“How are you feeling? Any discomfort?” Dr. Chen’s tone had completely shifted from the cold anger he’d shown his assistants earlier. There was even a hint of concern in his voice.
“Dr. Chen, I’m fine… I think I had a strange dream. There was a little boy in it who looked a lot like me, and he took me on a game of hide-and-seek around the hospital…” Shen Ge attributed everything to a “dream” again, answering Dr. Chen’s questions “truthfully” through that lens.
Since Shen Ge and Sanzi hadn’t killed the female mutant this time, the monstrous baby hadn’t appeared early either. Naturally, there was no scene with a meal cart delivering the baby as a deterrent.
Later, to punish Shen Ge for leaving the ward without permission, Dr. Chen took him to Sanzi’s room to “observe” the process of being fed to the bugs.
Shen Ge was committed to playing his role completely, so he naturally put on a frightened and terrified act, eventually pretending to faint and being wheeled back to his ward by Dr. Chen and the others.
Shen Ge thought Dr. Chen and his team would use this as an opportunity to experiment on him. He was even prepared to use “hypnosis” to control himself again. But to his surprise, they simply settled him in and left.
“What does this mean?”
“Are they really just going straight to the third phase of the experiment?”
Shen Ge lay on the hospital bed pretending to sleep, rapidly reviewing every detail of the past few days of “infinite loops” in his mind.
Generally speaking, each time he fell unconscious after watching Sanzi being fed to the bugs, and then entered a “loop.” But now that stage had clearly been skipped. Did that mean he was out of the cycle?
Shen Ge believed the so-called “loop” represented the countless “endings” of Earth No. 2. Depending on his choices, this world was destined to move toward a certain conclusion, triggering a “reset” and starting the cycle over.
He had already more or less figured out the rules of the dream world. Now, the most important thing was to find the so-called “key”—the ability to enter the dream world at will, rather than being dragged in each time under special circumstances.
Soon, it was noon. Shen Ge, still pretending to sleep, heard the sound of a door opening and a cart being wheeled in. This should be the lunch delivery.
Judging by the sound, the person set down the food and left with the cart. Shen Ge waited another twenty minutes or so, then sat up in bed, acting as if he had just woken up.
He got out of bed and walked over to the desk. On it were a few biology books Dr. Chen had given him. In the center, the silver tray held the usual meal. But this time, there were two red pills in the upper right corner of the tray. A piece of paper was pressed beside it.
The paper stated that these red pills were nutrients to boost his constitution. But as far as Shen Ge remembered, these were exactly the “psychotropic drugs” he used to take like candy…
“So, they realized my resistance to psychiatric meds was increasing, and now they’re making me take them this way?” Shen Ge picked up the red pills from the tray and put them in his mouth. But as they entered, he used “manifestation” to make them stick to his hand, smoothly hiding them as he withdrew.
And so, Shen Ge fell back into his old “two-point” routine: either resting in his ward or being taken to the operating room for various experiments.
After more than two weeks of this, Shen Ge noticed during one experiment that Dr. Chen had changed the injection formula. He made a mental note of the information.
From that day on, the daily meal tray no longer had the little red pills. Instead, the food itself tasted a bit off.
Shen Ge was confident that even with hidden cameras in the ward, they couldn’t detect that he’d concealed the red pills through “manifestation.”
That left only one possibility: Dr. Chen had detected that his psychotropic drug levels were too low, so he was simply increasing the dosage by mixing it directly into the food.
What puzzled Shen Ge, though, was this: if Dr. Chen wanted to control him with psychiatric drugs, why not just inject them during the experiments in the operating room? Why go through all this trouble?
Although Shen Ge couldn’t quite figure it out, after Dr. Chen started “dosing” him this way, he gradually began to feel that strange sensation again—hovering between reality and the bizarre.
The most noticeable sign was when the white coats brought him food. In his eyes, they all looked like pale, terrifying, monstrous faces.
That night, after a white coat left following dinner, Shen Ge looked through the slightly ajar door and, sure enough, saw one of those tumor-like eyeball monsters again!
“What’s going on here?”
“If Dr. Chen is only trying to use psychiatric drugs to make me see the staff as monsters, or to cause hallucinations—what’s the point?”
“The aberrations and mutants are ‘real.’ Even without the influence of psychiatric drugs, I can still see them clearly…”
“According to the mirror creature, the Aberrant Society kept me locked up in Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital for three years to study the primal aberrant cells inside me and to find the ‘key’ to the dream world.”
“So everything Dr. Chen does in his experiments should revolve around these two goals. There’s no way he’d do something meaningless.”
“Could it be that when my consciousness—or my perception—gets disturbed, it triggers some change in the primal aberrant cells? Or maybe it has some connection to the ‘key’ to the dream world?”
Shen Ge steadied himself, got up, and walked to the door. Peering through the crack, he looked outside. This time, there were no tumor monsters, no eyeballs. Just endless darkness.
“When I’m not under the influence of psychiatric drugs, the inpatient wing looks mostly like a normal hospital, aside from the lighting being a bit dim.”
“But this… this is exactly like being pulled into an aberrant space.”
“Wait a minute…”
A possibility occurred to Shen Ge. What if Dr. Chen had found a way to stimulate the aberrant energy within his primal aberrant cells… wouldn’t that be equivalent to finding the key to triggering aberrant spaces?
Because whether it was what the mirror creature said, or the clues Shen Ge had found in the director’s files during his last stay at Rongshan, they all pointed to the same thing: in “reality,” there were no aberrant spaces. These spaces were unique realms formed when aberrant energy, generated from primal aberrant cells, twisted and merged with the countless endings of Earth No. 2.
It had already been confirmed that the system was the primal aberrant entity. Shen Ge had originally thought the system might have been implanted in him by the Aberrant Society during those three years at Rongshan.
But now it seemed the system had been inside him much earlier. In fact, it was almost certain he was that “infant” who had originally been found with primal aberrant cells inside him.
As for the contradictions with Ye Jingwen’s account, it was possible she hadn’t been entirely truthful, or there were other secrets behind it all.
Regardless, after these几次 unsettling experiences in the dream world, Shen Ge was now certain that Dr. Chen had found a way to stimulate the primal aberrant cells inside him, causing the aberrant energy to spread and create something resembling an aberrant space.
Only this could explain why, after Dr. Chen injected him with the so-called “virus antibodies,” Shen Ge began seeing the inpatient wing filled with monsters.
Shen Ge still had many doubts, but for now, he had no choice but to take things one step at a time. At least the most troublesome “infinite loop” was over. The worst that could happen was death, followed by losing another chunk of memory.
Anyway, Shen Ge was already tormented enough by the conflicting “fuzzy” and “clear” memories. Losing a bit more wouldn’t make much difference.
Creak—
Shen Ge slowly pushed the ward door open. A sharp, grating sound cut through the silence. Outside was a pitch-black hallway. Not a single light was on. It was terrifyingly still.
Not to mention how closely Shen Ge had observed the hallway and wards during this “endless cycle”—he had practically lived here for “years.” He could easily recite not just the length and width of the corridor, but even the measurements of the doors, windows, and railings.
So as he walked through the dark hallway in absolute silence, he kept a steady count of his steps and distance. Soon, he reached the stairwell.
Shen Ge wanted to confirm three things now: First, were the mutants in the operating room part of “reality” or an aberrant space influenced by aberrant energy? Second, were the director’s files and records consistent with what he’d seen last time?
And third—the most important point—
What exactly was Dr. Chen’s so-called “third-stage experiment”? And under these circumstances, were they still watching him from the shadows?
Shen Ge counted the steps as he went up. When he reached the second-floor landing, he could faintly see some light above. A few old lamps were on in the second-floor corridor. He could hear a faint buzz of electric current. The lights flickered occasionally, making it even more unsettling than the completely dark hallway below.
Shen Ge had intended to go straight to the third floor, but he unconsciously stopped at the second-floor landing. If he remembered correctly, besides the pregnant female mutant, the inpatient wing also housed a mutant reduced to a human torso. The last time he was in the dream world, he had died in that mutant’s blood.
Shen Ge stepped into the second-floor corridor. About halfway down the dim hallway, a room had a red indicator light outside—like the kind in hospitals signaling an ongoing surgery.
As Shen Ge got closer, he saw the sign on the door: “Operating Room.” The characters were red and seemed to be melting, like dripping blood.
“This is it.” Shen Ge remembered seeing the torso mutant here last time. He leaned close to the door, listening carefully for any sound inside. Hearing nothing, he pushed the door open a crack.
The operating room was spacious. Old instruments and stands lined the walls. In the center was a single hospital bed, holding a bound figure. This person had no head, both legs amputated, yet was still strapped to the bed with two thick ropes wrapped in chains.
Creeeak—
Shen Ge pushed the door open and stepped inside. The door emitted a piercing screech that echoed eerily through the dim hallway.
Only a single energy-saving light hung in the center of the operating room, leaving the corners steeped in shadow. But the moment he entered, Shen Ge felt a shadow moving overhead.
He instinctively looked up. Several bloody human legs hung from the ceiling. They looked freshly severed, with blood still dripping onto the floor.
Drip.
Drip.
Shen Ge took a step aside to avoid the dripping blood, skirted the pooled area on the floor, and approached the operating table.
The mutant wasn’t dead. Its chest rose and fell faintly, as if breathing normally. At the severed neck, a wound extended down to its lower body, stitched closed with surgical thread into a scar resembling a centipede.
The mutant was largely unchanged from the last time Shen Ge had seen it. But this time, Shen Ge was much bolder. He picked up instruments from the surgical tray, poking and prodding here and there, as if studying the mutant’s tissue and the clean, precise cuts.
No blood flowed from the severed neck or limbs. The flesh at the cuts still looked fresh. Even without the rising and falling chest, it didn’t appear dead.
This was what Shen Ge found most puzzling. To be tortured like this and still not “die”—only aberrations and mutants possessed such vitality.
Last time, Shen Ge had sliced open the mutant’s abdomen with a scalpel, cut into its stomach, and caused the blood inside to gush out, fully transforming the mutant into a bloody monster.
This time, he didn’t act rashly. Instead, he searched the operating room, trying to find reports related to the mutant experiments.
While rummaging through files, he noticed a locked storage cabinet in the corner. An old-fashioned lock like that was no match for him. He easily opened it using instruments from the surgical tray.
Shen Ge had expected to find important experimental reports inside. Instead, there was a silver tray. And on that tray sat a…
Head!
The truly horrifying part was that this peacefully sleeping “head” looked strangely familiar. Shen Ge studied it closely and realized it bore a five or six out of ten resemblance to Sanzi!
No, to be precise—it looked like an adult Sanzi!
But just as Shen Ge was carefully observing the head, its serene, closed-eyed expression suddenly shifted. Its eyes snapped open. They were blood-red, exactly like the mirror creature Shen Ge had encountered before.
“Found… you…”
The head’s tranquil face twisted into a vicious grimace, glaring fiercely at Shen Ge and repeating the phrase over and over, its voice growing louder with each repetition.
And as the head “came alive,” the torso mutant strapped to the bed began struggling violently, trying to break free from its restraints.
Shen Ge’s willpower was strong enough not to be shaken by this level of horror. But he wasn’t sure if the head’s voice would attract floor patrollers or other monsters. He simply pushed the silver tray back into the cabinet and locked it.
Thump!
Thump!
The cabinet shook violently, as if the head inside was slamming against it furiously. Shen Ge stood up, looking for something to block the cabinet, but then saw the bound mutant on the bed break free. It sat up from the bed in an extremely unnatural way.
The next second, with a series of thump thump thump crashes, all the bloody legs hanging from the ceiling fell to the floor in an instant.
These severed limbs were still dripping blood. In the blink of an eye, they turned the operating room into a pool of blood.
