It seemed the trouble they caused had been smoothed over.

Director Qi asked in a tone that was half reproachful and half annoyed, "What's going on with you? Didn't we agree that I would come out to meet you? Why did you run in here on your own?"

"And make such a commotion?"

Everyone was completely unaware of the mission's background, so they just kept apologizing and trying to get the man to talk.

Fortunately, the man only complained for a while before getting down to business.

As they talked more, everyone gradually understood the roles they were supposed to play in this world.

They belonged to a private company that specialized in helping clients solve difficult and complicated problems. The headquarters were located in Dongzhu City, and it was considered to be operating in a gray area under the guise of legality.

This time, they were sent by the company at the request of this Director Qi to help solve a problem.

From their conversation, they learned that the company had a wide range of businesses, and they dared to take on almost any job that could make money.

Director Qi looked these people up and down, seemingly feeling that they didn't match his expectations. He had been told that these people were well-trained and very professional.

Especially when it came to things of *that* nature.

The person in charge of contacting him even told him on the phone that their headquarters had a lot of business in Southeast Asia and had connections with many well-known Jiangtou masters (practitioners of black magic).

In short, they were the most capable in the business, and correspondingly, their fees were also the highest.

To prevent the client from asking for a refund, Jiang Cheng immediately showed the qualities of an absolute elite.

It was clear that Director Qi was quite satisfied with this young man with shining eyes.

As for that crazy woman... Director Qi sighed. After all, the matter he was entrusting them with was different from ordinary matters. It was normal for the people sent to be a little strange.

"To be honest, if this matter weren't so strange, I wouldn't have spent so much money to hire you," Director Qi said with a bitter face.

He flicked a few strands of hair on his forehead with his hand. At just over 40 years old, he was already showing signs of balding.

After initially gaining the other party's trust, everything else was much easier. Jiang Cheng and the others tried not to talk too much, because the more they said, the more loopholes there would be.

Director Qi's voice gave people an uncomfortable feeling. He looked at everyone, his lips trembling, and said, "The reason I hired you is because I suspect that something unclean has come to the hospital recently."

He lowered his voice and looked mysterious, with a hint of undisguised fear.

Jiang Cheng had seen this long ago. The man's face was gray, and his eye bags were very obvious. He probably hadn't had a good night's sleep in a long time.

The way he spoke also gave people a feeling of weakness.

Something unclean...

Jiang Cheng couldn't help but raise his eyebrows. After so many missions, it was rare for an NPC to come up to him and say there was a ghost.

"Please tell us the details," Huai Yi said in a professional manner.

"Hoo—" Director Qi took a long breath, as if recalling the past. "This matter started a month ago."

"One day, the head nurse came to me very reluctantly and said that she had an emergency at home and wanted to take a long vacation."

"I didn't agree." The man explained, "It's not that I was targeting her, but it really wasn't possible, because too many people have been asking for leave recently. If I let two more go, we wouldn't have enough staff."

"Some patients' families have already complained, saying that they can't find anyone when they need to change medication. When they go to the nurses' station, there's either no one there, or just one or two people, and they all say they're busy."

"But what I didn't expect was that the head nurse actually left without a word, without even saying goodbye."

"I went to the nurses' station to ask and found that she wasn't the only one who had left. Less than half of the remaining people were there. Many of them were like her, leaving without approval."

"And the remaining people also had strange expressions and shifty eyes, as if they were hiding something from me."

"Because some patients' families had complained before, I rushed to the nurses' station at noon and personally supervised them in assigning the night shifts. But when the remaining nurses heard that they had to work the night shift, their faces changed, and they refused to go no matter what."

"I can understand not wanting to work the night shift, but I didn't expect them to be so resistant, because it had never happened before. But how can we not have anyone at night? What if something goes wrong?"

"I persuaded two of them to stay and even promised them some benefits, but to my surprise, one of the younger ones burst into tears on the spot and refused to do it no matter what."

"In the end, she directly made a scene and said she was quitting."

"What's even stranger is that the other nurses didn't even try to stop her. They just watched silently from the side. It gave me the feeling that if they were asked to work the night shift, they would do the same."

"Considering what had happened recently, I felt at the time that something must be wrong, otherwise it would never be like this."

"So I invited the nurse who was making a scene about quitting to my office, first calmed her down, and then asked her if something had happened after her emotions had calmed down a bit."

"If there's anything wrong, or if you're unhappy with the hospital's arrangements, you can bring it up. Quitting is not the way to solve problems."

"At first, she pursed her lips tightly and didn't want to say anything. I spent a lot of effort and even promised her that she wouldn't have to work the night shift before she wavered."

"She just looked at me with a strange look in her eyes. After a long while, she said to me that some of them had encountered something unclean in the hospital."

"During the night shift." The man paused and looked at Huai Yi. "More than one person."

"What kind of...unclean thing?" Huai Yi pressed.

After a moment's pause, the man's face became strange, and cold sweat began to appear on his forehead. Jiang Cheng went to get a chair and asked him to sit down and talk slowly.

But what he didn't expect was that the man didn't even look at the chair. Instead, he went straight to the desk, took a bunch of keys from his belt, and then found a very small one.

He squatted down, opened the bottom drawer, rummaged through it, and took out a blue notebook.

Holding the notebook, the man's face was extremely solemn. After returning, he opened the notebook in front of everyone. Inside were paragraphs of records.

The man's handwriting was beautiful, but the further back it went, the more潦草 (liáo cǎo, scrawled) it became. Jiang Cheng couldn't even see the last few lines of words, as if they were recorded in extreme fear.

The first paragraph of text was marked with the character "Chuan."

Jiang Cheng guessed it might be a person's name.

"This is what I collected and recorded before," the man said. "The phenomena that everyone saw were different from each other. Some people said that when they were patrolling the wards at night, they heard footsteps behind them, but when they looked back, there was no one there."

"But when you turn around and continue walking, that eerie sound of footsteps reappears behind you, and it gets closer and closer to you."