Yu Xiao’s eyes widened in panic as she gazed at Zhao Lan. “What? Misty, what are you saying?” she cried. “I can’t hear a word, Misty. What should I do?”

    Zhou Xiao Zhen dabbed at her dry eyes, feigning sorrow. “Poor Xiao, she’s really in a bad way,” she said. “Having a fit at such a crucial moment.”

    Zhang Kui and the others felt a surge of worry. Yu Xiao had looked through the walkthrough. What if she had lost her hearing now? Had her two friends also gone through the walkthrough?

    Gu Shu watched them silently for a while, then his expression softened, as if he felt sorry for them. “If you can’t hear, then forget it,” he said.

    Yu Xiao breathed a sigh of relief, but then Gu Shu said, “Do you… do you want to know this story?”

    He gestured towards Zhou Xiao Zhen.

    Zhou Xiao Zhen: “…”

    She wanted to burst into tears. She knew doctors liked to mess with people, but she felt like she had been thrown under the bus this time. She couldn’t pretend to be deaf. So, she just froze in place.

    Gu Shu asked again, “Do you want to know this story?”

    Zhou Xiao Zhen shook her head frantically. “No, no, no, I don’t want to know!”

    As soon as the words left her mouth, she saw Gu Shu smirk, the smirk of someone who had got what he wanted. At the same time, Zhou Xiao Zhen felt a cold shiver, as if something had set its sights on her.

    Oh no! Zhou Xiao Zhen thought, Gu Shu must have changed the rules! It didn’t matter if you said you wanted to know or not, the ghosts would still target you. The only way to avoid it was to not answer, like Smiley.

    Zhou Xiao Zhen’s spirit deflated instantly, like a balloon pierced by a needle.

    Gu Shu gave Yu Xiao a meaningful look, then said, “Even if you don’t want to hear, I still have to tell because the clue to the nurse’s whereabouts is hidden within the story.”

    He casually strolled over to Yu Xiao, ending up behind her by chance. He lightly placed his right hand on her shoulder, his posture as if he were chatting with an old friend.

    His hand was on Yu Xiao’s shoulder, but his eyes swept over everyone. “We have a tradition in our hospital,” he said. “Every new medical staff member has to undergo some training and exercises. They have to work night shifts and deal with corpses often, so they need courage. Our hospital has designed a special training for this, which involves locking the new medical staff in the morgue overnight.”

    Everyone gasped inwardly, “Bloody hell,” as they realised this was the perfect setting for a ghost story. These hospital NPCs were insane, courting their own doom.

    Gu Shu went on, “Last night, it was the nurse who keeps your death reports who had to spend the night in the morgue to toughen up. She went in and never came out.”

    “But you haven’t told us the legend about the morgue yet,” Zhang Kui said. He had been in the hospital for a long time, and he knew it was safe to talk to the attending physician as long as he didn’t break any taboos.

    “I was getting to that,” Gu Shu said. “The legend about the morgue has been around in the hospital for a long time. It’s said that there was once a nurse who stayed in the morgue alone to bolster her courage. She was terrified and couldn’t sleep. Then she came up with an idea, which was to sing in front of the mirror. She loved to sing and had dreams of becoming a singer. She sang passionately in front of the mirror all night.”

    Everyone exchanged glances. Had that nurse died like that?

    “The next morning when she came out, everyone asked her if she was scared, if she had seen anything frightening,” Gu Shu said, smirking at everyone. “She said she was a bit scared at first, but after singing in front of the mirror, she wasn’t scared anymore, and she didn’t see anything frightening. When everyone heard her say this, they all looked horrified because there was no mirror in the morgue.”

    Yu Xiao let out a sigh of relief. This story matched what was in the guide.

    Some patients might think, after hearing this legend, that singing lured ghosts, or that ghosts lived in mirrors. But that wasn’t the case. The ghost would emerge five minutes after someone entered and would kill. However, singing could hold the ghost back. Only when there was one living person left in the morgue, and that person was singing, would the ghost lose control and transform into the person’s likeness, copying how they sang.

    So, one had to sing after going in!

    “So,” Gu Shu asked everyone, “if you want to find that nurse, you have to enter the morgue. Are you going to look for her?”

    Everyone thought, ‘Isn’t that obvious?’ If they didn’t find her, how would they leave?

    They felt less nervous with Yu Xiao by their side. She had read the guide, so everything would go according to plan.

    But just as they felt a bit more confident, a wave of fear swept over them like a dark shadow.

    Gu Shu’s voice broke the silence, cold and sudden. “None of you are objecting, so it’s agreed, right? In that case, who’s going in first?”

    Yu Xiao and the others stared in disbelief. What was Gu Shu up to? The guide clearly stated that after Dr. Lao Wang finished the story, he would leave, and the patients could decide whether and how to enter the morgue. So why was Gu Shu still here, watching them go in one by one?

    With his eyes on them like a hawk, they couldn’t talk, trapped by the silent question in the air.

    Zhang Kui and the others didn’t know what had changed, but they knew they couldn’t go in right now; they hadn’t even seen the guide yet.

    A loud cry cut through the tension, like a ray of light through dark clouds. Yu Xiao’s voice, full of drama, sounded.

    “Oh! I can hear again!”

    She looked overjoyed, like a deaf person who had miraculously recovered her hearing.

    “I’ll go!” she said, her voice full of strength. “I’ll go first because I’m brave!”

    Zhao Lan and Zhou Xiao Zhen were genuinely shocked this time. Was Yu Xiao really ready to take this risk alone?

    “Is that final?” Gu Shu asked.

    “It’s final,” Yu Xiao said with a courageous expression. She turned to the others and said, “Don’t worry, if anything happens after I go in, I’ll let you know with my phone. You have to save me, okay?”

    Everyone immediately got her message; with Gu Shu there, it was not easy to talk about the strategy in front of him. But once Yu Xiao went in, she could use her phone to tell them about the copy.

    This girl is smart! Zhang Kui was impressed and said to Yu Xiao, “Don’t worry, we’ll watch our phones all the time!”

    “Okay,” Yu Xiao said as she walked towards the morgue door.

    But before she could reach it, a voice stopped her. “Wait.”

    Puzzled, Yu Xiao turned, meeting Gu Shu’s eyes. He walked towards her, slowly and carefully, his hand reaching out like a question mark in the air.

    Yu Xiao felt a surge of panic as she saw Gu Shu’s hand coming towards her. She thought furiously, ‘How dare you touch me in front of all these people? You’ll regret it if you do!’

    But Gu Shu’s hand did not stop. It grabbed Yu Xiao’s hand, along with her phone… her phone…

    The crowd gasped in shock, witnessing Yu Xiao’s phone being snatched away by Gu Shu’s hand. Yu Xiao sputtered, “What are you doing?”

    Gu Shu answered calmly, “The morgue is a restricted area. Electronic devices are not allowed inside.”

    Everyone was speechless.

    “You’re outrageous!” Yu Xiao fumed. “You’re abusing your authority for personal gain and retaliation!”

    Zhang Kui and the others were confused. What was that barrage of idioms just now? Retaliation? Who was Gu Shu retaliating against?

    “If you have any doubts about my actions,” Gu Shu smiled slyly, “feel free to report me to the Medical Disputes Office.”

    “Grass!” Yu Xiao cursed inwardly, “You’re ruthless.”

    (“草” (cǎo), which literally means “grass” but is also a common slang term in Chinese used to express frustration or annoyance, akin to saying “damn” or “crap” in English.)

    Gu Shu raised an eyebrow. Yu Xiao said quickly, “A type of plant.”

    “It’s time for you to go in,” Gu Shu gestured with a hand, “there are no plants inside for you to study.”

    “Heh, right,” Yu Xiao chuckled bitterly, “Plants are only outside, like… ancient trees.”

    (t/n: The joke doesn’t translate into english for it is related to chinese language sounds, word meanings and so on and I couldn’t think of an alternative.)

    Gu Shu raised an eyebrow again.

    Yu Xiao turned away, walking towards the morgue. “I really love ancient trees. There used to be one not far from my husband’s family home. I visited that ancient tree every day, my favourite thing was trimming its branches. But then I had to leave, and I couldn’t forget about that ancient tree. I even got a neighbour with many hands to help me trim it.”

    Zhao Lan and Zhou Xiao Zhen gasped, barely keeping their faces straight.

    Zhang Kui and the rest stared in confusion; Yu Xiao’s joke had a hidden meaning. It wasn’t just about her and an ancient tree, it was actually… a flirtatious remark to the attending doctor, Gu Shu?

    They glanced back at Gu Shu, whose face had turned as black as coal. He gritted his teeth, as though a bitter memory had resurfaced.

    At last, they came to their senses.

    One of them couldn’t resist asking, “Yu Xiao, is she married?”

    Zhang Kui added, “Does her neighbour have a lot of hands?”

    “Uh…” Zhao Lan looked uncomfortable. “She… has a malignant brain tumour.”

    Yu Xiao entered the morgue, the heavy door shutting behind her. With an inspiration card enhancing her senses, she could clearly feel the dense aura enveloping her. She shivered and rubbed her arms.

    She was safe for the first five minutes in the morgue, but without her phone, she had no way of telling the time.

    Luckily, she had done her homework and learned a lot of lifesaving tricks, so she didn’t panic.

    This game level was quite difficult; for one thing, the ghosts’ killing patterns were hard to figure out. For another, one had to act alone to find clues, because the ghosts only gave clues when there was no one else alive around.

    As she thought of this, Yu Xiao felt relieved. Since Gu Shu had taken away her phone, stopping her from sharing information about the level with others, she might as well complete it by herself, which solved the problem.

    Reassured, she waited patiently. The ghost here was a heartbroken one, who loved to sing and had a preference for love songs. To make her give clues, one had to sing love songs, sing until she was touched, then she would soften and give the nurse’s clue.

    Yu Xiao had no idea how much time had elapsed, but fortunately her intuition was strong; she could sense when the ghost was close.

    A few moments ago, she felt a cold draft behind her and turned around to see someone rising from one of the many hospital beds.

    The white sheet that covered the figure fell off, exposing a corpse with a ghastly complexion and livor mortis. Sear?h the N?vel(F)ire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    The next moment, the corpse disappeared into thin air.

    Yu Xiao freaked out. She quickly started to sing.

    To her horror, she realised she couldn’t remember any songs. She used to like listening to music, but she only knew a few songs by heart. Since she hated reading lyrics and couldn’t catch what the lyrics were, she usually just hummed along, unable to sing them out.

    Feeling the aura closing in on her, Yu Xiao opened her mouth in the nick of time and sang, “I planted a seed, and it finally bore fruit, today is a great day~”