Chapter 9: Unhealable |
Wu Zhong faced the many patients who were trying to kill him, separated by the door.
Catching his breath, he grabbed his phone and dialed the police.
“Hello? Someone’s chasing me—so many people, they’re like mad…”
“In the hospital, yes, City First Hospital… holy—!”
While Wu Zhong was reporting it, he suddenly noticed smoke wafting through the crowd.
Then, through the door crack and the shards of broken glass, a lot of mist seeped out.
These mists were emanating from the pursuers’ mouths and noses, swirling like phantoms.
At that moment one of the clouds passed through the gap in the door and formed a humanoid fog right before Wu Zhong’s eyes.
Its face was lecherous, its body thin, shirtless—looking like a shriveled old man.
“It’s a ghost!”
“Good heavens! It’s really haunted!”
Wu Zhong remembered what his grandfather had said and immediately understood.
Earlier, that smoky, ghost-like figure must have drifted in through the window and his grandfather had seen it, which was why his grandfather said a ghost was harming him.
Later, that ghost apparently possessed the patients and made them chase him.
But the ghost was powerful—able to possess and control so many people at once.
Why, then, didn’t it possess him directly?
“Run!”
Wu Zhong couldn’t care about anything else. Seeing the thing pass through the door and fly toward him, he turned and bolted down the stairs.
If they were simply crazed humans trying to kill him he might fight, but demons coming for your soul? No way he’d trade blows with that.
He hadn’t expected ghosts to be real; his worldview felt shaken.
Supernatural powers might have other explanations, but a ghost meant myths and ghost stories could be real.
“Who are you? I haven’t wronged you—why are you trying to kill me?” Wu Zhong shouted as he ran.
If it was a ghost, there had to be a reason. He’d never hurt anyone in his life—what right did the ghost have to target him?
The ghost actually spoke: “This little god does not wish to harm you, but you… must die.”
Its voice was ethereal, drifting like the sound of rain and wind.
Wu Zhong was baffled. What was wrong with this ghost? It was bizarrely polite, calling him respectfully yet insisting he had to die.
“Rattle!”
By the time he had only descended one floor, the ghostly cloud had already rushed after him, enveloped his body, and swept him up!
Wu Zhong’s feet left the ground, wrapped in vapor and about to be carried out the window.
The ghost meant to throw him to his death!
Wu Zhong reacted quickly and slammed the window shut.
The ghost hesitated, then instead of trying to smash the window, it changed tactics: it wrapped his lower body and forced a great deal of vapor into his mouth and nose.
Suddenly his nasal passages filled with mist, his lungs choked with vapor; suffocation rolled over his mind.
His head throbbed as if splitting, his brain swelling with water pressure.
“Ugh! Cough! Cough!”
Wu Zhong struggled painfully, but his feet didn’t touch the ground and the enemy was made of cloud—he had no good way to counter it.
He didn’t want to die; his eyes bloodshot with desperation.
At that life-or-death moment, inspiration struck.
Clouds and mist have no fixed form; they shift and drift.
Although his limbs passed through it, he could feel it wasn’t nothing—it was a mass of vapor and moisture.
If that was the case…
“Eat this!” Wu Zhong slammed out a brutal punch, splitting through a mass of fog with a crushing force that ripped open a cloud-shaped doorway in the ghost’s chest.
The cloud door gaped open; the edges of the mist writhed, but the opening could not close!
“Shh…”
The old-ghost lowered its head to stare at the gaping hole in its chest. Wu Zhong pulled his head out from inside and gasped for air in the empty space.
Coughing water from his mouth and nose, he brought his palm down hard.
This time it struck squarely across the ghost’s face, punching a hollow through its head like a framed doorway.
A face-door opened!
“Ha! What bullshit ghost-god—if you had a body I’d still be scared of you!”
“I’ll stomp you to death!”
Wu Zhong, having broken free, advanced and kicked. The ghost’s face was gone; the opening wouldn’t seal!
This clearly affected it. If it could operate purely as a vapor, why bother forming a human shape before passing the door? Why not simply remain cloud and pursue him?
Apparently the ghost needed to condense into a self-image to carry out certain actions.
And Wu Zhong’s punches and slaps had blown literal doors in its body.
No matter how the mist writhed and spun, the doorways remained, unable to contract.
At the brink of life and death, Wu Zhong realized an alternative use of his ability.
It was oddly idealistic: he carved a door into the ghost and thought of it as opening a gate.
It actually functioned like a gate, triggering a “welded door” effect—the ghost couldn’t close the wound it formed.
In other words, it forced the injury to remain unhealed.
Of course, Wu Zhong was trying everything at this point. He had never expected his power to work this way. He had poked holes in things before, but never triggered this effect.
So this special “door” required his conscious action to manifest.
Strange, uncanny, metaphysical—beyond nature.
Wu Zhong even felt a bit more ghostlike than the ghost itself...
The old man-ghost, by contrast, seemed rather materialistic...
At first he’d panicked at the signs of haunting—genuinely terrified—but once it spoke he felt his fear break.
Seeing it had some physical form made Wu Zhong’s dread vanish, which let him think to “open a door” and break its body.
“Come on then! I’ll stomp you dead!”
Triumphant after escaping, he charged and delivered a heavy kick.
“Bang!”
The kick carved another huge hole. The ghost’s bulk was large but its mass was light.
If it had been truly powerful, it wouldn’t have resorted to trying to throw him out the window or suffocate him—such low-level tactics.
Now every strike produced a real wound; each punch and kick made holes the ghost couldn’t withstand.
He pounded and kicked it until it looked like a hornet’s nest—full of holes, a dense array of little doorways.
The remains of the old man’s form tore the mist in that area like a lizard dropping its tail, and fled at high speed.
“You cowardly ghost! If you’ve got guts don’t run!”
Wu Zhong pressed the assault, full of adrenaline, no fear left.
But when he reached the next floor, the ghost had vanished. Instead, he saw a group of patients and nurses down the corridor clutching various makeshift weapons, staring murderously at him.
A female nurse held a large syringe like a lance and charged straight at him like a knight.
“Slash!”
Wu Zhong stopped short. Dozens of people were before him—though old and weak, there were too many hands for his two fists.
He had no proper weapon at hand. As the syringe lunged, he snatched at the air and grabbed the “hornet-nest cloud door” and swung it wildly.
The mist was soft—like an inflatable hammer. When it hit a person it made muffled, dull thumps.
But it sufficed; Wu Zhong didn’t want to seriously injure those being controlled—he only needed something to parry with.
The unhealable, multi-ringed cloud structure was perfect.
“Thunk thunk thunk!”
Standing on the stairs and using his vantage, he smashed down one by one.
With that improvised weapon and his strength, he could knock people over without killing them.
He fought and retreated, then moved back up a floor.
Soon he heard sirens; people were coming.
He saw a group rushing up from below. Wu Zhong dispersed the ringed cloud and reopened the doors and windows he’d closed, then pushed through the crowd and ran down shouting, “Help! It’s haunted!”
Two policemen arrived, accompanied by several security guards. Wu Zhong hid behind them as the possessed people drew near.
“Everyone stop! Don’t hit them!”
A square-faced cop barked, stepping forward and grabbing the IV stand that had been used as a blunt instrument.
“It’s useless—they’re all…”
Wu Zhong started to explain, but then the pursuers’ murderous expressions suddenly melted away. Their faces softened into confusion and pain.
“Ouch!”
“Oh no—oh no…”
“Support…support…”
They staggered and fell about; some barely steadied themselves on the stair rail, others collapsed clutching at their bodies.
The stairwell filled with moans; it was a scene of misery.
Even the cops looked stunned, worried they might be accused of wrongdoing.
The security guards, however, understood: “They really were acting like they’d lost their minds—chasing that kid. I saw it on the monitors.”
Wu Zhong’s mouth twitched. “Then why didn’t you come up and help me?”
The guards fell silent. A young guard muttered, “How do you fight a ghost? I saw the ghostly figure myself.”
At that the guards shivered.
Two policemen snorted: “Enough with the haunting—help the patients up first.”
Everyone and the nurses together helped return the patients to their wards. Wu Zhong helped as well.
Before long more staff arrived—nurses from other floors and other on-duty personnel. They all settled the patients, but then something unfortunate happened.
“Someone’s gone…”
A cry rang out. The police found several patients with severe cerebrovascular conditions had no pulse. Nurses were performing emergency CPR and arranging to send them to the ER.
The two young officers realized the gravity and immediately reported it. More and more people arrived to secure the scene; even the fire brigade came.
Once Wu Zhong confirmed his grandfather was okay, he was taken to a lounge room. The square-faced officer sat with him to talk.
Others checked the footage to piece together what happened.
There was nothing particularly mysterious in the footage: it showed Wu Zhong dragging a caregiver, chased by two old men who attacked them in the ward—then the duty nurse ran in and struck a bottle, shattering the glass.
After that, one by one the patients began chasing Wu Zhong, pursuing him to the stairwell.
The door seemed to have been barred from the outside by Wu Zhong—details were fuzzy—but the patients crowded the corridor.
The police even saw mist spreading out from the patients’ bodies and passing through doors. They didn’t know what happened outside because the stairwell had no camera.
Even from those shots, everything was clear: it was a haunting.
“It really happened. I saw the cloud condense into a human shape—it was a shriveled little old man, shirtless…” Wu Zhong told them everything that happened after he woke his grandfather up.
Naturally he omitted the details of his fight with the ghost—the punch that opened the ghost-door.
He only said the ghost had a physical presence, composed of vapor, and that he’d fought free.
The cops compared his account to the footage; their lips went pale.
They exchanged looks. Wu Zhong could tell they were frightened—this incident exceeded what they understood.
A firefighter sitting in on the meeting suddenly asked, “Did the ghost say anything to you?”
Wu Zhong paused. “It claimed to be a god and said it had to kill me.”
The firefighter’s eyes shifted as he grabbed a sketchpad. “Describe its appearance—be as detailed as possible.”
Wu Zhong was puzzled; the police were puzzled too.
“Buddy, isn’t this a suspect sketch? Shouldn’t the cops do it?”
“I’m pretty good at drawing—let me try,” the firefighter smiled.
The cops didn’t stop him. Wu Zhong described everything. The firefighter’s pen moved quickly and soon a sketch was done.
Wu Zhong saw it and gasped: “That’s it!”
It was uncannily accurate. The smoky old man’s silhouette had been fuzzy; the drawing matched almost perfectly.
The firefighter nodded and stepped out for a moment.
Soon a senior officer walked in.
Several cops stood and called out, “Captain Tang!”
Captain Tang looked stern. “This case already has four victims who died. Whether the killer is a ghost or a human, we will investigate with full force!”
“Mr. Wu, we need to ask you more questions. Please come with us for further questioning.”
Wu Zhong was shocked. “People died?”
Captain Tang nodded gravely. “Four patients died despite resuscitation…”
Wu Zhong leapt up in panic. “What about my grandfather? How is he?”
The firefighter chimed in: “Your grandfather’s condition is holding.”
“All of the victims have varying degrees of ‘hydrocephalus’; your grandfather has a slight amount too, but he’s scheduled for surgery tomorrow. We can address the hydrocephalus then.”
“Both procedures have high success rates; you don’t need to worry too much.”
Wu Zhong breathed a sigh of relief. Thinking about four patients killed by that old ghost made his skin crawl.
Hydrocephalus? The ghost was vaporous and saturated with moisture. Its possession and control leaving some residual fluid-related issues made sense…
But Wu Zhong looked at the firefighter curiously.
The cops still seemed stunned, unsure how to handle this paranormal case, while the firefighter was oddly composed.
Moreover, he’d already gathered details—like the fact Wu Zhong’s grandfather had surgery scheduled—down to the specifics.
If a cop had been that organized it wouldn’t be strange, but this was a firefighter. This wasn’t his usual job.
“All right, of course I’ll cooperate,” Wu Zhong said, standing to go with them.
Outside the hospital they rode in Captain Tang’s police car, traffic clear.
At the station he was placed in a conference room to rest; Captain Tang poured him a cup of tea.
The same questions were asked and Wu Zhong answered them again.
“I’m telling the truth. You saw the footage—this is all I know. I don’t know why a ghost would target me.”
“I’m still shocked that ghosts are real.”
Captain Tang sighed. “Whether it’s a ghost or not, since it exists we must accept the fact and face it rationally.”
“You said it was physical, made of vapor. If it’s material, there’s nothing inherently miraculous about it—maybe it’s some strange lifeform. There are many unknowns in the world.”
Wu Zhong: “That’s why I stopped being scared and just fought back. It wasn’t particularly strong—just unkillable.”
Captain Tang responded with a heavy “hmm.”
Wu Zhong asked, “Is that all? Can I go now?”
Before Tang could answer, a group entered the conference room.
A man in formal administrative attire led them, beside him a young man in a Taoist robe, and the rest wore firefighter uniforms.
Wu Zhong recognized the firefighter who’d done the sketch.
“Mr. Wu, you can certainly leave… if you’re not afraid of attracting more ghosts or further accidents,” the middle-aged man in administrative dress said grandly, sitting opposite Wu Zhong.
Wu Zhong glanced at him, then at the Taoist, bewildered. “What do you mean? Is this… an exorcism?”
The Taoist looked young and handsome, his hair tied up, wearing a blue robe and cloth shoes, carrying no ritual tools—only a box.
He laughed and opened the box, which was filled not with talismans but with guns!
They gleamed, oddly configured, each solid and heavy—decidedly hardcore.
“The Taoist doesn’t perform rites, but if any more ghosts dare show up here, this humble Taoist knows a little about shooting,” he said.