The hospital was gray and dim. The corridor was silent. The monster had disappeared, leaving only bright red blood smeared across the floor.
The backpack-wearing teenager held half a wooden pole in one hand, his face cold and murderous as he remained fully on guard.
After encountering so many bizarre things over the years, Captain Xie considered himself fairly experienced. “Are we no longer in the original space?”
Fang Huan Xing saw that he was injured yet still managing to remain calm, so he was willing to talk to him a little more. “Yes. The Anomalous Case Department calls this an ‘interference space.’”
“Interference space.” Captain Xie repeated the term, then couldn’t resist asking, “Does the Anomalous Case Department usually investigate cases in places like this?”
“Mm.” Fang Huan Xing told him, “We don’t fight actual monsters every time.”
He had learned that this morning.
Captain Xie said, “I always thought the Anomalous Case Department just walked around the scene, asked a few questions, took samples with some equipment, and called it done. I guess those of us on the outside really don’t know much about what you do.”
Fang Huan Xing neither agreed nor disagreed.
“Tao Ran was lying in a hospital bed. How did he suddenly turn into that?” Captain Xie asked again. “And is that thing actually Tao Ran?”
Fang Huan Xing did know the answer to that.
“No.”
He had seen this kind of thing before. It wasn’t a true monster, and it wasn’t the real Tao Ran either. All Fang Huan Xing knew was that it existed somewhere between two realities, like… a process that was still underway.
It was too difficult to explain that clearly to an ordinary person, so Fang Huan Xing used another new piece of Anomalous Case Department terminology. “You can think of it as preparing for positional overlap.”
There were so many anomalous cases that joint investigations between agencies were often necessary.
Police leadership had heard a little about the concept of positional overlap during meetings, so Captain Xie understood immediately. “Fusion disease.”
Not exactly.
After several consecutive rounds of conversation, Fang Huan Xing’s patience was exhausted. He glanced at Captain Xie, his expression clearly saying, You’re a little noisy.
Captain Xie had spent years as a police officer and was excellent at reading people. Of course he could tell that the young man was getting impatient.
He knew that in a place like this, he had better listen to the person who understood it. “Then how are we supposed to get out?”
Fang Huan Xing was thinking about the same thing.
Parts of this place felt familiar, but after entering, he had discovered many other abnormalities. At the very least, he could tell that this place was different from Xianlu Hotel.
This was not reality overlap, nor was it fusion.
It was closer to another layer of space that had somehow been copied.
“I don’t know yet.”
Xiao Fang ended the conversation and set off with a cold expression to look for an exit.
Troublesome.
If no outsider had been here, he could have gone to places that looked like possible exits and tried using his ability several times. He could test a few different locations, and usually it wouldn’t take long before something worked.
Back at Xianlu Hotel, he hadn’t particularly wanted to leave and hadn’t wanted to expose his ability either, so he had deliberately dragged his feet and let Shang Lu lead him around by the nose. That wasn’t quite so convenient now.
Fang Huan Xing walked forward several steps, first examining the trail of blood on the floor. He noticed that it disappeared around a corner rather than continuing toward Tao Ran’s intensive care unit.
He thought that perhaps the exit was connected to Tao Ran’s room.
The monster had been badly injured, so Fang Huan Xing didn’t immediately follow it. Instead, he began examining his surroundings again.
Everything here resembled the original hospital layout. The nurses’ station, the wheelchair against the wall, and the transport stretcher parked in the corridor were all present, but every object looked indistinct and hazy. Even the registration ledger on the counter was blurred.
He picked up the ledger and realized that the blurriness wasn’t caused by a layer of fog obscuring it. The object itself existed in an unclear state. Its wooden backing and paper pages were both indistinct. The blur shifted whenever the object moved, as though something were tugging at it.
“Xiao Fang, come here!”
Captain Xie called softly from outside a door.
Fang Huan Xing went over and, following Captain Xie’s gesture, looked through the observation window.
It was an intensive-care room. Everything inside was still blurry and indistinct, but what caught their attention was the human figure inside.
Judging by the figure and clothing, it was a female nurse. She wore a white nurse’s cap and white uniform with an additional sterile gown over it. A mask covered her face as she stood in front of a medication cart, picked up a syringe, and carefully expelled the air from it.
It should have been a perfectly ordinary scene inside a hospital.
Instead, it made the scalps of the two observers outside crawl.
Because just like the monster from before—she had no face.
Beneath the nurse’s cap, the shape of her head was blurred. Like everything else in this place, she existed in a hazy state that seemed to be pulled slightly out of alignment.
Completely absorbed in her task, she didn’t hear anything outside. With practiced movements, she slowly injected the medication from the syringe into the IV bag hanging beside the bed.
An unconscious patient lay on the bed. Unlike the nurse, the patient had complete facial features and wore an oxygen mask.
Under the bed, another genuine nurse was lying flat on the floor. Her face was perfectly clear, but deathly pale. She was so frightened of the monster beside the bed that she barely dared breathe and was desperately signaling the two men outside with her eyes for help.
Apparently, Fang Huan Xing and Captain Xie weren’t the only ones who had been dragged into this “interference space.” Other nurses and patients had been pulled in too.
After finishing the injection, the blurry faceless nurse turned and pushed the cart toward the door. Bottles and instruments rattled on the equally blurry cart while its wheels squeaked.
Drawing on his police experience, Captain Xie thought that since the young nurse under the bed had not yet been discovered, it would be better not to alert the monster. They should get the person safely out first.
The faceless nurse was about to emerge.
Captain Xie looked back, and Fang Huan Xing was already standing beside a transport stretcher. After inspecting it briefly, he bent down and removed a half-detached metal crossbar from its frame.
“Xiao Fang!”
Captain Xie called in an extremely low voice, signaling for Fang Huan Xing to hide with him, but the young man misunderstood completely and threw him half of the broken mop handle.
Captain Xie hurriedly caught it.
The steel tube Fang Huan Xing had taken was a little over a meter long. He tapped it experimentally against his palm and found that it felt much better than wood.
Even Captain Xie could see the young man’s intentions now. Fang Huan Xing wasn’t frightened in the slightest. He was apparently planning to wait until the faceless nurse came out and simply beat it to death with a few swings of the pipe.
But at that moment, the earlier monster reappeared.
Bang!
Bang!
At the other end of the corridor, the faceless Tao Ran had crawled out from who knew where and was violently throwing himself against the door of the intensive care unit.
Fang Huan Xing said quietly, “Protect the person inside.”
Captain Xie: “?”
Had an intern just ordered him around?
“Hey—!”
Fang Huan Xing shouted toward the monster, and its attention immediately snapped toward him. With the bloody hole still in its head, it turned in their direction.
Enemies meeting were bound to see red. The monster shrieked and adopted an attacking posture again.
Fang Huan Xing dragged the steel pipe behind him as he walked toward it. Captain Xie was frantic behind him, but at that exact moment, the patient-room door opened in front of him and the faceless nurse pushed its cart outside.
Behind the door, the terrified young nurse was struggling to crawl out on weakened limbs.
Captain Xie wished he could split himself into two people.
Fang Huan Xing and the monster met halfway down the corridor. Fang Huan Xing swung the pipe immediately. The monster leapt, but the steel pipe caught it in midair and smashed it into the wall. Blood sprayed outward, leaving an explosive splatter across the surface.
The monster screamed and tried to crawl away, but Fang Huan Xing pursued it. More than a dozen blows followed, smashing its head directly into bloody pulp.
Fresh blood covered the white corridor, chunks of flesh flying everywhere.
The scene was so horrifying that even a cult splatter film would have had to step aside.
The teenager standing amid the pieces of flesh looked cold and vicious.
When he turned around, he first confirmed that the other two were unharmed, then finally seemed to find a spare moment to reach up and pull the sliding strap of his backpack back onto his shoulder.
“…”
Captain Xie and the young nurse were both staring at him, dumbfounded.
The only thing that allowed them to breathe a little easier was that the faceless nurse had completely ignored the violence in the corridor. It pushed its cart across the hallway and returned to the nurses’ station.
Mechanically, it picked up the registration ledger and wrote something. Then it suddenly lowered its head at an angle and looked at the floor.
A piece of flesh had struck its trouser leg.
Its head turned with a series of clicks as it looked around.
Then the blurred face oriented itself precisely toward Fang Huan Xing in the corridor.
The young nurse nearly cried out, but Captain Xie clamped a hand firmly over her mouth.
Again?
Fang Huan Xing was breathing hard.
Fine. He might as well take care of everything at once.
The web of his right hand had gone numb from the impacts. Taking the opportunity, he quietly transferred the steel pipe to his left hand and strode expressionlessly toward the faceless nurse.
When he was only a short distance away, however, the faceless nurse turned its head back.
It resumed pushing the cart, the wheels squeaking as it guided the cart through the glass door of the nurses’ station.
The young nurse could no longer hold it in.
She shoved Captain Xie’s hand away and vomited.
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
I don’t want to go over there anymore.
＊
Inside the intensive-care room, the three of them discussed what to do next.
More accurately, Captain Xie and the young nurse did most of the discussing. Fang Huan Xing stood at the doorway without putting down his weapon, keeping constant watch on the corridor outside.
The faceless nurse had changed the medication at the nurses’ station and was now pushing the cart back through the corridor.
Fang Huan Xing watched it walk straight ahead without looking to either side, open another door, and go inside.
The young nurse’s name was Huang Ying. She took her medical responsibilities extremely seriously. The moment she finished vomiting, she returned to the room and prepared to stop the unconscious patient’s IV.
She had no idea what the faceless nurse had injected into the patient, and she couldn’t simply ignore it. As she checked the patient’s condition, she tried to call for help. After learning the identities of the two men with her, her entire world seemed to collapse.
Tears gathered in Xiao Huang’s eyes as she lowered her voice. “So… we really can’t get out right now?”
Captain Xie reassured the civilian. “We’ll get out. Xiao Fang will think of something.”
He neglected to mention that Xiao Fang was only an intern.
Both of them had witnessed Fang Huan Xing’s combat ability just now, and his complete composure gave them confidence. Still, Captain Xie felt the need to say a few words to him.
“Xiao Fang, we don’t have much in the way of weapons, and this place is extremely strange. There’s no telling what other monsters might be here. We should keep as low a profile as possible. If we can hide, we hide. Don’t confront things head-on.”
Captain Xie phrased it as tactfully as possible.
“There’s no need for us to do that, right?”
Fang Huan Xing didn’t want to keep waiting and didn’t respond to the conversation they had just been having. “If you’re scared, you can wait here.”
Captain Xie: “…”
Xiao Huang had already checked the patient’s IV. “No. There are other patients here too. We don’t know what that monster might inject into them. I have to go check.”
Fang Huan Xing didn’t want to drag ordinary people all over the place. “Wait. I’ll check first.”
Xiao Huang was so anxious that she genuinely began to cry. “Why? The patients can’t wait!”
Fang Huan Xing froze.
Should he just let her go first?
Would that be appropriate?
Captain Xie asked instead, “Xiao Huang, how many patients and nurses are there on this floor in total? And do you recognize that faceless one from earlier?”
Xiao Huang gave him the numbers for the floor that day: three doctors, seven nurses, twenty occupied beds, and one cleaner. She had only recently rotated onto the floor and had been working there for less than an hour. The patient she was caring for had also only just been transferred in.
“That person doesn’t have a face, so I’m not sure,” Xiao Huang said. “But if we get a chance, I could look at the name badge on its chest. Captain Xie, why are you asking?”
“I’m trying to calculate the maximum number of people who might be trapped here.”
That settled it. Fang Huan Xing needed to find the exit, Captain Xie needed to establish how many people were trapped, and Xiao Huang needed to make sure patients weren’t being randomly injected with unknown drugs. None of them could remain there for long.
They decided to split up. Captain Xie and Xiao Huang would form one group so that he could count people while protecting her, while Fang Huan Xing would investigate the situation alone.
As a police captain and public-security officer, Captain Xie made a point of warning both of them, “Avoid provoking the monsters whenever possible. Your own safety comes first. If anything happens, return to this room and regroup as quickly as possible. No taking important action on your own.”
After saying that, he glanced at Fang Huan Xing.
Unfortunately, Fang Huan Xing wasn’t looking at him. Maybe he was simply too focused on examining their surroundings.
Captain Xie took the lead, gripping the wooden pole tightly. He opened the door and stepped outside first, then waved for the other two to come out.
Their luck was terrible. They had barely walked any distance from the room when another door opened.
The faceless nurse from earlier emerged pushing its cart and came face-to-face with them.
All three stopped at once, and silence fell.
Fang Huan Xing tightened his grip on the steel pipe.
Creak, creak.
The blurry little cart began moving.
The faceless nurse paid no attention to them whatsoever and continued straight ahead.
This time, it actually entered the same room as before again.
The three hurried after it to look.
The faceless nurse once again went to the patient’s bedside, unscrewed a medication vial, and began expelling the air from a syringe. It was repeating the exact same actions.
Xiao Huang looked ready to cry. She whispered, “Captain Xie, please think of something.”
The patient was going to be medicated to death at this rate!
Captain Xie analyzed the situation. “It seems like it can’t see us.”
The two of them continued discussing it.
At that moment, Fang Huan Xing suddenly noticed that the corpse at the other end of the corridor was gone.
The blood sprayed across the wall, ceiling, and floor was all still there. Only the body had disappeared.
Click-clack, click-clack.
A sound came from nearby.
Fang Huan Xing silently retreated several steps without making any noise. He noticed that the printer at the nurses’ station was producing a new wristband.
The printed text was blurry, but he could vaguely make out:
Bed 26.
Tao Ran.
The wristband emerged completely from the printer, then vanished. It was neither on the counter nor on the floor.
Near the nurses’ station, a monster in a patient gown was lying on the ground. A wristband encircled its left hand. Its limbs were disabled. It had no face. It was sprawled atop the pulped mass of flesh from earlier, its skin and flesh tightly adhering to the remains, wrapping around them—fusing them into one.
For some inexplicable reason, Fang Huan Xing suddenly felt hungry.
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