I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 144 - 144 143. Dispel Superstition_1

Chapter 144: 143. Dispel Superstition_1 Chapter 144: 143. Dispel Superstition_1 Liu Qingjiang’s face was pale, swollen, with a hint of bloodshot in his eyes. Wearing a safety helmet, he casually dragged a shovel by his side as he stared at the pit’s center, at Lu Ban in the middle of the hole.

Liu Qingjiang raised his hand, lifting the shovel high, then suddenly brought it crashing down.

As he lifted the shovel, Lu Ban had already dodged to the side, gripping the crowbar tightly in his hand while “Testament” was loaded and ready.

However, Liu Qingjiang’s shovel struck the gaps between the human heads, cracking the ground. The aged cement broke into rubble and debris, shovelled up by the iron tool and cast aside.

Then, Liu Qingjiang raised the shovel again, repeating his previous action as if he hadn’t noticed Lu Ban’s presence.

“Can he not see me?”

Lu Ban stood diagonally opposite Liu Qingjiang, backed against the wall, unmoving.

Liu Qingjiang just kept digging, one shovelful after another, unearthing the corpses of the workers buried below.

“The hospital’s architect was a foreigner, who committed suicide after completing the design. The construction foreman also seems to have been tortured mentally. Living Stakes… They tried to suppress something using the ill-fated workers who died in accidents to create Living Stakes, but is that truly effective?”

Lu Ban, who had encountered various strange and menacing entities and Evil Gods in Foreign Domains, thought that the custom of Living Stakes was mostly likely just an outdated feudal superstition.

If real monsters weren’t afraid of the living, why would they fear the dead?

As for ghosts fighting ghosts, these workers had been doomed by them, not even given a proper burial, forever sealed in concrete. If it were Lu Ban, wouldn’t he haunt every night, seeking vengeance against those who buried him, instead of protecting their hospital?

The so-called “Living Stake” was probably the result of a different ritual, possibly not aimed at suppression but at summoning something.

Rituals of Evil Gods from various Foreign Domains inevitably involve live sacrifices, as only death and the scent of souls can attract these indescribable and sinister beings.

“The missing persons seem to have entered this dimension. Is this the Another World?”

Lu Ban thought of a horror game he had once played. In that game, humans could enter Another World due to supernatural forces. One such place was the Inner World, filled with abnormalities and monsters, extremely dangerous.

“It is apparent that after they entered this place, they might have lived for a while but, with the Corrosion, eventually underwent Mutation into monsters. Moreover, these monsters seem to act based on the fixations they had in life. Liu Qingjiang, feeling guilt over the workers’ deaths, wants to dig up their remains, while Xu Xiao attempts to escape, constantly calling for help at the nurse’s station?”

He saw Liu Qingjiang dig up a pile of dirt, pack it in cement bags, and then drag it out of the room, his movements as stiff as a machine long overdue for maintenance.

“As for the doctor earlier, could his fixation be born from a failed surgery or something else from his life? Thus, after stumbling in here, he keeps repeating his original work?”

Lu Ban thought of the obstetrician.

Yet, new questions arose.

“Wait, but this hospital shouldn’t have an obstetrics department, so where does this obstetrician come from?”

Lu Ban began to suspect that the obstetrics department of the hospital held secrets, possibly related to the deepest secrets of the hospital.

“Could it be one of those private practitioners who deliver babies for wealthy people?”

He considered that some doctors performed secretive deliveries for the wealthy: some were celebrities at the height of their fame, others were the mistresses or “other women” of rich men, and some even darker, children born out of socially unacceptable relationships.

“No, it can’t be something so simple… This hospital used Living Stakes during its construction, which must be part of some ritual. The architect who designed it committed suicide, and the investors were foreigners and the Overseas Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which means, was this hospital built with a specific purpose from the start?”

Lu Ban left the room, standing by the wall near the window. Outside, the world was pitch black; he couldn’t see anything, as if blinded in the dark.

“Moreover, from what I saw earlier, there must be more than one or two missing persons in the hospital. There are many lost here, but such a large number of disappearances couldn’t have evaded police investigation. According to the information Song Yunyan gave me, Nanhua Private Renji Hospital has never been subject to such an investigation.”

He watched Liu Qingjiang enter the room again, dig persistently, then leave with the debris, but the pit kept growing larger, seemingly never-ending, almost as if it were alive.

“From the outside world’s perspective, I must already be missing by now. The only way out is to unravel the hospital’s secrets.”

Lu Ban saw that two hours had passed since he came in, and it was still early before six o’clock.

“Where could Du Danping’s Melody Fragment be?”

He walked through the corridor and saw the nurse’s station on this floor.

In the nurse’s station, there sat a nurse with empty hands, as if she were knitting a sweater, but in reality, there was nothing there. Even the eyeballs on her rotting face had turned into two empty sockets. She sat there stiffly, as if nothing had changed.

Lu Ban returned to the stairwell and saw what looked like the traces of a baby’s crawl. The footsteps stopped there as if this thing wouldn’t follow him upstairs unless Lu Ban ascended.

“Or is it that it needs someone to lead it to climb the stairs?”

As Lu Ban stood there thinking, a certain sound suddenly rang out, jarringly loud in the silent corridor.

It was the sound of machinery working.

Lu Ban looked up to see the neighboring elevator, which, unbeknownst to him, had suddenly lit up.

The display above showed it was on the first floor, but quickly, accompanied by the sound of machinery, the elevator reached the second floor.

However, the elevator didn’t immediately ascend to the third floor; instead, it emitted the sound of arrival.

Ding-dong—

This made Lu Ban startle.

Because according to how elevators work, the only possibility for such operation was that someone on the second floor had pressed the elevator button.

But in this hospital, aside from him, a living person, who else could operate the elevator?

Lu Ban heard the sound of the elevator doors closing, as well as the sound of the steel cables being pulled.

The number on the elevator transformed into the shape of a ‘3’.

Ding-dong—

The elevator had arrived, emitting a crisp notification tone.

Subsequently, the doors slowly opened.

Lu Ban saw a doctor in a white coat standing inside; he wasn’t wearing a mask, and his face didn’t show severe signs of corrosion, allowing his looks to be discerned.

He looked familiar.

Lu Ban remembered that this was the person he had seen on the doctor’s introduction in the nurse’s station on the first floor.

The dean of Nanhua Private Renji Hospital, Zhao Gongping.

“He isn’t the one who disappeared here. How could he be here?”

Lu Ban quickly stood by the wall, pretending to be dead, which seemed the best choice since he was unclear about the dean’s behavioral patterns.

He saw the dean stepping slowly towards the nurse’s station, passing in front of Lu Ban.

Lu Ban noticed that what the dean was holding in his hand were a hammer and a scalpel, as if he were on his way to perform surgery.

Holding his breath, Lu Ban watched the dean walk by.

However, Dean Zhao Gongping didn’t continue moving forward.

The figure in the white coat stopped walking; without moving his body, his head turned almost one hundred and eighty degrees to look at Lu Ban.

“Death…”

“Death…”

“Death…”

From his mouth came fragmented words, as he lifted the hammer in his hand and swung it towards Lu Ban!