Chapter 34: Clues Revealed
When Luo Ling pushed Elsa’s wheelchair into Ward Zero, she found the normally spacious room was now crowded.
Besides the people she had met yesterday, there were three new faces.
A scruffy man with a goatee and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, a nondescript young man with black-rimmed glasses, and one more person… whom Luo Ling hadn’t expected.
“An Yu?”
Luo Ling looked at the round-faced girl playing a game console in the corner. It was the freshman she had met earlier.
She was even wearing the same canvas shoes from military training.
Luo Ling subconsciously looked down at her own feet, relieved that she had bought new shoes after receiving the money yesterday. She wouldn’t be recognized by her junior this time.
“So, she must be ‘Cyber Girl.’”
Luo Ling’s eyelids twitched. The codename didn’t quite fit the freshman’s personality. It was probably assigned to her, just like her own.
The moment Luo Ling entered the ward, almost everyone turned to look at her, especially the three who hadn’t met her before, their gazes filled with curiosity.
A flicker of dismissive disappointment crossed the scruffy man’s eyes, while the bespectacled young man nodded politely, the reflection on his glasses hiding his expression.
“Wow.”
An Yu exclaimed and tried to approach Luo Ling, but the room was too crowded.
“Alright, everyone’s here,” Ji Shinian, the group leader, who looked slightly better than yesterday, sat up slightly in his bed and said softly, “First, let’s welcome the newest member of our Qingshan Psychiatric Hospital Patient Self-Help Exchange Group, Miss Bai.”
“Clap, clap, clap…”
An Yu immediately stood up and applauded, but seeing no one else join in, she awkwardly stopped.
Elsa wanted to clap too, but she had to keep her hands on the teddy bear’s mouth to prevent the chaotic little creature from saying anything inappropriate.
The small interruption didn’t affect the slightly tense atmosphere in the ward. Everyone knew that Luo Ling had “killed” Wu Qin, although Ji Shinian had explained the situation, he still couldn’t say for sure whether Wu Qin had been alive or dead at the time.
“Let’s have a brief self-introduction. After all, we’re all group members now, and we need to cooperate with each other,” Ji Shinian said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Codename White Witch, just call me Bai,” Luo Ling said softly. “Myriad path, my ability is healing.”
She decided to keep her Spores’ surveillance ability hidden for now, no need to reveal everything.
Shen Miaoyun was the first to react, her eyes lighting up. She was also a healer.
But the others looked puzzled. How could a healer instantly kill the Bone Doctor, known for her formidable defenses?
Even Yang Meili, renowned for her assassinations, would struggle to kill Wu Qin in her current Third-Order state, let alone without Wu Qin sending out a distress signal.
“Bai, if you don’t mind, could you tell us what happened at the time?”
Liu Songyi, the criminal investigator, who was standing next to Ji Shinian, asked in a low voice. He had learned part of the story from Ji Shinian, but not the specifics.
Because Ji Shinian had only glimpsed the final moments of Wu Qin’s death, it was difficult to determine the true situation.
Luo Ling nodded and briefly recounted the events, omitting the parts about the Puppet Ballad and her transformation, focusing on Wu Qin’s condition at the time.
As for how she had managed to kill Wu Qin, Luo Ling simply said she had used her ability, glossing over the details.
After listening to Luo Ling’s account, everyone fell into deep thought.
So Wu Qin had died as a controlled, living corpse… but strangely, her consciousness had remained clear until the very end.
Ji Shinian was certain of this. At least, from the thread of fate, he hadn’t seen any signs of Wu Qin’s mind being controlled.
Ji Shinian’s eyes flickered. He knew Luo Ling was hiding something, but on this point, she seemed to be telling the truth.
He thought for a moment, then took out his phone, scrolled to a portrait, and handed it to Luo Ling.
“Did you… see a woman like this at the time?”
Before the thread of fate was interfered with by the Grotesquery, it was severed by a cold woman. This was the true killer Ji Shinian had mentioned earlier.
A woman?
Luo Ling’s heart tightened. Could it be her sister?
But after taking the phone, Luo Ling secretly breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t her sister.
The woman in the portrait had a cold expression, as if devoid of emotion, and a pair of chilling snake-like eyes that sent shivers down her spine.
“I haven’t seen her…”
Luo Ling shook her head. At the time, only Li Tianming and Wu Qin had been present. Li Tianming was weak, and if there had been another person, she wouldn’t have been able to handle it in her state at the time.
But then, Luo Ling felt a sense of familiarity with the woman.
“Really haven’t seen her?”
Ji Shinian noticed Luo Ling’s hesitation and asked again.
“Not at the time, but… I think I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
Luo Ling frowned, thinking hard, a vague figure forming in her mind.
“Wait… I think I remember.”
She raised the phone slightly, studying the woman’s portrait carefully.
The eyebrows a little lower, the corners of the mouth slightly softer, and most importantly, without the snake-like eyes… yes, and there should be a hint of sorrow in her eyes.
It gradually matched someone in Luo Ling’s memory.
“I remember!”
Luo Ling’s eyes widened in disbelief.
It was her!
The mad woman!
“Who?”
Everyone became tense, even those who had been unfriendly towards Luo Ling earlier looked at her with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.
Luo Ling quickly recalled everything about the mad woman, then exhaled and said in a low voice,
“The mad woman who stayed at the People’s Hospital for over a year, it’s her!”
“Huang Xiuqin?”
Liu Songyi blurted out a name.
“Her?” Yang Meili’s face was filled with shock. “Wow, isn’t that the patient I rejected half a year ago?”
The next moment, noticing the questioning and disapproving gazes directed at her, Yang Meili said defensively,
“How was I supposed to know? She was crazy and couldn’t afford the fees. The People’s Hospital wanted to dump her on us, how could I possibly accept…”
“But she’s the mother of the stolen corpse… and she’s been insane for so long,” Liu Songyi still frowned. “The hospital has her DNA records, there’s no mistake.”
“That corpse… is no longer a corpse,” Luo Ling said softly. “It’s the Forgotten River Child, the Grotesquery I fought at the morgue.”
“…”
Silence fell over the room.
They all knew that the Forgotten River Child was a Grotesquery transformed from a baby’s corpse through some kind of sacrificial ritual.
“So, she actually refined her own flesh and blood into a murderous Grotesquery…”
Ji Shinian uttered the chilling truth.
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