Chapter 26

There were a total of six participants in the trial. Three of them appeared in the hospital, including Song Qingxiao.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

The disturbing noise of the ticking clock continued. The sound of the elevator arriving rang out. The doors opened, and the lightbulb in Song Qingxiao’s brain seemed to light up. She felt as though she was about to figure out another clue. She was about to ponder on it carefully when someone patted her heavily on the shoulder.

“Hey!”

She felt a sharp jolt of pain on her shoulder. After she had been ambushed by number six, Song Qingxiao was once again caught unaware from behind. She twirled on her toes and moved aside. She crouched next to the side of the equipment console and leaned her upper body backward as she turned around to face the person who had tapped her on the shoulder.

The person who had tapped her on the shoulder was a nurse. She was not one of the six participants, and she looked about 30 years old. She wore soft-soled shoes. She did not make a sound when she walked, so Song Qingxiao had no idea when she came over.

Song Qingxiao reacted outlandishly when she shrank away earlier. She felt a little embarrassed. Her hand was still raised, and when she saw Song Qingxiao’s reaction, she sighed. “Are you new?”

After she asked that, she mumbled to herself, “It seems like there have been so many new people recently.”

What the nurse said caught Song Qingxiao’s attention. She narrowed her eyes as soon as she heard that. As the countdown continued, she paid attention to the name tag on the new nurse’s chest. Her name was written on it.

‘Tu Xiaoyun’.

Song Qingxiao knew that her exaggerated response to being tapped had incurred the displeasure of Tu Xiaoyun. She looked a little embarrassed. Since Song Qingxiao had just arrived and she had still not figured out the mission of the trial, she hoped that she could be on good terms with her ‘colleagues’. That was so she would be able to probe more information to give her an advantage in completing the task.

She needed the favor of the people around her. As soon as she noticed Tu Xiaoyun frowning as she spoke, Song Qingxiao’s mind was already busy thinking about the best way to fix it. She raised her left hand to stroke her shoulder. She looked as though she was trying to endure a great deal of pain as she turned to look at Nurse Zhang.

“What happened?”

As soon as Nurse Zhang saw Song Qingxiao’s reaction, she quickly asked about her with concern.

“I think my shoulder is injured from being kicked earlier.”

As soon as Song Qingxiao said that, Tu Xiaoyun looked at her with a puzzled expression. Nurse Zhang explained, “We admitted a new patient today who suddenly attacked Qingxiao and injured her neck.”

While she spoke, Nurse Zhang got Song Qingxiao’s permission and peeled away her collar to look at her shoulder that had been kicked. Song Qingxiao was 1.68 meters tall. However, the nurses working in the psychiatric hospital were not short either. As soon as Nurse Zhang peeled her collar back, she exclaimed in shock after she took a look.

“Oh! There’s a hematoma.”

Number six had not gone easy on her. As she pulled tightly against the lanyard on Song Qingxiao’s neck with both hands, she kicked her feet against Song Qingxiao’s shoulders. Hence, she had two red and swollen marks on her shoulders.

Once Tu Xiaoyun realized what had happened, she looked a little guilty. She took some cotton with some iodine on it and walked up to help Song Qingxiao disinfect her wound. She said, “That’s true. Our hospital may have another newcomer. Doctor Zhou is preparing to meet them now. If that person stays on, we’ll have a new doctor.”

The skin on her neck was torn after she had been strangled by the lanyard string. It stung when the iodine was applied. However, it was not as shocking to Song Qingxiao as the news she heard from Tu Xiaoyun.

She recalled that Tu Xiaoyun previously said ‘It seems like there have been so many new people recently’. Tu Xiaoyun did not specifically mention if all of the ‘new people’ were medical staff or patients. It was highly likely that it was a mix of both. For example, there was herself, as well as number five and number six that she saw earlier.

Since a new doctor was about to enter the hospital, she could not help but wonder who the new ‘doctor’ would be. If everyone in the trial had entered the same scene, three of them have already appeared. Hence, the participants left were the bespectacled guy, the large chap with the gun, and the red whip lady who had yet to appear.

The doctor mentioned by Tu Xiaoyun must be one of the three. There were a total of five floors in the hospital building. According to what Nurse Zhang told her earlier, there were a total of 27 patients. She wondered if the other two participants of the trial would be among the patients.

Her mind was full of questions, along with the sound of the ticking clock. Tu Xiaoyun was still speaking when a chilling boom could be heard. The sound was clear and not dull. It sounded like it came from a distance away. However, because of the hospital’s unique location, the sound echoed in the air.

Song Qingxiao was not the only one who looked like she had suffered a shock. Even Nurse Zhang and the others who were in the midst of a conversation were startled. Tu Xiaoyun’s hand that held the cotton swab shook and the cotton swab poked Song Qingxiao’s injured neck, causing her to let out a gasp.

“What happened?”

Wang Xiaoli was a little surprised. Song Qingxiao, on the other hand, felt her eye twitch non-stop. She felt as though something was wrong! The soundproofing of the hospital was excellent. She had experienced it herself firsthand.

They were all in the same building. There were 27 patients on one side, and the medical staff offices and dormitories were situated on the other side. When she first entered the trial scene and was interviewed by ‘Liu Yixun’, she did not hear anything from the patient zone at all.

It was only when she had followed Nurse Zhang over and passed through several metal gates did she begin to hear the cries and sobs of the patients. The explosion earlier sounded like it came from the offices on the other side of the building. What kind of sound could travel that far?

Not to mention, that noise did not sound like an object falling to the ground or the sound of something breaking. It really sounded like a gunshot. Song Qingxiao instantly thought of the large chap with the gun! She licked her dry and chapped lips.

Tu Xiaoyun said that a new person had arrived. At the moment, the gunman, the bespectacled guy, and the red whip lady had not appeared. The new doctor could be one of them. However, it seemed like the large chap with the gun was the most likely one.

Her neck that was strangled by number six started to hurt even more. The rate of Song Qingxiao’s breathing began to increase. After the sound of the gunshot rang out, she keenly sensed the presence of death. It was a powerful intuition that came from two close calls with death.

Song Qingxiao quickly took a look at the prompt in her consciousness. As she expected, the instructions that used to say ‘Protect the people. Obliterate failure. Upon completion of task: 1000 credits’ had changed after the sound of the gunshot.

‘Protect the people. Obliterate failure. Upon completion of task: 950 credits’.

The reward had changed!

When Song Qingxiao looked up, her eyes were filled with surprise and a little elation. Even though the earlier gunshot meant that it was likely that someone had died in the hospital, it was as she had expected. Once a death occurred, it would signal the official start of the trial.

Her eyes were half-closed as her gaze swept across Tu Xiaoyun and the others. Through the glass windows of the patient room, she could see number five lift his head. It was clear that he had been startled by the earlier gunshot. His face was filled with an unmistakable look of terror.

As soon as he noticed Song Qingxiao’s gaze, number five cradled his head in his arms and slowly lowered his head. His body began to tremble. The others had not recovered their senses after the gunshot when the shrill sound of a woman screaming could be heard in the distance.

“Ahhhhhh!”

The cry was loud, clear, and shrill. It sounded terrifying, especially in a quiet environment like the hospital. It seemed like all the patients had been affected by the shrill cry. As though they sensed a disruption, the patients that Nurse Zhang had ushered back into their rooms had started to rebel. The patient in the same room as number five got down from the bed and sluggishly walked towards the door.

“Go and have a look. Find out what has happened.”

Nurse Zhang seemed a little anxious. Before Song Qingxiao could react, she had been dragged along with Tu Xiaoyun and Wang Xiaoli to reassure and calm the patients down along with a couple of other nurses.

The gunshot seemed to come from the doctor’s office. Nurse Zhang rushed to get the keys and opened the three heavy metal gates. In that situation, she did not forget to explain to Song Qingxiao apologetically, “I’m so sorry, Qingxiao. Since you’ve just started today, I should have shown you around so that you can familiarize yourself with the place.”

She explained in a rush while she looked a little disconcerted, “I don’t know what is going on today…”

“It’s okay. We should hurry to see what is going on and whether we can help. I have time to familiarize myself with the hospital at another time.”

As Song Qingxiao said that, the ticking sound continued, and the numbers in her vision changed to 119: 06: 27. It was as if the numbers mocked her for saying that she ‘still had time’. Song Qingxiao blinked her eyes and endured the pain in her throat as she gulped. She suppressed the fear in her heart and did her best to ignore the numbers.

At that point, she wanted to test the theory in her heart. She wanted to see if that gunshot had anything to do with the large chap who was one of the six participants in the trial. She also wanted to see who had encountered trouble and figure out how she had lost 50 credits for no reason.

As soon as the both of them left the patient area, they heard a commotion outside. The sound seemed to come from downstairs. Nurse Zhang ran to the elevator and pressed the button. The elevator arrived quickly and Song Qingxiao followed her in.

The elevator lights were fluorescent white, and it made the enclosed space appear incomparably gloomy. They did not speak. Song Qingxiao could hear Nurse Zhang’s faint and quick breaths. It revealed that she was extremely anxious.

She turned her head to look at Nurse Zhang and show that she had lowered her head. As the light shone down on her, her eyes were cast in a shadow under her pale white forehead. Song Qingxiao could only vaguely see her tightly pursed lips.

The elevator went down one floor and the doors opened with a ring. However, Nurse Zhang did not move until Song Qingxiao spoke up.

“Xiaoyu…”

Only then did Nurse Zhang look as though she had been woken up from her sleep. She ran out of the lift in a hurry. The entire doctor’s office area seemed to have been startled by the sound of the gunshot. There were plenty of people gathered outside one of the doctor’s offices.

When Nurse Zhang and Song Qingxiao arrived, many noises were coming from inside the office. Song Qingxiao looked at the person sitting on the chair. It was a man whose body was slumped against the chair, and his head was tilted abnormally towards the door. His arms hung limply beside his body. He was dead.

There was an obvious gunshot wound on his forehead. The powerful force of the bullet had caused bruises to appear on the skin around the wound. The bruises looked like earthworms crawling all over his head.

His eyes were wide open. Blood slowly seeped out from the wound on his forehead and trailed down across his brow, nose, and eyes. Finally, it collected in a pool under his cheek and trickled down to form a blooming red patch on his white doctor’s coat.

Perhaps it was because he did not expect to be attacked so suddenly, the doctor’s face still maintained his smile. The curve of his lips made the scene look especially sinister. His appearance reminded Song Qingxiao of all the photos of the trial participants who had died in the previous trial when their card had flipped over.

The doctor’s coat had a name tag pinned on it which displayed the name ‘Zhou Yu’.

The office was filled with a pungent smell of gunpowder mixed with blood. Nurse Zhang was frightened out of her mind when she saw the scene. Song Qingxiao returned her gaze and looked towards the floor of the office. The large chap was pinned down by two nurses and two men that looked like bodyguards. He was completely unable to move. His face was bright red as he struggled with all his might, looking like a pitiful ant.

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