??Chapter 144: 143. Dispel Superstition_1
Chapter 144: 143. Dispel Superstition_1
Liu Qingjiang’s face was pale, swollen, with a hint of bloodshot in his eyes. Wearing a safety helt, he casually dragged a shovel by his side as he stared at the pit’s center, at Lu Ban in the middle of the hole.
Liu Qingjiang raised his hand, lifting the shovel high, then suddenly brought it crashing down.
As he lifted the shovel, Lu Ban had already dodged to the side, gripping the crowbar tightly in his hand while “Testant” was loaded and ready.
However, Liu Qingjiang’s shovel struck the gaps between the human heads, cracking the ground. The aged cent broke into rubble and debris, shovelled up by the iron tool and cast aside.
Then, Liu Qingjiang raised the shovel again, repeating his previous action as if he hadn’t noticed Lu Ban’s presence.
“Can he not see ?”
Lu Ban stood diagonally opposite Liu Qingjiang, backed against the wall, unmoving.
Liu Qingjiang just kept digging, one shovelful after another, unearthing the corpses of the workers buried below.
“The hospital’s architect was a foreigner, who committed suicide after completing the design. The construction foreman also seems to have been tortured ntally. Living Stakes… They tried to suppress sothing using the ill-fated workers who died in accidents to create Living Stakes, but is that truly effective?”
Lu Ban, who had encountered various strange and nacing entities and Evil Gods in Foreign Domains, thought that the custom of Living Stakes was mostly likely just an outdated feudal superstition.
If real monsters weren’t afraid of the living, why would they fear the dead?
As for ghosts fighting ghosts, these workers had been dood by them, not even given a proper burial, forever sealed in concrete. If it were Lu Ban, wouldn’t he haunt every night, seeking vengeance against those who buried him, instead of protecting their hospital?
The so-called “Living Stake” was probably the result of a different ritual, possibly not aid at suppression but at summoning sothing.
Rituals of Evil Gods from various Foreign Domains inevitably involve live sacrifices, as only death and the scent of souls can attract these indescribable and sinister beings.
“The missing persons seem to have entered this dinsion. Is this the Another World?”
Lu Ban thought of a horror ga he had once played. In that ga, humans could enter Another World due to supernatural forces. One such place was the Inner World, filled with abnormalities and monsters, extrely dangerous.
“It is apparent that after they entered this place, they might have lived for a while but, with the Corrosion, eventually underwent Mutation into monsters. Moreover, these monsters seem to act based on the fixations they had in life. Liu Qingjiang, feeling guilt over the workers’ deaths, wants to dig up their remains, while Xu Xiao attempts to escape, constantly calling for help at the nurse’s station?”
He saw Liu Qingjiang dig up a pile of dirt, pack it in cent bags, and then drag it out of the room, his movents as stiff as a machine long overdue for maintenance.
“As for the doctor earlier, could his fixation be born from a failed surgery or sothing else from his life? Thus, after stumbling in here, he keeps repeating his original work?”
Lu Ban thought of the obstetrician.
Yet, new questions arose.
“Wait, but this hospital shouldn’t have an obstetrics departnt, so where does this obstetrician co from?”
Lu Ban began to suspect that the obstetrics departnt of the hospital held secrets, possibly related to the deepest secrets of the hospital.
“Could it be one of those private practitioners who deliver babies for wealthy people?”
He considered that so doctors perford secretive deliveries for the wealthy: so were celebrities at the height of their fa, others were the mistresses or “other won” of rich n, and so even darker, children born out of socially unacceptable relationships.
“No, it can’t be sothing so simple… This hospital used Living Stakes during its construction, which must be part of so ritual. The architect who designed it committed suicide, and the investors were foreigners and the Overseas Chinese Chamber of Comrce, which ans, was this hospital built with a specific purpose from the start?”
Lu Ban left the room, standing by the wall near the window. Outside, the world was pitch black; he couldn’t see anything, as if blinded in the dark.
“Moreover, from what I saw earlier, there must be more than one or two missing persons in the hospital. There are many lost here, but such a large number of disappearances couldn’t have evaded police investigation. According to the information Song Yunyan gave , Nanhua Private Renji Hospital has never been subject to such an investigation.”
He watched Liu Qingjiang enter the room again, dig persistently, then leave with the debris, but the pit kept growing larger, seemingly never-ending, almost as if it were alive.
“From the outside world’s perspective, I must already be missing by now. The only way out is to unravel the hospital’s secrets.”
Lu Ban saw that two hours had passed since he ca in, and it was still early before six o’clock.
“Where could Du Danping’s lody Fragnt be?”
He walked through the corridor and saw the nurse’s station on this floor.
In the nurse’s station, there sat a nurse with empty hands, as if she were knitting a sweater, but in reality, there was nothing there. Even the eyeballs on her rotting face had turned into two empty sockets. She sat there stiffly, as if nothing had changed.
Lu Ban returned to the stairwell and saw what looked like the traces of a baby’s crawl. The footsteps stopped there as if this thing wouldn’t follow him upstairs unless Lu Ban ascended.
“Or is it that it needs soone to lead it to climb the stairs?”
As Lu Ban stood there thinking, a certain sound suddenly rang out, jarringly loud in the silent corridor.
It was the sound of machinery working.
Lu Ban looked up to see the neighboring elevator, which, unbeknownst to him, had suddenly lit up.
The display above showed it was on the first floor, but quickly, accompanied by the sound of machinery, the elevator reached the second floor.
However, the elevator didn’t imdiately ascend to the third floor; instead, it emitted the sound of arrival.
Ding-dong—
This made Lu Ban startle.
Because according to how elevators work, the only possibility for such operation was that soone on the second floor had pressed the elevator button.
But in this hospital, aside from him, a living person, who else could operate the elevator?
Lu Ban heard the sound of the elevator doors closing, as well as the sound of the steel cables being pulled.
The number on the elevator transford into the shape of a ‘3’.
Ding-dong—
The elevator had arrived, emitting a crisp notification tone.
Subsequently, the doors slowly opened.
Lu Ban saw a doctor in a white coat standing inside; he wasn’t wearing a mask, and his face didn’t show severe signs of corrosion, allowing his looks to be discerned.
He looked familiar.
Lu Ban rembered that this was the person he had seen on the doctor’s introduction in the nurse’s station on the first floor.
The dean of Nanhua Private Renji Hospital, Zhao Gongping.
“He isn’t the one who disappeared here. How could he be here?”
Lu Ban quickly stood by the wall, pretending to be dead, which seed the best choice since he was unclear about the dean’s behavioral patterns.
He saw the dean stepping slowly towards the nurse’s station, passing in front of Lu Ban.
Lu Ban noticed that what the dean was holding in his hand were a hamr and a scalpel, as if he were on his way to perform surgery.
Holding his breath, Lu Ban watched the dean walk by.
However, Dean Zhao Gongping didn’t continue moving forward.
The figure in the white coat stopped walking; without moving his body, his head turned almost one hundred and eighty degrees to look at Lu Ban.
“Death…”
“Death…”
“Death…”
From his mouth ca fragnted words, as he lifted the hamr in his hand and swung it towards Lu Ban!
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