Card Room (Rebirth)

After a good night’s rest, everyone was full of spirit. They woke up the next morning, ate and drank and came to the balcony on the first floor to prepare for the next level.

Yu Hanjiang glanced at his teammates and gave a reminder. “We are going to enter 8 of Spades. The Spades secret room is a survival one and it will be more dangerous. If we are separated when we enter the secret room, remember not to act in an unauthorized manner. Sort out your cards and find a way to meet your other teammates.”

Everyone nodded in understanding.

Xiao Lou added, “We don’t know the environment of this secret room. If it is ancient times, try to find places such as tea houses or restaurants to meet. If it is a modern city, find the largest square in the city.”

Ye Qi recalled 3 of Spades, Financial Crisis, and immediately said, “If it isn’t very dangerous on the first day, I can play the guitar in the square and pretend to be a busker. I will wait for everyone to come to me, which is also convenient for everyone to gather.”

Xiao Lou agreed. “Take Ye Qi as the central point and find a way after gathering.”

It was certain that they would be dispersed in the Spades secret room. Every time they entered the Spades room, they wouldn’t be together on the first day. Still, it was like Ye Qi said. The first day was usually for everyone to get familiar with the environment and there was nothing too difficult to deal with. How to gather together was the key. It wasn’t easy to find someone in a crowd. If Ye Qi played the guitar then it would be easier for his teammates to find him.

They finished the discussion and Yu Hanjiang drew 8 of Spades from the Card Wall.

A familiar black vortex appeared in the middle of the card and everyone was dizzy. Once he woke up again, Xiao Lou found himself in a familiar environment—the hospital.

This should be the outpatient hall of the hospital. People were coming and going. There were many patients waiting in line to register and many doctors and nurses wearing white coats and rushing around in the corridors. In university, Xiao Lou had gone to such a hospital for an internship and there was an affiliated hospital of the medical university connected to his school. He was very familiar with the layout of this outpatient hall.

He was on the fourth floor and could see the scene in the hall downstairs. The left side of the hall had the sign ‘outpatient’ written while the right had ‘emergency’. Further forward, there was a registration office and medicine collection office.

Xiao Lou stood next to the escalator on the fourth floor and observed the patients downstairs while a few lines of background introduction quickly filled the floating box above him.

[Welcome Xiao Lou to the world of 8 of Spades.]

[For the morning of the first day in the secret room, please act according to the instructions. Your identity in this world is a surgeon. Today is Monday and you are going to work in the outpatient department. The time is 8:50 in the morning. Please arrive at your doctor’s office 307 on the third floor of the outpatient building before 8:00.]

[In the world of 8 of Spades, all card skills are available and it isn’t forbidden to kill the residents of this world.]

[You must survive in this world for 14 days to clear the instance. Good luck.]

Seeing this, Xiao Lou’s back became cold. In the past, the survival time of the Spades secret room was seven days. Now it had reached the A-grade difficulty and the survival time was directly doubled.

The most critical things were the ‘unlimited card skills’ and ‘no restriction on the killing of the residents’. All cards could be used, including Yu Hanjiang’s guns and the attack cards drawn by teammates. This meant there would be bloodshed in 8 of Spades. The people here might attack them and there might be other challengers or hunters in the A-grade secret room.

What would happen? There was no hint from the secret room.

Xiao Lou took a deep breath and looked at the time in the floating box. It was 7:52. He had eight minutes to get to work.

He was on the fourth floor and his office was on the third floor. Xiao Lou immediately took the escalator downstairs and found office 307. The door of the office read ‘General Surgery Clinic’. He pushed open the door and—

A cute girl with her hair in a ponytail greeted him with a smile. “Professor Xiao, I am the new intern doctor Xu Rongrong. The director asked me to follow you in the outpatient clinic this week.”

Xiao Lou, “…”

Did 8 of Spades also have plot characters? He might have doubts but he still nodded politely. “Hello, sit down first.”

Xiao Lou saw a white coat hanging behind the door. He took off his coat, put on the white coat, sat at his desk and turned on the computer.

On the first day, he had to follow the prompts. He would be working in the clinic in the morning and temporarily couldn’t meet his teammates. He could only go to the nearby square to find his teammates at noon. The thing that made him a bit relieved was that this was the familiar modern city environment. The desktop computer was still a windows system and it was convenient to operate.

Xiao Lou opened the outpatient software, entered the work number on his white coat and logged in.

The current season should be winter. It could be seen from the sweaters and down jackets that the patients were wearing that the temperature outside was very low. Winter was a season for a high incidence of asthma and bronchitis in the elderly. In addition, Monday was the peak period for the outpatient service in the hospital. There were long lines in the hall and there should be many patients today.

Xiao Lou might’ve been well prepared but he was still startled after opening the outpatient software. A dense list of patients filled the entire screen. Wasn’t this too much? Could he finish it all in one morning?

Just then, Xu Rongrong behind him coughed. She coughed up some phlegm, wrapped it in a tissue and threw it in the trash. Then she spoke in an embarrassed manner. “I have a cold.”

Xiao Lou asked, “Has a cold been spreading lately?”

Xu Rongrong wiped her nose while replying. “Yes, the weather has been cold recently. Many doctors and nurses have fallen ill.”

A bad feeling suddenly filled Xiao Lou’s heart. He quickly found a mask in the drawer and wore it. He tried to remain calm as he called the first patient in the outpatient software.

The one who came in was a 38 year old woman who just had a cholecystectomy and was coming in to review the incision. She also brought her daughter with her, who was around 8 years old and looked very cute.

Xiao Lou asked the woman to lie down on the nearby treatment bed, put on gloves and lifted her clothes to take a look. The wound on her abdomen was festering and had pus. There was an abnormal blackness around it, a clear sign that she was infected.

After measuring the body temperature, Xiao Lou found that the woman’s body temperature was nearly 39 degrees. Alarm bells rang in his heart and he hurriedly asked Xu Rongrong to take the patient to the emergency department. First, the patient would receive an infusion to cool down and then she would stay in the hospital for observation.

The woman said, “Doctor, can you check my daughter as well? She is also injured.”

Xiao Lou had the little girl lie down on the hospital bed and asked, “Where is the wound?”

The little girl replied seriously, “I was bitten on the leg.”

Xiao Lou questioned, “Is it an animal bite?”

“Perhaps it was my dog. I was bitten in the early morning and my mother bandaged me.”

Xiao Lou unwrapped it and took a look. The girl’s calf was a bloody mess after being bittern. He immediately grabbed iodine and a sponge to disinfect and bandage the wound. Then he told the little girl “If you were bitten by a dog, you should get the vaccine as soon as possible so you don’t get rabies.”

The little girl lowered her eyes, bowed her head and followed her mother.

The next few patients were also post-operation. Some wounds healed well and some just came to remove the thread and change the dressing.

Xiao Lou wasn’t a surgeon but these simple wound stitching removals and changing dressings were compulsory courses for medical students. He could handle it.

He was patiently examining the patients while his brain turned quickly. The fact that he didn’t know what would happen in this world was the most disturbing. In the cast of the Hearts room, there might be the victim, murderer or suspects among these patients. However. it was now the Spades room and he was placed in a hospital. Was the hospital going to have a large-scale virus outbreak?

Xiao Lou couldn’t help thinking about the zombies that he saw in 2 of Spades, Zombie Town.

Due to the remoteness of the town and the sparse population, the zombie virus had limited its spread to within the town and the scope of the impact wasn’t large. If the virus broke out in a big city, the consequences couldn’t be imagined…

He was worried that a patient would suddenly reach out to attack him so he carefully kept his distance from the patients. At the same time, he prepared his card part. If the situation wasn’t right then he could escape at any time.

Seeing that the lunch break was approaching, Xiao Lou was about to breathe a sigh of relief. At this time, a man pushed open the door. Xiao Lou looked up and met a pair of dark, deep eyes.

In an instant, all his worries disappeared and he couldn’t help smiling. If it wasn’t for the presence of the intern doctor around them, Xiao Lou would’ve whispered the other person’s name—Yu Hanjiang.

Yu Hanjiang’s identity in this world was a policeman. He was currently wearing a handsome police uniform and entered with a colleague and a young boy who looked to be a student. He saw Xiao Lou wearing a white coat and his eyes brightened slightly. Still, he quickly maintained his calm and pretended not to know the other person. “Doctor, please help see to this student’s wound.”

Xiao Lou nodded while asking softly, “What happened?”

Yu Hanjiang explained. “There was a fight at school. Someone bit him on the arm and a piece of flesh was torn off.”

Xiao Lou, “……”

Was the one who bit him a dog? The teeth were so powerful?

He had the patient lie on the bed and disinfected and bandaged the bloody arm. The student shed tears of pain while crying out to Yu Hanjiang, “Police officer, I was bitten by Zhou Yu of class 8. This is an intentional injury! Catch that stinky boy!”

Yu Hanjiang spoke lightly. “Relax, he can’t run away.”

Xiao Lou quickly processed the patient and it happened to be time for his break. Yu Hanjiang had his colleague take the student to record his statement while he and Xiao Lou walked out of the office side to side. They were pretending to consult about the student’s condition but they were actually exchanging information.

At noon, there were significantly fewer people in the hospital.

Yu Hanjiang glanced sideways at Xiao Lou. He remembered that in the real world, he first saw Xiao Lou at the forensic identification centre with this look. The white coat was clean and spotless while he gave off a gentle air, his smile making people feel that he was very kind. Xiao Lou’s legs were long and straight. Once he put on the white coat, he looked like the hero of an idol medical drama.

At this time, his own police uniform and Xiao Lou’s white coat made Yu Hanjiang gain the illusion that they had returned to reality.

After coming to the end of the corridor, Yu Hanjiang took a deep breath and calmed his mind. He gently looked at Xiao Lou and asked, “Do you have any hints on your side?”

Xiao Lou shook his head. “No, but I feel that there should be a virus outbreak in this world. Today, there are many patients at the hospital and several infected people on my side. Their wounds are seriously festered. I haven’t seen this type of wound before. In addition, the student you sent here actually had a piece of flesh bitten off. I think it isn’t simple.”

Yu Hanjiang frowned. “Is it a doomsday virus? Will those who are infected attack indiscriminately?”

They were chatting when a sudden commotion occurred in the emergency room. They saw a middle-aged woman yanking the IV needle out of her arm and the bottle slammed into the ground. Her hair was messy and her eyes red as she bit at people like a mad dog!

There were harsh screams all around her. One child’s ear was actually bitten off by her! The child’s parents were stunned and immediately acted to stop the woman. Soon, there was a hospital security guard controlling her but the security guard was also bitten by her and some passing nurses were affected.

Her daughter followed her, holding her hand in an expressionless manner.

Xiao Lou felt suffocated. Wasn’t this the first patient he received? The woman whose wound was infected after her operation?

At that time, her daughter was also injured and she said that she was ‘bitten by a dog.’ Xiao Lou had asked her to get a vaccine in time. Now it seemed that the little girl wasn’t bitten by the dog at home. The wound on her leg was caused by her mother!

As if sensing Xiao Lou’s gaze, the little girl suddenly raised her head.

These eyes were bloodshot. She stared at Xiao Lou and opened her mouth. Xiao Lou clearly saw a strange smile appear on her face as she took the ear of the child that her mother had just bitten off. She crammed it into her mouth and chewed slowly, face full of satisfaction like she was eating the most delicious candy.

Xiao Lou, “…”

Yu Hanjiang, “……”

The two people stared at each other and exclaimed, “Run!”