Provincial People's Hospital, founded in the early days of Liberation, has developed rapidly in recent years. Now a Grade 3A hospital with over 200,000 square meters of floor space, its facilities and resources were among the best in the province. With numerous renowned experts and professors practicing there, the stream of patients seeking treatment was endless, most coming from across the province, though many also traveled from other provinces drawn by its reputation. While it appeared outwardly glorious, numerous problems lurked beneath the surface, particularly glaring management issues.
While reviewing civil disputes related to the Provincial People's Hospital, I discovered records of at least three cases involving missing hearts from deceased patients. The hospital had ultimately reached settlements with the families in each instance, so the police never formally intervened, leaving no detailed records of what transpired.
Arriving on the seventh floor of the hospital, I finally understood the government's rationale behind family planning policies—countless patients packed the waiting hall, making the nearly 300-square-meter space feel cramped. With limited seating, many patients simply stood outside the consultation rooms, though a few rooms remained conspicuously empty.
After circling the deserted consultation rooms, I stopped before one. "The person we're looking for is here," I told Zhenzhen.
"Why? There are so many rooms on this floor. How can you be sure it's this one?" Zhenzhen's eyes were full of doubt.
I explained, "If you were a doctor with a long line of patients outside your door, would you feel comfortable slacking off browsing alumni websites?"
"Okay, that makes sense," she conceded, "but there's more than one empty consultation room!"
"Check the list Weige gave us," I said, unwilling to elaborate further.
Zhenzhen pulled out the list somewhat foolishly and compared it to the doctor's profile card beside the door. "Xiao Yixuan... His name is on this list... Hey, didn't you only glance at this list once?"
I pointed to my head and smiled. "The names on that list are all right here." I knocked and entered.
Inside, a handsome man in his thirties was idly playing on his computer. Seeing us, he immediately offered a friendly smile, standing up politely. "Please, have a seat. What seems to be the trouble?"
"Dr. Xiao, hello. My name is Mu, I'm an investigator with the Criminal Investigation Bureau..." I sat down and stated my purpose. "I understand you graduated from Medical University. You must recall the murder in Room 106 of the girls' dormitory ten years ago. Could you tell us what you know?"
"It's a terrifying memory that often brings nightmares. Even after all this time, recalling it still sends chills down my spine. Honestly, even now, I can't believe a quiet girl like Xiaolou could kill a classmate in such a brutal way." Xiao Yixuan's face paled, and he unconsciously shivered as he slowly recounted this decade-old horror. His narrative was slightly disjointed, perhaps due to lingering fear:
The four girls living in Room 106 were: Ye Xiaolou, Xia Yulan, Yue Yingqing, and Qin Qiongzhi. They were in my year; Xiaolou and Qiongzhi were even in my class. They were very close—at least until the incident happened.
Xiaolou was the campus beauty, the prettiest of the four, and she had a good temper too. Many pursued her, but no one ever succeeded, as far as I heard. She loved staying in the library reading and always politely declined invitations.
She was particularly close with Qiongzhi. All four were close, but since Xiaolou and Qiongzhi were classmates, they were often seen together. Because they were never known to have boyfriends, guys often speculated privately if they were lesbians.
Because Xiaolou was so beautiful, her every move drew attention. Around a year before graduation, she suddenly started gaining weight. Someone joked if she was pregnant. Her reply was strange: "I'm about to become Mary. You should be happy for me!"
That Spring Festival holiday, none of the four girls went home. When the new semester started, Xiaolou was noticeably thinner and looked pale. Everyone suspected she'd had an abortion. But she never had a boyfriend, which was puzzling. Combined with her earlier words, people wondered if it was a virgin conception, like the Holy Mother Mary!
Stranger still, throughout that next semester, all four girls in their dorm grew increasingly pale, as if anemic, though Yingqing was slightly better off. But beyond that, they seemed normal. There was nothing amiss before the incident, no rumors of a falling out between Xiaolou and Qiongzhi. They were still inseparable.
The night before graduation, my dorm buddies and I hauled two crates of beer to the rooftop of the boys' dorm. The moon was full that night—"cups beneath the moon, return only when drunk." We all drank heartily, feeling only the sadness of parting, nothing unusual. None of us could imagine the horror unfolding in the girls' dorm across the way.
That night, no one in the girls' dorm heard fighting or arguing, nor noticed anything amiss. Everything seemed normal, the only difference perhaps the complex emotions of the graduating students.
The next morning, chaos erupted in the girls' dorm. School leaders arrived, and teachers guarded the entrance preventing students from entering. Later, we learned a murder had happened. Rumor was, that morning, Room 106 was unusually quiet late into the morning. A girl went to check if they were still asleep. When she opened the door, she froze in terror, only screaming after a long time. Almost every girl who saw the scene screamed; some even fainted.
According to the first girl who entered, the scene in Room 106 was like this—the door opened, revealing a flood of garish red, blood drowning everything. Xiaolou, covered head to toe in blood, knelt in the center of the room. Beneath her disheveled hair was a face frozen in a vacant, eerie smile, silently staring at the cold corpse before her...
Xiao Yixuan was still trembling slightly after finishing. It took him a while to calm down.
"What happened to Ye Xiaolou afterward? Do you know?" I asked. Based on the information, she was likely the legendary baby-carrying ghost.
He rubbed his face vigorously, trying to compose himself. "I heard she was sent to a psychiatric sanatorium in the city suburbs. Whether she's still there now, I don't know."
"Do you have addresses or phone numbers for the other two girls?"
"I wasn't in their class, didn't know them well. Lost contact after graduation."
"This isn't good!" Zhenzhen frowned, interjecting.
"I heard your hospital frequently loses hearts from deceased patients. Is that true?" I stared intently into his eyes. He unconsciously averted his gaze. "I've heard rumors, but I'm not sure. You know how damaging this kind of thing is to the hospital's reputation. Leadership demands low-profile handling, suppressing the news as much as possible. So I don't know much."
"Oh, I see. Sorry to disturb you." We bid farewell and left the consultation room.
"That guy Xiao seems to know something," Zhenzhen said as soon as we stepped out.
"He's not a suspect. We can't force him to talk about things he doesn't want to," I replied helplessly, spreading my hands.
"So how do we investigate the missing hearts?"
"Set it aside for now. It involves the hospital's reputation; they won't cooperate much. Besides, if the hospital knew what was happening, so many hearts wouldn't have gone missing." I put a cigarette in my mouth but didn't light it. "The Boss will need to pull some strings to dig deeper. For now, let's take a stroll to the suburbs..."
We drove to the psychiatric sanatorium located on the city outskirts. It resembled a white prison, every door made of sturdy stainless steel, with white-clad angels replacing prison guards, watching over inmates in patient gowns. Visiting here felt like visiting a prison, perhaps the biggest difference being that visitors had to pay "sanatorium fees" for their incarcerated loved ones.
At the reception desk, I inquired about Ye Xiaolou. The nurse checked the computer and gave an answer that stunned me for a long moment: "Dead."
"Dead? How? When?" I strongly suspected the insane Xiaolou was the baby-carrying ghost. If she had been discharged or gone missing, that was one thing. But if she was dead, who was killing now? Could it be ghosts?
"Died eight or nine years ago. Suicide," the nurse replied coldly as if speaking of a stray cat.
"Are you sure she's dead?" I pressed, unwilling to give up.
"Dead is dead! How else should I confirm it?" The nurse was impatient now, her raised voice drawing attention from others nearby.
"Was her attending physician still working here? I need to speak with him about Xiaolou's condition before she dies." I needed proof of life or death. If this lead vanished, finding the real killer within the remaining days would be harder than climbing to heaven.
"That was nearly ten years ago! Many doctors have transferred to other hospitals. How am I supposed to find one for you?" The nurse finished and went to attend to other matters, ignoring me.
I felt a pang of discouragement, but thankfully my mental fortitude and thick skin kicked in quickly. I pestered the nurse for Xiaolou's records. Reluctantly, she printed them out. The file included a headshot. Though the girl in the photo had a vacant stare, she was strikingly beautiful and pitifully delicate—just as Xiao Yixuan had described.
As I scanned the document for useful information, I noticed someone peering over my shoulder—a cleaning lady in her fifties. Seeing her stare at the headshot, I felt fortune had finally smiled upon me. "Do you know her?" I asked immediately.
The auntie nodded. "She stayed here before. I remember her a bit." She then slowly recounted details of Ye Xiaolou's hospitalization:
She was one of the quieter ones here. Didn't talk much, always huddled in corners reading. For us staff, those kinds of patients are the easiest—no trouble except for feeding and bathing. Not like the troublemakers who had to be strapped to their beds.
Normally, a patient like her wouldn't leave a deep impression—too many patients here. The reason I still remember her after all this time, besides her being so pretty, is mainly because she caused a huge scandal later.
Her attending doctor was a young fellow surnamed Ou. He'd just arrived, wasn't married, and reportedly didn't have a girlfriend. Maybe... she really was too beautiful. Beautiful enough to bring disaster upon herself. Little Ou spent day and night with her, and over time, feelings developed... or rather, sinister intentions arose. He raped his patient.
Although her mind wasn't right, she still resisted when Little Ou attacked her, scratching and biting him all over. Afterward, she just curled up in a corner sobbing. Honestly, at that moment, she was no different from any ordinary girl. It was heartbreaking to see.
The director was frantic about this. Such a scandal getting out would doom the sanatorium. Just as the director was tearing his hair out, she committed suicide—by injecting air into her veins. She stole a syringe when the nurses weren't looking, and locked herself in the bathroom. By the time the nurses found her, she was dead.
The syringe she stole was 5ml. The nurses said injecting that much air would take at least twenty injections into a vein to kill someone. They also said dying that way would be agonizing.
After she died, Little Ou got sick. The bite wounds turned black, and he developed a high fever that wouldn't break. He died the next day. Before he died, he kept screaming things like, "She's coming for revenge! She's going to kill me!"...
After listening to the auntie, I immediately asked my most pressing question: "What happened to her body after death?" I still suspected Xiaolou was the baby-carrying ghost, that her corpse might have undergone some change after death and returned to the Medical University to kill.
"Of course, cremated! The director was afraid of complications and had the body cremated without the family's consent. And after Little Ou died so strangely, everyone was terrified. So they cremated both bodies quickly." Her answer shattered my theory.
"Was there... virgin blood when she was assaulted?" Asking this was awkward but necessary—it related to whether Xiaolou had been pregnant.
The auntie thought for a moment, then said firmly, "No."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure. I cleaned the room that day. There was no blood in her pants, none on the sheets or floor. Just a little on her shirt, but that was from Little Ou's wounds. Virgin blood isn't like that." Given her age, she was unlikely to be an inexperienced maiden. Her judgment was probably sound.
As we thanked her and prepared to leave, she suddenly called out, "Wait, wait! One more thing, not sure if it's useful. When she first arrived, I helped bathe her and saw many small wounds on her breasts, like vampire bites. Though the wounds were quite small... maybe bat bites?..."
On the drive back from the sanatorium, I sorted through the day's information. Yixuan had mentioned that all four girls in Room 106 grew inexplicably pale in their last semester. The auntie said Xiaolou had bite marks on her breasts. By inference, the other three likely had similar marks. But how were these wounds caused? Could there have been vampire bats in Room 106... or... a vampire?
Furthermore, Xiaolou didn't bleed after the rape. This almost certainly confirmed she wasn't a virgin and suggested she might have given birth or had an abortion. During a violent assault, the lack of natural lubrication often causes vaginal tearing and bleeding in virgins, whereas women who have given birth, with more relaxed vaginal muscles, bleed less. Assuming she had been pregnant, who was the father? Xiao Yixuan said she had no boyfriend. Was that true? Did she have one secretly? Or was he lying? Could it have been a virgin conception?
Xiaolou's method of suicide was also perplexing. Given her environment, injecting air was undoubtedly one of the most reliable suicide methods—harder to interrupt than hanging, and faster than bleeding out. But for a psychiatric patient to calmly apply her prior medical knowledge wasn't easy. She hadn't just jabbed herself randomly; she'd found a vein and injected herself over twenty times. This raised doubts: was she truly insane, or had she feigned madness to escape punishment?
Whether truly mad or pretending, she was dead now, drastically reducing the likelihood she was the baby-carrying ghost. Though I still suspected the ghost was a living person or a reanimated corpse, the facts were pushing me toward the intangible realm of spirits.
"Where are we going now?" Zhenzhen interrupted my thoughts.
"To the old city district to find someone," I replied casually.
"Who?"
"Mei Qiaoying."
"Who is she?"
"I don't know." I handed Xiaolou's file to Zhenzhen. Under the 'Next of Kin' section were the name 'Mei Qiaoying' and an address.
Every prosperous city has its dilapidated corners, and those living in these corners are often the ones who contribute most to building the city.
We arrived in the old district at nightfall. Following the address, we came to a shabby house. Light seeped through the windows; someone was home. After knocking for a while, the rusty iron door opened a crack. Behind it was a haggard-looking woman, her voice wary: "What do you want?"
I showed my badge and stated my purpose. Her tension eased, and she invited us in.
"Sorry about that. The neighborhood isn't safe at night. Have to be careful. Hope you understand," Mei Qiaoying said, bringing us two cups of boiled water.
I glanced around. The house was small and very old, probably over thirty years. Every piece of furniture looked older than me, even the chipped cups in front of us. The owner lived in hardship.
"Auntie Mei, can you tell us about Xiaolou?" After some polite small talk, I got straight to the point.
"Sigh... I don't know if it's my fate or Xiaolou's that's bitter. She never knew her father, and died so young..." Auntie Mei sighed and began recounting her daughter's past:
Xiaolou's father died young. I raised her alone with much hardship. She has always sensible and well-behaved since she was little. Teachers and classmates at school all liked her. She studied diligently too, and never gave me cause for worry. But after she entered Medical University, I felt she changed. I couldn't pinpoint how exactly, but a mother who's lived with her daughter for so many years senses these things. At first, I thought she had a boyfriend, so I didn't pay much mind. But later, I felt more and more that something was wrong.
Our home was small; we always shared a bed. After she started university, she lived in the dorm, only coming home during long holidays. When she stayed home, I woke up several times in the middle of the night to find her not in bed, but standing by the window, staring blankly at the moon. She wouldn't respond when I called her. When I mentioned it the next day, she had no memory of it.
Later, she came home less often but called every week. I didn't think much of it then. Our home was poor; I didn't blame her for not wanting to come back. As long as she was happy. I didn't even say much when she didn't come home for Spring Festival, assuming she wanted to spend it with her boyfriend!
The day before the incident, she called me. She said some strange things—asked if I wanted a big house, endless money, eternal life. I said yes, of course I did, but having her was enough for me; I didn't care about the rest. She was silent for a long time before saying, "Mom, I will make sure you live the best life from now on!" Who could have imagined the very next day, disaster struck?
After the incident, the school handled it quietly. She didn't go to prison but was sent to the mental hospital. During those days, I cried almost all my tears dry. But that wasn't the worst ending. After about a year in the hospital... she inexplicably committed suicide...
Tears streamed down Auntie Mei's face as she spoke. The sanatorium had clearly concealed the rape. Seeing her grief, we naturally didn't want to pour salt on the wound by revealing the truth. Both parties involved had died years ago; pursuing responsibility now seemed pointless.
"Did you ever meet Xiaolou's boyfriend?" Though her expression was bleak, I had to ask.
"No. I wasn't even sure if she had one. Every time I asked, she said no. But I always felt she was seeing someone back then." A mother knows her daughter. Though she couldn't confirm, her intuition was likely reliable. Ye Xiaolou probably had a boyfriend while at Medical University. If true, it would confirm she had been pregnant and explain why the ghost carried a dead baby when killed. Of course, this theory rested on the premise that the killer was a ghost—something I still had reservations about.
"What kind of man was Xiaolou's father?" Zhenzhen seemed to want to comfort Qiaoying but couldn't find the right words, blurting out a question about her late husband instead.
"My husband was Ye Ping'an. He wasn't very capable; worked in construction when he was alive. Funny coincidence—the dorm Xiaolou lived in at Medical University was built by his construction crew. But not long after the dorm was finished, he passed away... didn't even get to see his daughter once..." Qiaoying's tears fell again.
Her father died after building the dorm; her daughter went mad and killed someone while living there. That seemed too coincidental! Setting aside sensitivity for the moment, I pressed: "Can you tell us how your husband died?"
"The doctors said it was stomach cancer. He was fine normally. One day, he suddenly said his stomach hurt. Went to the hospital for a checkup, and the doctor said it was too late, and couldn't be treated. He passed a few days later. Xiaolou was almost due then. If he'd held on just a few more days, he could have held his daughter..." She paused, wiping her tears. "Several of his workmates died of stomach cancer too. I think it must have been the terrible food on the construction sites. He always complained the food was pig slop."
Zhenzhen offered some clumsy words of comfort. As we prepared to leave, Auntie Mei seemed to remember something. "I recall when he was building that dorm at Medical University, he mentioned digging up a big white snake while excavating the foundation. Everyone was greedy back then—they cooked and ate it right away. I don't know if offending those spirits brought on this misfortune..."
After leaving Auntie Mei's house, one question echoed in my mind—Father dies mysteriously after building the dorm; daughter changes after moving in, ultimately going mad and killing... Was the dorm itself the problem? Or specifically, Room 106?
Perhaps Old Man Liu Shu could provide some information on this.