Chapter 42: In the hospital.

Chapter 42: In the hospital.

Meanwhile, inside the hospital, the atmosphere had already completely lost the order and restraint that normally defined such a place. The corridors outside no longer sounded like a hospital at all. There were no clear footsteps of nurses pushing carts, no hurried but controlled voices calling patient names, no rolling sound of stretchers moving toward treatment rooms. Everything outside had become sharp, broken, and terrifyingly chaotic, the kind of noise that made even people hiding inside a locked room feel their nerves tightening with every passing second. Yan Cijin was currently inside one of the inner doctor cabins on the upper floor, a room originally used for brief consultations, paperwork, and short breaks between shifts, but now the small space had become an improvised shelter for everyone who managed to run in before the corridor fully descended into madness. The room was crowded far beyond comfort. Two younger doctors stood pressed close to the metal shelving unit near the wall, one nurse leaned against the cabinet with both hands clasped so tightly that her fingers had already turned pale, three patients who had blindly followed the nearest calm looking person inside were crouched close together near the far corner, and an elderly man sat directly on the floor with his back against the wall, breathing unevenly as if trying hard not to make any sound at all. The air carried a mix of antiseptic, fear, sweat, and stale closed room heaviness, but even with so many people inside, nobody dared speak loudly because the sounds outside were enough to keep every throat tight.

Only Yan Cijin looked completely out of place in this room. She sat on a chair near the desk as if this were merely an inconvenient pause in an otherwise ordinary day, one leg crossed over the other, phone resting in one hand, her posture relaxed enough that if someone ignored the sounds outside, they might think she was simply waiting for the next patient file. Her expression remained calm to the point of almost appearing detached. She did not even look toward the door every few seconds the way the others did. She did not tense whenever footsteps suddenly passed outside. She did not react when distant screams rose sharply and then stopped so abruptly that everyone inside instinctively imagined what had happened next. The only movement from her was the slow motion of her thumb scrolling through Weibo, where emergency posts, shaky videos, and chaotic messages were already flooding every platform. If someone looked carefully, they would notice that her eyes were not cold, only steady, the kind of steadiness that could not exist in someone seeing this kind of disaster for the first time.

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