Chapter 119: The secret hidden in the handwriting in the diary sent a chill down her spine…
Ward 718 is right next to ward 720; the two rooms are separated by only one wall.
The overall structure was exactly the same—four brand-new, white cotton beds, an intact window, and several neatly arranged benches.
Liang Jun was momentarily dazed. If it weren't for the seemingly harmonious space still being filled with noisy red light, she would have really thought that she had been teleported to that house where she had lived for a long time.
“Everything is safe,” Ge Lin, standing at the front, waved his wooden stick, his eyes shining brightly. “No dangerous elements have been detected so far. We can proceed!”
Qi Zhixia and Geng Qing, both driven by reason rather than emotion, walked past him one after the other, while Jiang Zhiling remained indifferent.
Without Gu Keke and Xin Sang, who usually indulged his eccentric behavior, Ge Lin felt a slight sense of loss.
But Leung Wan was more grateful to him for pulling her back to reality.
As she walked towards the ward, she turned back and smiled at the slightly dejected Ge Lin, saying, "Thank you, brave little general."
Ge Lin was taken aback at first, and then he nipped all the bad moods that had been brewing in his head in the bud.
He grinned from ear to ear, as happy as Sun Wukong who had just been released from under the Five Elements Mountain.
The ward looked like it had never been occupied, but after entering the room, Geng Qing still wandered around several times, feeling uneasy, before finally sitting down on one of the beds with a puzzled expression.
“I remember there were people living here…” she murmured softly, as if recalling, “one was an auntie in her seventies, and the other was a child about your age.”
She glanced at the other players, "Why are there no signs of them living here now?"
Ge Lin paid no attention to any of this. With the stick in his hand propped up by the bed, he lightly jumped onto the bed, casually lifting the blanket over his head to block some of the red light shining down from above.
He gestured for everyone to sit down and rest, but his gaze kept darting back and forth between Qi Zhixia and Liang Jun.
Unable to bear his behavior any longer, Qi Zhixia clicked her tongue.
"Speak your mind, or shut up."
Ge Lin pulled the blanket tighter around his head, almost wrapping himself up completely.
"What exactly is going on with that Zhang Weiming...?"
Qi Zhixia froze, even her breathing stopped for a few seconds.
She didn't rush to explain, but subconsciously looked at Liang Jun, who was still standing by the window.
Liang Jun remained calm, spreading her hands. "Summer, you're the person involved. If you're willing to share, I have no objection."
Upon receiving the reply, Qi Zhixia took a deep breath and then took the opportunity to once again expose that lingering shadow to everyone.
She narrated very quickly, as if she were telling someone else's story; yet she didn't miss a single detail, as if these fragments were playing on a loop day and night deep in her mind.
Only when the storyline returned to familiar plot points did the three people in front of them relax a little.
Jiang Zhiling clenched her fists, like a docile kitten that had been provoked. "So he's shameless enough to come back without a second thought!"
Liang Jun had her back to the window. The dim light from outside clashed with the bright, wary look inside, leaving mottled marks on her.
“So everyone must be wary of Zhang Weiming,” she said, taking two steps to sit next to Qi Zhixia. “It’s not because he hurt us before, but because we have witnessed firsthand how he would stop at nothing to win.”
Liang Xun took a deep breath. "He can even kill his teammates whom he spends every day with, let alone strangers like us."
"Then why not kick him out?!"
Ge Lin was filled with great doubts. He just wanted to figure out what had happened. "Anyway, there are many of us. Even if each of us pushes him, we can still get rid of him."
Qi Zhixia immediately replied, "We can't do that."
"Why?" Ge Lin was even more puzzled.
"Look, he went straight to Lao Ren as soon as he entered the room. Don't you understand why?"
Qi Zhixia was somewhat speechless, but she still patiently explained, "Old Ren was originally one of Zhang Weiming's men, and now it's even more obvious that the two of them have reconnected. So now, we can't even completely trust Old Ren."
"Furthermore, we don't know exactly how much information he leaked to Zhang Weiming."
Liang Jun chimed in, "If all our strengths and weaknesses are exposed, the only thing we can do is keep the other side close at all times. Only in this way can we ensure that they have no chance to attack us from the shadows."
At this point, Liang Jun seemed to remember something. She tilted her head and looked at Geng Qing sitting opposite her.
"Director Geng, what was the second half of what you didn't finish saying in room 720?"
Geng Qing was very pleased that she could understand his subtle hints.
She gathered the collar of her white coat, embodying the idiom "sitting upright and solemnly."
“Zhang Weiming did receive treatment at the hospital, there is no mistake about that—but his injuries were very minor, only requiring a few anti-inflammatory pills to recover, not nearly as serious as Lao Ren described, and certainly not to the point of needing hospitalization.”
The reasons Lao Ren had previously explained flashed through Liang Jun's mind, quickly overlapping with the information Geng Qing was now giving her, creating a jumbled mess.
Liang Jun felt as if her chest was filled with a tangled mess. She pinched her brow until a tender pink mark appeared on her skin before letting go.
"You see, we can't trust Lao Ren anymore."
She then braced her hands on the hospital bed, saying, "From the very beginning, he never told us the real information and kept it from Zhang Weiming the whole time."
Hearing this, Ge Lin became even more anxious, "Then Sister Jun, since those two are definitely going to be in the same group, why did you still divide them into groups like this?"
He was so anxious that the bed started shaking, and the wooden stick propped up beside the bed suddenly fell to the ground. "Aren't you afraid that those two bad guys will turn against them?"
"Defection?"
Liang Jun was puzzled at first, but then she suddenly realized what was going on and shook her head confidently. "Coco, like the two of us, is a witness to Zhang Weiming's atrocities. Unless she betrays her conscience, I can't think of any reason why she would join Zhang Weiming's team."
"As for Luo Chuange, although he has not experienced it firsthand, we are old teammates after all. We have been fighting each other since the beginning of the rule-based world. We still have the tacit understanding between us."
Liang Xun coughed twice, lowering the volume slightly. "Although it's unclear what his motivation is, I can still tell that he listens to Coco completely. Even considering Coco's feelings, I doubt he would treat Zhang Weiming well."
“As for Sister Xin…” Liang Jun drew out the last syllable, then lightly kicked Ge Lin, “Don’t you have any faith in Sister Xin?”
That's impossible—
Ge Lin immediately pledged his loyalty to heaven and earth, "I've followed Sister Xin for so long, and I swear on my character that she would never betray us!"
"That's enough."
Liang Jun's lips curved slightly upwards. "In order to avoid alerting the enemy and still be able to exchange information, I came up with this method of dividing the group into equal parts."
Qi Zhixia nodded in agreement, and Ge Lin suddenly realized what was happening, saying that he had just come to his senses.
Although Geng Qing and Jiang Zhiling were not as exaggerated as him, they still admired Liang Xuan from the bottom of their hearts for being able to make a meticulous plan in a very short time.
Everything that needed to be said had been said, and no one had the extra time to let them continue their pleasantries in the instance.
Liang Jun was the first to get up and start searching the room, and the others followed suit, determined not to leave empty-handed this time.
Although the room appears to be uninhabited, that doesn't mean the system wouldn't have hidden some clues inside.
For example, a closed bedside table or an empty space under the bed can be a hidden corner for clues.
Sure enough, when Qi Zhixia opened the drawer of the bedside table at the far end, several tattered and incomplete sheets of paper were laid out on it.
“Come quick!” she called to everyone. “This should be a clue.”
Several people immediately rushed forward from all directions, staring intently at the few yellowed pages in her hand.
It looked like a few torn pages of a diary, with dense black writing covering the entire page, but apart from the less important dates and weather, everything else was illegible.
The diary also seems to be quite old, with water stains and blurred marks, making the task of deciphering the text even more difficult.
These few brittle pages were identified by Qi Zhixia, Geng Qing, and Ge Lin, but none of them could clearly decipher the marks on them, and in the end, they were passed to Liang Jun.
“This looks like something the patient wrote during a period of mania,” Geng Qing said lightly, his fingertip poking at the ball of black thread, making a squeaking sound. “There might be a very few recognizable characters, but the amount of information is probably not much. You don’t need to nitpick.”
Liang Jun did not respond, but instead held the paper high above her head, using the red emergency light above to see through it.
This was much better than everyone lying on the table. Although it made Liang Jun's eyes hurt, she could still barely recognize the words "person," "I," "home," and "courtyard."
It can be considered that we have gained something.
But it's not much different from what Geng Qing said: you can't deduce any useful information from just a few words that don't form a sentence and have no logic.
Just as she was about to find a bag to put it in, she inadvertently caught a smudge in the lower right corner of the paper.
She couldn't see clearly when she held it up to the light.
The hidden secret sent a chill down her spine.
Liang Xun quickly laid the paper flat on the bedside table and, as if browsing Braille, covered the uneven ink marks with her fingertip.
There are clearly other words below, but it's as if someone is deliberately hiding them, using a lot of black ink to draw circles and smear them, trying to completely cover them up.
Sight can interfere with one's sense of touch. Liang Jun simply closed her eyes, her eyeballs transforming into the tip of a pen behind her eyelids, tracing in the air with the touch of her fingertips.
Only after finishing the last stroke did Liang Jun open her eyes in a daze.
Her eyelashes trembled slightly, whether from excitement at deciphering the content or from panic at recognizing the words themselves, it was hard to tell.
Liang.
The character that was deliberately concealed was "梁" (Liang).
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Author's Note: They say there's a "blood moon" tonight, but I haven't seen it yet! ToT
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