Académie des Surnaturels 3

Chapitre 1

Hell Demon

Part One

Late at night, torrential rain poured down, sweeping down from the dark night sky and shrouding the entire Tai Shing Shan in a thick fog of rain.

With a deafening, piercing thunderclap and a flash of pale lightning, a black Mercedes-Benz pulled up in front of the New Kangli Hospital, halfway up the north side of Dayao Mountain.

The hospital building, its five floors gleaming with lights, stood out amidst the torrential rain and flashes of lightning in the dark night. It was strikingly bright in the continuous misty rain. The signboard in front of the main entrance of the hospital building flashed with the five large characters "New Kangli Hospital". The security booth and iron gate in the iron fence surrounding the building reflected a cold, eerie arc of light under the flashing lights in the night rain, making it unusually sinister.

The Mercedes slowly passed through the iron gate and drove into the open space in front of the hospital building. As he drove, the driver, Li Zhong, looked up at the rows of windows on the building that were flashing white light. For some reason, he felt that they were like eyes, watching him drive in.

"Zhongzai, stop right now." A vicious voice came from the back seat of the car. The voice belonged to a fat, bald, middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit and a huge diamond ring on his hand. His round face had a pair of greedy and fierce small eyes. He was obviously a shrewd businessman. He was Zhongzai's boss - Wang Tiansheng, the chairman and chairman of the real estate company.

With a swishing sound, the car stopped in the open space to the left of the building. Uncle Long, who was in the security booth, rushed out and, ignoring the scorching rain, opened the car door with a swish. Of course, Uncle Long immediately recognized the car as belonging to Wang Tiansheng, the hospital's largest shareholder, so he dared not be negligent.

"Boss Wang, please," Long Bo, soaked to the bone from the rain, called out as he opened the car door.

Wang Tiansheng, sitting in the back, snorted, picked up his briefcase and umbrella from his seat, and smugly tried to get up.

"Boss, isn't it raining too hard?" Zhongzai turned around.

“I have an umbrella, you idiot. Damn it, why didn’t that stinky dean build a rain shelter in front of the building?”

As Wang Tiansheng spoke, he opened his umbrella and leaned out of the car.

Just as Wang Tiansheng stepped out of the car, a terrifying, sudden, and deafening thunderclap followed, and an arc of lightning flashed across the sky above the hospital building, instantly illuminating the entire hospital building and everything around it as if it were daytime. In that terrifying flash of lightning, Li Zhong noticed that the walls of the entire hospital building reflected a ghastly white arc of light under the lightning, resembling the white bones of a dead person, making it seem as if the entire building was a giant graveyard tombstone. He couldn't help but feel an eerie and terrifying aura permeating the surroundings.

"I heard that nine construction workers died when this hospital was built, and four others went insane and were sent to a mental hospital. It's really too eerie." Sitting in the car, Li Zhong couldn't help but recall his colleague Pingzai's words: "The boss even had a big argument with the union over the compensation. Ah Zhong, I'm not superstitious, but there really are incredible and terrifying strange things in the world! I suggest you avoid that hospital."

Thinking about Pingzai's words, Li Zhong couldn't help but smile bitterly. He had always been skeptical of things like ghosts and gods. Behind the main building of this hospital was a rock garden lawn, and next to it was an annex building. It was a beautiful place, but he didn't like coming here at all.

For some reason, every time he drove his boss to this hospital, he would feel a strange sense of unease and foreboding. He didn't know why he felt this way, and a few times he even caught a cold and fever after returning home. Although he didn't know if it was related to coming to this hospital, he had an instinctive feeling that something was wrong with this hospital.

With a "bang," Wang Tiansheng, holding an umbrella, closed the back door of the car and hurriedly ran towards the main building lobby with Long Bo, who was soaked to the bone, disappearing instantly into a vast expanse of rain and mist.

Li Zhong sighed and turned off the windshield wipers. The dense raindrops quickly blurred the view outside the windshield. The large, fierce raindrops not only pounded the windshield with a loud bang, but also pounded on the roof of the car with a clanging sound, as if a torrential downpour had trapped Zhongzai firmly inside the car.

Zhongzai turned off the other switches, patted the steering wheel expressionlessly, and muttered to himself, "This miser, he should go bankrupt soon!" It turned out that he hated his boss, Wang Tiansheng, who often took various opportunities to deduct his wages.

If it weren't for the bad environment, he would have left long ago.

To kill time, he pulled a cigarette from his bra. As he puffed on the smoke, amidst the soft hissing of the air, he glanced at his watch; it was already eleven o'clock at night.

With a "clang," for some unknown reason, the protective talisman hanging above his head suddenly swayed automatically and made this crisp bell sound.

The sound of the bell inexplicably made Li Zhong's heart skip a beat, and he involuntarily looked up at the amulet made of a metal bell, a copper coin, and a triangular folded paper talisman. But then the amulet stopped ringing and returned to its original state.

Li Zhong couldn't help but feel strange. Why would this amulet shake on its own? Although there was air conditioning in the car, it was blowing from below and couldn't reach the area above the amulet.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [4]: For some reason, he instinctively felt that the bell sound emitted by the amulet this time was very different from the bell sound he usually heard when he was driving. This time the bell sound was not loud, but Li Zhong felt that it was very piercing and his heart was pounding. It sounded a bit like the screams and groans in hell. It was also very prominent in the midst of the thumping rain outside the car.

Looking at the bell talisman that had returned to its original state, Li Zhong opened his mouth and exhaled a puff of smoke at it. "Perhaps it was just my imagination!"

Before he could finish thinking, with a "ding," the car's interior lights suddenly turned on automatically, bathing the car in a bright orange light. Before Li Zhong could react, with a "whoosh," the orange lights automatically turned off, and the car returned to its original darkness.

Li Zhong was stunned. He felt something was strange, as he had never turned on the light switch before. How could the interior lights suddenly turn on and off automatically?

At the same time, he felt that the light was eerily bright, completely different from the usual dim yellow light, which gave him a strange sense of unease.

After Wang Tiansheng and Long Bo rushed into the hospital lobby, he pointed to the east side of the door and asked the nurse at the information desk, "Whose white Mercedes is that in the open space outside the door?"

"This is Dean Bai's car, specially provided for him by the company, Mr. Wang," the nurse said, standing up quickly upon seeing the boss arrive.

“Yes, Mr. Wang, you’re really generous to the dean!” Uncle Long added from the side.

"Go away, go away!" Wang Tiansheng waved impatiently at Long Bo to leave, muttering to himself, "That old bastard actually used company funds to buy himself a car. I'll make him pay sooner or later." He angrily turned to the nurse and asked, "Has Dean Bai left yet?"

"No, he's in his office on the fifth floor."

"Perfect timing, that's exactly what I was looking for!" Wang Tiansheng said viciously.

It turns out that Wang Tiansheng's real estate company bought the land for the hospital two years ago when land prices in Dayaoshan plummeted. It was a dilapidated villa and an air-raid shelter abandoned for many years on the mountainside, supposedly left behind by a Japanese military command post. Wang Tiansheng spent only 20 million yuan to buy this land, which was as big as two football fields, showing his extreme shrewdness.

Then, under the encouragement of Professor Bai, a medical doctor who claimed to know many high-ranking officials and wealthy people, Wang Tiansheng, together with several real estate friends, invested in building this sanatorium.

Unexpectedly, since the hospital was built, accidents and troubles have been frequent, the budget has been exceeded again and again, and the investment has reached nearly 800 million yuan. The current financial crisis has caused Wang Tiansheng to suffer heavy losses in the stock and land markets, and he has encountered unprecedented difficulties in cash flow. The hospital has become a terrible bottomless pit.

However, what enraged him most was learning something else: the reason he had poured so much effort into building the hospital two years ago was because he was extremely superstitious and believed a fortune teller and feng shui master from mainland China. This master, who claimed to have been instructed by a high-ranking official, asserted that as long as Wang built a hospital there, it would complement his destiny, making Wang's business incredibly prosperous and invincible, turning him from a billionaire into a multi-billionaire. Wang Tiansheng, who had always believed in metaphysics and disregarded science, naturally spared no effort in frantically building the New Kangli Hospital.

However, after the building was completed, he learned through some friends that the so-called feng shui master actually had a very close relationship with Bai Dewen, and they were old friends of more than ten years. Based on this, with his keen business sense, he realized that this feng shui master was working with Bai Dewen to trick him into building the temple.

From then on, he hated Bai Wen to the core. If it weren't for building this hospital, he would at least have some money to cope with his current predicament.

What's even more infuriating is that this guy actually took advantage of Wang Tiansheng's absence last week to propose at the hospital's board meeting to expand the hospital's area, increase equipment and staff, and even increase the director's annual salary by 50%. This is practically a death sentence for Wang Tiansheng.

"Damn it, do you think I'm a sucker? You old geezer, I'll kick you out sooner or later!" Wang Tiansheng stormed across the lobby floor and arrived at the west elevator.

Just as he was waiting for the elevator, suddenly, "whoosh!" "Hurry, hurry, ah!" A series of heart-wrenching screams and the sound of a cart being pushed urgently rang out behind him. Wang Tiansheng's heart skipped a beat, and he felt an inexplicable tension rushing towards him from the air, engulfing his entire body. Instinctively, he turned his head to look.

Good heavens! He saw seven or eight medical staff in white coats, soaked to the bone, rushing in from the lobby door through the night rain, shouting as they pushed a hospital trolley.

Wang Tiansheng looked intently at the hospital gurney and was immediately struck by a chilling realization. His scalp tingled. On the bed lay a middle-aged woman, her body covered in blood. Blood rippled across the white sheets on her unconscious face and body. A bloodied arm hung limply beside the bed. Blood dripped down her arm, down her fingers, and onto the floor, leaving a trail of countless tiny, star-like drops of blood—a sight that sent shivers down one's spine. Clearly, this was an emergency medical rescue operation.

"Quick, into operating room number 2." Following the direction of a middle-aged doctor, the group quickly pushed the trolley into a long corridor on the east side. At the end of the corridor, the lights of the emergency operating room were already on. A terrifying trail of blood, turning a corner, followed the trolley into the cold corridor. Wang Tiansheng couldn't help but feel a chill of fear creeping over him.

He couldn't help but call out to a nurse following behind the car, asking, "Miss, what... what happened?"

The nurse stopped, looking fearfully at the gurney that had been pushed into the operating room. She brushed her wet hair aside. "I'm not entirely sure either. I heard this woman brought her son to visit a friend. Suddenly, she discovered her son was missing, so she went to look for him with the hospital security guard. Somehow, they ended up at the air-raid shelter outside. She said she heard what sounded like her son's voice inside. She and the security guard searched the shelter thoroughly but couldn't find him. But when they came out, the woman suddenly disappeared at the door. Then the security guard heard screams coming from inside the air-raid shelter. He was so frightened that he waited until several passing caregivers rushed in. They found the woman lying unconscious on the ground, covered in blood. It was terrifying! We all rushed her out. It was so horrific and unbelievable..." The nurse finished speaking and turned to rush towards the operating room.

"Damn it!" Wang Tiansheng pounded his chest in anguish. "It will cost a lot of money to save this woman. I'm such an idiot, how could I have opened a hospital?"

Lu Manlin is the most outstanding surgeon at New Kangli Hospital, and the hospital staff always think so. He was the doctor who just directed everyone.

At this moment, he was dejected and had changed into a green surgical gown. He and three nurses were doing their best to save the unconscious woman. The nurses were quickly cleaning and disinfecting the injured woman's entire body with alcohol. Operating table lights, ventilators, blood transfusion equipment, electrocardiogram monitors, pacemakers, and other equipment were ready.

"Lights on, pacemaker ready!" Lu Manlin, wearing a mask and gloves, shouted, raising his hands. "How's the heart rate and blood pressure?"

"No heartbeat, very low blood pressure, but the EEG is still working!" the nurse responded, pointing to the cardiac and EEG monitor.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [5]: At the same time, two nurses handed the electric shock pacemaker to Lu Manlin. The ten bright lights on the round and flat table lamp illuminated the dying woman on the bed, making her skin turn pale and her pupils unresponsive. Based on his doctor's instinct, Lu Manlin knew that if he didn't hurry up and pull this woman back from the brink of death, there would be no chance.

"One, two, three!" With a shout, Lu Manlin pressed the pacemaker against the bloodied woman's chest, then pulled it out with a "thump," and with a sharp electric shock, the woman was sucked up and bounced up before falling back onto the bed.

"No response, no heartbeat!"

"One more time, one, two, three!" Lu Manlin shouted, then raised the pacemaker again to shock the woman's heart once more, and "thump" was heard from the pacemaker once more.

With a soft "whoosh," a tiny, delicate peak appeared on the electrocardiogram screen, which had been a straight line, before falling back to a straight line. "Dr. Lu, there's a reaction!" the nurse beside the machine exclaimed excitedly.

"Okay, one, two, three!" Lu Manlin immediately used the electroshock device to shock the middle-aged woman for the third time. With a "thud," the woman sprang up again and fell back onto the bed.

With a "whoosh," the electrocardiogram display screen went straight, and the heart rate wave jumped up again before falling back to a straight line. This time, the peak was higher than the previous one.

"There's a heartbeat!" a nurse called out.

“Okay, let’s do it again.” Lu Manlin confidently raised the pacemaker, preparing for the fourth shock, when suddenly there was a “bang” and the operating room light went out automatically, plunging the entire operating room into darkness.

Almost simultaneously, the electrocardiogram monitor suddenly exploded with a "bang," sending up a long, straight streak of electric sparks that instantly illuminated the entire dark operating room.

With a loud "whoosh," the nurse next to the equipment screamed as she was sent flying by the explosive burst of sparks and air, crashing straight into the wall six or seven meters away.

With a loud thud, the nurse flew high into the air and crashed into the wall, knocking Lu Manlin over in the process. The pacemaker rolled out of Lu Manlin's hand, and the nurses around screamed in unison, plunging the dark operating room into chaos.

"What happened?" Lu Manlin angrily got up from the ground. He couldn't tolerate the power outage in the operating room at such a critical moment of saving lives. He rushed straight out of the operating room without thinking. When he looked around, he couldn't believe his eyes. The corridor outside the operating room was brightly lit. Only the operating room was without power.

He turned his head to look at the electric switch and leakage circuit breaker on the wall. Strangely, all the switch plates on the control panel were normal, and there was no sign of any tripping.

"Quickly call someone to see what the problem is!" he shouted angrily at the security guard who rushed over from outside the lobby. Before he could finish shouting, "ding!" the lights in the dark operating room behind him, which had lost power, automatically turned back on.

At the same time, a nurse called out from the operating room, "Dr. Lu, the power is back on! Come back quickly, come back quickly..." "What the hell is going on?" Lu Manlin felt an unprecedented sense of bewilderment at the inexplicable power outage and then the inexplicable return to normal in the operating room.

When he returned to the operating room, under the bright light of the lamp, he found the middle-aged woman dead, her body stiff and lifeless. Her breathing mask had inexplicably fallen to the floor, and black blood was gushing from her eyes, ears, mouth, and other seven orifices. Her eyes were wide open and bulging, her tongue protruding straight from her open, stiff, bloody mouth, as if she had seen something terrifying before her death—a chilling sight. In just that one moment, the woman resembled a zombie that had been dead for days.

The nurse, covered in blood, got up after being thrown against the wall, sobbing, "There was a strange wind just now, a strange wind..." Lu Manlin looked at the scene with a face full of panic, not knowing what to do... Outside the main building of the hospital, raindrops as big as popping beans continued to pour down, pale lightning flashed across the dark and chaotic night sky with terrifying thunder, and the wind and rain lashed at the nearby mountains, causing large swathes of trees on the hillside to sway left and right, and to make rhythmic rumbling sounds like giant waves, which mixed with the sound of rain, making people feel that the whole world was going crazy in this storm of night, shaking incessantly.

For some reason, amidst the terrifying flashes of light, no one noticed that a dark cloud hovered tightly above the hospital building, lingering for a long time.

Li Zhong was still enjoying his cigarette in the car when suddenly, for some reason, his heart started pounding faster. He instinctively felt that something was watching him from behind. He turned around involuntarily and, through the long rear windshield, saw only an empty field bathed in the heavy rain behind the car. He couldn't see a single person or anything watching him.

"I'm being paranoid," Li Zhong cursed himself as he turned around. For some reason, even though he couldn't see anyone, he felt a strange sense of gloom about the blood-red clearing behind the car, bathed in the nearby red streetlights.

"Maybe it's just a feeling!" Li Zhong thought. He had made a mistake. He thought there was nothing behind the car, but in fact, in that dimly lit, rainy open space, a terrifying creature invisible to the naked eye was staring at him menacingly.

The windshield wipers had already stopped, but for some reason, Li Zhong looked at the wipers hanging on the hood and suddenly felt a strange dizziness. The surroundings seemed to be spinning and becoming blurry. He couldn't control it; he was so dizzy that he involuntarily closed his eyes, leaned back in his seat, and fell asleep. In less than two minutes, he was snoring away.

Just then, suddenly, with a "swish, swish, swish" sound, the windshield wipers miraculously started wiping the glass automatically. Meanwhile, their switch inside the car was off.

"Boss Wang, you've really hurt me. I've put in so much effort and worked so hard to help you build this hospital. I don't know how much I've suffered. And now you're cursing me like this? You're so ungrateful. If it weren't for me, would this hospital have been built so quickly? Boss Wang, there aren't many good people like me these days." In the magnificent director's office on the fifth floor of the hospital, Bai Wen, the director in his fifties with a sharp face, spoke in a sarcastic tone.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [6]: “What? Ungrateful, hahaha…” Wang Tiansheng laughed in anger. “Who invested hundreds of millions of yuan here? Your stinky car parked at the door, and your office decorated more expensively than my villa, who paid for them? Damn it, I didn’t realize your skin was thicker than an ox.” “Yes, and,” Wang Tiansheng continued angrily, “You’re always bragging about your excellent social skills, but you’re just using my millions to live a life of debauchery. Even a three-year-old can do that. Damn it, you old thing that’s stinks more than shit, listen to me, if you can’t produce reasonable results in business within three months, you have to get out, understand? Get out!” Wang Tiansheng slammed his fist on the table in anger.

"You're threatening me, boss. Let me remind you, you're just a shareholder of this hospital group. Of course, you have the right to express your opinions. My flaw is that I respect human rights. However, whether I leave or not isn't up to you, but to the hospital's board of directors." The white-haired man with fox-like eyes said in a sinister tone, "Furthermore, I also want to remind you that there are very few people in Hong Kong like me who know how to run a hospital and know so many high-ranking officials. Don't think that just because you've speculated on some land, you have the ability to run a hospital!"

"Are you mocking me for being uncultured!" Wang Tiansheng's face flushed red with anger. "Fine, you've got guts, we'll see." Wang Tiansheng slammed his hand on the table again. "Those suggestions you made last week won't get approved. Just wait to be fired!"

"You old liar!" As soon as Wang Tiansheng finished speaking, he picked up his briefcase, pushed open the office door with a "bang," and rushed out.

"Just you wait! Hahaha, don't worry, I'll definitely squander all your money!" Bai Wen watched Wang Tiansheng's retreating figure disappear through the door and couldn't help but laugh slyly.

With a rumble of thunder and rain, Wang Tiansheng arrived at the lobby entrance with his briefcase. The night rain was still pouring down, and the open space outside was gloomy under the occasional flashes of lightning. Wang Tiansheng glanced at his watch; it was already 12:30 a.m. Good heavens, he had been arguing with Bai Wen for almost an hour.

He turned to look again and saw his black Mercedes, shrouded in darkness and lifelessness under the torrential rain.

Wang Tiansheng opened his umbrella with a loud "pop" and rushed out of the lobby entrance. He had only taken a few steps outside when a sudden, dense rain of large raindrops swept towards him, hitting his head and chest indiscriminately, instantly soaking his upper body.

"Damn it, this awful weather!" Wang Tiansheng cursed involuntarily, while also feeling a strange sensation in his heart. Why were these heavy raindrops as hard as stones, hitting him horizontally and causing a stinging pain on his face and body? It was extremely bizarre!

He quickly rushed across the open space amidst the torrential rain to his car. By the light of the hospital lights behind him, he could vaguely see Li Zhong fast asleep. Wang Tiansheng felt a surge of anger. He pulled open the car door and shoved Li Zhong's head hard. "Get up, kid, drive!"

Li Zhong, who was woken up, was stunned for a moment before opening his eyes and looking back at Wang Tiansheng. His eyes were very blank. After a while, he finally came to his senses and said, "How did I fall asleep? I'm sorry, boss, should we start driving now?"

"You idiot, drive!" Wang Tiansheng angrily climbed into the back seat, slammed the door shut, and slammed his briefcase down. He was furious, thinking of Bai Wen's utter rudeness earlier.

"Damn it, you old codger! I'm going to fire you at the next board meeting and bankrupt you. Let's see if you'll still be so arrogant then!" He owned 35% of the hospital company's shares. Although this guy surnamed Bai had two major shareholders backing him, he believed that as long as he united with the other shareholders, he was absolutely capable of kicking the old man out. With his business acumen, he was confident he could cripple Dean Bai.

With a "thud," Li Zhong restarted the engine, quickly turned on the lights, shifted gears, and stepped on the gas. The Mercedes sped up in the rain, passed the iron gate, and headed out of the hospital... The black Mercedes quickly turned and sped onto the winding, undulating mountain road of Dayao Mountain. The hospital building, its lights flashing, quickly receded and disappeared into the dark, undulating mountains and the night rain behind the car, which continued to pour down.

Li Zhong drove very fast. It was nearly 1 a.m., and the mountain road was bathed in a blood-red light by the alternating night rain and red streetlights, which made him feel inexplicably uneasy. For some reason, Li Zhong noticed that the road was completely empty, with no cars in sight. Although driving was very smooth, he had not seen a single car after driving for seven or eight kilometers, which made him feel that something was wrong with this return trip, and he had a strange sense of unease.

Furthermore, he found himself extremely cold all over after inexplicably falling asleep with dizziness, as if he had crawled out of an icehouse or ice cave when his boss woke him up—a very strange experience. Meanwhile, the vast stretches of forest rushing past on both sides of the road swayed violently in the night rain and gale, like a chaotic dance of demons. The white graves that occasionally appeared on the hillside looked eerily terrifying in the night rain.

Soon, Li Zhong had driven his car from the northern half of Dayao Mountain to the southern half, but he still hadn't seen a single car.