard many people mention this, right? The spirits with the strongest malice towards human slaughter are the ferocious spirits."

"Right..."

"But this statement isn’t completely accurate. Strictly speaking, the ones who truly possess the most intense malice and intent to kill humans are the fierce ghosts. Or put it this way, over ninety percent of the human curses that result in a brutal death belongs to the curses of fierce ghosts."

A resentful spirit is an evil spirit that has just departed from the state of being an apparition. Although they possess malicious intent to kill, it requires a cumulative process through a curse to kill someone, a process that is slow and reversible through treatment, and the majority of patients can be cured clinically in the early stages.

Therefore, the Wraith Surgery Department has the most beds and doctors, as most patients are at this level.

However, when a resentful spirit becomes a fierce ghost, two significant changes occur. First, fierce ghosts, compared to resentful spirits, become entirely uncommunicable, and their killings no longer have any rational reasons. Second, the progression of a fierce ghost’s curse is much faster, capable of killing multiple patients in a very short period.

"In folk legends, those evil spirits seeking lives for vengeance due to resentment, where there’s a debt there’s a creditor, are mostly resentful spirits, a few are apparitions, but apparitions can hardly kill anyone."

"Once they become fierce ghosts, they usually indiscriminately slaughter humans, which is a pure malice. But once fierce ghosts become ferocious spirits, a new change occurs."

Compared to fierce ghosts, the terror of a ferocious spirit’s curse is enough to send the majority of doctors running scared. Potentially hundreds or thousands of people may suffer from the curse, and it can spread rapidly. Hence, the mainstream theory is that ferocious spirits possess a stronger intent to slaughter humans.

But...

"In fact, it’s different. To make a distinction, it’s like the difference between a human killing another and a virus killing someone. When a human kills someone, even if there is no enmity or debt between them, it’s still entirely possible to harm them due to a distorted malice. So, clinical cases show that people killed by fierce ghosts often also give birth to intense resentment and malice, because the process of death is just too painful, and they can’t find peace even after death, with many apparitions and resentful spirits being manipulated by the fierce ghosts to continue enduring torture. However, within the curses where ferocious spirits kill, there are very few such cases."

"That’s really..." Dai Lin recalled the various papers he had read, and indeed, some doctors had noticed this point.

The belief that Ferocious Spirits harbor a stronger intent to kill humans stems mainly from the fact that the number of deaths caused by Ferocious Spirits is far greater than that of Fierce Ghosts.

"For Ferocious Spirits, killing people is the same as viruses killing. Viruses don’t purposely torment their hosts; the death of the host is just a result of the biological characteristics of the virus. This is the same with Ferocious Spirits. When a Ferocious Spirit kills, it focuses more on the result of the kill rather than the process of killing. In this process, the Ferocious Spirit does not harbor what we call ’malice’ towards humans, just as viruses do not bear malice towards humans."

"But..." Dai Lin suddenly thought of something, "For example, the Dead Soul Tomb, where a large number of Ghosts are imprisoned, unable to find peace even after death..."

"Yes. That’s the difference between Quasi-curse spirits and Ferocious Spirits."

At this point, Renees stood up, walked to the tightly drawn curtains, and said, "The level of Fierce Ghosts represents the two possible directions of a curse’s evolution. The first is a typical Fierce Ghost, while the second is what is referred to as a Malevolent Ghost, tainted by the Abyssal contamination. Fierce Ghosts are products of Abyssal contamination, and the elites among Malevolent Ghosts become Devils. When a Devil assimilates with the Abyss, it transforms into a part of a Demon."

A Demon is not a separate entity of an Evil Spirit but rather some form of collection of the Abyss Curse. Generally located in a higher dimension than Three-Dimensional Space—the Four-Dimensional World. Beyond Demons lie entities situated in the Five Dimensional World, such as the director-level beings that are "indescribable" and beyond language depiction. Above the fifth dimension lies higher dimensions beyond the Abyss, which are no longer observable by Paranormal Doctors. The emergence of so-called Malevolent Ghosts is the best evidence of the temporal layer being contaminated by the Abyss.

"By the way, let me supplement your knowledge with something that the people at Hospital 444 won’t teach you: without the intervention of Abyssal contamination, there would not be Karmic Obstacle Ghosts or Malevolent Ghosts. The process would be merely the transformation of Fierce Ghosts into Ferocious Spirits. This is also an inevitable part of a curse’s evolution... The nature of a curse is that it does not have so-called benevolent or malicious consciousness. Apparitions and ordinary people alike can be good or evil, and a few Resentful Spirits may bear goodwill towards innocent people, while Fierce Ghosts have only pure malice towards humans. Ferocious Spirits, however, have neither goodwill nor malice towards humans, but when it comes to Quasi-curse spirits... The will and self-awareness of the Ferocious Spirit no longer exist and are replaced by the will of the curse, no longer belonging to a specific Evil Spirit individual."

"It seems similar to the process of a Devil and an Abyssal Demon assimilating," Dai Lin, who had some understanding of Demons, added. "Religious descriptions of the Demon’s personality are completely wrong. Demons do not have specific names such as Satan, Lucifer, Lilith, Mephisto, or Mephistopheles, nor do they have the consciousness and thought to strike bargains with humans to take their souls. The same applies to curses, right?"

"No," Renees shook her head, "A curse is an existence that transcends beyond Demons. Because Demons can exist only in the Four-Dimensional World, they are still constrained by the confines of the apartment and must obey and follow the Rules. However, a curse is the maker of the Rules, omnipresent and able to transcend all dimensions. This is what makes a Cursed Spirit terrifying... A Ferocious Spirit is like a block of ice. You can crush a block of ice, but if the ice evaporates into the air, would you destroy all the air? This is exactly what a Cursed Spirit is."

"As for Quasi-curse spirits... In the process of transforming from Ferocious Spirits into the curse itself, they transition from being a specific Evil Spirit individual to becoming a part of the specific curse, with all Cursed Spirits being a part of the vast curse collective. Thus, Quasi-curse spirits lose all intelligence as individual entities, and as part of the curse, they control and bind other Evil Spirits!"

"Lose intelligence?"

"Put simply, Quasi-curse spirits will begin to lose the intelligence, experience, and memory of normal humans. When they transform into Cursed Spirits, they become a part of the Rules, and all their actions are controlled by the Curse Rules."

Most Evil Spirits, though malign, possess intelligence on par with average people. This can be seen through a multitude of clinical cases. Especially with Resentful Spirits, most can communicate and negotiate in various ways. However, as they become Fierce Ghosts, there is indeed some degree of change in intelligence.

According to Renees, Cursed Spirits are more comparable to AI than viruses. Many people think AI is intelligent, but most AI can only execute rigid programming and do not possess true intelligence, not even stable memory.

At this point, Dai Lin thought of something.

"So the reason you can’t draw the curtains is because?"

Since both parties can share consciousness, Dai Lin understood what Renees was trying to tell him.

"Right. In the state of a Quasi-curse spirit, intelligence and memory are lost. And the curtains, they might obstruct its line of sight, causing it to be unable to recognize the presence of someone behind them!"