"No need. I can handle it myself!"
Worried about infecting others, I quickly declined the kind offer of the young nurse.
"You're so stubborn!"
Accustomed to saving lives, the young nurse saw the severe injury on my hand. Immediately, she grabbed my wrist, picked up a pair of tweezers and some iodine, and started to clean the wound for me. The iodine numbed the burnt and blackened wound on my finger. As the soft cotton ball wiped across, layer upon layer of the blackened, icy flesh peeled off my finger, revealing the pale bone inside!
"Oh my god! You must have surgery right away!"
Seeing the severity of my finger injury, the young nurse was shocked and was about to push me out.
I was deeply touched by her pure kindness, but I had to decline.
"No, really. I'm fine!"
The young nurse ignored my explanation. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out. The nursing station was right next to the emergency room door. She half - dragged me out.
The emergency room was on the first floor of the hospital. The lights in the corridor were already on. It was the ambiguous time between day and night. The shadows of the trees outside the window projected strange shapes.
As the door opened, I heard a strange sound, like someone scratching glass with their fingernails. The "squeak, squeak, squeak" sound made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
"Do you hear that? What's that sound?"
I asked the young nurse beside me while looking around the corridor.
Apparently, the young nurse heard nothing. She thought I was still avoiding medical treatment, so she frowned and continued to pull me towards the surgical clinic at the other end of the corridor.
The lights in the corridor flickered twice and suddenly went out. In an instant, two rows of vague - faced ghosts emerged from the ground. They all wore dark - colored long robes with hemp ropes around their waists, and each ghost wore a withered yellow bamboo hat.
"Ghost messengers!!"
I knew something was wrong.
I had never seen so many ghost messengers act together. They walked side by side in the not - very - wide corridor, silently. Only the talismans pasted on their clothes and hats fluttered eerily.
Some patients either walked towards them or bumped into them head - on. Without exception, they all shivered and complained that the air - conditioning in the hospital was turned too high and it was unbearably cold.
I quickly tried to retreat back into the emergency room. These ghost messengers looked menacing. They were obviously coming for us!
Who else in history was as audacious as me, daring to obstruct the ghost messengers' work and break the soul - capturing rope, challenging the entire underworld alone!
"Seize him!"
The leading ghost messenger was significantly taller than the others. The talisman on his bamboo hat clearly had the vermilion characters "Bestowed by the Lord of Mount Tai". His pair of yellow vertical pupils stared fixedly at me, and his hands pointed at me from inside his wide black robe.
"Don't struggle!"
The young nurse got angry when she saw me desperately trying to hide in the room. "Do you really not want your finger anymore?"
As she turned to speak, the ghost messengers had already silently slipped behind her. I wanted to pull her behind me, but my fingers were stiff. Although I touched her pink - and - white nurse's uniform, I only left some dirty black marks on it. At the same time, another piece of the carbonized flesh on my hand rubbed off.
"Ah!"
The young nurse also shivered. Suddenly, a sinister smile appeared on her face. "I think you don't just not want your finger!"
"Possession?!"
I was shocked. It was said that righteous gods didn't possess human bodies. How could these ghost messengers, who were also official gods, possess a person recklessly like a wandering ghost?
People possessed by ghosts would surely fall seriously ill after being exposed to the yin energy for a long time.
The young nurse was so kind. How could I bear to let her suffer?
"Come with me to be tried in the underworld!"
The young nurse's originally black pupils had turned yellow - green. The thin pupils in the middle were like those of some cold - blooded reptiles, making people shudder.
"Even if you're ghost messengers, you can't randomly capture the souls of the living!"
I argued forcefully. Even though they were high - ranking enforcers in the underworld, they couldn't violate the destiny written in the Book of Life and Death at will.
"Hehe... The soul of the living?!"
The ghost messenger, who had possessed the young nurse, moved his neck stiffly and grinned. "How dare you claim to be the soul of the living? I'm not a low - level minion like those bamboo - hat - wearing ghost messengers. You don't look like a living person at all. You're clearly a living corpse that has escaped the pursuit of the Book of Life and Death and has lived for who knows how long!"
Saying this, he reached out and grabbed my arm, while his other hand slapped towards the Shangxing acupoint on my forehead.
If it was a possessed ghost, this slap would surely be slapped out of the body.
"Pa!"
A very loud slap sound. My head tilted back. A bluish - black mark immediately appeared on my fair forehead.
This slap was extremely heavy, and I was stunned.
I instinctively wanted to bite my tongue and spit out a mouthful of blood to prevent this ghost messenger from returning to the underworld...
However, this was the last resort of the Maoshan School to catch ghosts. Although I had learned it, I had never used it. My master didn't allow me to use it, and Master Lu had given me countless useful magical tools. I was also very afraid of pain... Now that I thought about it, they all knew that my blood was poisoned with corpse poison and would infect others!
"Huh?"
The ghost messenger was surprised to find that he couldn't slap my soul out of my body at once. Then he suddenly understood and said, "No wonder you've escaped the lifespan in the Book of Life and Death. Someone must have separated your three souls and seven spirits. One soul was left in the underworld, and the rest... were sealed in this body. Hehe!! This physical body looks very beautiful... No wonder you're reluctant to shed this shell!"
At this time, the other ghost messengers had already sneaked into the emergency room.
They probably also thought that my grandfather, Du Wenzhong, was like me, a living corpse that had escaped the Book of Life and Death!
I was anxious. I wanted to break free from the ghost messenger's hand, but I couldn't just watch the young nurse being possessed for too long and harming her soul.
"The celestial constellations of the Supreme Pure protect your mind. Yin energy cannot invade, and evil energy has no power. Neither hear nor see. Quickly, as in the divine decree!"
I used my unbound left hand to draw a soul - protecting spell and pointed it at the young nurse's glabella.
"Humph! Mere trifles!"
The ghost messenger wasn't afraid of my meager cultivation at all. He just tilted his head back slightly to avoid my spell.
The whole group of ghost messengers had entered the emergency room. Their target was Du Wenzhong. I was extremely anxious! I couldn't even deal with one ghost messenger. How could I rush in to save him?
Just when I was almost in despair, I suddenly heard Si Jiangchen in the emergency room let out a cold snort.
In an instant, countless severed limbs, along with the fragments of the black robes and bamboo hats that had shattered into countless pieces, flew out of the wall and then disappeared in the dim corridor lights...