Chapter 149
Chapter 149
Inside the hospital, nurses returned Guo Xiaojun to his ward, placed him on the bed, and hurried away.
He clutched his leg and grimaced.
“What rotten luck. I walk out a door and somehow break my leg.”
Guo Xiaojun had completed only three missions, surviving each by clinging to stronger players. He lacked Li Wei’s habit of careful analysis. Since he rarely exercised, he assumed simple bad luck caused his fall.
He regretted not training more in the past.
Then he glared at the patient beside him. Without that man, none of this would have happened.
But the patient, previously paralyzed in bed, was now standing.
He smiled down at Guo Xiaojun.
Guo Xiaojun froze. The man’s osteoporosis was so severe that the slightest movement should have broken his bones. How could he possibly stand?
Then Guo Xiaojun noticed his employee badge hanging around the patient’s neck.
His heart sank.
“Could you give that back?” he asked with a forced smile.
“N… no.”
The patient’s voice was dry from disuse.
Before Guo Xiaojun could respond, the man seized his jaw and squeezed.
Crack!
His jaw dislocated. Guo Xiaojun’s face filled with terror.
A nurse entered.
“Time for medicine!”
Hope flared in his eyes, only to vanish when she ignored him and spoke to the patient.
“Here’s the medicine. Make sure he takes it.”
“Aah! Aah!”
Weeping, Guo Xiaojun reached toward her.
Crack!
His arm broke.
“All right,” the patient said, his speech now perfectly fluent.
He picked up the pills and approached. Guo Xiaojun tried to resist, but every movement made his bones crack. The patient easily forced open his mouth and pushed the medicine inside.
Dizziness overwhelmed Guo Xiaojun. Moments later, he fell into a drugged sleep.
Patients in the other wards were equally resistant to their medicine.
In Ward 07, Sun Miao’s patient knocked the pills onto the floor.
“I won’t take them!”
The patient suffered from a petrification disorder. His bones grew continuously until his body would become a motionless figure of stone.
“Please. Take your medicine, all right? If you do, your big sister will grant any request.”
Sun Miao gave him a flirtatious wink.
“No. I refuse!”
The patient turned away. Growing anxious, Sun Miao suddenly had an idea.
“If you don’t take them, I’ll fetch Director Jia.”
The patient fell silent. At last, he obediently accepted the pills and swallowed them.
Sun Miao brightened. She had discovered how to handle them: threaten them with Director Jia.
She did not see the patient spit out the medicine after she turned away.
Similar scenes unfolded in every ward except those assigned to Wang Fugui and Liu Ye.
The woman under Liu Ye’s care swallowed her pills immediately, without waiting for him to say a word.
Wang Fugui achieved much the same result. He had absorbed Liu Ye’s teachings perfectly. Holding a toilet plunger at his patient’s bedside, he persuaded the anorexic woman to swallow every pill.
After the woman took her medicine, Wang Fugui tried to chat with her. Perhaps one of the patients could provide useful information.
Unfortunately, he was terrible at speaking with women and stumbled over every question.
“Um… how did you develop this condition?”
The woman fell silent.
“Would you like to hear a story?” she asked eventually.
Wang Fugui nodded.
“I once had a boyfriend. We grew up together as childhood sweethearts, attended the same high school, then the same university. We planned to marry after graduation…”
Tears rolled down her face.
“Before the wedding, we decided to go skiing on Mount Alagas. Once we started working, we wouldn’t have much time to travel. But we never imagined…”
Boom!
Two people slowly opened their eyes beneath a cliff on Mount Alagas. They lay on a narrow ledge far below the summit. Clearly, they had fallen from above.
They were only university students and had no idea what to do. They tried to climb, but the cliff was too steep. Several attempts nearly sent them plunging farther down.
In the end, they could only wait for someone to notice their disappearance and send rescuers.
One day passed. Then two. Then three.
After seven days, their snacks were gone. They survived by melting snow, but the icy water tortured their stomachs.
Both drifted in and out of consciousness.
Just as the woman began sinking into eternal darkness, her boyfriend’s voice reached her.
“Juanjuan, I found food. Open your mouth…”
She obeyed instinctively. Something entered her mouth. She bit down and tasted meat.
When she asked what kind, her boyfriend said he had found a snow sheep.
She swore she had never eaten anything so delicious. It was the finest meat in the world.
The snow sheep sustained her until rescuers arrived.
When she woke, however, her boyfriend was gone.
“I searched for him for a long time, but he had vanished from the world. And I never tasted anything that delicious again.”
A strange smile appeared on the woman’s face.
“Then one day, while cooking, I accidentally cut my finger. Without thinking, I put it in my mouth. Hahahaha…”
Wang Fugui shuddered.
He had guessed what she ate from the moment the couple became trapped on the mountain. Hearing the truth still chilled him to the bone.
“From that day onward, I could no longer eat anything. Every kind of food became disgusting. I cannot forget how I survived.”
The woman buried her face against her knees and sobbed.
Wang Fugui wondered whether his earlier treatment had been too cruel.
Then he remembered the warning in the Notebook and immediately recovered his senses.
Never believe anything a patient says.
Perhaps the woman truly deserved sympathy. But who knew whether this story belonged to her? And even if it did, had her boyfriend really offered himself willingly, as she implied?