CHAPTER 632: MEETING

The smell of disinfectant was pungent. One’s body would be infected by the smell after staying in the room for too long. Gao Ming walked down the hospital hallway with his bag. New patient moved into his former room. The patient was unconscious and his family was forbidden from visiting him.

“Stop! This is a private hospital. To prevent stimulating patients, no visitations are allowed during the treatment period!” A nurse came out of a sickroom and saw Gao Ming’s back. She jogged over to stop him.

“I’m not a family member. I’m a patient.” Gao Ming turned around. The nurse looked familiar. She was the one who looked after him. Her name was Ling Ling.

“Gao Ming? Haven’t you been discharged? I didn’t hear the doctor mention anything about your relapse.” Ling Ling was happy to see Gao Ming. She was the one who looked after him when he was unconscious. She felt a sense of accomplishment after Gao Ming returned to normal.

“I’m here to look for Wen Xuan. I keep having strange dreams recently.” Gao Ming was not a handsome man but he possessed a melancholic air from dying many times.

“This is such a coincidence. Doctor Xuan has just finished a meeting with the experts from Immortal Pharma. She’s checking on the patient in Room 7009.” Ling Ling grumbled, “You’ve met the patient from Room 7009. He’s the most troublesome patient I’ve handled. He’d wake up so quickly from every hypnosis. Even the experts have been in meetings for two days already.”

“I’ve met him?!”

“Yes. His name is Xia Yang. Everyone hated him, so you were the only one who would listen to his stories. That was because you were in a coma.” Ling Ling looked helpless. “You might not know him, but he believes you’re his only friend. You’re closer to him than his family.”

“But hasn’t he been discharged too?” When Gao Ming woke up, Xia Yang gifted him a birthday painting.

“The madman got hospitalized a few days after that. When the hospital rushed to his home, the bedroom was slathered in blood. The walls were painted with strange symbols. He wanted to paint his home into a bloody cage.” Ling Ling used to share her unhappy things at work with Gao Ming because he would never gossip. “Why do you think he’s acting like this? He’s a typical rich second-generation. The inheritance his parents left for him is enough for him to survive several lifetimes. What could possibly be troubling him?”

“Perhaps he’s homesick.” Gao Ming touched his heart. Han Hai’s Xia Yang was dead. His death portrait was in the torture room. However, Gao Ming fell into the God of Future’s trap, causing Xia Yang and Situ An’s spirits to escape. “Xia Yang underwent Immortal Pharma’s latest treatment like I did. Therefore, his actual body should be in Xin Lu. Did his consciousness enter Han Hai? Or was it his soul?”

Ling Ling chatted with Gao Ming for a while and left to do her job. Gao Ming followed the stairs up to the seventh floor. The hospital became dimmer as you went higher. The seventh-floor corridor gave off a sinking feeling.

“How come it feels like I’ve been here before?” Many death memories remained in Gao Ming’s mind. There were also memories from Xin Lu and Gao Ming’s childhood memories. A normal person would have lost their mind already. Thankfully, Gao Ming was not normal.

Gao Ming walked past the sickrooms as he examined the room numbers. He slowed and stopped before Room 7003. Through the window on the door, Gao Ming saw a patient standing rigidly on the bed. His head looked caved in as if a part had been taken away.

“I saw Room 7003 in Situ An’s hospital. There was a patient who called himself Question Mark, who stayed in it. It was he who told me Han Hai was not real and our lives in Han Hai were fake.” Gao Ming still kept the city map the man gave him in his wallet. The map had been folded many times. The sea around Xin Lu and Jiujiang was circled in red.

Gao Ming knocked on the door. The patient in bed slowly turned around. His clothes were covered in math formulas. Their eyes met. The patient, who just had brain surgery, had his eyes trembling. He walked to the door. The locked door was connected to the hospital’s siren system. It couldn’t be forced open. The patient leaned on the window and cautiously observed Gao Ming.

“Question Mark?”

“You remembered everything!” The man’s face squeezed into the window and revealed an ugly smile. “That means you still have a chance.”

“A chance to do what?” Gao Ming was curious about this patient. He had been to Han Hai and managed to use his power to calculate a loophole to wake himself up.

“I had you call me Question Mark because I couldn’t remember my name, but you’re different. You still have a chance to recall your real name.” The patient’s face was squeezed into the small window. He looked horrifying. “Do you remember what I told you when you were awake?”

“I have some impressions.” The man said Gao Ming became like this because of Immortal Pharma’s latest treatment. There were twelve other people like him.

“Of the thirteen of you, the other twelve were especially picked. You are the only exception. Your appearance is an accident for everyone.” The patient pressed his hands on the door. “Only you…”

He still had more to say when footsteps came from the other side of the corridor. He instantly returned to a dullard. He stood dumbly at the corner. Gao Ming turned to where the footsteps came from. However, he saw no one. The path to Room 7009 was deserted.

Gao Ming rushed to Room 7000. He glanced into the room, and his eyes narrowed.

The bed was covered in blood. Bloody bandages and medicine were strewn on the ground. The devices were broken. In the chaos, a female doctor flipped through the patient’s record calmly as if detached from the chaos around her.

The iron bars on the window were bent. Glass shards were everywhere. Gao Ming’s eyes settled on the female doctor in the room. The wind slipped through the open window and fluttered her hair.

Gao Ming opened the door and entered the room.

The doctor raised her head.

The moonlight shone between them. One stood among the chaos. The other hid in the dark.

There was no joy of reunion or tears of happiness. They stood there quietly, waiting for the other to start speaking.