Chapter 30
Jing Xiebai: "Any ideas?"
Xie shook his head and said nothing. The clues available on this floor were too few to piece together the true circumstances of the incident.
"Do you want to take a look at a scapegoat doll?" Jing Xiebai asked casually. They couldn't mess with the corpse, so they could only start with the doll.
"Wait a minute." Xie frowned and took the medical record from the bed beside him. "Have you noticed that although the environment is getting older, the layout of the hospital has not changed."
The municipal hospital is newly built, and since time is moving forward, the layout cannot but change.
Jing Xiebai looked down at the medical record book, but Xie had drawn out the layout of the hospital and the distribution of the bodies. He took out the map and compared them carefully.
There is no change, and that is the problem.
"Do you think we've missed the key?" Xie recalled the last time they encountered the Death God. They'd only discovered the truth after finding the groom's house. Unlike before, their actions were confined to the hospital, which meant the key to the matter must also be there.
Xie recalled his experiences on the way to the hospital: the sealed evil spirit, the extra bodies in the morgue, the bodies in the cleaning room, the scapegoat, the pregnant woman...
wrong!
Xie Que suddenly looked up, grabbed Jing Xiebai's arm, and said hurriedly: "Do you find it strange that there are people in the hospital who are doing such evil things as raising scapegoat dolls?"
Witchcraft has become rare since the exorcists worked together to destroy the spellbooks, not to mention that people believed in science a hundred years ago. How come so many people still keep scapegoat dolls?
Jing Xiebai also realized the problem. His eyes grew colder and he said, "Someone is deliberately spreading evil magic." There may not be anything wrong with scapegoat dolls on the surface, but over time, they will absorb a person's yang energy, and in serious cases, even their lifespan.
"It seems that the person we are looking for is the one who spreads evil magic." Xie Que stood up and sat on the hospital bed, his brows furrowed, with an expression of unrelieved distress on his face.
That being said, this person wasn't easy to find. Xie had clearly noticed that time was slowing down, and the evil spirit had only appeared once at the very beginning. They were completely stuck in a dead end, and had no choice but to find another way.
"A corpse."
"How about starting with the corpse?"
Xie Que and Jing Xiebai said in unison.
Their eyes met in mid-air, but Xie was the first to look away. He recalled, at an inopportune moment, the erratic sound of his heartbeat when Jing Xiebai had held him in his arms. It was like a pianist accidentally hitting a wrong note. The pianist might not have cared, but the tranquil surface of the lake was disturbed by it.
"Go, go ahead." Xie lowered his head and didn't dare look at Jing Xiebai, "You go ahead."
Xie, however, internally despised himself. He knew his ears were completely red without even looking in the mirror. He had been like this since he was a child, his ears would turn red whenever he got shy.
"Okay." Jing Xiebai seemed not to notice Xie Que's embarrassment. He took the map and turned to walk out.
Hearing the sound of the door opening, Xie breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was about to look up, he felt a sudden chill in his ears.
? !
Xie's eyes widened, and he stood there in a daze, maintaining this awkward posture.
Seeing this, Jing Xiebai withdrew his hand, chuckled and said in a cheerful tone: "Let's go, Quezao."
"Okay..." Xie replied, his voice so soft that it was almost inaudible.
He stood in the room, took a few deep breaths, and adjusted himself before leaving the ward.
The hospital was becoming increasingly dilapidated, the lights growing dimmer, and it looked a bit rundown. Xie glanced down the corridor and quickly noticed something was amiss.
"Where are the stairs?"
He remembered clearly that there was a staircase five meters to the right of the ward, but now it has become a wall.
"It seems that the evil ghost has been observing us from behind." Jing Xiebai said in a sarcastic tone. The Youzhong in his hand has been emitting black air since just now. The Taotie opened its mouth wide, looking extremely ferocious.
"I remember there was a body in the ward opposite the elevator?" Xie's expression was serious and his voice was cold: "Press the elevator button and knock on the glass window when the door opens."
At this point, there was no time to be cautious. They had to hurry up and catch the evil ghost and not follow the other side.
"Yeah." Jing Xiebai responded, pressed the elevator button, and kept an eye on the elevator door while paying attention to his surroundings.
"bite--"
The elevator door opened, and there was no one inside. Xie Que and Jing Xiebai looked at each other, each seeing caution in the other's eyes. Xie Que took a deep breath, nodded to Jing Xiebai, and walked into the elevator.
Jing Xiebai turned around, kicked open the door of the ward, and without waiting for the corpse to react, slashed it with a sword.
The body was cut in half, and the scapegoat fell to the side, but the smile on his face grew wider and wider, looking unbearable. At this moment, all the lights in the corridor broke, and explosions followed one after another. Jing Xiebai was unable to dodge and was cut by the glass in several places.
Xie pressed the door-closing button and shouted, "Come in!"
More and more corpses rushed towards this side, moving very quickly. In just one or two seconds, they surrounded Jing Xiebai.
The elevator door was already half closed, but seeing this, Xie had no choice but to lean out, grab Jing Xiebai, and pull him back with all his might.
"careful!"
As soon as Jing Xiebai cut a gap, corpses quickly surrounded him, the number far exceeding their initial estimate.
Xie Que pulled out a talisman and flung it forward. When the talisman hit the body, a flash of fire flashed, and then it exploded with a bang. Xie Que took advantage of this moment to forcefully pull Jing Xiebai into the elevator.
The corpse ignored its injuries and scrambled to squeeze into the elevator, trying to pull them back in. Seeing that the corpse was about to touch him, Jing Xiebai was about to raise his sword, but the elevator door slammed shut, crushing the corpse's hand.
Xie was sitting on the ground, gasping for breath. Just as he was about to speak, his eyes suddenly plunged into darkness.
"Jing..."
Just as Xie Que opened his mouth, the elevator suddenly accelerated and fell.
In the darkness, Xie Que could only hold on to Jing Xiebai tightly, and the red light emitted by the floor display became the only source of light in the darkness.
14, 13, 12...
The numbers changed rapidly, and when the elevator reached the eighth floor it stopped.
The sudden pause in the high-speed fall caused Xie to hit the elevator wall. He covered his head and stood up with difficulty.
"What's going on? Why is the elevator stopped on this floor?"
Xie, however, lit a lantern talisman, and the light blue flame dispelled the darkness and made the red light above his head seem less dangerous.
"Hey, why is there no button?"
Xie remembered that there was a button when he first entered the elevator, and he also pressed the door closing button, but now the button has disappeared.
"Not only that, the severed hand is also missing." Jing Xiebai looked up at the floor display. He remembered that this floor was the surgical department.
Before Jing Xiebai could recall the layout of this floor, the elevator began to fall again.
Unlike last time, with the light of the lantern talisman, they could clearly see more and more ghost faces and bloody handprints on the elevator.
The elevator kept falling, but it always stopped at the eighth floor. Xie suppressed his discomfort and opened his eyes to observe the ghost face.
The bloody handprints and the ghost faces overlapped, and the light of the lantern talisman flickered due to the fall of the elevator. However, Xie bit his lower lip hard, trying to use the pain to wake himself up.
The elevator fell for about a minute before it stabilized. The floor display had been turned off at some point, the elevator lights came on, and all the ghost faces and bloody handprints disappeared.
Jing Xiebai raised his hand to wipe the blood off his face. Seeing Xie Que kneeling on the ground, he casually asked with concern, "Are you hurt?" He remembered that when the elevator stopped for the first time, Xie Que hit his head on the elevator wall.
"It's okay." Xie remained kneeling on the ground, recalling the scene he had just seen in the darkness. He spoke uncertainly, "Those ghost faces just now seemed to be the faces of the corpses from before."
The light was dim and the ghost's face was covered with bloody handprints, so Xie was not sure whether it was true or not.
"Don't think about it for now, let's go out and take a look." Jing Xiebai helped Xie Que stand up. The elevator button reappeared at some point, and Jing Xiebai pressed the door button. The scene outside the door was very different from before, and it became very unfamiliar.
The outside could no longer be called a hospital. It looked like a makeshift rescue center with several rooms separated by curtains.
"Pharmacy, operating room..." Xie quickly drew a map in his mind, "And the dean's office?"
Such a shabby place actually had a room specially separated out as an office. Xie Que and Jing Xiebai both keenly sensed something was wrong. They looked at each other and walked towards the office tacitly.
The office is simply furnished with a wooden table, two wooden chairs and a bookcase.
"Something's wrong." Jing Xiebai grabbed Xie Que and quickly scanned the room. He soon discovered the problem. "Someone has set up an evil formation here."
Various small gadgets were scattered around the room, including puppets, red cloth, a pot of withered flowers... These seemingly ordinary and simple things combined together just happened to form a soul-damaging array. If Jing Xiebai hadn't been sharp-eyed, they would probably have lost their lives if they had rushed in.
"Throw a talisman in and don't use spiritual power." Jing Xiebai looked around the room several times again. The person who set up the formation was very clever. He hid the eye of the formation inside the house. If one wanted to break the formation, one had to enter the house and destroy the eye of the formation. This would inevitably damage the soul of the person who broke the formation.
Upon hearing this, Xie Que tossed in a ghost-slaying talisman. The talisman floated in mid-air, and a strong wind blew through the windowless room, sending grains of sand flying everywhere. Xie Que closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the talisman had just burned out, its ashes landing in front of the desk and quickly disappearing.
"What's going on?" There was a pot of withered flowers on the desk, but Xie threw another piece of talisman paper in, and the situation was still the same.
"Don't throw it away, we've found the center of the formation." Jing Xiebai took two steps forward, and the heavy resentment suppressed the evil formation. Cracks began to appear on the wall, and the flowerpot on the desk fell to the ground, dropping a few pieces of colorless talisman paper.
"Tsk." Jing Xiebai looked unhappy. He raised his hand and swung the sword. The talisman paper split into two halves, turning into an ordinary yellow paper, which fell lightly to the ground.
"Come in, it's okay." Youzhong was full of resentment and suppressed all evil things. Jing Xiebai deliberately weakened his suppression of Youzhong. This evil formation was nothing in front of it.
"Look through it, we should be able to find a clue." The evil ghost has not shown up in such a long time, and has been teasing them. Jing Xiebai has never suffered such an injustice in all his time as an exorcist, so his temper is inevitably a little bad.
There wasn't much in the office, half account books and half medical records. Xie was flipping through the records quickly, frowning the more he read. "Come over and see, how come there are so many more patients coming in since this day?"
Before May 10th, there were only a few patients, but after that day, the hospital was overcrowded. The number of patients in a month could fill up a medical record book.
"This isn't a big clinic, so how come so many people come to see the doctor?" Xie Que handed the medical records to Jing Xiebai and showed them to him. "Besides, most of these are duplicate names. They'll come back in a few months."
"It seems that they are all residents of this area, but they come to the hospital so frequently. Could it be that a regional disease has appeared here?" Xie didn't know much about the past and could only speculate based on his experience.
In the past, medical conditions were poor, and it was not uncommon for entire villages to contract the same disease and die overnight.
Jing Xiebai lowered his head to check the medical records. "But a year later, the number of patients in the hospital decreased again. They were either cured or passed away. Either reason is not enough to support the claim that someone wanted to kill the dean and cast an evil formation on him."
Given the poor medical conditions, it is a blessing that someone is willing to step forward to treat the villagers. Moreover, setting up an evil array will result in backlash. Will anyone be willing to set up an evil array and suffer backlash?
Xie tapped the table unconsciously, musing, "On one side is the hospital, and on the other side is the sorcery. How are they connected?"
So far, they haven't found any clues about the person who cast the sorcery, and they are still a long way from the truth.
"Let's go out and have a look. There's nothing to be found here."
Jing Xiebai threw the medical record book casually on the table, lifted the curtain and walked out.
Xie did not give up and looked through the medical records again, but still found nothing.
"Oh." He sighed and followed Jing Xiebai out the door. "Let's go to the pharmacy?"
"Okay." Jing Xiebai has been exorcising ghosts outside for many years and has a good understanding of medicines.
There is an entire wall of medicine in the pharmacy, and there are medicine bottles scattered on the table.
Jing Xiebai casually took down the account book hanging on the wall and flipped through it casually while standing in front of the desk. The previous account book only recorded the total expenditure, and the specific expenditure was in this account book.
"They are just some common medicines. It doesn't seem to be a local disease." Jing Xiebai raised an eyebrow and handed the account book to Xie Que. "But the amount of medicine is too large, and they are all strong drugs."
Regular hospitals will choose mild medicines with few side effects on the human body, but here they choose medicines that are quick to work but have serious side effects.
Xie took the account book, flipped through two pages, and put it down: "Let's look for it again."
There was a whole box of discarded medicines under the pharmacy table, but when Xie moved the box away, he found a wooden board covering it.
"What is this?" Xie Que said as he moved the wooden board aside, took out the white box from under the board and handed it to Jing Xiebai, "What's inside?"
Xie stood up and dusted himself off.
Jing Xiebai took the box, which contained dozens of small bottles filled with white powder.
"What is it? Why hide it?" Xie took the bottle out of the box and placed it on the table. He really couldn't see anything wrong with it.
Jing Xiebai leaned against the wall, looking down at the box of discarded medicines. His thick black eyelashes cast a shadow under his eyes, and he looked thoughtful.
"Is there a possibility that this doctor is poisoning people?"
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