"Ghost! Ghost! Don't come near me!" After being awakened, the young man suddenly pushed Chen Ke forcefully.
Caught off guard, Chen Ke fell to the ground.
Ghost? Chen Ke was confused.
What ghost? Where would ghosts come from in this world?
The young man who had pushed Chen Ke carefully examined him after pushing him away.
After realizing that the other person wasn't a 'ghost,' he finally let out a sigh of relief and quickly apologized to Chen Ke: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you. It was just an instinctive reaction... I thought you were the female ghost I saw earlier, so I pushed you away without thinking. I'm really sorry."
Hearing this, Chen Ke became even more confused: "What? Female ghost?"
"Yes! A female ghost!" The young man nodded emphatically and said with conviction: "I saw it with my own eyes... Actually, it wasn't a ghost, it was a corpse. You know what I mean? A moving corpse, a female corpse wearing a white dress, chasing people and trying to bite them, running incredibly fast!"
As he spoke, the man seemed to recall something terrifying, appearing severely shocked, his lips even turning pale from fear.
Chen Ke slightly furrowed his brows.
"A moving corpse? Chasing and biting people? Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!" the man's voice grew louder: "I can definitely tell the difference between the living and the dead! That skin color couldn't have been human. It was definitely a corpse, no doubt about it."
Although the person before him didn't seem to be lying, Chen Ke still didn't quite believe his words. He felt that this person might have been hallucinating due to excessive stress or some other reason, which led him to see the so-called "reanimated corpse."
The whole thing about a "moving corpse chasing and biting people" seemed too far-fetched.
Anyone with common sense knows that when people die, they're dead, and dead people don't move, let alone run and bite people. If this wasn't a hallucination, what was it?
At that moment, the hospital's night shift nurses arrived after hearing the commotion and woke up all the collapsed patients who had fainted.
Strangely, these people's reactions after being awakened were exactly the same as the man Chen Ke had just woken up. Their first reaction was to shout "There's a ghost!" or "The corpse has come alive!" and similar phrases.
Looking at these people, Chen Ke suddenly began to think that the man before him might not have been hallucinating after all; perhaps he really did see a corpse move.
When one person claims to have seen a moving corpse, it might be a hallucination, but when so many people say the same thing, could they all be experiencing the same hallucination simultaneously?
It's possible, but the probability is extremely small, almost zero.
So it wasn't their hallucination - did they really see a corpse chasing and trying to bite people? Chen Ke wondered.
The night shift nurses were trying to comfort the patients who had fainted earlier: "How could a corpse possibly move? You must have seen wrong. Please go back to your rooms and rest."
"No, no, no, there was definitely a corpse chasing people and trying to bite them. It was a female corpse wearing a white dress, we all saw it... I'm not staying here anymore. I want to be discharged. I'm going to process my discharge papers right now. This hospital is haunted," one patient was already preparing to leave.
After he took the lead, the other patients who had witnessed the corpse chasing people also expressed their desire to be discharged or transferred. They couldn't stay in this hospital anymore... It was too frightening!
Seeing this, the nurses tried another round of explanations, persuasion, and comfort.
If so many patients collectively requested discharge during their shift, the hospital leadership would inevitably take it out on them the next day.
While these patients firmly believed that there was a reanimated corpse in the hospital chasing and biting people, Chen Ke felt something was suspicious. As the saying goes, when something seems unusual, there must be a reason...
As a police officer, he was a firm materialist who didn't believe in any supernatural phenomena. Reanimated corpses? Impossible! There must be some unknown secret behind this incident.
With this thought, Chen Ke took out his police badge and showed it to a nearby nurse.
"Hello, I'm a police officer. Would it be possible for me to check your surveillance footage? I'd like to know if what they're saying about the reanimated corpse is true or false."
"Sure! I'll take you there," the nurse nodded without hesitation. "After you watch the footage, could you help us persuade these patients? They don't believe what we say, but they might listen to a police officer."
Chen Ke nodded and said, "No problem."
In the surveillance room.
After watching the first-floor corridor surveillance video, Chen Ke felt all his hair stand on end, because what he saw in the footage matched exactly what the patients had described.
A pale-faced female corpse in a white dress was chasing people and trying to bite them... The scene was terrifying, especially in the middle of the night, making it even more creepy!
The security guard helping to check the surveillance footage was an elderly man who seemed remarkably brave. Even after seeing such frightening footage, he maintained a calm expression and casually took a sip of tea from his desk: "This is obviously fake, too fake."
Chen Ke couldn't help but look at the old guard with a puzzled expression.
"How could a corpse possibly move? I've been a security guard at this hospital for decades and have never seen anything like this. Reanimated corpses... isn't that nonsense?" the old guard explained. "This must be staged by young people trying to get attention. It can't be a corpse - the person in the white dress must be very much alive!"
Chen Ke thought about it and felt the guard might have a point. How could a real corpse move?
Following the old guard's logic, this so-called corpse must be someone in makeup and costume, with the purpose of posting it online for attention.
That slightly bluish, sickly pale color of a corpse could actually be achieved through makeup - that's how they do it in movies and TV shows.
So this must just be a false alarm! Nothing worth paying attention to... Chen Ke thought.
However, the young nurse who had brought Chen Ke to check the surveillance footage still had a pale face, appearing severely shocked, and pointed at the female corpse in the white dress on the monitor.
"I remember this person, she was just taken to the morgue this morning..."
Chen Ke: "???"
Security Guard: "??? What did you say? So this really is a corpse?"
The young nurse nodded with a bitter smile: "Yes, this woman was quite beautiful, that's why I remember her."
In the next second, the security guard's eyes rolled back, and he slumped in his chair, having fainted from shock.
Because of the nurse's words, Chen Ke realized that this incident might not be a false alarm but something else entirely...
Reanimated corpses were definitely impossible - Chen Ke was a firm materialist and didn't believe in such things at all.
Moreover, the nurse had confirmed that the corpse was real, having been taken to the morgue just that morning, so it couldn't be someone in costume trying to get attention.
After ruling out these two possibilities, Chen Ke suddenly thought of another possibility - someone might be stealing corpses!
After some consideration, Chen Ke made a phone call to Xu Mo while simultaneously calling the police.