Chapter 69
Chapter 69
Zhu Xiangfeng asked in a clear, crisp voice, “Lolita, do you like Xiangfeng?”
Luo Li paused. “Do you think I like you?”
Zhu Xiangfeng said, “You do, right? You kept this doll safe.”
Under the moonlight, the doll’s black eyes stared straight at Luo Li too.
They clearly had no focus, but in this atmosphere, they were inexplicably creepy.
Luo Li looked at her without expression. “Then you may have guessed wrong.”
Zhu Xiangfeng stared at her for a long while before leaving.
Luo Li’s hands, hanging at her sides, had long since clenched tight. Sleep had completely fled her.
How could she not like it?
She reached out and placed her hand over her own chest.
Inside was a heart that was still beating.
Even after two years, the sensation of that heartbeat in her chest still felt somewhat foreign.
She still wasn’t used to this heart.
…
The next day, after Ning Shuo confirmed when the nurses made their rounds, he Disguised himself and went out again.
He changed into a long black coat, put on a large pair of sunglasses and a black mask, and turned himself into the cool, flashy, impossibly suave Ning Oscar Best Actor Shuo.
Yu Qian, whom he had dragged out with him, stared in shock. “Half… King, what is this?”
Ning Shuo lightly tapped the bridge of his sunglasses with his ring finger. “Handsome, right?”
He was handsome, sure, but-
“What if a nurse asks you to take off your sunglasses later?”
Ning Shuo said, “No matter. This King has applied a Disguise to the part covered by the mask.”
They went to the hospital’s only supermarket and searched around, but they couldn’t find any little cakes.
Ning Shuo asked a shop assistant where the cakes were. The assistant spread their hands. “Bad timing, sir. A customer came by just now and bought every cake we had. Even the stock in the back.”
The corners of Ning Shuo’s mouth drooped beneath his mask.
Someone had beaten him to it.
…
A Certain Wang, the one who had beaten him to it, was currently handing out a cardboard box full of little cakes to the children in the pediatrics department.
To avoid running into the nurses checking the corpses and bringing trouble upon himself, Ning Wang had also given himself a simple Disguise.
When Ning Shuo came looking for trouble and saw his face, he said, “…Aren’t you being a little too perfunctory?”
Ning Wang lowered his head and continued handing out cakes. “It’s not as good-looking as my own face.”
He looked up. “It’s fine. I can just look at your eye c-”
He broke off mid-sentence. Expressionless, Ning Wang said, “Why are you like this too?”
Ning Shuo said pointedly, “Someone got checked last night. The nurses came to raid my place too.”
He shook his head with a sigh. “I was clearly in the isolated psychiatric department. I should’ve been able to move around freely.”
Ning Wang said, “Cut it out, bro. I heard. The nurse you asked for directions yesterday realized the face on the list was the same as yours.”
“Oh? Is that so?”
Ning Shuo immediately changed his tune. “Looks like I’m just too handsome. So unforgettable that even after an entire night, she still couldn’t forget me.”
“Yeah, way too handsome. Why don’t you take those off, then?”
Ning Shuo immediately knew when to yield. “No can do. I don’t want to fight monsters for two days and two nights straight. I’d die of exhaustion.”
Ning Shuo stopped in front of Ning Wang just as the latter took the last cake out of the box.
He dragged out his tone. “Brother Ning, it’s the last one. You wouldn’t be unwilling to give it to me, would you?”
Ning Wang hid the cake behind his back. “Of course I’m unwilling.”
Ning Shuo: “…”
Fine. His competitiveness had already overridden everything else.
Ning Shuo narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at the remaining cake.
It was chocolate.
Ning Shuo still remembered what that Cloth Doll from yesterday looked like. It had a strawberry pattern printed on it.
That was Xiangfeng’s favorite doll.
Although strawberries might not necessarily be Zhu Xiangfeng’s favorite, if they were talking probability, the chances were at least higher than chocolate.
Ning Shuo waved a hand. “Fine, do whatever you want.”
After Ning Wang finished handing out the cakes and was about to follow him, Ning Shuo immediately said, “Stop right there.”
He held out a hand and said solemnly, “We’re opponents now. Private negotiations are forbidden.”
Ning Wang raised an eyebrow. “Being opponents means I can’t tag along?”
Ning Shuo said gravely, “Other opponents can. Xie Ning can’t.”
Ning Wang: “…”
After that childish little exchange, Ning Shuo headed toward the hospital cafeteria in high spirits.
The hospital made boxed cakes, so logically, they had an oven.
Ning Shuo had originally planned to take the stairs, but they were under construction.
There were too many people coming and going for him to fly. Ning Shuo stared at the elevator, his gaze firm. “Shuishui, onward we march toward the Ghost/Monster!”
Yu Qian looked at the elevator.
Generally speaking, plenty of people took elevators, especially now that the stairs were under construction.
And yet at this moment, the only ones waiting for the elevator were the two of them.
They were on the third floor. The elevator doors slowly opened, and they stepped inside. Not long after the doors closed, the light overhead began to flicker.
Yu Qian swallowed. He had just been about to say something when he heard Ning Shuo drawl, “Scared?”
After hearing him make a small sound of agreement, Ning Shuo said, “Have you seen my first Script?”
Yu Qian shook his head. “No.”
“Perfect. Then I’ll let you see for yourself,” Ning Shuo said. “In a Script, the things that stir up trouble are basically either ghosts or monsters. Monsters use the power of their own bodies. Manipulating objects from a distance is usually something ghosts can do.”
“My internal energy isn’t enough right now, but I’ve still learned a few other techniques that are more convenient for beating up ghosts.”
The moment he finished speaking, the moving elevator came to an abrupt stop, and the light overhead suddenly burst.
Yu Qian felt a gust of cold wind brush past his ear. Before he could react, pain shot through his ear, and in the same instant, someone shielded him behind their back.
Ning Shuo rubbed the blood from Yu Qian’s ear between his fingertips. “Sorry. Borrowing a little blood.”
Yu Qian stood there blankly. With the lightbulb broken, he couldn’t see Ning Shuo rolling the blood between his fingers. All he heard was Ning Shuo muttering under his breath.
The elevator, which had been icy cold, suddenly warmed again. But because the light was already broken, the inside of the elevator remained pitch-black.
Ding.
The elevator doors opened. Patients were waiting on the first floor. As if they couldn’t see the shattered glass all over the elevator floor at all, they walked in and pressed the elevator buttons on their own.
Ning Shuo curled his lips provocatively at the ghost bound to the elevator wall by golden chains and mouthed, “See you next time.”
When they reached the cafeteria, non-kitchen staff were not allowed inside. So Ning Shuo glanced at the staff wall, found two apprentices slacking off, knocked them out, murmured a quick apology, and fed them some medicine.
Yu Qian asked, “Where did you get medicine?”
“Swiped it while I was tailing a psychiatry nurse. It should at least keep them asleep for a few hours.”
He applied a Disguise to Yu Qian. “Give me a hand in a bit.”
It was Yu Qian’s first time wearing a Disguise. The feeling was novel; he wanted to poke at it but didn’t dare, so he obediently followed behind Ning Shuo.
Aside from the times they needed to use the oven, they even stuffed the ingredients into the Backpack and carried them back to the ward, rushing back and forth whenever the nurse wasn’t around.
After working for nearly an entire day, they had made one of every kind of cake.
Yu Qian wasn’t exactly smooth at making cakes. While they were in the hospital cafeteria, his greatest contribution beside Ning Shuo was acting as a shield.
Whenever another NPC called Ning Shuo over to do something, Yu Qian would say, “I’ll do it!”
The afternoon tea today also required cakes, so the NPC staff let Ning Shuo focus on baking.
Ning Shuo was busy when a hand suddenly touched his face. “You’ve got flour all over you.”
Ning Shuo froze. A different scene abruptly overlapped with the one before his eyes.
His nose was filled with the smell of rust and the bloody stench that lingered after the flames of war. A hand reached over from the side. “You’ve got blood all over you. For a second, I thought your face was ruined.”
“Watching your face get ruined would be no different from having my own face ruined, would it?”