For easier operation, the doctor directly tore the patient’s chest wide open by hand…
Shi Haochen couldn’t hold back anymore. Nausea surged up; it was as if he smelled the thick stench of blood. He felt enveloped by this sinful aura, as if he had become the lamb on the chopping block, liable to be gutted by the butcher at any moment.
The face of the patient on the operating table grew more and more familiar. Shi Haochen endured the disgust and continued watching. The instant he clearly saw the face, he was horrified.
That face was extremely familiar—it was his own face!
The lamb lying on the operating table, at the mercy of others, was himself!
The intense pain of flesh being torn open came from his chest. Shi Haochen’s vision blurred.
It hurt so much!
It hurt so much!!!
A cold hand reached into his chest, gripped the scorching heart, and yanked it outward with force.
Cold sweat beaded on Shi Haochen’s forehead. He wanted to escape, to dodge, but his body felt immensely heavy, as if bound by chains weighing a thousand catties. No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t move.
Though Shi Haochen’s eyes were open, his gaze grew increasingly scattered. Large sweat drops fell from his forehead. On the ground, his shadow gradually dissipated—this was a sign of his supernatural ability going out of control!
What exactly had he seen?!
Lin Juan grabbed Shi Haochen’s shoulders and shook him hard. “Shi Haochen, listen to me. No matter what you saw or felt, it’s all fake!”
“Fake…?”
“It’s fake!”
On the operating table, the adolescent boy suddenly opened his eyes.
The immense pressure on his body vanished. He leaped up from the table, controlled his shadow to bind the ice-cold doctors, and dragged them out of the operating room.
The red light above the operating room door went out, the door opened, and shadows with bared fangs and claws dragged a group of doctors out.
The moment they left the door, the skin on the doctor’s body peeled off like cracked tree bark. His flesh withered away, transforming him into a complete monster.
It was a low-level pollutant that had been contaminated by a high-level anomaly.
“Brother Lin, I caught them!”
Shi Haochen’s shadow dragged the bound pollutants over to Lin Juan like it was proudly offering treasures.
“The doctors and nurses here should all be these things,” Lin Juan said as he glanced down. “Just kill them directly. Let’s go save people.”
Shi Haochen straightened himself out. Time was tight, and he didn’t have much time to dwell on everything that had just happened. Following his will, the shadows squeezed hard. The pollutants were strangled in half, twitching reflexively on the ground a couple of times before going still.
After confirming the pollutants were dead, the two pressed onward.
Along the way, they encountered several more pollutants disguised in white coats. There was no need for Lin Juan to act—Shi Haochen handled them directly.
It wasn’t Shi Haochen’s first time strangling anomalies, but this was different from last time. Back at school, it had been for self-preservation. The belief in “surviving” overrode everything else, leaving him no time or energy to think deeply.
This time, though, it was deliberate. He had intentionally killed anomalies. For a high school student who had never even killed a chicken, it was far too extreme.
Shi Haochen’s emotions were indescribably complicated.
But he also knew this was something he had to go through. In the future, countless anomalies would die by his hand. He couldn’t afford to be merciful or hesitate for even a moment.
Captain Sheng had told them on the very first day of training: Any moment of hesitation could lead to unimaginable tragedies.
The moment ability users chose to become guardians, their hands were destined to be stained with the blood of anomalies.
There was no need for any psychological burden. After all, every anomaly was already stained with the blood of their fellow countrymen.
All they had to do was kill them as quickly as possible, minimizing the number of compatriots who fell victim.
Perhaps due to the immense psychological pressure, Shi Haochen unwittingly said a lot to Lin Juan.
By the time he realized it, the words were already out. His expression shifted slightly. “Brother Lin, was I too indecisive?”
“It’s a normal mentality shift. You can go ask Captain Sheng or your other companions what it was like for them—their first time seeing an anomaly, their first time fighting one.”
They searched room after room. The floor was littered with low-level pollutants strangled by Shi Haochen’s shadow. Seeing that he only knew crude, brute-force strangling, Lin Juan summoned 【Forest Cabin】.
“You can try changing the form of your shadows.” With a mere thought from Lin Juan, 【Forest Cabin】 transformed into a massive scythe. He swept it casually, and the heads of the tree-like pollutants fell to the ground one after another.
Their bodies collapsed instantly.
Shi Haochen’s eyes lit up. He instantly cast aside his untimely thoughts and imitated the move, taking down a large swath of pollutants.
“This is way faster!” Shi Haochen said excitedly.
They had cleared out most of the low-level pollutants in the clinic. Occasionally, a C-Rank anomaly would appear, but it was no match for Lin Juan and Shi Haochen.
Finally, they reached the end. Lin Juan pushed open the door and froze at the sight inside.
It was a multi-bed ward, completely different from every other room they had seen.
This ward was huge—extremely huge—like several rooms had been knocked together to create a special one.
Inside were exactly thirty-six beds, each with its quilt slightly raised, as if a “patient” lay beneath.
Lin Juan and Shi Haochen walked in.
The ward was very quiet. There were no nurses, only the oblivious “patients” lying on the beds.
Shi Haochen frowned at the layout. “The way these beds are arranged doesn’t look like a hospital at all. It’s more like classroom desks.”
Lin Juan had a sudden realization.
No wonder the setup had felt off and somewhat familiar. It was arranged just like the classrooms at Upward Middle School.
Why would a ward be set up like this?
A certain idea in Lin Juan’s mind grew clearer.
Upon closer inspection, as expected, these “patients” had the exact same faces as the students he had seen when he entered Upward Middle School.
No—they were those very students!
Names were written at the head of each bed.
Shi Haochen looked over and exclaimed in shock, “Brother Lin, these look just like the missing students from our school!”
The students wore breathing masks, with IV bottles hanging on stands beside the beds. Unknown liquid flowed into their bodies through long, transparent tubes.
Lin Juan and Shi Haochen checked bed after bed. The room was enormous, accommodating a full thirty-six beds. Apart from three empty ones, every bed held a student.
The nameplates on the three empty beds had been deliberately blacked out. They didn’t need to check to know whose names had been there—the three students who had left the school.
Shi Haochen called out softly a couple of times, but got no response.
These people were in a deep sleep. If not for the slight rise and fall of their chests—and Shi Haochen confirming they had breath by checking—he would have doubted they were even alive.
“They’re still alive.” Shi Haochen withdrew his hand and let out a breath of relief.
But the problem was, how to wake them now that they were alive?
Simply calling didn’t work. Shi Haochen didn’t dare touch their bodies, fearing it might disrupt some balance and harm them instead.
By normal reckoning, these people had been missing for nearly a month. Going without food or water for that long would have severely impacted their bodily functions.
They had no idea how their missing classmates had sustained themselves, so they didn’t dare act rashly.
“Looks like we still need to find the owner of this place,” Lin Juan said.
To untie the bell, one must seek the one who tied it. They needed to find the culprit behind all this to wake the students in the least harmful way.
“We’ve searched almost the entire clinic. Where on earth is that anomaly hiding?” Shi Haochen turned his head, scrutinizing the special “classroom.”
This unusual ward clashed the most with the rest of Cherish Clinic. Shi Haochen’s intuition told him the anomaly was closest here.
His intuition was spot on. After a careful search of the ward, the two found an unassuming hidden door.
They pushed it open to reveal yet another ward behind it.
Unlike the previous one, this room was filled with a sense of everyday life.
As soon as they stepped inside, the hidden door closed silently behind them.
One door separated two worlds.
Lin Juan heard a nurse’s voice.
“How are you feeling today? Anywhere uncomfortable? Let’s take your temperature.”
The voice was very gentle and perfectly normal. Lin Juan and Shi Haochen knew full well that in a place like this, the more normal something seemed, the more abnormal it truly was.
The nurse bustled about by the bed. The ward door opened, and a doctor in a white coat entered with an assistant for rounds. Lin Juan took the chance to get a clear look at the patient half-reclining on the bed.
He wore a blue-striped hospital gown, his head shaved bald, his face pallid and withered. It perfectly matched the scene Lin Juan had seen in the medical office back then.
It was Gong Siyuan.
The people in the room seemed unable to see them. Lin Juan and Shi Haochen walked right up to the bed without drawing any attention from the doctor or nurse.
Only the adolescent boy on the bed seemed to glance their way.
“Brother Lin, did he see us?” Spotting the owner of the most anomalous file from the Archives Room in a place like this, Shi Haochen refused to believe it was mere coincidence.
He wasn’t sure if Gong Siyuan had seen them and asked in a very low voice.
“Perhaps.”
Whether he had or not, they could test it.
“Gong Siyuan?” Lin Juan called out tentatively.
The moment Lin Juan uttered that name, it was as if an invisible membrane shattered. They were no longer mere observers—they had become participants.
Two extra people suddenly appeared in the ward. The nurse jumped in alarm. “Where did you two come from? The patient needs rest. This isn’t visiting hours.”
With that, she tried to usher them out.
Shi Haochen, who had lived seventeen years without ever encountering a nurse trying to chase him off like this, sensed something was deeply wrong with her attitude. Having finally found a lead, he wasn’t about to leave easily.
He shoved his way into the room. “Hey! What’s your problem? I’m here to visit my classmate—why do I need your permission? It’s a hospital, not a prison. Visiting hours? Even if the king of heaven or your dad showed up, I’d visit whenever I damn well please!”
The nurse’s face twisted in fury. She pushed with all her might but couldn’t budge the boy in front of her.
“If you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security!”
“Go ahead and call!” Shi Haochen refused to back down, acting like a complete rogue and infuriating the nurse to the point of nearly toppling over.
“Pfft.”
Gong Siyuan, who had been silently observing them, suddenly let out a laugh. Realizing he had made a sound he shouldn’t have, his face drained of color. He hurriedly clamped his hand over his mouth, terrified the nurse would notice he was laughing.
The commotion drew back the doctor, who hadn’t gone far. The door swung open. “What’s all the noise? The patient needs rest. Irrelevant personnel, please leave first.”
The doctor’s attitude was unyielding. Shi Haochen already thought the nurse’s demeanor was off, so naturally he refused to go. Amid the standoff, the doctor’s white coat suddenly burst open. Arthropod-like tentacles extended from within, lashing toward Shi Haochen.
Shi Haochen dodged sharply to the side. The nurse lunged violently, her neck elongating like a snake. Her mouth split open to her ears as she bit toward the adolescent boy on the bed.
The boy couldn’t dodge in time. His pupils contracted sharply, and he froze stiff on the bed, unable to move.
“Brother Lin!” Shi Haochen was stretched thin, dealing with the doctor monster while trying to save the boy.
Lin Juan reached out and yanked the boy off the bed to the side. The nurse monster pounced on empty air and whipped her head toward Lin Juan.
Her gaze was icy cold.
Lin Juan looked up at her. “What’s the deal with your hospital? No reason to turn into monsters and eat people just for trying to talk sense, right?”
