Chapter 540: Chapter 468: Survivor
"Yes, the person in the crime scene photos is indeed her, but the ambulance arrived in time and she was resuscitated!" After such a lengthy investigation, to arrive at this result was naturally difficult for Lian Jinsun to accept, but the truth was the truth.
Yang Xiao asked cautiously, "Can you be sure?"
"Yes, we’re at her family’s store now, we saw Fang Qingyun herself," Lian Jinsun sighed.
Seeing is believing. After finding out the exact location, Yang Xiao and Ju Juan immediately rushed over. Soon, the taxi stopped at a street corner, and upon disembarking, the two followed the driver’s directions and entered an alleyway off the main road. Walking into the alley, they saw Lian Jinsun squatting on the ground smoking a cigarette, while Che Xuexiang silently stood against the wall.
Lian Jinsun flicked away the cigarette butt and crushed it under his shoe. He turned around and gestured for them to look behind, where there was a grocery store.
A wooden sign hung above the door of the grocery store, with the words "Fang’s Grocery Store" written on it.
Approaching the store’s window and looking inside, the shop was not large, only about ten square meters or so. The glass display case and the walls held all kinds of small merchandise for sale. An elderly woman with graying hair was sitting on a small stool, fanning herself as she watched an old-style black-and-white television set on a wooden shelf.
Behind the elderly woman was a wheelchair, and in the wheelchair sat a middle-aged woman with short hair. The woman’s gaze was empty, unfocused. She was missing half of her left arm, her neck slanted to one side, and a thick blanket covered her lower body.
The woman made no response to the sound from the TV, maintaining her posture motionless, like a wooden figure.
"That’s Fang Qingyun. Although she was saved from the car accident, she’s now in a vegetative state. Her father passed away from illness the year before last, and these past years it’s been her mother looking after her, relying on this small grocery store to make ends meet," Lian Jinsun, who had silently approached Yang Xiao’s side, said as they both looked through the glass at that world within.
The clue they had painstakingly found was once again cut off, and they were left with no leads; the identity of the female ghost once again became a mystery.
It wasn’t until a phone call came in, for Lian Jinsun, that things took a sudden turn. After listening for a few moments, his expression drastically changed and his tone became urgent, "What?! Say that again, where is that person now?"
After Lian Jinsun hung up, he immediately looked at Yang Xiao with an excited expression, "There’s a clue. A few years ago, another incident occurred at that villa, where the victim was also scared to death, and high heel shoe prints were found at the scene!"
After a pause, his excitement unabated, Lian Jinsun continued, "And there’s a survivor who might have seen what the culprit looked like!"
Half an hour later, the four of them—Lian Jinsun, Yang Xiao, and the others—took a taxi to the outskirts, where the vehicle stopped in front of a cluster of white buildings surrounded by an old-style retractable door, rust-stained in places.
"Penang Mental Health Emergency Center," Che Xuechun announced each word clearly as he read the conspicuous sign over the door.
After Lian Jinsun made a phone call, soon, Zhang Man and Monk Wukong, who had stayed at the hotel, emerged from the hospital. They spoke a few words with the security guard at the duty desk, who then unlocked the gate to allow the four of them entry.
"What’s going on?" Yang Xiao inquired, as they walked through the hospital’s main entrance.
"Not long after you left, the hotel staff delivered a letter. The letter described an incident of a similar nature to the one that had happened years ago at the villa. That time, there were two people in the room: one was scared to death, and the other survived," Zhang Man explained as they walked, "But they say he went mad from fear and has been confined here ever since."
Yang Xiao looked around and asked in a low voice, "How did you manage to convince the hospital to let us in for a visit?"
"It’s not a visit, it’s an inspection," Zhang Man corrected, "The hotel sent us a letter with an introduction, our identity is that of observers from the Human Rights Observation Organization."
As Zhang Man opened her leather jacket, a blue-framed, white-background work ID was seen clipped to her shirt at the chest, with the word ’Observer’ written on it.
Without asking, it was definitely something Fei Rou had arranged to facilitate their investigation, and she really was capable.
Before they entered the building, a person hurriedly walked out of the glass doors in the lobby. He was a middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat with a slightly balding head. His eyes swept over everyone, then naturally walked towards Lian Jinsun, standing in the middle, with a grin so wide that it created folds on his face, "This must be the Observer comrade, right? We’ve been looking forward to your arrival! My name is Wu, just call me Xiao Wu!"
Lian Jinsun smiled as well, waiting for the bald middle-aged man to finish his pleasantries before he turned slightly to look at Zhang Man and introduced her, "Doctor Wu, you are mistaken, this is the Observer comrade."
Doctor Wu’s mouth twitched, but in the next second, his frozen smile melted away, and he immediately turned and walked towards Zhang Man. Without any explanation, he grabbed her hand, squeezed it tightly, and shook it vigorously, "The Observer comrade really has a commanding presence, full of vigor. To be honest, from afar, I recognized you immediately! Hahaha!"
Zhang Man wasn’t interested in exchanging pleasantries and got straight to the point. She said she wanted to see Ning Houfu, evidently the survivor of a terrible incident.
Taking advantage of Doctor Wu leading the way, Zhang Man knocked lightly yet firmly, "Doctor Wu, we’ve received a report alleging that your hospital is suspected of abusing patients, and you personally are..."
Before Zhang Man could finish, Doctor Wu hastily denied, "Impossible, absolutely impossible! Our hospital is patient-centered, with benevolent medical care. How could we commit such inhuman actions? These are slanders, libel! They are slandering me! They are slandering me!"
"There’s no need to get worked up, you’re acting as if it’s the truth," Zhang Man said with a smile, reassuringly signifying to Doctor Wu that she would investigate thoroughly.
Soon, they arrived in front of a room on the fourth floor, room 4031. There was a white paper stuck on the door, marked with words like ’fears quietness’ and ’prone to fear’.
Doctor Wu pushed the door open, revealing an exceedingly bright room, bright to the point of being glaring—all the lights were on. In the center of the room sat a chair, an iron seat with its legs harshly welded to the floor.
Tied to the iron chair with a white straitjacket was a person who had all his hair cut off, with a dark, lean body and averted eyes filled with panic, clearly unsettled by the arrival of Yang Xiao and the others.
What was stranger is that not far from this person, stood a mannequin dressed in a white lab coat of the hospital, with a fake face painted quite realistically.
"Look at this, take a good look, who says we’re abusing him?" Doctor Wu defended himself while showing a photo, "This is him when he first arrived at our hospital, also thin. He’s very afraid of being in dark, cramped spaces. To make him happy, we have staff take him out to relax every day."
"Has he exhibited any peculiar behaviors since arriving here?" Zhang Man asked seriously.
"This is the Mental Health Emergency Center; these patients naturally deviate from the norm. Ning Houfu likes quietness; he can’t tolerate even minor sounds. He’s also prone to fear, especially of being alone, particularly in dark and cramped spaces. No matter where he is, the lights must be on, or else he’ll go into a frenzy, shouting and screaming," Doctor Wu explained.
"Anything else?" Zhang Man pressed.
Hesitating for a moment, Doctor Wu’s expression grew complicated, and with great reluctance, he said, "There’s another thing, he... he also paints."
