Chapter 205: Chapter 169: Jin Xueli: The Road Sign of Love
Jin Xueli had imagined several scenarios.
For example, she’d spot Morando at a glance, and faced with irrefutable proof of his crimes, he’d fly into a rage and open fire on her. Or maybe she’d find the Kai Family had surrounded and infiltrated the hospital building, summoning all sorts of Illusions and stirring up demonic winds, making the place look like anything but the Human World.
The one thing she hadn’t expected was that she couldn’t even get in the door.
"I’m sorry, we operate on a whitelist system."
In a lobby that could have been either a private hospital or a luxury hotel, an elegant middle-aged woman told her from behind the reception desk, "Our emergency room isn’t open to the public, and we don’t accept walk-in patients. You can only enter the hospital after making an appointment and being added to the whitelist."
"My frien—my cousin, he was just transferred here by ambulance. You can check the records if you don’t believe me. You do have records, right?"
Jin Xueli remembered seeing the ambulance leaving, its job done, as she arrived. An idea struck her. "He’s unconscious. I’m here... I’m here to handle his paperwork and pay the fees."
’They have to let me in if I say I’m here to give them money, right?’
"I’m sorry," the receptionist said politely. "Please call the hospital’s general affairs office, explain the situation to them, and make an appointment. We operate on a whitelist system."
"A whitelist system for a hospital? Won’t that cause delays?"
Jin Xueli’s voice had risen by just a hair’s breadth, and next to the metal detector, a burly Black man in a black security T-shirt with what looked like a weapon at his hip turned his head toward her.
Her voice dropped again. "...What’s the number for the general affairs office?"
Clutching a number she knew would be useless to call, Jin Xueli walked out of the hospital building.
She looked down at her pajama pants and sneakers, suspecting her outfit was making it even harder to get in. But at this point, all she could do was figure out a way to sneak in past the front desk.
Initially, Jin Xueli had simply not wanted Chaisi to die. She’d even had the passing thought that since the Kai Family already knew, maybe she didn’t need to come at all.
But now that they wouldn’t even let her in the door, her mood changed completely. ’Why can Morando get in, but I can’t? Doesn’t this feel like Morando is the one keeping me out?’
’Great. First, they use me as bait, and now they won’t let me in. Is there no end to this humiliation?’
It didn’t matter if the logic was sound; that was just how she felt.
The more they tried to keep her out, the more she wanted in. Even if Chaisi was already a corpse, she had to get inside and see for herself.
But that was easier said than done. After circling the building, she found the hospital was indeed a lot like a high-end hotel. There were no climbable windows on the first floor, and the side doors for stretchers and the rear employee entrance were all secured with keypad locks.
Jin Xueli considered trying to pick the locks, but being a Hunter didn’t mean you knew how to do everything. Besides, she wasn’t optimistic enough to think an alarm wouldn’t go off after she broke a lock.
’What should I do? Chaisi is really going to die any minute now.’
She circled back to the front entrance and called Han Liuyue from the parking lot to discuss the situation. Of course, no one answered.
Apparently, the Kai Family’s phones were mainly for decoration; making callers anxious was just a side benefit.
A woman got out of a taxi and walked toward the main entrance. It was late at night, yet she was wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat made of straw.
Jin Xueli was about to look away, but then her head snapped back for a second glance.
Beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat was a curtain of pin-straight, jet-black hair that looked as heavy as a swatch of black cloth. Behind the dark curtain, a puffy, snow-white face was faintly visible.
The woman didn’t spare Jin Xueli a single glance. As she passed a few steps away, Jin Xueli’s heart seized, and she couldn’t help but take two steps back.
’Th-that’s not a mask, is it? Is she here for facial treatment?’
’...If you looked like that, wouldn’t life be full of troubles?’
She watched as the woman entered the main doors and also stopped at the reception desk.
Jin Xueli followed her inside, positioning herself at an angle where the guard couldn’t see her but she could vaguely hear their conversation.
"I’m sorry, we operate on a whitelist system..."
’The woman doesn’t have an appointment either?’
The head in the sun hat slowly leaned over the reception desk, its neck stretching out longer and longer, and murmured something in a low voice.
Her hair, too black to be human, flowed onto the countertop, as thick and cloying as crude oil.
"Please don’t lean over..." The receptionist’s protest suddenly softened, and her next words became inaudible.
The guard seemed to sense something was wrong. He strode over and demanded in a deep voice, "Is there a problem here?"
To avoid being seen by the guard, Jin Xueli quickly shrank back a couple of steps. When she peeked out again, she realized she seemed to have missed something—no one was talking anymore.
The receptionist, the woman in the sun hat, and the guard—the three of them stood frozen in silence, like statues.
After a few seconds, the woman in the sun hat turned and, as if no one else was there, walked toward the gate with the metal detector at the other end of the lobby.
The receptionist and the guard remained where they were, completely still.
’Huh? What’s with them—’
’Ah, wait, now’s not the time to worry about them. Isn’t this my chance?’
Jin Xueli darted through the door, shot a quick glance at the two at the desk, and saw that neither reacted to her. She didn’t dare walk too close to the straw-hatted woman. Only after she saw the woman enter the elevator bank did Jin Xueli hurry through the gate. A look back confirmed the guard was still standing with his back to her.
As she walked toward the elevator bank, she dialed Han Liuyue’s number again.
This time, the call was answered almost as soon as it started ringing.
Han Liuyue’s voice was low and broken, as if the signal was poor. "Xueli, we... ran into some trouble on the way..."
’He sounds pretty friendly.’
"I finally managed to sneak in. Where are you?"
Jin Xueli walked into the elevator bank and saw that one car had just left the first floor and was ascending. It must have been the one the straw-hatted woman took.
"My signal... is bad... We were attacked. You go find Chaisi first, make sure he’s... I’ll be right there."
"I don’t know where to find Chaisi! It’s not like they’re going to tell me—"
Before she could finish, the call dropped.
Jin Xueli stared at her phone, wanting to laugh bitterly.
’Great. The Kai Family has so many people, yet not a single one has shown up. In the end, the task of saving him has fallen squarely on my shoulders?’
’I’d better get at least a ten percent stake in the Kai Family after this to repay my kindness, right?’
This private hospital wasn’t large, and unlike a normal hospital, there were no directional signs for patients. It seemed confident that everyone who came for treatment knew exactly where to go.
Jin Xueli looked at the row of elevator buttons and, trusting in (Chaisi’s) luck, pressed the button for the second floor. As for why... no reason. It was like a moth drawn to a flame, just blindly bumping around. It all came down to whether Chaisi’s fate was strong enough to survive.
Apparently, it wasn’t.
Because when the doors opened, she was looking at what seemed to be a lounge and dining area—likely for inpatients and their visiting families. Was Chaisi an inpatient?
’Even if he’s not an inpatient, they wouldn’t kill him the second he arrived, would they?’
If the goal was to kill him as quickly as possible, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of transferring him to another hospital.
Jin Xueli recalled that when she received the summons, the information about the target Illusion Chaisi possessed was also revealed to her—he had the "Tongue."
’Could it be that the Westley Team knows about this too? They’re sure proactive for a leaderless group.’
For one team of contestants to bring another contestant who possessed a target Illusion into a hospital under their control, the goal couldn’t just be to kill him. They had to be after the Illusion, too.
The only question was how long the process of taking the "Tongue" would last. However long it took was how long Chaisi had left to live.
’Where the hell is he?! I have no information, how am I supposed to—’
Jin Xueli suddenly froze.
On the third floor, the emergency department level, she finally found a nurses’ station that looked similar to one in a normal hospital.
She had assumed a hospital for the wealthy would have strict security, but she was surprised to see two nurses at the station standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs to her, staring at something, unmoving for several seconds.
Jin Xueli didn’t dare miss the opportunity and wait for them to turn around. She quickly crouched down, tiptoed past, and slipped into the waiting area behind the nurses’ station. The area was empty, and as she entered, she saw a brown-haired girl walking out of a restroom in the distance.
It wasn’t the woman in the straw hat, it wasn’t Morando, and it certainly wasn’t the completely unreliable Han Liuyue. The girl’s face was unfamiliar; she had never seen her before.
She quietly scanned her surroundings, and when her gaze met Jin Xueli’s, she immediately lowered her head and sat down nonchalantly in a corner of the waiting area.
’...How is there someone here even shadier than me?’
The next second, the brown-haired girl suddenly furrowed her brow, rubbed her ear vigorously, and then tapped it lightly a couple of times, as if something in her ear was bothering her.
A thought struck Jin Xueli.
’...No way.’
She recalled the post about the chance encounter. The original poster had said she met Morando at the entrance, but she never specified whether she was about to leave or about to come in...
’So the brown-haired girl really is her? The Hunter of Love?’
’Her love is certainly passionate. Waiting all this time without leaving, using all her Hunter tracking skills to chase after her idol.’
’In that case, does this mean Morando is on this floor?’
’Wait, Morando’s target is Chaisi. If *she’s* on this floor, then Chaisi must be—’
Before Jin Xueli could finish her deduction, a door down the hallway suddenly opened. A doctor rushed out as if escaping, his face pale and tense. Someone from behind him yanked the door shut.
’That bastard Chaisi’s luck is really something else,’ Jin Xueli cursed inwardly as she broke into a sprint. If she had been even one minute later, she would have missed this critical moment.
Beneath the door, darkness suddenly fell.
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