“Don’t be afraid. I don’t look like a bad guy, right?” Han Fei smiled while holding the hilt. The blade cut through the night. He stabbed at the space beside Xiao He’s head. Han Fei’s knife cut at the monster behind Xiao He. Blood squirted around. When Xiao He turned around, the stomach monster had already been killed. Han Fei stood on the monster’s dead body with humanity’s glow shining on him.
“The reason the eastern corridor is safe is that you’ve killed all of the monsters?” Xiao He was afraid that the entire hospital had been corrupted, but Han Fei’s appearance had brought her light. “Are you here to save us?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone else in this city that is going around saving people other than me.” At that moment, the citizens who had been saved by Han Fei rushed into the corridor. They didn’t dare to stay too far from Han Fei. Most of them saw the video about Han Fei and knew his parents’ accusations about him. However, when they got to know Han Fei, they didn’t think the accusations were true. Han Fei always walked at the front of the group, and the other citizens were well protected. They could get inspiration and hope from Han Fei. The survivors looked at Han Fei, but Han Fei looked at the darkness. That was the biggest difference between them.
“What is the tag around your ankle? Who gave it to you?”
“These are body tags for the dead in the morgue. The person who gave me the tag is called Liu Yinxiong. Listen, even though he’s dead, he’s different from the other ghosts! He hasn’t harmed anyone and has been going around saving many innocent souls and people!” Xiao He hoped Han Fei could go and save Uncle Ying and the other patients in the morgue, so she explained everything clearly.
“I do wish to meet this ghost king.” Han Fei walked to the morgue. A giant butterfly pattern appeared on the door. The bloodstains formed a giant pair of butterfly wings. Dream appeared to have sped up his ritual because Han Fei kept disrupting them.
Big Sin smashed through the iron door. The morgue had become hell. All the patients who dared to resist were punctured. The colors in their souls faded. Their precious memories were stolen by Dream.
“Uncle Ying!” Xiao He saw the elder. The elder was dragged away by the stomach monster and then disappeared.
“Was the old man the owner of the tag?” Uncle Ying didn’t fit Han Fei’s imagination of the Ghost King, but he did sense a cryptic world presence on Uncle Ying. Perhaps the normal cryptic world wasn’t only filled with despair.
With Xu Qin and Big Sin’s help, Han Fei soon took over the morgue. The monsters and ghosts were fed to the unique citizens. Normal ghosts wouldn’t help Big Sin, and Xu Qin needed black flames of Pure Hatred.
“Why is your hospital’s morgue so big?” Han Fei had been to many hospitals and morgues.
“There’s another underground floor. Normally, our department head bans us from going there.”
“Is your department head still alive?” Han Fei needed more clues.
Xiao He looked around and pointed at a pool of blood by the door. “There he is.”
Using Soul-depth Touch, Han Fei searched the pool of blood. He confirmed that Doctor Wang was gone. “It looks like we have to depend on ourselves.” Han Fei waved, and Zhao Gu and Shan Shan walked out of the crowd. They started to have their families consume the monsters and save the innocent patients.
“Seeing the patients here, I see hope. At least some of the ghosts are willing to help maintain the peace of the world.” Han Fei opened the door deep inside the morgue. He had Big Sin lead the way. He and Yan Yue walked behind it.
Yan Yue was surprised that Han Fei could reach this step. The young man had brought her so much surprise. This was the first time she felt a living person could challenge the powerful theme park managers.
“Why is Dream collecting so many living bodies? Based on our collected information, this hospital has been dealing with the organ trade. Dream has taken over the hospital director and most of the managers. It offered them immortality for them to work for it…” Han Fei was not an idiot. Once he entered the hospital, he started to gather information. In this chaotic age, the sins of the private hospital were nothing anymore. The monsters stopped hiding in the shadows. They crawled out and started to kidnap the living humans.
“Dream has prepared eight different bodies for eight different rituals. The water monster in the Sea of Brain represents extreme sin, ugliness, and tragedy. The rituals here represent endless potential and future. This hospital is the center for Dream to conduct human experiments. It wants to create the perfect human body.” Yan Yue’s mother stopped hiding anything. She was a clever person, and she’d side with whoever had the highest winning chance.
“He’s trying to create the perfect human body?! Is something wrong with Dream? Does it think humans are jigsaw puzzles?” To create the perfect human, Fu Sheng and Fu Tian were more acceptable. They exhausted decades to study the human body, while Dream approached this in a monstrous way.
“What it wants is not human organs but to inject part of it into different human organs for cultivation. When the time is right, it will shape its body back together.”
“Until now, you haven’t told me what kind of existence is Dream. Can you describe it for me?” Han Fei was intrigued by Dream. Dream was the manager back in his age, and it was already an Unmentionable. Yan Yue’s mother shook her head.
“Alright. I won’t force you. When I find the chance, I’ll have Big Sin consume Dream before you so that you won’t fear it anymore.”
The path led down. Han Fei started to hear children crying. This hidden basement had many babies.
“Newborns?” Han Fei frowned. Dream wouldn’t be above using babies.
“Do you still remember what I told you? There are two rituals in this hospital.” Yan Yue’s mother told the truth. “One of them is to find all the organs scattered across the city. That ritual is a backup for Dream. It was afraid that it might be discovered by the other managers, so it kept dissecting its own body. As long as a person in the city still has parts of Dream’s body inside them, then Dream will still be alive.”
“What about the other ritual?”
“The other ritual is added by Dream later on. While it took away the humans’ organs and health, it witnessed not only humans’ fear of death but also the glow of humanity. Before death, people would have different attitudes. Even at the end of their lives, some people would bloom like flowers. That was something even death couldn’t take away. These beautiful moments intrigued Dream. It wanted to use these most beautiful souls to create a new body.”
Yan Yue’s mother glanced at Rest in Peace.
“But what does that have to do with newborns?”
“Even the prettiest colors need a clean canvas.”
The beautiful souls were the paint, and the newborns were the canvas. Dream had done everything for the resurrection ritual. “Eight rituals with eight different methods. It has even prepared eight bodies. No wonder Fu Sheng and the other managers still can’t fully kill Dream.”
With the babies crying, Han Fei’s group entered the deep part of the morgue. Han Fei was greeted by the most absurd scene. Under the morgue, there was a large birthing room. Death and life were only one floor away.
“Haven’t I said that no one is allowed entry without my permission?!” A gloomy voice said. It boomed and caused Han Fei’s ears to vibrate. Han Fei’s eyebrows rose as he turned to the voice. Other than the morgue and the birthing room, there was a human organ factory. After the humans were captured here, they became a raw material. They lost their names, ages, and humanity. The suitable materials would stay and enter the next stage. If they passed multiple stages, they would become hosts for parts of Dream. Those who failed the filtration would be sent to another passage when they’d be made into stomach monsters.
“So those monsters were once humans!” Xiao Jia covered his eyes. “The monsters captured humans to turn them into monsters. There is no monster, to begin with. They were once humans. This is an endless tragic cycle.”
“You’re right.” Han Fei patted Big Sin’s light. “The cycle is repeating, but someone will be there to break the cycle.” Big Sin charged toward the organ factory. All the sins were destroyed.
“Who’s there? Come out now!” The gloomy voice said again. All the machines in the organ factory stopped. A man who had multiple butterfly tattoos on his body walked out of the machines. His flesh was connected to the machines. His blood vessels were the machine wires.
The back of his head was hollowed. A black cocoon sat inside. Different from the other cocoon, something had already grown out of this cocoon. Its lower body was inside the cocoon, but its upper body had stuck into the man’s brain.
“Hospital director?” When Xiao He saw the man, she was shocked. Her most respected mentor was actually the source of all the tragedies!
“It was you who led them here! You should die! I should have kicked you underground on your first day of work!” The man slowly moved forward. The machines combined with him started to twist. He seemed to drag the whole factory as he moved.
“Dream always makes some strange creatures.” Yan Yue’s mother was disgusted. The normal citizens didn’t even dare to look anymore. “I will turn all of you into presents for God!”
The hospital director sensed the terrifying presence of Big Sin. The blood vessels on his body burst. A group of stomach monsters crawled out of the factory. They flew at Han Fei like mutated butterflies. However, Han Fei didn’t need to do anything with Big Sin there. It could deal with the whole hospital on its own.
“Dream has been meaning to cultivate extreme evil and tragedy. I bet it has no idea that a kind person like me would breed Big Sin.” Han Fei thought it was funny. Then again, the human cocoons he got all first came from Happiness Neighborhood. Butterfly probably didn’t lose them, but Fu Sheng had caught them and kept them at Happiness Neighborhood.
Fu Sheng had not directly helped Han Fei, but he left a lot of stuff for Han Fei. If Han Fei could make use of them, it was fine. It was better if Han Fei didn’t use them because then Fu Sheng would revive using Han Fei’s body and reclaim his stuff.
Han Fei had been observing the hospital director. When the director’s focus was on Big Sin, Han Fei sneaked to hide behind Big Sin. When the hospital director came close enough, he showed the butcher’s knife.
1 comment:
thank you for the chapter, Lonelytree!
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