Players, Please Board the Train

The female doctor stared blankly, showing no reaction to his words.

”Seventeenth Hospital, do you remember the man standing next to you in the group photo?”

”Besides the four other young male doctors, there should have been another man around your age. He was also a doctor, you helped him with many things, you might have been in a relationship, but he abandoned you and disappeared.”

Liao Xu frowned as he looked at Xu Huo. ”Mr. Xu, I really appreciate you coming to see my mother, but she truly can’t remember things from the past anymore.”

Xu Huo’s expression remained unchanged as he said, ”People don’t delete memories. Forgotten things are still stored in the brain, just temporarily inaccessible.”

”You’re right about that, but my mother is sick. Her brain has pathological changes - if she can’t remember, she simply can’t remember.” Liao Xu moved to escort him out, but at that moment the female doctor suddenly moved. She returned to her bedside, took out a small heart-shaped vanity mirror from the cabinet, tidied her hair with a smile, then placed the mirror back in its original position.

Xu Huo picked up the mirror and lightly tapped it. Along with the glass falling out came a folded portrait, but the man in the painting had no eyes drawn.

Liao Xu looked very surprised. ”This is something my mother drew a few years ago when she was learning sketching. She drew many identical ones at that time.”

”None of them had eyes?” Xu Huo took a photo of the painting, then placed the paper back exactly as it was.

”No, she said she would forget what the model looked like while drawing.”Xu Huo looked at the female doctor. An incomplete beginner’s practice piece was the only clue he had found so far, and this was while the female doctor was sick.

Everyone who had been in Seventeenth Hospital, including doctors and patients, none of them remembered the seventh doctor. It was as if their memories had been erased, but he trusted himself.

Unless someone undergoes brain surgery or suffers brain pathology, memories don’t disappear. They remain stored in the brain, and under special circumstances might suddenly be recalled, but they might also never be remembered again.

The female doctor started getting sick a few years ago, so she might suddenly remember someone she should have forgotten. And after he started becoming a player, his brain was also evolving - it wasn’t strange for forgotten memories to flash back under the catalyst of potions. Besides this, another proof was his medication history.

In his clear memories, because his condition was more stable than other patients, and eating and sleeping didn’t cause trouble for anyone, plus his parents’ strong demands, the hospital focused more on psychological intervention rather than giving him large amounts of medication. Therefore, the medication scenes he saw in his dreams should be real.

He had just forgotten the key person in this matter, like everyone else.

It wasn’t clear whether that doctor was the same person as the businessman who established Seventeenth Hospital but never appeared. But if someone had been secretly training him and later erased his memory, then the situation with the other four children might be the same.

Chang Bei and the other three all disappeared or died ten years ago, and except for Chang Bei, the other three had their entire families wiped out. Before the incidents occurred, their records showed completely normal lives - growing up, attending school, graduating as normal people, receiving awards for being model students, getting commendations for returning lost property and helping others. From a normal perspective, what happened to their families was just exceptionally unfortunate, but in his view, those four children had leveled up.

Concealing emotions, disguising identities, using cruel methods to achieve their goals, while still gaining sympathy and support from outsiders - it could be said that when they left Seventeenth Hospital, they had completed their psychological pathological evolution. Growing older just made it easier for them to execute their plans.

What a coincidence that they all disappeared or died exactly ten years ago.

Xu Huo understood clearly in his heart - they hadn’t died, but had been taken away.

Missing memories, erased records, non-existent people, a psychiatric hospital that suddenly vanished - who could accomplish all this?

Xu Huo walked along the bleak path outside the nursing home. Seeing leaves falling from tree branches, he stopped to light a cigarette, then sat down by the roadside.

Xu Zhi had also died ten years ago.

If Chang Bei and the other three had been taken away, someone should have come for him too, but he was still fine.

”SCREECH—!” Several cars sped over and slammed on their brakes near him. Doors opened and a group of muscular large men stepped out one after another. The short-haired man walking in front threw down his cigarette butt and crushed it, then spat before saying with a weird laugh, ”Xu Huo, so it really is you, kid.”

Xu Huo didn’t look up, saying coldly, ”I don’t have time to talk with you right now.”

The short-haired man slapped his own forehead. ”Haven’t seen you for years, and your damn temper hasn’t changed. Look at you - you ran off clean, got me implicated in debt collection. Debt collection is one thing, but I was about to catch that Zhang Dong kid, and then you had to make a call and report it to the Special Defense Department. The vanguard team came and directly took him away. I didn’t recover the debt either. How should we settle this account?”

”Brother Jie, is this the Xu Huo you mentioned?” A tall, thin man beside the short-haired man examined Xu Huo. ”He looks pretty ordinary to me. I heard you two were friends ten years ago?”

”Spit! Bullshit friends!” Brother Jie rubbed his crew cut. ”If I hadn’t seen that this kid had some skills, would I have called some kid who wasn’t even fully grown my brother?”

”Xu Huo,” he called out. ”Back then you caused trouble at the underground market, that was the first time you screwed me over. Today you screwed me over again. So? Should we settle both the new and old accounts together?”

Xu Huo stood up to leave, but the tall, thin man stepped forward to block him first. ”Your gambling skills are impressive. How about gambling with me?”

”I quit,” Xu Huo said.

The tall, thin man sneered. ”I heard you gambled away your own elder brother’s life...”

Before he could finish speaking, the man flew through the air. Before he even hit the ground, a blurry figure caught up with him, directly slamming him against a car with such force that the entire car door caved in!

The tall, thin man spat blood onto Xu Huo’s shoes, then had his head lifted up, a face magnifying in his vision.

”You’re still not dead after that - must be a player.” Xu Huo’s gaze was icy cold as it pinned the man’s face. ”Who told you I gambled away Xu Zhi’s life?”

The tall, thin man clearly hadn’t expected to be taken down immediately. Shocked and angry, he said, ”I won’t let you...”

”BANG!” A sudden loud noise cut off his words. Xu Huo kicked him against the car again and again, listening to the sound of bones breaking one by one. ”It doesn’t matter if you don’t tell me. I have plenty of time.”

After saying this, he pulled the man out from the car door, forcibly poured a healing potion down his throat, then broke his shin with a stomp, followed by snapping his fingers.

”AHHH!!!” The tall, thin man screamed continuously. Seeing Xu Huo reaching for him again, he quickly roared, ”It was Brother Jie! He told me!”

Xu Huo threw the man aside and turned to look at Brother Jie.