Chapter 152: Nightmare after ten years

As the sky gradually darkens, brilliant neon lights illuminate the towering commercial buildings and crisscrossing streets, and the streets at the intersections are crowded with people.

Tianhai City Third Municipal Hospital is located in the city center. The tall building stands tall on the downtown street and is adjacent to Central Park. Even late at night, there are still vehicles entering and exiting the hospital.

Cen Dongsheng and Song Yutang were standing at the entrance of Central Park, looking at the gate across the street.

The young man in casual clothes was pushing a bicycle in his hand. He rode here leisurely. Song Yutang was dressed in a T-shirt and short jeans, revealing his slender and strong thighs. He wore a baseball cap and exuded youthful vitality.

To passers-by, they looked like a pair of friends hanging out… or a well-matched college couple.

Most people would probably be surprised if they heard a woman calling a man “Master”. Even from the perspective of sex play, it is very strange.

“Master, I started by asking Senior Sister Li Huishan’s roommate…”

At this moment, Song Yutang was reporting incessantly on his process of “searching for clues”.

“…Later, I got a list of contacts from my senior schoolmate and asked everyone one by one. Finally, I found someone who matched the person her roommate described. He was a dermatologist at the Municipal Hospital. His last name was Jia.”

“So, you came here.”

“Yes. I just went into the hospital and took a peek at the duty roster. Doctor Jia is on duty today.”

The girl looked tense, but mostly excited.

He could understand Song Yutang’s emotions. Such actions gave him a sense of déjà vu like those in crime movies, where a highly skilled but anonymous private detective or retired policeman stalks suspicious people on the streets of a busy city and investigates the secrets of a criminal organization. It was quite exciting.

He liked this kind of story very much when he was a child, and he still liked it when he grew up. Later, he chose to become a front-line member of the ruling bureau, which was more or less due to this heroic complex in his heart.

Of course, in real professional life, most investigative work can only be described as “boring”, while real crises often decide the outcome in an instant.

In the battle of wits and courage with the villains, patience in waiting and keenness in seizing the opportunity are both indispensable.

“Well done.”

Cen Dongsheng gave his evaluation.

“It was a good experience, wasn’t it?”

“Ah.”

Song Yutang nodded vigorously, then asked curiously.

“Then Master, what should we do next?”

“Straight to the door.”

“Eh?”

The girl was a little surprised, and saw Cen Dongsheng take out his phone, as if he was preparing to contact someone.

But at this moment, Song Yutang noticed someone’s presence not far across the street from the corner of his eye. He was moved and quickly patted his companion.

“Master, Master, look over there.”

Following the direction of her finger, the young man saw a hurried figure.

“…That’s Doctor Jia?”

“It seems like… he left work early? That’s rare for a doctor.”

Cen Dongsheng put his phone back into his pocket.

“It’s too late to find connections. Let’s talk to him directly.”

“Now? Will he be willing to answer our questions?”

“If he is unwilling, we can take tougher measures depending on the situation.”

“Uh… it’s really…”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Well, if the other party resists…”

“Who do you think I am? And who are you?”

Facing Cen Dongsheng’s question, Song Yutang widened his eyes.

“Do we have to use the power of a curse master…on ordinary people?”

“That doctor is most likely an accomplice of the sorcerer, a villain who is helping the evildoer… He dared to hinder our investigation, so he should be taught a lesson.”

Cen Dongsheng’s tone was understated.

Even when he was still a small soldier under the Philosopher King, if an ordinary person dared to protect the sorcerer in front of him, the end would not be good.

Members of the ruling bureau have a responsibility to protect ordinary people, but that does not mean they can tolerate deception.

“Don’t worry about hurting innocent people. Most people know what to do, especially those who have something to hide.”

Seeing Song Yutang’s hesitation, he realized that this was another “teaching hurdle”.

To let the apprentice accept the values ​​of the Curse Master does not mean that she should learn to do evil. Doing or not doing is one thing, and understanding or not is another.

“If you are still unsure about the ins and outs, just follow my instructions.”

“……I see.”

The ponytail girl nodded slightly, looking at him with eyes full of expectation. These few short days together had already allowed her to build up a certain level of trust and dependence on Cen Dongsheng.

……

Dr. Jia was in a hurry, walking home alone.

For some reason, he always felt that the temperature had dropped by several degrees tonight. The night wind blowing in his face was so chilly that he couldn’t help but shrink his neck.

His car was parked on the side of a nearby driveway. As he was going uphill, he noticed two people standing not far away, a man and a woman, both of them looked young, college age.

“Doctor Jia, please stay.”

The man among them spoke.

“What? A sales pitch? I’m not interested…”

He didn’t want to get entangled with anyone, so he refused and reached out to open the door.

But at this moment, the man suddenly grabbed his wrist, and his movements were so fast that he didn’t have time to see clearly.

The force from the fingers was so strong that he almost thought his hand was going to be broken.

“It hurts…!” Doctor Jia shouted in anger and panic, “What are you doing?”

The young man’s mouth curved up.

“I asked you to stay, didn’t you hear me?”

“you!”

Under the doctor’s stunned gaze, the man suddenly raised his foot and kicked the whole car in a tilted direction. There was a loud bang, the front of the car deflated, and the tires made a shrill “squeaking” sound.

“you you……”

Doctor Jia’s lips were trembling.

“Settle down.”

The young man patted him on the shoulder with a kind tone, but he felt as if he had turned into a stake, being hammered into the soil again and again;

When Dr. Jia saw what Cen Dongsheng took out of his pocket, his frozen expression became even uglier.

“This is what you secretly sold to students. We came here to find out where this thing came from.” Lying in Cen Dongsheng’s palm was a box of facial mask cream.

Dr. Jia’s shoulders drooped and he simply gave up resisting.

Without any explanation from others, the doctor realized why the other party came when he saw this thing. During this period of time, the secret about it had become an endless nightmare that haunted him.

“This, this is not what I did…”

He lowered his head and muttered to himself with an unpleasant look on his face.

“It’s just that someone forced me to spread it… He… That guy came to me in a dream… I really had no choice but to do it…”

“Someone came to me in a dream?”

“right……”

Cen Dongsheng and Song Yutang looked at each other.

“Is there a coffee shop or something like that around here?”

“Have.”

The female college student answered quickly.

“I saw it when I came here. It was at the intersection.”

“Then let’s invite Dr. Jia to come over and chat for a while.”

*
After that, Dr. Jia never resisted again.

Song Yutang quietly observed the other person’s expression and found that the man was pale and looked absent-minded.

I don’t know if it was because he saw the superhuman strength displayed by his master and realized that he had nowhere to escape; or because of his inner struggle.

It was not until he entered the cafe, surrounded by the bustling customers and the warm and bright interior atmosphere, that the doctor’s emotions calmed down.

The three of them each ordered a cup of coffee.

Afterwards, Dr. Jia tried to calm down and told them a strange story.

……

About a month ago, whenever he fell asleep, he would have a similar nightmare.

The dreams always took place in the dead of night, and he was not at home or in the office, but alone on night shift in the hospital morgue.

He did have such an experience. It was when he was doing internship in the hospital, and he had a “part-time job” for a period of time.

Even so, he wouldn’t always be alone at that time…

In short, in such a seemingly real dream, the surrounding air was cold and dull, the light was dim, and an unsettling silence filled the air.

But he is a doctor and should have gotten used to this kind of environment.

However, this dream reminded him of a distant memory, and what happened at that time still makes him unable to let go.

That day, all his part-time classmates happened to have left. It was just past midnight and only the clock on the wall made a ticking sound. He dozed off at the table in the duty room, trying to keep himself awake.

Suddenly, a sharp metal collision sound came from the end of the corridor, breaking the silence of the whole night. The sound was heavy and abrupt, “creaking”, as if someone pushed open a rusty iron door with force.

He stood up suddenly from his half-asleep state.

…There was no one in the surveillance camera. The empty corridor made his heart beat faster.

Despite the fear in his heart, he picked up the flashlight, left the duty room and walked towards the source of the sound. After all, this was his job.

The corridor, which was usually so strange and unfamiliar, suddenly became eerie and scary at this moment.

The room at the end of the corner is where the bodies are stored, and the strange sound just now came from here.

He hesitated for a moment, but still stepped in with careful steps.

The spacious room was air-conditioned, with cold metal cabinets neatly arranged on both sides. He resisted a certain uneasy imagination: each cabinet had once sealed a large number of dead souls.

When he got to the end, he found that the door of one of the refrigerators was actually slightly ajar, and he could vaguely see the outline of something inside in the darkness.

The scenes in nightmares or horror stories actually came true. All kinds of terrible speculations came to his mind, making his heart palpitate as if he was haunted by a demon.

Just as he was trying to calm down and check his surroundings, suddenly, there were light footsteps coming from the other corner of the room, hurried and panicked.

He turned around hastily and raised his flashlight, but where the beam of light reached was nothing but an empty corridor.

He heard his own anxious heartbeat, gurgling in his eardrums, and the ominous premonition became stronger.

At this moment, there was a sudden “click” sound from the refrigerator door behind him – he was so scared that he turned around abruptly and almost dropped the flashlight in his hand to the ground – the open cabinet had been closed at some point.

Looking back, he didn’t see anything at the time. Maybe he just bumped into it accidentally when he turned around. But he didn’t have time to think at the time because fear had already gripped his mind.

His mind was blank at that time. He quickly ran back to the duty room, locked the door, leaned against the wall and gasped, trying to calm himself.

However, the chill could not be shaken off. He stayed in the duty room for the entire night and did not dare to push the door open.

The terror of that day, like some kind of brand, remained deeply on his body until the dawn of the next day, until the third day, the fourth day… until the part-time job ended, the internship was over, he officially became a doctor, and then he could become a resident physician, attending physician –

Until now.

Ten years later, the familiar terror came again, and the memory of that night never let him go.

In this unbearable nightmare, Dr. Jia found himself becoming his past self again, the self who had been alone in the morgue keeping vigil until the early hours of the morning that night.

Doctor Jia felt the familiar chill, and the first thing he thought of was to escape from this haunted place. Even if it was a dream, he didn’t want to stay here for another second.

But for some reason, no matter how he walked, he couldn’t find the exit. In the entire dream world, it seemed that there was only that one corridor left, and he could not go anywhere else.

As if the timing was perfect, the harsh sound of metal collision, “Squeak”, came again from the direction of the morgue.

He didn’t dare to leave the duty room and decided to call the security guard to tell him about the bizarre incident. However, all he heard from the other end of the phone was hoarse noises and low murmurs, as if someone was whispering in a dark corner.

The sound gradually came closer and closer, and finally turned into a tragic scream right next to his ear. He hung up the phone in horror and collapsed on the ground.

He suddenly realized one thing: what was happening next was something he had never experienced ten years ago… The nightmarish memories were continuing, and that terrible night was catching up with him.

When he realized this, the lights in the duty room began to flicker and finally went out completely. He frantically searched everywhere in the darkness and finally found a flashlight, relying on that faint light to illuminate the room.

It was pitch black all around, and the air was filled with a suffocating sense of oppression.

His heart was beating like a drum. In the pitch-black darkness, he saw the face emerging from the window of the duty room.

His face was as pale as paper, his mouth was as black as ink, and his mouth was stretched to reveal a happy smile…the boy’s face.

……

“The dream ends here.”

At the end of the story, Dr. Jia’s pale face was once again shrouded in the shadow of fear.

“I had this dream for several nights in the first week. And for some reason, even though I didn’t know him, I always felt that the boy’s face looked familiar.”

He grabbed his hair in annoyance, and his emotions became visibly unstable again.

“Then, I spent several days looking for clues, and then I remembered that it was a body that was recently sent to the hospital… That person was a student at Tianhai University.”

Hearing this, the female college student sitting opposite him could not hide her surprise.

“Tianhai University again?”

(End of this chapter)