Thriller Zone: From the Mental Hospital to the Ghostly World

In the hospital corridor.

Chen Ji and the others stood outside the ward, peering into it through the glass.

Zhang Cheng has gone home to rest.

Xu Sandao was seriously injured and had just come off the operating table not long ago. He is still in a coma.

The woman who had been taking care of him by his bedside quietly came out, gave Chen Ji and the others a wink, and they all walked to a corner.

This person was Yun Yuan, Xu Sandao's assistant, who intercepted the company's internal emails, allowing Xu Sandao to turn the tables and take the initiative.

She had been persuaded by Xu Sandao to leave the company long before anything even began, euphemistically called "resignation".

How could Yun Yuan not see that Xu Sandao was about to do something "big," something so important that he would die if he failed?

Fortunately... it's all over now.

The Thirteenth Bureau found her and took her to the hospital.

"I want to take him away from Yanjing."

Yun Yuan looked very haggard; clearly, she had been going through a lot of hardship these past few days.

Chen Ji nodded. After discussing it with everyone, he also had this plan: Xu Sandao had to leave Yanjing as soon as possible.

Zeng Guichuan's death will cause a major upheaval within the company. Once Bat returns to the company and informs Xu Sandao of the situation, he will face wave after wave of retaliation.

Therefore, they must leave Yanjing as soon as possible and hide Xu Sandao.

“We’ll set off tonight,” Chen Ji said decisively. “Yun Yuan, you two will come back to Tianhai with the four of us.”

Yun Yuan nodded, but still said with some worry:

"That's what I think too, but I know that several of the company's directors are in Tianhai..."

"It's darkest under the lamp," Liu Zi said. "Don't worry, Tianhai is so big. If it could hide Chen Ji back then, it can definitely hide the rest of you too."

Chen Ji thought for a moment before saying, "Tianhai is the headquarters of the Thirteenth Bureau."

"It's too much trouble for the company to investigate, don't worry."

Yun Yuan nodded silently. Now that things had come to this, going to Tianhai was the best option. Even if something happened, they wouldn't be helpless.

Without saying another word, she silently pushed open the door and returned to the ward.

Chen Ji watched her figure disappear quietly. His first meeting with this woman was not pleasant; at that time, she still carried the company's style.

However, she was ultimately someone Xu Sandao had trained, and in the end, she chose to follow Xu Sandao.

After sending a message to Zhao Xun, Chen Ji pondered the ghost inside Du Muyu's body again.

In the final stage of the Netherworld Prison, Chen Ji finally learned what that ghost was up to!

Its goal is very clear.

It's just waste.

Thinking of this, Chen Ji even felt a chill run down his spine, because a large part of the reason for Zeng Guichuan's death was that he could no longer shed his skin and escape, which was precisely because Zeng Guichuan had absorbed the wrong nutrients.

The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it. The oriole in this saying is the ghost inside Du Muyu's body.

Chen Ji referred to this ghost as a "spirit".

Because it truly resembles a ghost, constantly lingering and hiding on the edge of the prison, waiting for the struggle between Xu and Zeng inside to end before making its move and seizing the two pieces of trash in one fell swoop.

Chen Ji strongly suspected that if Zhang Cheng hadn't reacted so quickly and immediately shut down the Netherworld, the outcome might have been much worse and more chaotic...

The moment he came out, Chen Ji did not let his guard down, fearing that the "ghost" would strike again and kill Xu Sandao in reality.

But for some reason, it disappeared...

Was it because the people from the Thirteenth Bureau came? Or was it something else?

Chen Ji frowned slightly. He believed it was the latter, because Du Muyu's body did not completely belong to the "ghost," and Du Muyu's will was also struggling.

Perhaps the stimulus of returning to reality gave Du Muyu a temporary advantage.

At the same time, he was also vaguely worried about another thing: the waste material on the pen!

Although it's incredibly small, it's still essentially worthless. Before, under the cover of [Netherworld·Fate], the "ghosts" might not have been able to detect it, but that might not be the case now.

No matter how small the mosquito legs are, they are still meat.

Du Tingfeng and Fei'er, who had turned to the side, had surprisingly similar expressions, a mixture of deep confusion and anxiety.

Chen Ji took a deep breath and stepped forward.

"Du—"

His words rang out almost simultaneously with Du Tingfeng's.

Du Tingfeng murmured, "You're saying... she did all that just to get scrap?"

"It's not Sister Muyu."

Fei'er suddenly said, her tone stubborn: "It's the ghost inside her body."

But this makes it even stranger. The ghost's target had nothing to do with Du Muyu. It was as if it had just randomly chosen an unlucky guy as its puppet.

As the pen once said, that shimmering, glowing thing is called "essence," and almost all strange objects contain a bit of "essence."

The reason Chen Ji and his group called it "waste" is because all the "essence" they had seen was actually what was left over from forging the brush.

Even the fountain pen, a degenerate version of the calligraphy brush, is beyond classification; the calligraphy brush must possess extraordinary capabilities.

Thinking of this, Chen Ji suddenly shuddered.

Regardless of who the "ghost" inside Du Muyu is, could it be that its purpose is...?

Chen Ji murmured, "Is that ghost trying to make another writing brush?"

The moment he said that, everyone's expression changed.

Chen Ji couldn't help but grip the dormant pen tighter. If that was the ghost's true purpose, the resulting butterfly effect might lead Chen Ji himself to the end, sitting on his friend's corpse!

Since things are already quite clear, assuming the calligraphy brush is indeed invented, what about the fountain pen?

It is impossible for two identical monsters to exist at the same time.

Even after collecting all the scraps, the next target might very well be a fountain pen... But without the fountain pen, Chen Ji would be unable to change his friend's fate of death.

Chen Ji even vaguely felt that if the scene in the first act came true, the initial trigger would have been the death of Du Muyu.

The death of Du Muyu would be an extremely strong blow to Fei'er, Du Tingfeng, and everyone else. Chen Ji had not forgotten how much Fei'er and Du Tingfeng's mentality changed when they misunderstood Du Muyu's death.

Such a change would be fatal within the domain.

This is... the butterfly effect.

Could it be that fate has taken a turn here?

Share your thoughts with others.

However, Fei'er remained silent for a while before proposing another idea: "Chen Ji is not Chen Ji."

"I've wanted to say this for a long time: have you forgotten the space where we first met?"

Phil said, "Your body is gone inside."

"You said it yourself, at the end of the world, a group of ghosts emerged from the end of the domain river, where there was a village, and you thought that was Wangjia Village."

Fei'er's meaning was clear: the apartment also belonged to the Wang family.

With this connection, the whereabouts of Chen Ji's body becomes particularly suspicious. Fei'er believes that perhaps the missing body of Chen Ji has mutated or been transformed into a source corpse.

Du Tingfeng also felt that, given Chen Ji's personality, even if all his friends were dead, he would never open the door to the apocalypse and harm ordinary people.

Chen Ji seemed to be deep in thought.

The future is ever-changing, and their two speculations, though seemingly unrelated, are both possible, and may even coexist.

It is possible that the original corpse was that body, and at the same time, Du Muyu's death indirectly led to the death of his friend.

As a mortal, it is too difficult, far too difficult, to predict the future; moreover, fate itself is unpredictable.

However, one thing is obvious even without prediction: the difference between the two images.

The life or death of a friend.

"After I return to Tianhai, I want to meet with Yang Yu."

Chen Ji said, "The fact that Zeng Guichuan has Lao Sun's scrap materials proves that the company has been to Tuotuo Mountain; he is not the only one with the scrap materials."

“I have a feeling that the ghost will eventually come after them.”

Chen Ji finished speaking slowly, his eyes already becoming resolute.

He temporarily set aside thoughts of Wangjia Village, the corpse, or the relationship between the ghost and the writing brush...

He thought very simply.

He wanted the future depicted in the second act, and he wanted everyone to be well.

So the immediate goal is clear: to save Du Muyu's life!

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Volume one finished. Taking a day off today to refine the outline. Here's one chapter to start.