Yan Qing patted her on the shoulder from behind, "Hey sis, what are you looking at so intently?!"
Jiang Xinxin jumped up from the table instantly. "Dr. Yan, what brings you here?" But she was quick and decisive, turning off the video call immediately.
"What, as a doctor, isn't it normal to make rounds?" Yan Qing glanced around the nurses' station and noticed that Xiao Shuo wasn't there either. She was quite curious.
"Are you the only one on duty at noon? What about the others?"
Jiang Xinxin shrank back. "They, they've all gone to work to earn money. The cafeteria lady's meals are getting more and more expensive every day, and now we can hardly afford them anymore. We can only earn some extra money during our lunch break to make ends meet."
"Extra income?" Yan Qing became interested. "How do you earn extra money?"
Just then, the sound of something being dragged came from the end of the corridor. Jiang Xinxin immediately pulled her behind the nurses' station.
Shh—they're coming.
The dragging sound grew closer, and Yan Qing saw several people, each dragging a heavy black sack, walking towards them from the end of the corridor.
At that moment, the elevator door she had seen before suddenly reappeared on the wall opposite the nurses' station.
The group of people were all wearing white medical worker uniforms, but black helmets, making it impossible to tell who they were. However, the black sack they were dragging, judging from its outline, seemed to resemble a person.
The elevator doors suddenly opened, and Yan Qing saw the group of people throw the black sacks into the elevator, but they didn't go inside.
The elevator slowly descended, the numbers on the doors dropping from 8 to -2 floors before finally stopping. After a while, the elevator surprisingly began to slowly ascend again.
The group remained motionless at the elevator entrance. Finally, the elevator reached the 8th floor once again, the doors opened, but the elevator was empty.
One of them entered the elevator, picked up several 10-yuan spirit coins from the floor, and then distributed them to everyone. The group then dispersed.
The elevator doors closed, and the elevator disappeared from the wall the next moment.
The whole process only took a few minutes. After everyone had disappeared, Yan Qing and the other person climbed out from under the nurses' station.
Jiang Xinxin patted her chest, looking relieved. "That was close!"
"Do you know what they're doing?" Yan Qing wondered why it looked a bit like smuggling.
Jiang Xinxin nodded. "Of course I know. They're secretly selling the bodies of dead patients. I should have known that this kind of thing is absolutely forbidden in a sanatorium! If the director finds out, it's a death sentence!"
"Then why are they still doing it?" And it seems like this isn't the first or second time they've done it.
"Sigh!" Jiang Xinxin sighed again. "It's all for food! The food sold by the cafeteria ladies is getting more and more expensive. We're all wondering if we'll ever have enough to eat. What's a little smuggling of corpses if we're just trying to survive? Besides, the most common things we have here are the corpses of patients."
"But isn't this a sanatorium? Where did all these corpses come from?" Yan Qing wondered. Weren't there only about a hundred adventurers?
Jiang Xinxin chuckled, but didn't say anything. Yan Qing sensed something was wrong and immediately took out a hundred-yuan spirit coin bill, waving it in front of Jiang Xinxin.
Jiang Xinxin's eyes lit up, and she was about to step forward to take it, but Yan Qing retreated even faster.
“Tell me what you know, and this spirit coin is yours.”
Jiang Xinxin bit her lip, then cautiously glanced around before speaking in an extremely soft voice.
"Director Xu instructed me not to tell you anything. You absolutely mustn't say that I told you!"
Yan Qing's expression hardened; she hadn't expected that she had been tricked so early on! So, she readily took out two more hundred-yuan spirit coins and placed them in Jiang Xinxin's hand.
"Don't worry, I'll forget everything I heard today immediately!"
"Okay." Jiang Xinxin was relieved. "Director Xu said that he needs to get your and your partner's bodies tomorrow, before the next batch of employees starts work. We were all told not to tell you anything. You probably won't survive tonight."
"Why?" She really couldn't understand it, since the rules didn't mention this at all!
Jiang Xinxin said mysteriously, "Dr. Yan, we all found out when you arrived that you had been marked. In this sanatorium, none of the marked prey have ever escaped."
"Moreover, a new batch of employees joins here every three days, and very few of them survive more than a few days. Especially in the last few batches, according to my colleagues, something has happened and the mortality rate is almost 99%. People like you who are specially marked are probably only one or two out of dozens of batches, so Director Xu has been eyeing you for a long time."
Yan Qing broke out in a cold sweat. She never imagined that she had become someone else's "prey" from the very beginning. Moreover, she didn't even know when she had been targeted. This was terrifying!
"Xiao Jiang, do you know what Director Xu plans to do with me?" Yan Qing asked tentatively.
Jiang Xinxin shook her head. "I overheard Director Xu telling Mu Yang to find a way to get into the director's office after he finishes prescribing the medicine this afternoon. He didn't say anything else."
When pressed further, Jiang Xinxin truly knew nothing. Yan Qing retraced her steps, and as she passed the ward, she inadvertently saw the person Jiang Xinxin had forcibly fed medicine that morning, now trembling and rolling around on the bed.
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