Chapter 1142 - A Good Person? 2 in 1 (2/2)

“The middle of this storeroom is partitioned off with an iron door? Who designed the place like this? What is the purpose of this?”

“I have no idea.” The three entered the inner room and discovered things that would never be used at a hospital, like an old, white wedding dress and pairs of shoes covered in a layer of dust. Inside the dark room, just these rows of tattered shoes gave off a very creepy feeling.

“I have no idea why these things would be found here. The old gentleman who guarded this place when it was built passed away many years ago. This place is commonly locked up. If not for the fact that the new hospital director wanted to redo the storeroom, no one would have known that there were so many shoes abandoned here.” Doctor Zhao held the flashlight and keys. His heart was palpating with an indescribable fear.

“There are all different styles of shoes, and the sizes are all different. Is it possible that one of the former guards here liked to collect dead people’s shoes? Could he have stolen all of the dead people’s shoes and then stored them here?” Chen Ge mumbled to himself. He did not notice the expressions on Ol’ Wu and Doctor Zhao’s faces that had gotten paler and paler.

“I have to say, if you don’t mind, your supposition is rather unbelievable.” Doctor Zhao pointed at the surrounding shelves. “All of these shoes on the shelves were once worn by dead people? I realize the process of thinking for you inspectors is really different from us normal people.”

Ol’ Wu touched his nose. He wanted to say something else, but after what Doctor Zhao said, he suddenly did not know how to voice his thoughts. Chen Ge, who walked at the front, did not answer. He suddenly stopped after walking past two shelves. “The shoes on the earlier few shelves were all neatly arranged. How come only the shoes from this shelf are on the ground? Someone has tripped here before!”

Narrowing his eyes, Chen Ge compared the location where the shoes had fallen and tried to reconstruct what happened that day.

“Someone who was about my height found something around this spot where I am standing. He was shocked, and his body knocked into the shoe rack, so the shoes got knocked off and spread to the two sides.” Chen Ge had very sharp observational skills. Just based on where the shoes had landed, he had managed to come up with many reasonable hypotheses. “What shocked the victim probably suddenly appeared behind him. When he turned around, he lost his balance, and he knocked into the shoe shelf.”

Chen Ge locked onto a direction and walked toward there. Scanning the shelves on the side with Yin Yang Vision, he came upon a discovery. “What’s this?”

There was a small paper ball hidden in a very inconspicuous corner at the bottom of the shelf. Chen Ge opened it up, and there was only one sentence on it.

‘Do not enter the last and innermost room!’

“Doctor Zhao, take a look at this. Do you think this is Doctor Fang’s handwriting?” Chen Ge handed the note to Doctor Zhao.

After taking a look at it, the latter shook his head. “It is not Doctor Fang’s handwriting, but it has appeared where Doctor Fang’s accident happened. It can only mean that someone was kind enough to warn him of the danger before he came in here, but unfortunately, he did not notice it at the time.”

Chen Ge held on to the paper note. This was a very important clue, so he had to look after it. “Doctor Zhao, do you still remember the people who came with Doctor Fang to this storeroom that day?”

“I do.”

“Among them, do any of them have similar handwriting to this writing on the paper note?”

“I do not think so. The handwriting of most doctors is very hard to read because we need to write prescriptions very fast.” Doctor Zhao confirmed it one more time and finally said that the note was not written by the people who went with Doctor Fang that day.

“It was not someone from the hospital, huh?” Chen Ge frowned, but after a while, he said, “To enter this place, one has to first get the keys from the management center. Could it be that someone there passed this note to Doctor Fang?”

Since they could not find more clues at the old storeroom, Chen Ge took the paper note and hurried back to the management center. After comparing the handwriting, Chen Ge noticed that the handwriting on the note was very similar to one of the managers. The manager had the surname Chi[1]. It was a very rare surname.

Chen Ge put away the paper note. He looked at the pictures of the employees that were posted on the wall and asked very loudly, “I am so sorry, but is Chi Ren here? Is he on duty today?”

“Brother Ren asked for holiday a few days ago. Is there anything that you want me to tell him when he returns?” The people at the center thought Chen Ge and Ol’ Wu were inspectors from the Xin Hai station, so they were very cooperative.

When he heard that Chi Ren had not been to work for several days, Chen Ge immediately had a bad feeling arise in his heart. “Can you give me Chi Ren’s address? We wish to ask him some questions in person. This is very important.”

The people at the management center hesitated for a while before they finally gave Chen Ge the address of Chi Ren’s apartment.

“Brother Ren does not like to communicate; he normally will not talk to strangers. So, I advise you to be prepared for no one to answer the door.” The people at the management center had bitter smiles when they mentioned Chi Ren.

“Does he have any strange habits, or has he done anything strange before?”

“There is nothing particularly strange about him… Oh, right, Brother Ren, I am sure, lives alone. In his employment information, he stated very clearly that he has no family, but he occasionally mumbles to himself, saying terms that are very scary like Chi Shou[2], Chi Yanjing[3], Chi Bi[4], and so on.”

Just the mere mention of these terms made the person at the center feel uncomfortable.

“One time, I could not help myself and asked him why he kept saying these things, and then he told me all those terms were the names of his family members.”

“He sure comes from a very strange family. Who would even think of naming their children like that?” Chen Ge did not finish the other half of the sentence. He had a feeling that this family who had the surname Chi probably had some kind of relation with the non-smilers.

With this useful information, Chen Ge had Doctor Zhao return to his post while he and Ol’ Wu travelled to Chi Ren’s apartment. They knocked for a long time, but there was no answer. In the end, it was the landlord who had come over to tell them Chi Ren had not returned for days. The landlord revealed some very important information as well. The last time Chi Ren left the apartment, he was carrying a very large bag. It was filled with water and a lot of food. It was as if he was preparing for some incoming danger, and he was going into hiding.

If my assumption is not wrong, the reason Chi Ren gave Doctor Fang the note was because he wanted to save Doctor Fang, but he failed. He was worried about the non-smilers’ revenge, so he hurried and packed up to run away in the night.

From how Chen Ge saw it, even though this Chi Ren had a very strange name, he believed that he should be a good person.

“Looks like if we want to find Doctor Fang, we need to find this Chi Ren first. He will be our next lead. Hopefully, he can give us more information that might help lead us to Doctor Fang.”

[1] Chi (吃) can be literally translated as eat.

[2] Chi Shou can be translated as ‘eat hand’.

[3] Chi Yanjing can be translated as ‘eat eyes’.

[4] Chi Bi can be translated as ‘eat nose’.