You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

The back door of a nursing home is usually a dedicated passageway for transporting medical waste and transferring corpses.

Alex pushed open the heavy double iron door and led Leon and Irina inside.

The incandescent lights in the corridor were dim, and the air was filled with a strong smell of Lysol, along with the decaying scent of the elderly.

After walking a few steps, a white female nurse wearing a light blue uniform walked towards me.

The nurse looked extremely unwell.

Her hair was a mess, like a bird's nest, and her dark circles were so heavy they looked like they were about to fall to the ground, but she managed to force an exaggeratedly bright smile onto her pale face.

She walked with light, quick steps, her eyes wide open, and even her blinking was frighteningly slow. She looked like someone who had suffered from neurasthenia due to long-term night shift work and then entered a neurotic state after taking too much prescription antidepressant.

However, what attracts the most attention is not her face, but the two oversized transparent glasses she is holding.

Through the glass, Leon and Alex could clearly see what was inside.

It was an extremely viscous, eerie liquid with a color between dark green and pale green.

A thick layer of grayish-white, suspicious foam, emitting tiny bubbles, floated on the surface of the liquid.

Suspended in the pale green liquid were a large amount of coarse plant fibers that had not been broken down by the blender, dark brown unidentified particles, and even a few pieces that looked like unpeeled root-like objects.

This thing looks exactly like biochemical nuclear waste scooped directly from a stinking, algae-covered ditch next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Leon and Alex instinctively stopped in their tracks.

The two, wearing masks, turned their heads at the same time and looked at each other.

From their shocked expressions, they could both see the same thought flashing through each other's minds: Holy crap, this is something carbon-based life forms can drink?

Is this the ridiculously healthy vegetarian diet in America?

The two of them turned their heads at the same time and glanced at Irina, who was following behind them.

Irina, holding her writing tablet, sighed listlessly.

"well……"

Her eyes were blank, completely ignoring the mysterious, highly poisonous drink the nurse was holding, as if it were just a glass of ordinary water. Her mental fortitude was truly remarkable.

Excuse me.

Alex steeled himself and stepped forward, pulling out his work ID and flashing it: "I'm from Ren'ai Biological Resources Company, here to collect the body of the lady who passed away last night in room 304. Excuse me, how do I get to the morgue?"

The neurotic nurse stared at Alex for a second, her smile widening.

"Oh! Corpse collectors! I recognize your uniforms."

She spoke quickly in an excited, somewhat sharp tone:

"Keep walking straight down this corridor, turn left after passing the laundry room, and you'll see a red double door. Push it open and take the dedicated freight elevator down to the second basement level. The second room on the left is the cold storage."

After explaining the route, the nurse did not leave immediately.

Her wide eyes noticed that Alex and Leon's gazes had been lingering, intentionally or unintentionally, on the glass in her hand.

"Oh! You've been staring at me like that, are you thirsty?"

The nurse enthusiastically handed the cup forward, her words brimming with the fervor of a salesperson:

"This is vegetable smoothie that I squeezed myself. I originally planned to give it to the patient upstairs who can't chew and have it administered through a feeding tube."

"If you're thirsty, you can have this cup first, and I'll go to the kitchen and make another one."

As the cup drew nearer, a strange and nauseating raw, grassy smell, mixed with an indescribable sour and rotten odor, wafted directly into Leon and Alex's noses through the rim of the cup.

"This is all-natural and organic!"

The nurse enthusiastically introduced the ingredients: "I put in three large stalks of raw celery, half a pound of kale, three large pieces of ginger, and a large spoonful of deep-sea spirulina powder."

"To supplement with high-quality protein and fermented probiotics, I also added two raw egg whites and half a cup of filtered apple cider vinegar!"

Raw celery, ginger, spirulina, raw egg white, and vinegar?!

And it's turned into a green paste?!

This is a typical white person's food!

Add an excessive amount of a bunch of seemingly healthy ingredients, mix them together, and then blend them into a paste!

Upon hearing this incredible recipe, Leon and Alex felt their stomachs churn violently and almost vomited on the spot.

Leon, Alex, and the nurse stood there in the chilly corridor.

You look at me, I look at you.

They blinked at each other awkwardly, neither Leon nor Alex daring to take the pale green glass.

You look at me, I look at you.

They blinked at each other awkwardly, neither Leon nor Alex daring to take the pale green glass.

"It tastes really good! It's especially good for bowel movements!"

Seeing that they didn't believe her, the nurse, in order to prove herself, directly picked up the other cup in her hand, opened her mouth, and took a big gulp without hesitation.

Thick, green slurry smeared the corners of her mouth, and a few uncrushed celery fibers were still stuck between her teeth.

"Mmm! Delicious! Full of energy!" The nurse stared wide-eyed, chewing the ginger residue in her mouth with satisfaction.

Leon and Alex swallowed hard, their bodies instinctively taking a half-step back.

At this moment, the two displayed an unprecedented level of chemistry.

They all turned their heads in unison, looking at Irina, who was standing at the very back, with eyes that seemed to be pleading for a savior.

Irina looked at the two large men who were suddenly staring at her, completely bewildered.

"well……"

She sighed helplessly.

Since the boss wouldn't accept, she, as the assistant, had to handle this kind of social situation.

Irina walked forward expressionlessly and took the glass of green biochemical liquid that had not yet been drunk from the neurotic nurse.

Under the horrified gazes of Lyon and Alex, as if they were looking at a martyr, Irina didn't even flinch. She lifted her mask and took a big gulp straight from the rim of the glass.

She chewed the rough residue in her mouth a couple of times with a blank expression, then swallowed it.

"Um."

Irina wiped the pale green stain from the corner of her mouth and nodded calmly:

"It's alright. It's a bit like cooled vegetable soup, not too grassy."

"..."

The pupils of Lyon and Alex instantly dilated to the size of a magnitude 10 earthquake.

Holy crap?!

Is this even human taste?! You call this acceptable?!

What is the purpose of you white people coming to Earth?!

"Right! I told you it was delicious!"

The neurotic nurse, as if she had found a kindred spirit, clapped her hands happily: "Then this cup is yours! I'm going to do my rounds now!"

After saying that, she picked up her cup of bright green porridge and hopped away down the corridor like a happy duck.

After confirming that the nurse's figure had completely disappeared around the corner.

Leon and Alex both let out a long sigh of relief and leaned against the wall of the corridor.

"That's terrifying..."

Alex wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

Leon looked at Irina, silently gave her a thumbs up, and his tone was full of genuine respect:

"Irina, you saved my life."

"Awesome. You're a tough guy." Alex also gave a thumbs up.

Irina had absolutely no idea what was wrong with those two grown men.

She glanced down at the pale green liquid in her hand, and as if to verify that her sense of taste was correct, she picked up the glass and took a sip.

"What's wrong?"

Irina put her mask back on and sighed, "This tastes alright. It's just that there's too much ginger, so it burns my throat a bit."

Leon and Alex exchanged another glance.

Lyon cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly.

"Um, Irina."

Leon pointed to the glass in her hand and said seriously:

"If we have the chance in the future, Alex and I will take you, our benefactor, to Chinatown to eat some real human food and order a table full of good dishes."

"As for the cup in your hand..."

Leon's lips twitched slightly: "This stuff, really, forget it. I'm afraid you'll mutate on the spot and turn into the Hulk after drinking it."

Alex shook his head vigorously, forcibly dispelling the terrifying image of the green, viscous goo in his mind, and regained his composure.

"etc."

Alex looked at Leon and suddenly realized, "Didn't you just say you were here to visit a patient? You didn't even ask that nurse how to get there."

"I didn't have time to ask."

Lyon answered in a muffled voice through his mask.

He glanced back down the corridor and couldn't help but mutter:

"My attention was completely drawn to that thing that looked like nuclear waste."

"I mean, are all the people in this sanatorium mentally unstable? That nurse just now looked like she'd just been released from a mental hospital."

Alex straightened his protective suit and shrugged as if it were nothing out of the ordinary:

"That's normal."

"The turnover rate of medical staff in these private nursing homes is alarmingly high. One person does the work of three, and every day they are dealing with people who are incontinent, have tubes inserted all over their bodies and are waiting to die, or elderly people."

"High pressure combined with low pay, it's no wonder people suffer mental breakdowns."

"Although I haven't been to many nursing homes, in my memory, eight out of ten nursing homes I've visited had nurses taking large amounts of Prozac."

"Okay, I'll go to the main nurses' station at the front and find someone to check the bed number."

Lyon nodded and was about to turn around.

"etc."

Suddenly, Alex reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Leon's jacket.

"There's new information from over there."

Lyon's eyes narrowed, and he immediately understood what Alex was talking about.

"The situation is a bit complicated and can't be explained in a few words. After we finish our work here today, we need to find a safe place to talk in detail."

Alex quickly arranged, "Whoever finishes first, waits in the parking lot outside."

"Once we've dealt with the body in the basement, I'll have Irina drive the refrigerated truck straight back to the company warehouse. I'll ride with you."

"Okay, see you in the parking lot."

The two quickly separated.

Alex led Irina toward the private freight elevator to the underground morgue, while Leon turned around and walked along the corridor they had come from to the sanatorium's spacious main nurses' station.

A middle-aged Black nurse was sitting at the nurses' station, frantically typing on a computer.

Excuse me.

Lyon tapped his fingers on the table:

"I'm looking for a patient. Her name is Sarah, and she has severe cystic fibrosis. She's probably been here for a while now."

The Black nurse stopped what she was doing, looked up, and sized Leon up and down with a suspicious and wary gaze.

"Who are you to her?"

The nurse frowned and asked bluntly:

"I've been on duty in this ward for almost half a year. There's only one family member who regularly visits that girl's room. I've never seen you before."

Lyon remained unfazed and casually told a lie:

"I'm a friend of her brother, you could say we're brothers. He couldn't get away today, so he asked me to check on Sarah's situation for him."

Upon hearing this, the nurse did not lower her guard; instead, she leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yeah?"

She stared at Lyon and continued her questioning unhurriedly:

"What's wrong with him? We've been trying to contact him since last night, but we can't get through to him at all; his phone is always switched off."

"What's even stranger is that when we dialed the other two emergency contact numbers he left in his file, both were disconnected. Can you explain that?"

Upon hearing these words, Lyon's heart skipped a beat.

Not right.

A strong sense of unease instantly welled up in my heart.

The ghost died in the unfinished building sometime between late the night before last and early yesterday morning, so it's normal that you can't get through to it by phone.

As for those emergency contact numbers that are not in service, for a professional assassin, in order to conceal his identity, apart from his own mobile phone, all the other information he leaves with the hospital is absolutely fake information.

But the question is, why would the nursing home frantically call ghosts in the middle of the night?

Is it because they've run out of money and are kicking the patient out? Or is it because the patient's condition has worsened?

Lyon suddenly recalled what Alex had said a few minutes earlier in the parking lot.

[In places like sanatoriums, corpses are usually owned; the families will take them away and dispose of them themselves. The probability of such a corpse being unwanted is very low, so I rarely come here to collect corpses.]

Unable to contact their only relative.

All emergency numbers are invalid.

The patient, who was once owned, was now in a state of abandonment and being without a home.

Alex just happened to come here today to collect the body.

"Fuck..."

Lyon cursed inwardly, a cold sweat instantly breaking out on his back.

"What happened to him?" the nurse kept asking, staring at Leon.

He was in a car accident.

Lyon didn't have time to think it through and blurted out another lie:

"He was hit by a dump truck in the middle of the night last night, and his phone was crushed on the spot. He is still in the ICU and was just awake for a minute this morning before passing out again."

"Before he lost consciousness, he gripped my hand tightly, begging me to come and see Sarah. What happened?"

Upon hearing that someone had been hit by a car and was admitted to the ICU, the nurse's wariness dissipated.

"No wonder..."

The nurse shook her head, a hint of pity creeping into her gaze as she looked at Leon.

"Then you're too late, sir. I regret to inform you that Sarah passed away late last night due to complete heart and lung failure."

"Because we haven't been able to contact her family, in accordance with the procedures for handling abandoned corpses, she has now been sent to the morgue on the second basement floor. We have notified the outsourced biological recycling company to pick her up."

"If you're here to collect her belongings, the cleaning staff hasn't had time to clean her room 304 yet. You can go there and take a look."

Holy crap!

Leon immediately cursed, ignoring the nurse's surprised look, turned around, and started running towards the stairwell.

Damn it!

That fat Alex is in the basement now!

If that guy had been any faster, he probably would have already zipped up the body bag by now!

If we had arrived two minutes later, Ghost's poor sister would have been taken directly to the underground black market and dismembered!

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