# Chapter One: The Bronze Ring and a Night in the Emergency Department
**Time: 2:17 a.m. | Location: Jiangcheng First People’s Hospital, Emergency Department**
The smell of disinfectant clung stubbornly to Lu Fan’s nostrils like a thick, sticky film. Mixed with the faint stench of blood and waste, it formed the distinctive scent of a major hospital’s emergency department in the dead of night. The corridor lights were a ghastly white, illuminating wet streaks on the tiles where someone had hurriedly mopped but left them to dry. They reflected one exhausted, distorted shadow after another. The monotonous beeping of heart monitors was the department’s constant soundtrack, occasionally pierced by a stifled moan or the uncontrolled sobbing of a patient’s family member.
Lu Fan leaned against the cold metal counter at the nurses’ station. The cuff of his white coat was stained with pale yellow medicine, though he had no idea whose it was. He had been on duty for more than thirty hours straight. His eyes were bloodshot, and it felt as if two little hammers were alternately pounding his temples. In his pocket, the rusty bronze ring he had worn since childhood rested against his thigh, giving off a faint, steady warmth that was almost imperceptible.
The sensation had begun three days ago, after his father, Lu Mingyuan, hurriedly told him over the phone, “Put the thing away. Don’t ask questions. Wait for word from me,” and then disappeared without a trace. The ring was an heirloom passed down through the Lu family for generations unknown. It was supposedly once owned by an old physician at the ancestral Benevolent Hall. Apart from its unusual material, it had never shown any strange properties. Until now.
“Lu Fan! Lu Fan! Where the hell are you?!”
A hoarse roar lashed out like a whip. Liu Jingui, the deputy director of the emergency department, waddled over with a beer belly. His shiny bald head gleamed under the lights like a moving bulb. In his hand, he clutched
