I Run Away with the Earth to Save the World [Unlimited Flow] - Chapter 119

When Jing Qizhen brought up the outside of the hospital, the original few in the ward still had animated expressions. They almost instinctively wanted to say, “Didn’t you come from outside?”

But before they could say it, they choked on their words at Jing Qizhen’s follow-up, “Did no one call the police?”

“Call the police, call the police… um…” The few of them looked confused all at once.

Jing Qizhen: “When did you discover the hospital was full of ghost doctors? What was the situation outside at the time? If something like this happens, you call the police. Why didn’t you?”

Jing Qizhen bombarded them with questions and the survivors were clearly overwhelmed, unable to respond.

Calling the police is a very normal response.

Even elementary schoolers are taught to dial 110 in emergencies, 120 for medical help, 119 for fires; it’s basic knowledge.

Yet, just like how protagonists in paranormal horror mystery games always seem to make the dumbest decisions, they also never seem to like calling the police…

Jing Qizhen had never understood this. Who cares whether it works or not? Making a call doesn’t cost anything! Seriously!

Wang Feizhou was also completely thrown.

When he found himself mysteriously trapped on the rooftop, he really did want to call the police, or at least ask the fire department for a ladder truck. Worst case, even calling the front gate security uncle for help to get down would have been fine. Wang Feizhou was willing to try anything! But the biggest problem was that there was no phone signal.

Jing Qizhen continued discussing things anxiously with the survivors. Those people were now completely lost in his logic and couldn’t say anything coherent.

Wang Feizhou hesitated, but didn’t bluntly point it out to Jing Qizhen. Instead, he turned his head and whispered in confusion to Manman and Si Jiayang, “Isn’t there no signal…?”

Manman blinked and whispered back, “We don’t have a phone signal, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have landlines!”

She still clearly remembered that in the remote mountain village within the Shennongjia’s erosion area, someone had walked directly into the dense fog that was completely inaccessible to them and returned to the village completely unharmed.

Wang Feizhou thought about it and agreed, immediately casting a more subtle look at the survivors.

Jing Qizhen and the survivors went back and forth about whether to call the police. After thoroughly leaving them speechless, he even patted one of them on the shoulder reassuringly, thinking to himself that, judging by the feel, they did seem like ordinary humans…

Then, Jing Qizhen once again tapped into his acting skills, perfectly mirroring the survivors’ dazed expressions. In a trembling voice, he asked, “You… you don’t know how it happened either?”

The survivors all shook their heads. One of them kept repeating, “We’ve been hiding from those ghosts. We spread chicken blood on the first floor because it can ward off evil. They don’t dare come over here. Yes, they don’t dare come…”

This time, Jing Qizhen didn’t interrupt the survivor’s muttering. Instead, he waited until the man finished rambling and then suddenly said, “I’m hungry.”

Everyone was stunned.

Feeling that he lacked the acting skills, Wang Feizhou obediently shut his mouth, thinking it was better to just watch quietly from the sidelines.

Jing Qizhen was already clutching his stomach, making a pained expression as if hunger was giving him a stomachache. He said worriedly, “There are ghosts outside and we’re trapped here. How are we supposed to find food and water?”

Manman turned her head and whispered very softly to Si Jiayang, “I know what Little Jing is thinking. If I were a ghost really hunting these survivors, I’d have cut off all the water and power in this building by now.”

Si Jiayang: “…” That sounds like a demolition squad tactic!

As for this issue, the survivors answered quite straightforwardly, “Wait for daytime! When the sun rises, the ghosts will disappear!”

Jing Qizhen asked, “Daytime? You mean when the sun comes up? Around what time?”

The survivor didn’t give an exact time and said instead, “After the sun rises and there’s sunlight, the ghosts will temporarily disappear. At night, they’ll appear again.”

As Jing Qizhen looked at the survivor, when the man mentioned sunlight and the ghosts disappearing, he suddenly got the feeling that the guy sounded a little superstitious or unhinged.

Other survivors chimed in, “Yeah, once it’s daylight, we’ll be safe.”

Jing Qizhen’s group: “…” But you’ve clearly been hiding here for a long time already.

Although the survivors kept saying they were being hunted by ghosts, the ghosts hadn’t actually come there, which was also a fact. Under such circumstances, it was hard for Jing Qizhen’s group to truly feel the fear that the people trapped in the hospital ward claimed to have.

After a pause, Jing Qizhen asked directly, “If the ghosts disappear in the daylight, then why don’t we all leave this terrifying hospital together?”

Manman immediately nodded in support, her voice full of pure and innocent hope, “Yeah! If we just leave this place and go outside, maybe we’ll be safe!”

The word ‘outside’ seemed to send the survivors into confusion again.

“We can go outside the hospital, but, but—”

They kept saying ‘but’ and couldn’t come up with a good reason to refuse Jing Qizhen’s suggestion.

However, when it came to actually leaving the ghost-infested hospital, they showed no enthusiasm. Instead, they looked even more frightened.

When Jing Qizhen acted scared and panicked, he was quite convincing. But once he started suggesting actual solutions, his bizarre logic, more stubborn than bitter chicken soup, could no longer be concealed.

Jing Qizhen targeted several survivors at once, not giving them any room to hesitate or waver. The moment anyone spoke, he would bombard them with questions, clearly determined to pester them until they gave in.

Amid the so-called ‘friendly exchange,’ he also took every opportunity to brainwash them, first by encouraging them to report to the police, then pushing everyone to leave together. When the survivors kept evading the topic, he even suggested they look for the ghosts’ weakness and confront them directly. His initiative and determination left the survivors utterly distressed.

One of the survivors who got cornered by Jing Qizhen looked pleadingly at the rest of the group, as if begging them to save him from Jing Qizhen’s terrifying plans.

But in the end, the survivors were disappointed.

Manman raised a legitimate concern about their vague responses. “The sun comes out and the ghosts temporarily disappear… but what if it’s cloudy or rainy? Do you all just go hungry for the whole day?”

The survivor: “…”

Lu Lingxi, who hadn’t spoken until then, turned his head and met the survivor’s expectant gaze. He blinked his innocent, Bambi-like eyes, then opened his mouth, only to firmly support Jing Qizhen’s plan. “If the ghosts are afraid of sunlight, wouldn’t they also fear fire? How about we just burn the building down?”

Lu Lingxi had learned that tactic from Jing Qizhen’s earlier experience in the Boston’s erosion area, where he set a villa on fire.

After all, items in special erosion areas weren’t affected by burning. And if the erosion core happened to be destroyed by accident, all the better.

Had the erosion core not been so well hidden, Lu Lingxi was sure their superior, Tang Song, and even the higher-ups, would’ve considered using high-powered military weapons to completely wipe out the erosion area and solve the problem quickly.

Unable to reach any consensus with Jing Qizhen’s group, the survivors looked increasingly tense and anxious.

They barely managed to maintain forced smiles uglier than crying. After brushing off the questions with a few vague answers, they practically scrambled to escape and finally suggested, “It’s late now. You just escaped from the hospital and must be tired. You should rest.”

Sensing their unwillingness to cooperate, Jing Qizhen’s group didn’t press further. They all stood up and tactfully went to a relatively clean room next door to find a place to lie down and rest.

Once inside the room and with the door locked, Jing Qizhen immediately pulled out his phone and started watching the surveillance footage.

The others instantly crowded around, everyone focusing intently on the screen.

Wang Feizhou, the only one who didn’t catch on, was dumbfounded.

He’d just been with the survivors next door and hadn’t noticed at all that while Jing Qizhen was endlessly chatting with them, he somehow still managed to plant a hidden pinhole camera without anyone noticing.

Without Jing Qizhen’s group there, the survivors sat quietly in the room. Some lay down on the beds, others sat, but no one moved or spoke; they were as still as corpses.

The one closest to the camera clearly showed a face full of intense anxiety and unease.

Old Xiao took a glance and said, “Judging by that expression, they’re really worried…” Then he yawned, covering his mouth.

Wang Feizhou rubbed his chin. “In a situation like this, with nerves stretched so tight, it’s normal for their mental state to break down and end up like this.”

Everyone could see that the survivors’ nerves had been pushed to the edge.

Wilcox and Si Jiayang had already blocked the door with cabinets and bed frames, stacking things all the way to the opposite wall to ensure absolutely no one could get in from the outside.

Jing Qizhen frowned slightly. “The ghosts and the survivors are not only giving opposite stories, they also define each other differently.”

According to the ghosts in the hospital’s old wing, it was a conflict between doctors, nurses, and infected patients.

According to the survivors in the inpatient ward, it was them versus ghosts that kept trying to capture them.

From the outsider perspective of Jing Qizhen’s group, both versions had logical holes. Add in the chaotic rules of the erosion area itself, and it became even harder to discern the truth.

Jing Qizhen said, “Given the current situation, it actually reminds me of a horror story.”

Lu Lingxi asked curiously, “How scary?”

Jing Qizhen replied simply, “The story goes like this: A group of people climbed a snowy mountain and the protagonist stayed behind at the camp for some reason. Seven days later, the others returned and told the protagonist that there’d been an avalanche and his boyfriend had been buried under the snow. That night, the boyfriend, covered in blood, came back and dragged the protagonist away, saying that there’d been an avalanche and everyone else had died; he was the only survivor.”

Lu Lingxi: “…”

Manman: “Eh? I know this story. The final question is, who was the ghost?”

Wang Feizhou shivered.

Jin Guijuan couldn’t help but ask, “So, who was the ghost?”

Jing Qizhen shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Si Jiayang: “The author didn’t say. You can guess however you want.”

Old Xiao: “…I was going to say I got goosebumps. But listening to Little Jing tell the story in that completely flat tone, I feel fine again…”

Jing Qizhen smiled a little.

Inside Jing Qizhen’s mind, the Earth kept muttering, “Who was it? I want to know too 0.0.”

Jing Qizhen smiled helplessly. “It’s not that I won’t tell you. I really don’t know!”

The Earth thought for a bit. “Then tell me which snowy mountain it was. I’ll go find it myself and come back with the answer!”

Jing Qizhen: “…The story was made up.”

The Earth: “What???”

After forcefully ending the conversation with the Earth, Jing Qizhen said, “The ghosts and survivors in this erosion area are basically acting out different scripts, like one group has the boyfriend role and the other has everyone else’s.”

Grandma Fang couldn’t help but shake her head. “That’s true.”

The Earth muttered quietly, “If you consider the number of people, the survivors are clearly fewer, so they’d be the boyfriends and the ghosts are the other companions!”

Jing Qizhen: “You’re not wrong, Babyball. The survivors even show up later in the story, just like the boyfriend did!”

The Earth: “0.0 That’s true too. But neither you, Manman, nor Si Jiayang knows the real answer, so what’s the point?”

Jing Qizhen smiled helplessly. “Exactly.”

He stood up, planning to draw the curtains in the ward. When he walked over to the window, he suddenly paused and softly said, “Huh?”

Everyone turned their gaze toward him.

The Earth immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

Jing Qizhen pondered for a moment. “If I’m remembering correctly, according to the old layout of the hospital, that direction should be where the cafeteria is…”

Old Xiao, whose memory was always reliable, nodded. “Yeah, the old hospital layout was different from after 2020. Back in our day, the cafeteria was on a floor within the building. It used to be a separate structure.”

Jing Qizhen stood by the window and slowly nodded. Then he suddenly turned around and called out, “Wang Feizhou.”

Wang Feizhou jolted. “Hm?”

Jing Qizhen: “When you were on the rooftop earlier, did you notice any lights in that building, the one that looks like the cafeteria?”

Wang Feizhou walked to the window and looked in the direction Jing Qizhen pointed. Inside the building that looked like the cafeteria, there were faint, dim lights. He shook his head decisively. “No. I remember it clearly. The whole view was almost pitch black. I even wondered at the time if the power outage was why my phone signal died!”

Jing Qizhen: “So, when we came out of the old building, our view of the cafeteria was blocked by the inpatient building. But based on what Wang Feizhou said, it was past 10 PM when he was on the rooftop. His view wouldn’t have been blocked and he didn’t see any lights from the cafeteria then.”

He paused for a second and then joked to himself with a smile, “A midnight diner?”