Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The old building of Kangning Hospital had already been decommissioned, yet the surveillance cameras outside Ward 0719 were brand new.

By the time Li Baiyan and I arrived, only a single flickering light remained at the end of the corridor.

The door lock had been forced open, and the room inside was completely empty.

Even the bed frame had been dismantled and taken away.

The only thing left behind was a nurse’s name tag that had fallen into a corner.

Chi Zhaoning.

I picked up the tag and was just about to leave when I suddenly heard footsteps behind me.

A young woman in civilian clothes stepped out from around the corner of the stairs. Her face was pale, but she looked straight at me.

“You finally got out.”

She was Chi Zhaoning.

Three years ago, when I was pinned to a hospital bed for injections, she was the only one who didn’t dare look me in the eye.

Later, on several nights when I was trembling from high doses of sedatives, she was the one who secretly swapped out half of the medication for me.

“Why was Ward 0719 cleared out?” I asked.

She pressed a USB drive into my hand. “Because someone discovered that you weren’t admitted through normal channels.”

On the drive were my medication records, restraint logs, and special medical orders from the past three years.

And on the very last page, a notation stood out starkly.

“Observation subject possesses extremely strong memory capabilities; not suitable for early release.”

Not a patient.

An observation subject.

A chill ran through my chest.

Chi Zhaoning said in a low voice, “Three months before you came in, another patient lived in Ward 0719. Her name was Chen Yulian, and she was the family member of a subject in the Linchuan Project. She kept saying her husband died under suspicious circumstances and that the Han Group paid her hush money. Later, she suddenly went mad and died of illness not long after. The ward was cleared out because of a testimony she left behind.”

“Where is the testimony?”

“I don’t know where the original is, but I remember the address.”

Half an hour later, we found an old residential compound in the south of the city.

When Chen Yulian’s daughter opened the door for us, she was still holding a funeral portrait in her arms.

The moment she heard the words “Linchuan Project,” her eyes turned red.

“Before my mother died, she kept saying that the female researcher from the Han Group who died didn’t commit suicide,” she said through gritted teeth. “She went to the hospital to see my father’s body, and when she came back, she said she was going to hand over the evidence. The next day, she fell to her death from the building.”

My heart constricted violently. “What did your mother see?”

The girl pulled an old letter wrapped in oil paper out of a cabinet.

It was written by Chen Yulian.

Only one sentence was left on it.

“There was more than one person who pushed her down.”