A limited-edition, top-trim Santland rolled into the hospital grounds and backed into a parking space with consummate smoothness.
The dutiful night watchman of the parking lot strolled over to collect the parking fee. But when he reached the driver's door and peered inside, he found that the car that had just parked was completely empty.
The guard rubbed his crown, balding from years of night shifts.
"Good lord, am I seeing things?"
At the entrance of the inpatient building, Alfred, clad in a blue suit, strode inside while peeling off his gloves.
The ward was on the first floor, and Alfred arrived outside the room in no time.
He drew a deep breath, his right fingers tapping rapidly against the back of his left hand, trying to calm his emotions as quickly as possible.
Yet before he could finish steadying himself, the door was pulled open from within.
Standing before Alfred was Karen, his face deathly pale and the front of his hospital gown soaked mostly through with blood.
Alfred gave him only a cursory glance,
and immediately sank onto one knee.
"Great Emissary of God, your humble servant, Alfred, has come in answer to your summons."
"Come inside."
With that, Karen turned and walked back into the room, taking a seat on a chair beside the bed.
Alfred noticed that the ward was in disarray, particularly the bed, which was spattered everywhere with bloodstains.
There were scattered drops of blood on the floor tiles and walls as well.
A black cat lay limply on the windowsill. When Alfred stepped inside, it cast a sidelong glance at him.
With a mix of confusion and absolute deference, Alfred asked, "O great one, were you hospitalized due to injury?"
He immediately felt that phrasing was off, so he repeated himself with a slight correction: "O great one, were you injured while hospitalized?"
The moment the second question left his mouth, Alfred felt his own intelligence tonight was truly hard to look upon.
Karen tilted his head, gesturing toward the bathroom to Alfred's left.
"Yes."
Alfred reached out, moved aside the mop wedged under the bathroom handle, shoved away the nightstand braced against the bottom, and pushed the door open.
In front of the toilet, a woman in a nurse's uniform, battered and covered in bruises, was resting her forehead against the wall tiles with one arm stretched forward, motionless.
Alfred's eyes instantly took on a crimson hue—the Succubus Eye activated.
This woman was already dead. She had been reanimated by the Church of Order's Awakening Technique, and then placed under a binding restraint.
Hmm?
No, that wasn't all.
Inside this woman's body, another consciousness was present.
Alfred raised his left hand to cover his left eye.
The next instant,
a few drops of blood rolled down from his right eye like tears.
Lowering his hand, he pulled a clean handkerchief from his cuff and dabbed at his right eye.
Inside the nurse was a beguiling aberrant demon!
Alfred took a few steps back out of the bathroom and looked at Karen.
Perhaps thanks to Diss's knife, even though Karen's body had not yet recovered, his nerve certainly had.
Meeting Alfred's gaze, Karen said calmly, "Take it away."
Alfred dropped to one knee before Karen and said, "O great one above, please permit me to convey the most sincere gratitude on behalf of Ms. Molly. I will bring this body to Ms. Molly and pass along your benevolent grace to her."
Hmm?
What did that mean?
Though Karen didn't understand, he gave a slight nod.
Alfred stepped back into the bathroom. By now, the restraint seemed to be wearing off. The previously motionless nurse jerked her head up, her eyes glazed entirely in milky white.
Alfred closed his eyes. Ten seconds later, he opened them again. The milky white in the nurse's eyes was now blanketed in a blood-red sheen, and a faint red glow began to shimmer around her frame.
A fresh layer of seal belonging to Alfred was complete.
Afterward,
Karen watched as Alfred hauled the nurse over his shoulder and carried her out of the bathroom.
"Your wounds..."
Karen made no attempt to conceal his injuries or hide his weakness. Instead, he said with absolute calm, "This is my tribulation."
Pausing, Karen waved a hand.
"Attend to your own duties."
"Understood. Forgive my insolence."
Shouldering the nurse, Alfred stepped out of the ward.
Once he was gone, Karen turned to Purr beside him and asked, "What did he mean by that?"
Though weak from its injuries, Purr couldn't resist a habitual jab: "Why would the great one deign to question a cat?"
Karen pondered for a moment. He remembered that when he left No. 128 that night, Ms. Molly had begged him for something.
"Purr, what is a purified body?"
"Purification is the process of becoming a God's Servant, and God's Servants form the foundation beneath the orders of every major church. So, a purified body refers to the physical vessel of a member of the clergy. To be safe, a fully purified vessel should at least be from someone above a God's Servant—a vessel of God's Revelation."
"A vessel of God's Revelation? Is that hard to come by?"
"Very hard. Personnel of every rank in the church are registered, and after death, their remains are reclaimed by the church."
"Did you say... reclaimed?"
"Yes, because their remains are materials in and of themselves, and quite useful ones at that.
"So obtaining the remains of someone with God's Revelation on the outside is exceedingly difficult—you can't get one through normal channels. If you were to kill someone just to secure one, you'd incur the wrath of their church and invite terrifying retaliation.
"However, the one Alfred just hauled out counts, in a sense, as a purified body."
"In a sense?"
"Because that nurse's corpse was 'Awakened' by your power. The spiritual energy in her body was thoroughly stimulated. Aside from certain exceptional remains, such an activation is irreversible. It's like burning fuel—once it burns away, the fire goes out.
"Purging the original spirituality from the physical frame and returning that spirituality to the soul—that process is called purification, or rather, half a purification."
"In that case, couldn't an Inquisitor of the Church of Order manufacture these purified bodies endlessly? So long as there are enough corpses?"
"That's why I called it half a purification. The bodies of the clergy haven't just undergone baptism; they also use their own divine-tinged souls to continually saturate and imbue that vessel.
"As for that beguiling aberrant demon, you sealed it within that body, so it effectively served a similar purpose.
"Leaving aside the corpses of clergy,
"a purified body requires a vessel that has been 'Awakened' to burn away the original host's spirituality, combined with an aberrant demon existing predominantly as a spiritual body to steep within it, before it can take form.
"Just like when Mary prepares mortuary makeup for the deceased, she has to clean the body before applying the makeup. Not a single step can be skipped."
"Oh, so that's how it works."
Purr extended a paw and said, "You seem to have forgotten one thing. You should have made him clean up this ward before hauling that body off."
"I didn't forget," Karen replied, shaking his head. "I was just somewhat nervous seeing him. He mistakes me for some magnificent entity. If Diss hadn't been away from home, and if I hadn't been afraid of that corpse suddenly going berserk again, I wouldn't have called him in the first place."
"Actually, you don't need to worry at all. I know what's going through his head."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you forgotten what I told you during the day? He either sees you as a true god descended or an evil god summoned back into the world. In truth, aside from your own denials, you've long met every criteria for the descent of an evil god.
"No matter how much he probes or inspects you, he won't be able to find a single flaw in you, because you don't have any flaws to begin with, Karen."
"But right now, I'm very weak, aren't I?"
"Whether it's an evil god or a true god, they require a lengthy period of recovery after descending. In the beginning, they are all feeble. That is common knowledge.
"Otherwise, Mr. Hoffen wouldn't have repeatedly urged Diss to kill you—and that includes me."
"You?"
"Yes. I've always hoped Diss would kill you, because I know how you descended, as well as the price Diss paid and the taboos he breached to 'awaken' you.
"Just as I said before, aside from your own denials, it's not just Alfred and Ms. Molly—all of us believe you are an evil god."
"Why tell me all this? Aren't you just bolstering my confidence by telling me?"
"I don't know either. Perhaps... for the sake of the fried fish strips and pudding from earlier today."
...
Outside the entrance of the inpatient building;
Under the dim, yellow glow of the night lights, Alfred, shouldering the corpse, caught sight of Diss standing before him.
In truth, not long after Karen made the phone call, Diss had returned from the hospital where Mr. Hoffen was staying. After hearing Mary pass along the message, Diss had rushed to this hospital at top speed.
Diss's gaze landed upon the corpse draped over Alfred's shoulder.
"Lord Inquisitor, I must remind you that as the Emissary's retainer, you are truly somewhat derelict in your duty."
With that, Alfred stepped around Diss and continued down the stairs.
Diss hesitated for a moment, but did not stop him, choosing instead to enter the inpatient building.
...
"Meow..."
Upon seeing Diss step into the ward, Purr let out a frail, mournful cry, sounding like a delicate woman on her deathbed.
Diss ignored Purr entirely. He walked up to Karen, crouched down, and reached out to undo Karen's blood-soaked garments to inspect the wound.
"The stitches tore open again," Diss said.
"My life is intact," Karen said. He could tell that Diss was genuinely concerned.
Diss glanced around the room, only then seeming to notice Purr, who was also severely injured. "What happened?"
"Meow~"
"Speak."
"You can ask Karen," Purr said.
"He is wounded. It is not convenient for him to speak much right now; he needs to rest."
"..." Purr was speechless.
After hearing Purr's account, Diss nodded.
"I will go down to the basement level to investigate."
With that, he stepped out of the ward and headed down the stairs to the basement.
Inside the mortuary were a fair number of bodies. Some were tied up in disputes, while others were stored temporarily without anyone claiming them.
Just as there would always be people running red lights in defiance of traffic laws, not every corpse found swift peace in the soil.
A scrawny old woman's body sat upright on a gurney, her mouth hanging agape.
Yet she was nothing more than an empty husk now, devoid of the slightest trace of spirituality.
Leaving the basement, Diss headed up to the nurse's station and roused the unconscious nurse.
"Did I... fall asleep?" the young nurse muttered, clutching the back of her head.
"The patient in Room 3 tore his wound open. There is a lot of blood."
"Ah! Right, I understand! I'll contact the doctor right away!"
Just as dawn began to break, a doctor and nurses arrived in the ward. Though startled by the bloodstains scattered across the bed and the floor, they assumed it had all sprayed from the reopened wound. They promptly wheeled Karen back into the operating room to restitch the torn incision.
Due to the anesthesia, Karen did not wake up until the afternoon.
When he came around, he found that he had been moved to a different room. Mena was sitting beside his bed. Seeing him open his eyes, she asked with concern, "Are you feeling any better, Karen?"
"Much better."
Being stabbed was supposed to be a horrifying ordeal, but after surviving the previous night, everything felt relative. The wound on his chest hardly seemed like much now.
"It's all because the night nurse fell asleep on duty. But that was only because Nas, who was supposed to relieve her for the second half of the night, didn't show up for work. The director sent someone to her home this morning, only for her family to say she never returned yesterday. They're considering calling the police now."
Karen had a premonition that Nas was likely the unfortunate nurse who died last night.
The sounds of someone being murdered in the basement that he had heard during the day had probably been her. The reason the hospital staff headcount had shown everyone present was likely that her shift had ended around that time.
She was already dead. According to Purr, once her body was 'Awakened' by him, even the final lingering spirituality stored in her physical vessel had dispersed. So Alfred hauling her away could be considered an organ donation of sorts for Ms. Molly.
Karen thought this to himself, finding it the only way to alleviate some of the guilt weighing on his conscience.
"By the way, your grandfather arranged the paperwork for home treatment today," Mena said with a smile.
"I see."
It seemed Diss was uncomfortable leaving him on his own outside any longer, even with Purr accompanying him.
Speaking of which, where was Purr?
Karen glanced around but saw no sign of the cat. It had likely gone home; it needed to recover from its injuries too.
"So from now on, every afternoon, I'll accompany the doctor to your house to help change your dressings and manage your IV drips."
Karen understood why Mena was so happy.
"Thank you for the trouble."
"It's no trouble at all. It's actually easier for me this way—I get to slack off a bit."
Of course, the prerequisite was that such home visits demanded higher medical fees, such as travel allowances and bonus stipends for the medical staff.
"My little Karen, I'm here to bring you home."
Uncle Mason strode into the ward. Following his father Diss's instructions, he had come to fetch his nephew home today.
"Young Master Karen."
"Young Master, we're here to help you check out."
Paul wheeled in a stretcher trolley, lowering its four wheels once inside the room.
Then Paul and Ron took positions at either end, one moving to grab Karen by the neck and the other by his legs.
Seeing this, Uncle Mason immediately barked, "Dammit, you're moving my nephew, not a client! His wound is on his chest—are you trying to tear his fresh stitches wide open again?!"
Paul and Ron exchanged a glance, then burst into sheepish laughter.
"Sorry, Young Master. We're used to hauling the dead; we haven't handled many living folks."
Under Mena's direction, Ron and Paul carefully encircled Karen with their arms, gently lifting him flat and setting him onto the stretcher.
From there,
Karen lay upon a stretcher trolley that had carried who knew how many guests, wheeled out of the inpatient building to experience the guest's perspective of the Inmerlese family firsthand.
And indeed,
the vehicle sent to pick him up was a hearse.
Just then, a mother passing through the parking lot with her daughter walked by.
"What a shame... gone at such a young age."
"Yeah, he's so handsome too. What a pity."
"..." Karen.
Just as they had in the ward, Paul and Ron lifted him up once more and carried him into the hearse.
Then came a scene that left even Karen utterly baffled: he was actually lowered into a coffin.
"What is this...?"
Sitting in the driver's seat and starting the engine, Uncle Mason chuckled. "It's a new coffin ordered for another client this morning. I intentionally didn't unload it before coming to pick you up. The ride is bumpy, but inside a coffin, things will be much smoother."
Karen recalled how Mr. Mossan and Jeff had ended up embracing in the jostling hearse.
After a brief thought, he accepted the reality of lying inside a coffin for shock absorption.
To be fair, with soft cushions laid inside, lying there was actually quite comfortable. Moreover, one could directly and profoundly experience true "peace of mind."
On top of that, there was a pillow, and even a recessed groove along the side containing cigarettes, a lighter, and a deck of playing cards.
The hearse rumbled along the road toward home.
Leaning against the rim of the coffin, Ron grinned down at Karen, toying with a copper coin as he asked, "Young Master, comfortable? I specifically added an extra cushion."
"Thank you." Karen noticed the coin Ron was tossing and catching in his hand, and asked, "Ron, what's that in your hand?"
"Oh, picked it up. It's copper—not worth anything, but it feels nice in the hand."
Sitting beside him, Paul scoffed, "Picked it up, my foot! Yesterday, while we were moving our own client from the hospital morgue, he stole it off another corpse nearby."
"Bah, how's that stealing? The person's already gone; things should be used by the living! I just can't stand seeing waste.
"Besides, you wouldn't believe it—ever since I carried this thing on me, I've felt bursting with energy. I drank half the night yesterday, yet today I don't feel the least bit sleepy. I can't even bear to put it down; I just keep it tucked in my pocket."
"Ron, could you let me see that coin?"
"Huh?" Ron hesitated, a look of reluctance flashing across his face, but he still extended his hand toward Karen. Karen reached out and took the copper coin.
It didn't feel any different. The material was indeed copper, stamped with the profile of an empress. It was hard to tell whether she belonged to Ruilan's history; after all, it could be an antique coin that had circulated from another country, or even a mass-produced children's commemorative token from an amusement park.
Yet as Karen continued scrutinizing the coin,
he suddenly felt drops of liquid falling onto him.
Looking up, he realized it was Ron's drool.
Ron, who had been leaning over the side of the coffin,
now stared blankly with glazed, lifeless eyes. Drool spilled incessantly from the corners of his mouth, and he began to mumble under his breath:
"My money... my money... my money..."
Chapter 28