Nightmare, eyes gleaming like a predator’s, leaped from Yu Xiao’s arms. With a hiss, he planted himself between her and the approaching menace.


    Zhou Xiao Zhen let out a startled yelp, and Yu Xiao wasn’t much better.


    Five spirit-repelling talismans reduced to ash in a blink? This ghost was a real bruiser.


    She murmured to Nightmare, “Can you handle it?”


    “Sure,” the Nightmare replied, his voice firm but laced with caution. “But it’ll be a bit loud, wouldn’t want to attract unwanted attention, would we?”


    Yu Xiao caught his drift. Nightmare, being a wanted fugitive, wasn’t exactly the ideal ghost-busting partner. A full-blown brawl might expose their little secret.


    Squeak—


    Just then, the door creaked open a sliver, unleashing a bone-chilling cold that sank straight into Yu Xiao’s bones. Thinking fast, she barked at Zhou Xiao Zhen, “Door on me, Precious! You lock it, double time!”


    Zhou Xiao Zhen, initially pumped for a fight, blinked in surprise for a second before springing into action.


    Yu Xiao slammed the door shut with all her might. A deafening thud echoed as the doorframe groaned under the force. Zhou Xiao Zhen fumbled for the master key, her hands shaking slightly, and finally clicked it into place just as another bone-rattling blow slammed into the barrier.


    “Blimey,” Zhou Xiao Zhen breathed, adrenaline still coursing through her veins. “Close call, eh? Good thinking with the key.”


    Yu Xiao flicked on the light switch, bathing the room in a comforting glow. Wang Meng and the others huddled together, their faces visibly calmer under the bright light.


    “Is it gone?”


    As if on cue, another bone-jarring crash against the door sent all three of them scrambling back in fright. Yu Xiao backed away from the now-battered door, thanking her lucky stars for Misty’s foresight with giving them the master key. Without it, things could have gotten messy.


    “Looks like we’re dealing with more than your average night watchman,” Yu Xiao muttered, turning to scrutinise her wide-eyed companions. “Spill it. How’d you manage to tick off such a heavyweight?”


    The three women exchanged baffled looks.


    “Hold on!” Wang Meng cried. “We wouldn’t dare provoke anything! We barely even leave the ward – two meals a day, tops.”


    Yu Xiao frowned, utterly lost. Zhou Xiao Zhen jumped in. “Did anything, anything at all, happen in the days before the countdown started?”


    “Nothing,” Wang Meng insisted. “We’d just finished an instance, got lucky with a forum guide, breezed right through it. Everything was normal until lights out, then we heard this voice… ‘Thirteen,’ it said. Thought it was the ward ghost messing about, but then it came back the next day…”


    It defied logic. They seemed innocent, yet something had drawn this ghost’s attention. Yu Xiao couldn’t shake a feeling of unease. It wasn’t distrust, exactly, but that entity… Nightmare’s reaction spoke volumes. This was a powerful ghost, one with its own domain. Such beings didn’t attack random wards for no reason.


    Her gaze fell on the window. “Have you opened the curtains after dark?”


    “Never!” The three voices chimed together, emphatic. “Too scared to even go near them after lights out, let alone open them!”


    The mystery deepened. What could possibly entice such a fierce ghost to target them without cause?


    Outside, the pounding continued for a while longer, then slowly faded, as if the entity realised its efforts were futile. A collective sigh of relief swept the room.


    “Will it… will it come back?” Wang Meng asked, her voice trembling.


    Yu Xiao had no answer. She thought for a moment, then said, “I’m going to call someone.”


    Scrolling through her contacts, she hesitated, then selected ‘Flying to Someone Else’s Bed’. He was the most energetic of the lot and always had time to spare.


    True to form, he answered on the first ring. “Well, hello there! Missing me already? You know, you could just pop onto the forum if you’re feeling chatty…”


    “Bed Bro,” Yu Xiao cut in, “I’ve got a problem.”


    His voice perked up. “And coming to me is always the right choice! Spill the tea, what’s the issue?”


    Briefly, she explained the situation, ending with, “Have you ever heard of a ghost that does a countdown? What’s that all about?”


    A thoughtful silence followed, then, “Most ghosts need specific conditions to kill, you know.”


    Yu Xiao’s mind raced back to her own encounters. None of those ghosts had seemed particularly picky eaters.


    “Think about it,” Bed Bro continued, “for a ghost to off someone, it needs to see them, or they have to wander into its territory, or there has to be some kind of contact made. You’ve probably dealt with the first two loads of times. Every haunted instance? That’s walking right into their turf. But a hospital room… that’s different. They can’t see in, and they can’t just waltz through the door.”


    The pieces clicked into place. Wang Meng and the others were tucked away in the ward, hidden and safe. Which meant the contact had to have been made somehow…


    “But they swore they didn’t provoke anything,” Yu Xiao murmured, replaying Wang Meng’s words. If they were telling the truth, then how…?


    “Two ways that human-ghost interaction kicks off,” Bed Bro said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “One, someone winds the ghost up, like you did with that doctor, remember?”


    Yu Xiao mumbled something unintelligible.


    “Two,” he continued, undeterred, “the ghost makes the first move.”


    “That’s…” Never in all her encounters had she experienced that. “Can they even do that? Enter a hospital room and target someone?”


    “Not normally,” Bed Bro admitted. “But some ghosts, they play by their own rules. They set conditions. Ran into one that liked spitting in water, right? You drink the water, you get marked, and then it chases you around like a lovesick poltergeist until it eats you.”


    A shiver ran down Yu Xiao’s spine. She vividly recalled a night, curtains opened, a ghostly face staring back… then following her into an instance.


    “Sounds like your countdown friend is the same type,” Bed Bro said, his voice turning serious. “You hear those numbers, it ends… bam, contact made. Then it can waltz right into the ward.”


    “So, if it couldn’t get in tonight…” A chilling thought occurred to her. “Will it try again tomorrow?”


    “Dunno.,” came the reply.


    “And if it doesn’t show tomorrow, are we in the clear?”


    “Dunno…”


    Frustration tightened Yu Xiao’s voice. “What *do* you know, then?”


    Bed Bro’s tone was nonchalant. “Well, if you want to know if it’s coming back tomorrow night, you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow night and see, innit?”


    Yu Xiao was utterly gobsmacked. Words piled up in her throat, a jumbled mess of frustration and disbelief.


    Seemingly sensing her predicament, Bed Bro spoke up. “This ghost, it’s in your hospital’s Sixth Ward, right? Are you sure those three are the first ones it has targeted?”


    It was like a lightbulb flicking on. Suddenly, everything made sense.


    Ending the call, Yu Xiao turned to Zhou Xiao Zhen. “Precious, go to the forum. Post about the countdown ghost, see if anyone else has encountered anything similar.”


    Zhou Xiao Zhen nodded, already pulling out her phone. Wang Meng, still looking bewildered, piped up. “Wait, so we’re not the only ones?”


    “Just a theory,” Yu Xiao said, her mind racing. “We’ll know more once Precious posts and we get some responses.”


    The message went up, but it was late. The haunting hour approached, and the patients of the Sixth Hospital, terrified of the nightly rounds, had taken to turning in early. The forum thread remained stubbornly empty.


    “What now?” Zhou Xiao Zhen sighed, showing Yu Xiao the blank screen.


    Yu Xiao chewed her lip. “Maybe we head back for now. Come back in the morning?”


    “You’re leaving?” The three women looked at them with wide, pleading eyes. “But what if it comes back?”


    “Don’t worry,” Zhou Xiao Zhen said with a wink, holding up the key. “As long as I don’t use this to open the door, nothing’s getting through.”


    That, however, presented a new problem.


    “But…how will we get food tomorrow?” Wang Meng asked, her voice small.


    Yu Xiao opened her mouth, about to answer, when Zhou Xiao Zhen let out a triumphant yelp. “Smiley! We’ve got a reply!”


    The hospital forum, a haven of anonymity, offered a single, cryptic reply, signed only with a punctuation mark: a full stop.


    【One of my instance buddies mentioned something similar a couple of weeks back. Through the night patrol ghost was messing with him, bought loads of talismans, plastered them all over his door. Reckoned he was sorted.】


    Yu Xiao exchanged a worried look with Zhou Xiao Zhen. “Quick,” she whispered, “ask what happened to his friend.”


    Fingers flying across the screen, Zhou Xiao Zhen typed out a response.


    【How is your friend now? Are you still in touch?】


    Five minutes crawled by before the reply came.


    【Bloody hell… just tried calling him, phone’s off. What’s going on?!】


    Yu Xiao’s stomach dropped. In this hospital, a phone switched off usually meant only one thing: its owner was gone.


    All eyes were glued to the screen now, the forum thread painting a grim picture. Even Wang Meng and the others, their faces pale with dawning horror, understood the implications.


    “So…we weren’t the first?” she stammered.


    “And the ones who were targeted before…” Yu Xiao’s voice was heavy. “They’re all gone.”


    A shiver ran down Zhou Xiao Zhen’s spine. “All this time, right here in the Sixth, something this awful…and we never even knew.”


    That was the real horror. The victims, likely dismissive at first, would have thought a few talismans were enough. By the time the ghost came knocking for real, it would have been too late, the entire ward silenced, leaving no one to warn others about the true danger lurking in the night.


    “Yu Xiao,” Zhou Xiao Zhen’s voice was hushed, “another reply…”


    【Oh god… I swear I saw a post like this ages ago, over a month back. Same thing, poster kept hearing a countdown. Everyone told him it was just the patrol ghost, buy some talismans, job done. Wonder what happened to him…】


    Wang Meng, her fingers a blur on the screen, quickly found the month-old post.


    The replies, few and far between, echoed the most recent ones. Just the night patrol, nothing to worry about, talismans were the answer… No one had suspected the terrifying truth.


    Yu Xiao looked at the three women, their faces now stark masks of terror. “Let’s be clear,” she said, her voice sharp, “even if that thing spares you tonight, it’ll just find new targets. It won’t stop.”


    “But what can we do?” Wang Meng’s voice was barely a whisper, echoed by her companions. “Who else is going to stop it?”


    That was the crux of the problem. Even if Yu Xiao could fight it off, what then? Let this man-eating ghost roam free? The Sixth Ward might end up being the only one with any living patients left.


    “Report it,” Yu Xiao said, the only solution she could think of. “Medical Disputes Office.”


    “They’re closed at night,” Zhou Xiao Zhen pointed out.


    “Then first thing in the morning.” Doubt gnawed at Yu Xiao even as she said it.


    The Chief Cerberus was recently injured, but this ghost had been haunting the Sixth for a while. That meant either it was incredibly good at hiding, or…or security was turning a blind eye. And that was a terrifying thought because it meant the patients were on their own.


    She could handle it, with Nightmare’s help. But that was a risk she couldn’t take.


    Rubbing her temples, Yu Xiao sighed. “We need some sleep.”


    Tears welled in the three women’s eyes.


    “Don’t worry,” Yu Xiao said, forcing a reassuring smile. “We’ll be back tomorrow. No one’s starving on our watch. We’ll figure something out.”


    Scooping up Nightmare, she beckoned to Zhou Xiao Zhen, and headed for the restroom mirror. Behind them, the three women huddled together, fear clinging to them like a shroud.


    Back in their own ward, Zhao Lan looked up from her bed, a knowing smile on her lips. “Back already? Let me guess, that countdown ghost post was you lot, wasn’t it?”


    Zhou Xiao Zhen clambered onto the bed, letting out a relieved sigh. “You have no idea how bad it was, Misty! Luckily you lent me that key, or we’d be goners.””Spill,” demanded Zhao Lan, glancing at Yu Xiao. “What in the world is going on?”


    Yu Xiao laid out the whole saga of the countdown ghost, ending with a worried frown. “If reporting it doesn’t pan out, the Sixth is on its own. And that thing… it’s way too strong for us to handle.”


    Zhao Lan considered this, her gaze falling on Nightmare. “He…”


    “Out of the question,” Yu Xiao cut in. “If he makes a move, it’ll be a spectacle. He’ll be exposed.”


    “Right, of course.” Zhao Lan chewed her lip. “It’d be brilliant if we could get Wide Sea and Sky or Bed Bro over here.”


    “How, though?” Zhou Xiao Zhen chimed in. “Stick ’em in a box and courier them over?”


    Yu Xiao and Zhao Lan exchanged a look. Sёarch* The Novёl?ire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.


    Zhou Xiao Zhen, sensing she’d missed something, frowned. “You two aren’t actually considering that, are you? It was a joke! Bonkers idea, totally impossible, right?”


    “Who says it’s impossible?” A slow smile spread across Yu Xiao’s face. “We’ve bribed couriers before, haven’t we?”