Chapter 163

“Calm my nerves?” Lin Changqing looked at the large glass of juice in front of him with some confusion, “What nerves do I need to calm?”

Yuan Lan had given him watermelon juice, but its color was darker than bright red, resembling blood.

“Of course, it’s the shock of seeing a ghost,” Yuan Lan replied with a smile.

Lin Changqing was stunned for a moment, then silently pulled the glass of watermelon juice closer to him. He really did need to calm his nerves… but this was a bit too much, wasn’t it?

On the other side, Yuan Lan placed the small glass of watermelon juice in front of Bai Xuechao. This was what he had asked for earlier. He said, “I got you a glass first. The one with honey you mentioned earlier hasn’t been made yet. Of course, watermelon juice is best when freshly squeezed. I’ll get you another glass after you finish this one.”

Bai Xuechao wasn’t really craving watermelon juice anyway, so he nodded upon hearing this, “Alright.”

Now, Yuan Lan only had two glasses left in his hand: one was the same watermelon juice as Bai Xuechao and Lin Changqing’s, and the other was orange-yellow, which should be orange juice.

“Little Yu, this is yours~” Yuan Lan handed the orange juice to Yu Ruolan.

Yu Ruolan was a little surprised. She hadn’t told Yuan Lan she wanted a drink earlier, but Yuan Lan had proactively brought her her favorite orange juice, “Thank you, Brother Lan…”

Yuan Lan returned to his seat, and the male servant also came to the trolley that Yuan Lan had casually thrown aside and served them their lunch from the lower level.

Bai Xuechao had Pasta. He didn’t really want to eat too much tomato sauce, so under Yuan Lan’s arrangement, who understood his thoughts, the kitchen, besides the tomato sauce that was already needed to make it, squeezed the rest on the side, even in the shape of a flower for aesthetic purposes.

Yuan Lan also had noodles, but his was mixed noodles, and it seemed he was prepared for Bai Xuechao not liking the Pasta, as his bowl of mixed noodles was exceptionally large.

He watched as Bai Xuechao took a bite of the Pasta, and then fell silent looking at the plate of noodles.

“Don’t you like it?” Yuan Lan asked.

Bai Xuechao realized Yuan Lan was asking him and replied in a low voice, “It’s not that I completely dislike it… The taste is okay, but I don’t really like the texture of the noodles.”

“Then how about you try this?” Yuan Lan finally found the opportunity to push his mixed noodles towards Bai Xuechao.

Bai Xuechao took a bite from the side of his bowl and said after tasting it, “Not bad.”

The sauce was very fragrant.

Yuan Lan suggested with a grin, “Then you can pour your Pasta into my bowl, and take some of my mixed noodles?”

“Are you sure you can eat it mixed like that?” Bai Xuechao asked.

He was just putting on an act. After all, he was currently in a “sick and clingy” state, so of course he had to show some concern for Yuan Lan… verbally, at least.

Yuan Lan smiled, his eyes curving, and his gentle voice sounded, “It’s okay, I won’t mix them together to eat.”

“Alright.” Bai Xuechao didn’t stand on ceremony with Yuan Lan and directly picked up the plate.

He poured the Pasta along the side of the bowl into Yuan Lan’s bowl, not letting it “contaminate” too much of the mixed noodles, then took some mixed noodles from the other side of the bowl into his own plate.

Seeing this, Lin Changqing made a “tsk tsk” sound.

It was a good thing Mu Xinyue wasn’t here. If she had seen this, she would have been furious.

Back when the Apocalypse Society ate together, Yuan Lan had said he didn’t like to eat other people’s leftovers. But now, he was letting Bai Xuechao eat his mixed noodles and even pour the Pasta he didn’t like into his bowl. Even if Yuan Lan didn’t eat it, it wouldn’t be comfortable to have someone’s half-eaten food poured into your own bowl.

Could it be because Bai Xuechao had only taken one bite, so it didn’t count as leftovers?

With this thought in mind, Lin Changqing took a big gulp of watermelon juice.

“Cough cough— Pfft!” Lin Changqing spat out an eyeball.

The eyeball landed on the dining table, rolled a few more times with the force of Lin Changqing’s spit, and when it stopped, the iris and pupil, as if by a stroke of genius, were facing him, as if looking at him.

Lin Changqing’s expression was instantly indescribable. He stared at the eyeball and kept coughing, probably having choked, “Cough cough cough cough…”

“What’s wrong?” Yuan Lan asked with a knowing smile. He glanced at the eyeball and said with an innocent face, “Oh, I squeezed this watermelon juice myself, I didn’t dig out the eyes cleanly.”

After the watermelon mutated, it no longer had annoying seeds, but it grew eyes, both inside and out. The eyes on the rind would even move before the watermelon was picked. These eyeballs were very tough, as chewy as rubber. However, the good thing was that a watermelon usually only had a dozen or even a few eyeballs, and since they were seeds, special ability users just had to dig them out before eating the mutated watermelon.

Who would believe that Yuan Lan had missed one? It was such a big eyeball.

Lin Changqing’s black phoenix eyes slowly turned to the innocently smiling Yuan Lan. His lips moved a few times, then stopped, as if he had swallowed back a string of curses.

In the end, he only accused, “You’re not human, you knew I just saw a ghost, and you deliberately scared me!”

“Alright, I won’t scare you anymore,” Yuan Lan made a useless promise.

Lin Changqing was not reassured, “Really no more scaring?”

Yuan Lan nodded casually, “Mm-hmm.”

Lin Changqing believed him.

There was nothing he could do even if he didn’t believe him. Could he control Yuan Lan?

Next, except for Lin Changqing, the three of them were quietly eating their lunch.

This made Lin Changqing feel a little restless. But he had just eaten at Mortar’s place not long ago and couldn’t eat anything else now, so he could only drink watermelon juice.

At this moment, he thought, Yuan Lan gave him such a big glass of watermelon juice, could it be that he guessed he would have nothing to do later but drink water?

Lin Changqing tried to find a topic, “Have you guys ever encountered any supernatural incidents?”

Forgive him, he couldn’t think of anything else at the moment.

Bai Xuechao knew very well that there were no ghosts in this world, but at this moment, he opened his mouth and said, “I have.”

Lin Changqing’s long and narrow eyes widened into circles, his expression a mix of shock and the feeling of having found a “fellow victim of supernatural events.”

He thought he had found his people, but in fact, he hadn’t.

“Eh?” Even Yu Ruolan was surprised to hear this.

The corners of Yuan Lan’s mouth lifted, revealing a bright smile. He played along extremely well, “Little Xuechao, tell us about it?”

Lin Changqing swallowed nervously, “Um… is it scary?”

“It’s alright,” Bai Xuechao said calmly, “I’m not afraid of ghosts, so I feel fine.”

Lin Changqing looked at him with envy, “That’s great, not being afraid of ghosts.”

“This happened during my hospitalization,” Bai Xuechao began to narrate.

Lin Changqing exclaimed, “The hospital?”

You have to know, although their Apocalypse Society had a doctor, Mu Xinyue’s special ability could only heal injuries. Or rather, all healing-type special ability users could only heal injuries.

Therefore, when they were sick, they still had to go to the hospital for treatment.

Of course, Mu Xinyue had studied medicine for a long time and could give them simple medical examinations, but they still had to go to the hospital for prescription drugs. Although the Apocalypse Society was also in the pharmaceutical business, who would bother with those prescription drugs? Of course, the business that made more money was the priority.

The fact that this incident Bai Xuechao was talking about happened in a hospital made Lin Changqing a little uneasy.

He could only comfort himself that as a special ability user, his body was very healthy and he wouldn’t get any serious illnesses. And since it was during Bai Xuechao’s hospitalization, it must have happened in the inpatient department.

“Yes, the hospital.” Bai Xuechao took a slow bite of noodles before saying, “It happened in the outpatient department.”

Lin Changqing was numb. Who hadn’t been to the outpatient department?

Bai Xuechao picked up the mixed noodles with his chopsticks as he spoke, “That day, I had a CT scan scheduled for the afternoon, but I was a little late, around four-thirty.”

He said, “Both inpatients and outpatients have to go to the radiology department for CT scans. When I took the elevator downstairs, I met an outpatient who had taken the wrong way to the inpatient department and was also taking the elevator. He was very talkative and kept talking to me in the elevator. I basically just said ‘mm’ a few times and listened to him.”

Lin Changqing asked with some curiosity, “You can still chat in the elevator? Isn’t it just a short ride?”

“That’s where the problem lies.” Bai Xuechao paused for a moment and said nonchalantly, “That elevator kept going down, it never stopped.”

Lin Changqing couldn’t help but say, “Holy shit…”

Bai Xuechao took a bite of noodles and continued, “That person, I’ll just call him the patient. The patient chatted with me for five or six minutes and also noticed something was wrong. He asked me if the elevator was broken and if we should press the emergency call button.”

Lin Changqing agreed, “Yes, it could be broken.”

In fact, he was just comforting himself. After all, what kind of elevator malfunction would cause it to keep going down without stopping?

“If it was just a malfunction, it wouldn’t be called a supernatural incident,” Bai Xuechao said. As Lin Changqing’s face turned pale and he took a deep breath, he took another bite of mixed noodles.

Lin Changqing was torn between wanting to hear him talk and not wanting to hear him talk. He was very conflicted, “Th-then what?”

After he asked, he took a big gulp of watermelon juice.

“The patient pressed it, but there was no response.” Just as Lin Changqing took a deep breath, Bai Xuechao added, “But the elevator doors opened.”

Lin Changqing couldn’t help but reveal a faint smile, “Heh, is that the end of it?”

It’s not that scary!

“Of course not.” Bai Xuechao unhurriedly finished the noodles in his mouth and said, “After we got out of the elevator, we found that there was no one on the floor where the elevator stopped. I wasn’t interested in figuring out why, and the patient was in a hurry to go downstairs, so we just took the emergency exit down. But after walking for a long time, we found that we still hadn’t reached the first floor.”

He continued, “We randomly entered a floor to take a look and found that there was still no one there.”

Lin Changqing hissed and tried to rationalize this anomaly, “Could it be that you entered some special ability user’s space? Did you get hit by a special ability?”

Bai Xuechao glanced at him, “It would be better if it were a special ability. I’m not just a decoration.”

Lin Changqing nodded and said, “Oh, that’s true.”

Bai Xuechao picked up the noodles and said, “Next, we kept trying to take the stairs down, but every time we entered the emergency exit door, we found that it was the same empty floor. The patient got scared and asked me if we should go back to the elevator. It seemed like we were in a ghost-created illusion.”

Lin Changqing didn’t say anything, but took a few big gulps of watermelon juice.

Bai Xuechao said, “This time, when we took the elevator down, it was very smooth. As soon as the elevator opened, there were a lot of people waiting outside. Everything was normal. The patient just cursed and said ‘damn it’, then waved to me and left.”

Lin Changqing breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “Is that the end of it?”

“No.” Bai Xuechao continued, “I looked at the time after I got out of the elevator. The patient and I had been in the elevator and the emergency exit for about half an hour, during which the elevator was stopped, but no one waiting outside the elevator complained. This was already very strange, but I didn’t care and went straight for the CT scan.”

“The next day during the rounds, the hospital’s security guards, doctors, and nurses all came, holding a surveillance photo and asking me if I had seen this person. When I looked, it was the patient who had been in the elevator with me yesterday. I roughly told them about the elevator malfunction and taking the stairs yesterday, and the security guard left. But later I heard—”

Bai Xuechao paused here and leisurely ate his mixed noodles.

Lin Changqing couldn’t help but urge, “Heard what?”

Yu Ruolan also looked at him expectantly, but purely in the manner of someone listening to a story.

Yuan Lan still had a smile on his face.

Only then did Bai Xuechao say, “That patient didn’t leave the hospital yesterday, he went missing. His family came to the hospital to look for him, and that’s when the security guard asked me. I heard that they called the police later, and finally found the patient in the elevator shaft. He was already insane when they rescued him. No one knew how he got in. The hospital compensated the family some money and closed the case.”

Hearing this, Lin Changqing’s breath almost stopped. He took a few big gulps of watermelon juice and asked with a trembling voice, “Insane?”

It was creepy enough that the person was found in the elevator shaft, and now he was insane too.

“Yes, insane.” Bai Xuechao added, “The hospital’s surveillance footage was checked several times. They could only see that the patient and I got out of the elevator halfway yesterday, then walked up and down the stairwell for almost half an hour, and then went out to take the elevator again. Later, we separated. After the patient finished his examination, he took the elevator to the top floor, and then disappeared into a surveillance blind spot.”

The surveillance footage actually showed them getting out of the elevator halfway and walking up and down the stairwell? It was clearly the elevator that was broken, and they should have been walking downstairs the whole time.

The more Lin Changqing thought about it, the more scared he became. He proposed a hypothesis, “Could it be that someone harmed him?”

Yuan Lan said with a smile, “A-Qing, he’s just an ordinary patient. What’s the point of harming him?”

“That’s right,” Bai Xuechao nodded and said, “Just an ordinary person.”

Lin Changqing didn’t dare to think about it in detail and quickly said, “Alright, alright, I don’t want to hear it anymore, let’s change the topic.”

Hearing this, Bai Xuechao shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “You were the one who brought it up.”

Lin Changqing put his hands together and bowed, sincerely regretting it, “I was wrong, I shouldn’t have asked this.”

Bai Xuechao continued to eat his mixed noodles with his head down.

Lin Changqing took a few more sips of watermelon juice. Just as he was about to say something else, he suddenly felt the urge to pee.

Lin Changqing: “…”

“Um…” Lin Changqing didn’t dare to go to the bathroom by himself now. He tugged at Bai Xuechao’s sleeve, looked at him with pleading eyes, and then said in a voice even smaller than Yu Ruolan’s, shamefully, “Can you come to the bathroom with me…”

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