NOVEL WEB Chapter 73: Reasoning
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Chapter 73: Reasoning
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Zoe stepped off the subway and glanced at her phone, following the directions as she emerged from Exit B of Hollyball Station.
An 800-metre walk still lay ahead.
In the distance stood Holly Hospital, one of the most prestigious in Hamilton City. Just beside it was the renowned Hamilton University, Holly Campus, a stone’s throw away.
After an overdue phone call with her mother, Zoe checked the time. It was nearing 1 PM. According to her meticulously crafted short-term plan, Project 4.0, she had arrived at this prestigious hospital today.
But she wasn’t here for any medical treatment.
Her goal was far more elusive—she wanted to investigate the existence of the soul.
Back at mountains, while watching the rain fall through the mouth of that cave, her mind had drifted to this question: Does the soul exist?
She had even tried to sense it, experimenting with the bodies she had encountered. But despite all her focus, there had been no sign, no hint of a soul.
The conditions, however, had been less than ideal.
There were too few bodies to work with, and those she found had been dead far too long.
With such a limited sample size, Zoe knew she couldn’t definitively conclude that souls didn’t exist. Nor could she claim her spiritual awareness simply wasn’t sharp enough to detect them.
Approaching the matter with scientific diligence, she knew she needed more observations and more variables to consider.
Of course, she didn’t expect today’s venture to yield definitive results. Hospitals weren’t places where people were constantly dying.
While statistics might suggest a certain number of deaths in a hospital each day, the numbers alone told only part of the story. Various factors—such as the location, the hospital’s prestige, its specialties—would all affect the mortality rate.
These factors, in turn, would influence her ability to observe whether a soul emerges at the moment of death.
That was why today’s itinerary extended beyond Holly Hospital. Several nearby state hospitals were on her list, and even a few nursing homes—where the likelihood of death might be even higher.
Her goal was simple: gather enough data to sense the final moments of those nearing the end.
As these thoughts swirled in her mind, Zoe walked the 800 metres west from the station. The hospital's entrance soon loomed into view.
Sprawled across 500 acres, the hospital’s scale was far too vast for her current spiritual sensing range, which extended only about 80 metres in all directions.
Moreover, some areas were off-limits to casual visitors like her.
Still, 80 metres wasn’t a small range. If she planned her route carefully, she could systematically cover the entire area.
She opened her phone and mapped out a path, the layout of the hospital displayed clearly on her screen. She would follow lanes and roads.
By sticking to these routes, she would skirt around the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth inpatient departments, the emergency ward, and the infectious disease ward. She would be able to pass by these areas while staying close enough to monitor them.
With her plan set, Zoe began her sweep.
The hospital grounds were broken into manageable sections, and her 80-metre sensing range was fully utilized. She moved efficiently, weaving through the buildings and corridors, gradually covering most of the sprawling complex.
Although she couldn’t sense everything at once, by dividing the area into smaller chunks and navigating their edges, her radius proved more than sufficient.
Before long, she completed her predetermined route.
She now had a thorough understanding of the hospital’s layout.
But her expression remained unnervingly calm—too calm, perhaps.
It wasn’t just that she hadn’t detected any souls, something she had already half-expected.
What really gave her pause was what she had sensed on her journey through the hospital.
The walls had absorbed countless prayers, bearing witness to the hopes and fears of patients, their families, and the medical staff.
Prayers offered in reverence for life. Prayers filled with desperate hope for recovery, miracles, or simple survival. And beneath them all, the quiet acceptance of suffering.
This place was filled with more genuine prayers than any religious establishments.
Zoe’s heightened emotional awareness had always been keen, but here, in the halls of Holly Hospital, the emotions were overwhelming in their rawness and intensity.
The strain, responsibility, and exhaustion of the doctors. The fear, anxiety, and helplessness of the patients. These emotions, so vivid and visceral, reverberated within her like never before.
The very core of human suffering seemed magnified here. The most primal, painful emotions were laid bare.
And Zoe, with her senses tuned to detect something as elusive as a soul, found herself exposed to all of it with chilling clarity.
The experience left her standing motionless outside the hospital entrance, lost in contemplation.
Initially, she felt a wave of sadness swell within her, as if the weight of the emotions had seeped into her own heart. But almost immediately, a cool, rational clarity swept over her, soothing the sadness until it became a distant murmur.
The sadness didn’t vanish; rather, it was pushed aside by a stronger, more dominant force—reason.
In that moment, Zoe became extraordinarily calm, perhaps even unnaturally so.
And yet, in this heightened state of tranquillity, her perception of the world sharpened even further, as if the edges of reality had become clearer.
She realized something had shifted within her.
Her empathy hadn’t vanished entirely—she could still understand the devout prayers and the flood of negative emotions born from hardship.
But she wasn’t reacting as she normally would. It was as if her emotions had been dulled, held at arm’s length.
This was because her empathy was now firmly controlled by her rational mind.
Her overwhelming sense of reason was suppressing all emotional fluctuations, keeping her in a state of cool, almost detached composure.
No joy from others’ happiness. No sorrow from her own.
She’d first noticed this shift back on the mountains, while dealing with those cultists. The loss of life had stirred little reaction within her.
At the time, she had assumed it was simply her detachment from enemies, an unfeeling rationality towards those who opposed her. But now, she realized this rational state was constant.
It wasn't psychopathy. Whenever her emotions threatened to sway her judgement, her reason swiftly reasserted control.
This new ability, undoubtedly a result of her fourth evolutionary sleep, allowed her to maintain perfect balance—a reason-driven calm that didn’t eradicate her emotions, but regulated them, keeping her from acting impulsively.
It was, in some ways, akin to the calmness of a character like Saitama from One Punch Man. Not overly naive or stiff, but with a similar unflinching tranquillity. Only, in her case, it was laced with the capacity for swift and decisive action.
In a way, this rational, calm version of herself felt like an upgrade—an evolved form that held her previous self’s extremes in check. Not perfect, but balanced enough that Zoe didn’t mind the change.
Calm and calculated, but still capable of justice.
Reasonable, but not without the ability to act decisively when needed.
Her new state of being seemed, on the surface, to be a contradiction.
But then again, who’s to say any personality is without contradictions?
People are complex, layered, and dynamic, their personalities ever-changing depending on the context and circumstances they find themselves in.
It’s this contradiction that defines us all. The delicate balance we walk throughout life.
At this thought, Zoe shook her head, a slight smirk pulling at her lips.
All in all, this rational personality, with its calculated control over her emotions, felt right. It was something she could live with.
Her core values and sense of self remained intact.
And with that, she decided to think no further on the matter.
Opening her navigation app again, she searched for her next destination.
There had been no sign of a soul at Holly Hospital, so it was time to explore other hospitals and nursing homes.