original novel: 在都市怪谈里谈恋爱[快穿]
author: 小生不知
mtl’d and edited by dogpotato. please leave a comment if there are any questions or errors!
Chapter 4.2, Arc 1: Strange Sounds in the Morgue
After opening the page, a high-definition picture quickly loaded.
It was a half-body portrait shot of a delicate young girl. Yao Ye’s pupils shrank slightly as he recognized her face—it was the female ghost.
Swiping down on the webpage, Yao Ye continued to read and finally figured out how she died.
It was a miserable death.
According to the news site, after a girl pseudonymed Xiao Lan[1] was forced to break up with her first love under pressure from her parents and her school, her mental state became extremely unstable. She climbed to the roof of Yao Ye’s apartment building with the intention of committing suicide. She jumped down but accidentally got tangled up in the wires below. Her neck was gouged by the wires and her head eventually separated from her body. It was said that her blood spilled over half of the street.
She would definitely die if she jumped from the top of a fifteen-floor apartment building. At the very least, she should have died quickly, but this mention of wires put a question mark on the girl’s death.
Some speculated that the corpse was beheaded after she died, while others said that the girl was slashed to death by the wires.
The news article ended there. The public had long been numbed due to the recent frequent homicides in Gui City, so there wasn’t much media attention paid to this case. Yao Ye searched for half a day[2] and could not find any other reports. This was the only information available to him.
The incident happened before Yao Ye moved to the apartment. No wonder he hadn’t heard anything about it; if he had known that there had been such a gruesome death at his apartment building, he wouldn’t have moved there even if it killed him.
“Coming up to Renai Hospital, passengers please disembark as quickly and orderly as possible…”
When the bus arrived, Yao Ye got off and absent-mindedly followed the flow of people. His legs were so wobbly it felt like he was walking on cotton.
According to folklore, the more tragic the death, the more ferocious the ghost. If the female ghost really was strangled to death by wires, then she must have suffered a great deal before she died. No wonder her spirit did not disperse and instead lingered in the elevator.
Now, how long can one live after being targeted by a malicious ghost?
Yao Ye’s brows wrinkled in distress. This was the first time he felt so close to death. He used to think that he looked down on living and that he was indifferent to both life and death, but only at this moment did he truly feel the fear that belongs to the deepest part of the human heart—he didn’t want to die.
He wanted to live, and no matter what, he did not want to die at the hands of a ghost.
Since ghosts exist, then there must be some way to get rid of them. There might be methods to eliminate ghosts in places like shrines or Taoist temples.
Yao Ye thought about potential countermeasures as he entered the hospital and sat in the office in a daze, no longer motivated for work as usual. He even politely refused when the director of the department asked him to assist in the operating room. For the sake of his uncle, the dean of the hospital, the director was not angry and instead assigned him an easy clerical job printing some documents.
Yao Ye gave him a perfunctory response. The director had previously ignored him, but now that he knew his uncle’s identity, he suddenly became warm and friendly. Even a ghost could see his intentions.
His life was in danger, and the work for his residency lost its importance to him. If not for the fact that he didn’t know where else to go, Yao Ye would’ve directly asked for a leave of absence. He was about to die, so why would he care about his job?
“Ai, tell me it’s not strange that there’re always people dying these days. The refrigerators in the morgue are all stuffed full of corpses. They should have been delivered to the crematorium for cremation a long time ago, but they were never sent over.”
Several nurses disliked getting boiled water from the service counter and instead came to the water dispenser in the office, gossiping along the way.
“Why weren’t they delivered? Is there something fishy going on?”
“Hey, don’t tell anyone else, but I heard that the funeral home is overcrowded and they’re too busy to take any more bodies. Several hospitals in the city haven’t been able to deliver theirs. Actually, they’ve been saying that there’s something a bit off about these corpses…”
The head nurse who had been talking the most enthusiastically made a prayer gesture and then said, “My cousin who works at the Public Security Bureau said there have been so many accidents, it’s almost like anyone who moves ends up dead. So now the corpses are piling up over there and no one dares to move about randomly. They don’t know when the bodies will be dealt with, either.”
A few of the nurses listening uttered cries of alarm.
“Yeah! It’s so scary, who cares about managing the morgue anymore? That fool An Ling, is he not afraid of being on night duty?”
“Who knows, maybe it’s because he’s so ugly the ghosts are afraid of him, hahaha!”
The group of nurses laughed, splendidly making all kinds of speculations, but their words were all harsh jabs at An Ling.
Yao Ye frowned and couldn’t listen anymore. He was about to stand up to drive out these blabbermouth nurses, but paused when the head nurse who spoke first lowered her voice and mysteriously said, “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I heard that guy An Ling has the fate of the lone evil star[3]. Before it caused his old lady’s death, she begged the temple for a Ping An talisman[4] that could prevent the catastrophes ordained by his fate and protect him from all kinds of evil.
“It was because of this Ping An talisman that he was able to guard the morgue for so long without incident!”
The other nurses’ eyes went round, their faces full of astonishment.
“This Ping An talisman is that powerful? I don’t believe it, sister, don’t try to scare us!” Several of the nurses clearly weren’t convinced by the talk of star charts and fortune-telling.
Seeing a few young nurses questioning her authority, the head nurse grew anxious and patted her chest, saying, “What is there to lie to you about! You all haven’t been here for long so you don’t know how terrifying the morgue of our hospital used to be. Two security guards in a row were scared out of their wits! Even during the day, strange things often showed up there. Fortunately, no one was killed.
Back then, the dean used money to suppress the rumors for the hospital’s reputation, and then found a numerology expert to divine a solution. A short time later, they brought in An Ling, that guy born under the lone evil star, to come work here! Since then, the hospital quieted down and nothing happened again.
Otherwise, how did you think An Ling could enter such a good private hospital like ours with his face? You’d be worried he’d scare the patients!”
The head nurse’s voice was full of contempt as she spoke about An Ling.
After hearing these words, the young nurses looked at each other in awe.
In front of these nurses who looked like they had never seen the world, the head nurse’s gossipy heart was greatly satisfied. She said proudly, “Don’t talk nonsense when you go out later. I only warned you because I saw that you young people don’t know anything. I’ll be scolded by the dean if he knows I told anyone about this!”
The head nurse filled her cup with water and threw out these words as she walked out of the office.
The young nurses nodded their heads repeatedly. They were completely fascinated by the subject and followed her out to ask more questions.
Silence once again fell in the doctor’s office. Most everyone was out working and there were not many people in the office. It felt terribly empty.
Yao Ye leaned back on the soft office chair, his eyes unfocused as he thought about what he had just heard.
“Ping An talisman…” Could it be real?
The author has something to say: Let’s say it first. In view of the author’s lack of IQ, the doctors may have to lower their IQ to follow the plot in the next chapter. QAQ It doesn’t mean I think doctors are bad! I really, really, really respect the profession of a doctor very much! (props open the pot lid and crawls away)
[1] she’s most likely a minor, so they used an alias rather than her real name
[2] common hyperbole basically meaning ‘a long time’
[3] Baidu says: “According to folklore, the destiny of the lone evil star refers to the destiny of a person who is destined to live a lonely life. Although the lone evil star of the heavens is a big evil aspect, the evil star does not affect them, but is extremely harmful to the people around them.”
[4] literally means ‘safe and well’
dogpotato translations 
“My cousin who works at the Public Security Bureau said there have been so many accidents, it’s almost like anyone who moves ends up dead. So now the corpses are piling up over there and no one dares to move about randomly.”
Hmm are they maybe talking about moving the bodies?
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