Chapter 1145 - From Today Onward, We Are Friends 2 in 1 (1/2)

A heavy stench of blood permeated the air. The originally spacious room suddenly felt so incredibly crowded. The chilling cold light from the screen lit up his surroundings. Lan Xiaochen stood before the computer table, holding the cursed envelope, and slowly turned around. “Who’s there? Come out and face me!”

The man who was normally so courageous and fearless shouted loudly in the direction of the living room. Unfortunately, all that replied to him was the static of electricity. Inside the empty living room, the television set was suddenly switched on, and the black and white static appeared on the screen like snowflakes. Lan Xiaochen picked up the badminton racket next to his computer table and slowly nudged step by step to the living room. Perhaps it was a psychological trick or something else, but he felt a sense of déjà vu regarding this whole situation.

A barely discernible sound of crying came from a corner of the room. The computer suddenly started to play the horror movie that he had been watching earlier. The segment that Lan Xiaochen had critiqued as extremely cliched to the point of boring him was replayed again and again. The things that occurred to the main character inside the movie when he was watching a horror movie had replicated it perfectly now in his real life.

The familiar conversation floated out from the speakers. The heavy breathing and the nervous tone kept on stimulating Lan Xiaochen’s brain. Even though he was unwilling to admit it, he was really afraid at that moment. “Come out now! Or I will call the police!”

An overwhelming sense of helplessness overcame his body. Lan Xiaochen yelled at the living room as if raising his voice might increase his courage. He was facing away from the screen of the computer as he moved to the door between the living room and his bedroom. He noticed there was a bloody handprint left on his front door’s handle, as if someone had opened the door from inside his house.

At that moment, the horror movie playing in his computer reached its climax. The male main character realized that the ghost from the horror movie he was watching had escaped into his own home. He wanted to escape from his house, but he suddenly noticed that the door of his house was locked.

Seeing the bloody handprint on the door handle, Lan Xiaochen suddenly realized that someone had entered his own house; this place was no longer safe. He moved very slowly, but as he approached the front door, he suddenly picked up speed.

When both of his hands gripped the door handle, he realized, no matter how hard he tried, he could not turn the door open. Fear had completely swallowed up his sense of rationality. The man who thought he was so above other people, the man who spent his daily nights trolling fans of different horror movies, that man felt the prick of fear for the first time in his life.

“How come the door won’t open?”

He shook the door as hard as he could, but the door refused to budge even an inch. However, blood started to leak from the edges of the door!

The main character on-screen was caught in the same conundrum. He took out his phone to call the female lead for help. In real life, Lan Xiaochen also took out his phone in a panic. However, this person had no close friends, so he was calling the police for help. The scene in the movie and the scene in real life had run parallel, and the result was surprisingly similar. The phone call was soon answered, and a stranger’s voice came from the other side of the line.

“You cannot escape.”

Trickles of blood and pale faces started to appear in the room. Shadowy figures wearing red outfits surrounded Lan Xiaochen, who was so scared that he had started to convulse. Lan Xiaochen, who was never afraid of voice his opinion and who was always ready for a fight on the internet, was currently shivering with the corner of his mouth bubbling with white froth, calling his mother with tears in his eyes. A boy in a red shirt dragged Lan Xiaochen to his side. He opened the front door, and there was a young man carrying a backpack standing outside the door.

“He is the source of the curse? Not even a Red Specter?” The young man entered the room and closed the front door behind him. “So, I was getting excited for nothing…”

Sitting on the sofa, the young man took out a comic from his backpack, and he started to flip through it. A pail of blood splashed on the top of Lan Xiaochen’s head. The man instantly waved his hands as if he was thrown inside an icy pool. His first instinct was to cry out for help.

“Chen Ge, wouldn’t it be much easier for you to have Zhang Yi look through his memories? Why waste time with this extra step?” Men Nan clamped his hand over the Lan Xiaochen’s mouth. He looked at the sticky white stuff on his palm and felt disgusted.

“Zhang Yi’s ability is to hide and remove part of one’s memory. If this man’s memory has already been tampered with, Zhang Yi will not be able to recognize it. To prevent us from being misdirected, I’d prefer hearing the truth from the horse’s mouth first. We cannot afford to be too careful.” Chen Ge was a very cautious person. He first wanted the young man to very carefully think over the things that he had done. “Hey, I will ask you a few questions now. I hope you will answer them honestly. If I find out you’re lying, I will make you see how difficult living can be.”

With his brain slowly coming back online, Lan Xiaochen was half lying on the ground. He used the remaining energy in his body to force his head to nod. Just from the tone that he employed, Lan Xiaochen knew that the young man sitting before him was someone he could not afford to offend. Lan Xiaochen might not be afraid of anything or anyone on the internet, but in real life, he was even more cowardly than a mouse.

“Who gave you the blank cursed letter?”

“No one gave it to me. I stole it from an abandoned hospital.” Lan Xiaochen placed the envelope on the ground with his trembling hands. “This is yours, right? I won’t dare do this again. Please forgive me.”

“Someone like you dared to sneak into an abandoned hospital to steal something? You have to be kidding me.” The incredulity was clear on Chen Ge’s face.

“I made a bet with someone on the internet that we would all go spend a night inside that hospital. I was just saying it for fun. Who knew they would really come to Xin Hai in person? I could not hide from them, so I was dragged by them along to the hospital.”

“Where is the exact location of that hospital?”

“The hospital was in Xin Hai’s countryside. The surrounding area has basically not been developed. It’s a very desolate place.” Lan Xiaochen was clearly at the point of crying already. “There were three of them in total. They were all visitors from Jiujiang. Jiujiang must be a very incredible place because each of them was more courageous than the next. Who knows what kind of training they underwent daily?”

“They entered the hospital with you?” Chen Ge did not expect visitors from Jiujiang to appear in Xin Hai.

“I was the first to enter, but once I escaped from their line of sight, I instantly went into hiding. After they had all gone into the building, I ran out of it immediately.” This proved how nefarious this Lan Xiaochen was. To put it more frankly, he was human scum, plain and simple.

“Did the rest of the visitors come out from the hospital?” Chen Ge was more concerned about the safety of the visitors.

“I have no clue. I have waited outside the hospital for half an hour, but there was noise at all coming from inside the hospital. It was as if the three of them had been eaten by something inside the hospital.” Lan Xiaochen’s voice was stammering. He was still very afraid of Chen Ge. “The place was very scary at night. I did not dare stay there for too long, so I ran home on my own. But I returned to the place the following afternoon. I found one of the visitors’ wallets in a corner of the hospital lobby. All the identification documents inside the wallet had disappeared. Instead, all that was left were the three blank patient records and a paper note.”

“Did you call the police after that?”

“No, I assumed they’d left on their own. This could not be counted as a disappearance, and there was no sign of any dead bodies, so I had no reason to report to the police, right?” It was unclear whether Lan Xiaochen was trying to convince Chen Ge or himself.

“Where are the three blank patient records and the paper note now?” Chen Ge’s face was dark as a storm, and the atmosphere inside the room was equally suffocating.

“I have already used two of the patient records. The last one is inside this envelope.” Lan Xiaochen shrunk his neck back like a turtle. “Initially, I really did not know this patient record can curse someone. It was not until the day the neighbor’s dog would not stop barking. I was just intending to give it a try, so I wrote down their name. Who would have thought the whole family would get sick and die? The dog was the last to perish.”

“You said, other than the three patient records, there was also a paper note, right? Go and get it for me. I want to take a look at it.”

Lan Xiaochen initially wanted to use that paper note as a bargaining chip, but he realized that he did not have the courage to sit on the bargaining table with Chen Ge. “The paper note is inside the locked drawer inside my bedroom. The key is inside my pocket.”

Men Nan took out the key and headed into the bedroom. Moments later, he handed the paper note to Chen Ge. Lan Xiaochen might call it a paper note, but it was actually a page that was torn out from a book. There was a dark stain of dry blood left on it, and once one looked closer, one would realize the blood stain was hiding a sentence.

‘This is a sickened world, why have you not discovered that fact? I swear to cure you!’

These simple words had a very special power. They would give the reader a strange feeling, as if the statement was meant for them.

“A sickened world? I think you’d better work on curing yourself first.” Chen Ge used Yin Yang Vision to study the words on the page. The more he looked at them, the more confused he became. The black blood stain had a clear layering to it, as if people kept writing the same message on the same part of the page over and over again. “This feels like a notice, but at the same time, it could be some kind of hint. Could it have been left behind by the doctors of the cursed hospital? But why would this page be placed together with the three blank patient records?”

Chen Ge had fought with the cursed hospital several times already. This was the first time he had encountered a blank patient record. This was not something that someone could pick up randomly from the floor.

“I have already told you everything I know,” Lan Xiaochen whispered. “So, can you…”