Geister des alten Grabes

Kapitel 31

Chen Ai let out a breath and said with a smile, "You almost scared me to death."

Chen Ai put the dishes back on the table, then kindly pulled Qin Lizhen over to sit down and offered her chopsticks. Qin Lizhen just giggled for a moment, then grabbed a few pieces of greens with her hands and put them in her mouth. Chen Ai smiled and pulled her right hand over to help her pick up the chopsticks, saying, "Using chopsticks looks awful."

Qin Lizhen nodded, then began to eat with chopsticks, her movements a little clumsy. Chen Ai looked at her with pity, noticing that her clothes were covered in red spots, and even her face was covered in these spots.

Chen Ai asked Qin Lizhen softly, "Qin Lizhen, where did you get these things?"

"Paint!" Qin Li brayed like a donkey.

Chen Ai smiled, knowing that there was renovation work being done in the corridor outside Qin Lizhen's ward. Suddenly, she wondered why Qin Lizhen had come out.

"Qin Lizhen, didn't you go back to the ward with Nurse Sun? Why are you out again?"

"I forgot to lock the door."

Chen Ai shook her head helplessly and muttered to herself, "Really, this Sun Xiaojing is really terrible."

"Eat some fruit," Qin Lizhen suddenly asked Chen Ai, like a mischievous child.

Chen Ai just smiled and said, "Okay—but I might not be able to open the freezer."

Upon hearing this, Qin Lizhen threw down her chopsticks and started fussing like a child, "No, I want fruit, fruit!"

Seeing that she had no way to do it, Chen Ai found it amusing. She went to the freezer and opened it. It took a lot of effort to open the freezer. As soon as the freezer was opened, a blast of cold air rushed out, and everything was white and hazy. Chen Ai reached down and rummaged around, not knowing if there was any fruit inside. Suddenly, she seemed to touch something. She pushed aside the white mist with her hand and saw that what she touched was hard and solid, covered by a cloth.

What could it be?

Chen Ai flipped over the frozen meat and carrots covering them with both hands, only to discover that what was covering them was not cloth, but clothes.

So what's inside the clothes?

Chen's heart raced, and something seemed to pop into her head. She turned to look at Qin Lizhen and saw her still eating with her hands on the table.

Chen Ai looked into the freezer and tried to tear the clothes apart, but couldn't. In her haste, she tore the clothes to shreds, revealing a sweater underneath.

Tears welled up in Chen Ai's eyes with fear. She covered her mouth with one hand while using the other to tug at the sweater. She was very agitated and kept pulling at it with all her might.

The sweater was torn, and inside was a thermal undershirt. Chen Ai kept pulling, and soon tore the undershirt to shreds, revealing her flat breasts.

Two tear tracks ran down Chen Ai's chin, and the tears dripped into the freezer. She felt like she was about to have a mental breakdown, but she still covered her mouth with her hand and could only make choked sobs.

Chen Ai turned to look at Qin Lizhen. At this moment, Qin Lizhen had stopped eating and was just sitting at the table looking at Chen Ai with a wicked smile.

Chen Ai told herself to stay calm, turned away from her, wiped away her tears, and then rummaged through the freezer again. She saw her breasts above her collarbone, with a necklace hanging down from them. Chen Ai recognized it as Zhong Fang's. Chen Ai had already guessed this earlier, so it wasn't surprising in her panic.

When Chen Ai peeled away the frozen flesh from her neck, she discovered that her head was gone.

Chen Ai was startled, then tried her best to calm down. She took a carrot from the freezer, wiped away her tears, let out a long sigh, picked up the carrot, and turned to walk towards Qin Lizhen as if nothing had happened.

At this moment, Qin Lizhen's smile had vanished. Her eyes were fixed on Chen Ai as she approached and offered her a carrot. Then, Qin Lizhen asked her in a somber tone, "Isn't there any fruit?"

"No"

Qin Lizhen took the carrot and said to Chen Ai, "Thank you for the meal."

"No...you're welcome."

"Should I go back to my ward now?"

Chen Ai didn't know how to answer, and stood there stiffly. After thinking for a long time, she knew that she had to calm Qin Lizhen down first, so she said, "Where do you want to go? If you don't want to go back to the ward, you can take a walk around the yard. I'll go with you."

"No need, I want to go outside."

"But your condition..." Chen Ai blurted out, then realized her mistake and smiled, "It's alright, I'll go to the guardhouse and tell them, they'll let you out."

"Do you think I'm as easy to fool as a three-year-old?" Qin Lizhen's face was expressionless, but her tone sounded extremely displeased.

Chen Ai hurriedly waved her hands and said, "No...no...I can help you..."

"Yes, you can help me, but I can go out by myself, Dr. Chen." Qin Lizhen smiled again, stood up, and took out a kitchen knife from her waist.

"Hehe..." Qin Lizhen laughed, raising the kitchen knife and walking towards Chen Ai.

Chapter Nineteen

Faced with Qin Lizhen's relentless approach, Chen Ai's legs went weak, and she immediately knelt down. She didn't get up and pleaded with Qin Lizhen for mercy on the spot.

"Qin Lizhen, please don't do this. I've always treated you well. Please let me go."

Qin Lizhen stopped in her tracks upon hearing this. Seeing that her words seemed to have worked, Chen Ai hurriedly said, "Do you remember? Last time you escaped and were found, it was I who pleaded for you. That's why you weren't denied the right to even leave the garden."

Qin Lizhen nodded blankly, and the kitchen knife in her hand fell to the ground with a "bang".

Chen Ai felt much more at ease and slowly crawled over, wanting to get her hands on the kitchen knife first to reduce her danger. When she reached Qin Lizhen, before she could even pick up the knife, Qin Lizhen suddenly squatted down in front of her. Chen Ai wasn't surprised; she forced a smile, suppressing her tears, and said, "Qin Lizhen, you've been here for over ten years, haven't you? You need to calm down now. Your condition has improved significantly, so..."

Chen Ai spoke somewhat incoherently, while Qin Lizhen simply stared at her without replying.

Chen Ai finally couldn't take it anymore and burst into tears, saying between sobs, "I... I've always been so good to you, you..."

"Dr. Chen is very good to me." Qin Lizhen suddenly uttered a sentence from her throat, very low.

"Yes," Chen Ai seemed to sense that things were turning around, and quickly replied, "I've always been very good to you."

Qin Lizhen slowly reached out and gently placed her hand on Chen Ai's face, stroking it as she repeatedly said, "Dr. Chen is so good to me..."

Chen Ai nodded vigorously, as if driving a pile. "Yes, I've always been very good to you."

Qin Lizhen stopped laughing at this moment, but her face was very kind. She gently wiped away Chen Ai's tears with her hand, gazed at Chen Ai, and said, "You have always been very good to me."

Chen Ai laughed along, her eyes glistening with tears. Suddenly, Qin Lizhen grabbed Chen Ai's hair and slammed her head to the ground before Chen Ai could react.

The skull made a dull thud against the ground, and only then did Chen Ai realize she needed to fight back. She struggled and cried for help.

Qin Lizhen seemed to possess superhuman strength at that moment, and Chen Ai was completely unable to resist. In just a few blows, Chen Ai passed out, but Qin Lizhen did not stop. While grabbing Chen Ai's head and slamming it to the ground, she cursed, "Trash, good-for-nothing, damn it..."

"You good-natured bastard, you good-natured bastard... you motherfucker."

After a long while, with Chen Ai's blood staining the ground, Qin Lizhen finally stopped. She caught her breath for a moment, then stripped Chen Ai naked and put her clothes on.

Then, Qin Lizhen rushed out of the sanatorium area shouting, and stopped when she was about fifty meters away from the guard room at the gate. She kept shouting, "Help! Something's happened! Come quick!"

Of the security guards on duty in the guardhouse, only one was actually on duty. The rest woke up from their dreams and all came out of the guardhouse. They saw a woman in a doctor's coat calling out from not far away, so they went over and asked, "What happened?"

Before they could get over, Qin Lizhen said, "There's someone killing someone inside. You should go and save them."

Qin Lizhen was standing in a relatively dark spot, and the guards could only see her clothes and couldn't tell that she was a patient. Moreover, the hospital was large, and they didn't know every doctor. In addition, there was blood on Qin Lizhen's collar, so they thought that something must be very serious. Without asking any questions, they all rushed into the sanatorium area.

Qin Lizhen watched their retreating figures, smiled, and calmly left the hospital.

The next day at noon, Ziyuan and Gu Xing packed their things in their rooms. Several days of investigation had yielded nothing, and they planned to return to school, but both Ziyuan and Gu Xing were reluctant to give up.

After tidying up for a while, Gu Xing couldn't hold back any longer and quickly walked to Zi Yuan's room. As soon as he saw Zi Yuan, he said, "Dr. Zi, I think I should stay here. You should go back first."

What are you doing here?

"I want to continue investigating."

"Investigate what? Haven't we already investigated these past few days?" Ziyuan looked at Gu Xing, saying this, but in her heart she still hoped that Gu Xing could come up with some solution.

“When we went to that building last time, the old man seemed to be hiding something. I want to go to that building myself to see for myself.”

"But no one lives in the building anymore, and we can't find that person named Qin Lizhen either. I don't think we'll find anything."

After listening, Gu Xing couldn't refute Zi Yuan's words. After a while, he said, "I don't know, but I still want to go and see for myself so that I can put my mind at ease. Dr. Zi, you should go back first. You don't need to wait for me."

Ziyuan Xiao thought for a moment, smiled, and said to Gu Xing, "I'll go too, so I can give up on this idea as well."

Gu Xing had no reason to object, and he laughed along with Zi Yuan.

Just then, Zhang Bei suddenly burst in, nearly knocking Gu Xing to the ground. As soon as she entered, Zhang Bei turned on the TV in the room, saying, "Ziyuan, look at this."

Ziyuan knew something must have happened, but without asking Zhang Bei what was going on, she started watching TV. The program on the TV was an emergency news report from the city.

"...The patient escaped from the hospital around 4 a.m. last night. Her name is Qin Lizhen."

Ziyuan seemed to remember something at that moment, looked at Zhang Bei, and Zhang Bei also looked at Ziyuan and said, "Let's finish reading it first."

The television then displayed a photo of a woman, a middle-aged woman in her thirties or forties. It was the same doctor named Chen Ai that Ziyuan and Zhang Bei had seen yesterday, but now she was being portrayed as Qin Lizhen, a mental patient.

Ziyuan was completely bewildered. She glanced at Zhang Bei and said, "She is..."

Before Ziyuan could finish speaking, Gu Xing suddenly pointed at the TV and said, "Isn't she Xu Chen's mother from last time?"

"What?" Zi Yuan was even more puzzled when she heard Gu Xing say that. "She is not Xu Chen's mother. I have seen her. Xu Chen's mother does not look like this."

Gu Xing hurriedly explained, "Last time at school, she was the one who took Xu Chen away, and Xu Chen even called her 'Mom'."

Zhang Bei nervously gestured and said, "Stop arguing, let's finish reading the news first."

At this moment, a voiceover sounded on the TV: "Qin Lizhen killed her husband more than ten years ago. She was later confirmed to be a mental patient and had a history of escaping. Last night, at around 3 a.m., she killed two nurses and seriously injured a doctor before escaping from the mental hospital. Her whereabouts are currently unknown."

Just then, Yang Mian and Da Kai, along with a group of others, rushed in. Yang Mian shouted, "Quick, quick, turn on the TV! It's on..."

"Okay," Gu Xing replied impatiently, his eyes still glued to the television.

"Gu Xing, that woman upstairs, I remember she's Xu Chen's..."

Seeing that Yang Mian did not continue, he interrupted, saying, "I didn't expect it to be Xu Chen's mother."

“No, her mother doesn’t look like that,” Ziyuan explained again.

"But Xu Chen calls her Mom?" Yang Mian also asked.

Before Ziyuan could speak, Gu Xing suddenly raised his head and said to everyone, "Let's go to the hospital and ask the seriously injured doctor. There's no point in guessing here."

"Do you know what hospital it is?" Ziyuan asked Gu Xing as she followed him.

"You should call and ask right away."

Gu Xing and Zi Yuan walked out of the hotel, exchanging questions and answers, and the others hurriedly followed them.

Ziyuan found out which hospital Chen Ai was staying at on the way. When the group arrived at Chen Ai's ward, they saw that the ward was crowded with people, including several reporters. Two elderly people were guarding the ward, preventing anyone from entering.

"The injured person needs to rest now, you should leave quickly," said one of the people guarding outside the ward.

"When will the injured person wake up?" a reporter asked loudly.

"I don't know, you should ask the doctor."

Gu Xing whispered to Zi Yuan, "It looks like we can't get in at this time."

Ziyuan didn't answer, and slowly sat down on a chair in the aisle. Zhang Bei came over and advised her, "Why don't we go first?"

Just as Ziyuan was about to answer him, suddenly, there was a commotion in the ward. A person in a white hospital gown rushed out, knocking several people guarding the door to the ground, and ran away shouting like a madman.

Gu Xing and the others stood there for a while, then heard someone shout, "Quick, Chen Ai is gone, chase after her." It was a reporter who said this. As soon as Gu Xing and the others heard it, they knew that it was Chen Ai who walked out, and they immediately followed her.

A large group of people, including Ziyuan, Gu Xing, reporters, and Chen Ai's relatives, followed Chen Ai around.