Nanxing Kang'an Hospital

Ling Nanxing, 51, is a certified first-class cost engineer who takes a job as a security guard at Nanxing Kang'an Hospital.

He isn't there for a paycheck. He's calculated the cost of countless buildings, but he can't figure out what's hidden in the hospital basement.

On March 17, 1998, a shipment of pipes was delivered to storeroom 37. The storeroom was sealed soon after.

Someone had accessed the files early. Those in the know either pretended to be drunk or stopped talking after letting slip half a sentence. In a crack in the wall behind the guard booth, he finds a piece of pipe that shouldn't exist, with a name half-ground off its inner wall. Someone warns him not to touch it. Someone else says, "Tell me as soon as you find anything." And someone coughs over the phone and says:

"You're not the only one investigating what happened in 1998."

An old scar on his hand can keep thirty years of trembling at bay. But the illness hidden beneath Nanxing Kang'an Hospital runs deeper than any disease.