“Well, perfect timing.” Shen Ge slung his backpack over his shoulder, turned, and kicked a nearby filing cabinet. With a loud bang, the cabinet slammed precisely into the spider-headed freak.
Not wanting to waste any more time with it, Shen Ge simply opened the door and ran out. In the dim corridor, he could faintly hear heavy footsteps in the distance; the human torso freak must be catching up too.
As he sprinted halfway down the hall, the commotion from the file room meant the spider-head had already broken free and was giving chase.
He was just thinking of a way to “materialize” a steel wall to block the corridor when he heard a strange noise from a ward further ahead.
Shen Ge swept his materialized flashlight towards the ward. From beside a dark hospital bed came a faint creak, creak. A pair of hands reached out from under the bed, gripping the bedboard.
Then, a pair of pale, cold, damp feet draped over the bedside, followed by a second pair, then a third… Six smooth, delicate feet in total, an incredibly eerie sight.
Its body was skeletal, with ribs growing backwards like barbs – a stark image of a human body aberrantly fused with a Weird.
Its face, vaguely discernible as female, bore a strong resemblance to that pregnant female freak, maybe seventy or eighty percent similar.
“Oh! An old friend! Good evening! Fancy a little similar snack?” Shen Ge recognized it instantly. This was the Rank 3 freak he’d encountered during his second visit to the dream world!
Shen Ge stepped back, clearing the doorway. Whether triggered by the light or the scent of a living person, the spider-freak instantly became violent and frenzied, lunging towards the door.
Shen Ge smoothly directed it towards the pursuing head-spider. The moment the two freaks met, they were immediately drawn to the weird energy emanating from each other.
“You two have fun, I’ll leave you to it!” Leveraging his hypnosis-enhanced jumping power, Shen Ge took a running leap, soaring right over the two entangled freaks and heading for the stairwell.
But just as he reached the stairs, a hulking figure came thudding up with heavy steps.
“Endless, aren’t you?” Shen Ge thought quickly, made a decision, and turned back, leading the human torso freak towards the two battling spiders.
With three freaks now gathered – though it was really the head-spider and human torso freak teaming up against the spider-freak – Shen Ge naturally couldn’t let the spider-freak die so quickly. So he joined the fray using “Materialization” and “Hypnosis,” his main goal to stir the pot and provoke an internal freak war.
After these several dream journeys, Shen Ge had become thoroughly familiar with using “Hypnosis” and “Materialization,” and could control his weird energy consumption more precisely.
Just as the chaotic battle between one man and three freaks reached its peak, a faint tap, tap, tap of footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor. The sound unmistakably heralded the Director’s arrival.
“Oh, old lady, you finally showed up!” Shen Ge had deliberately stirred up a huge commotion with the freak fight, hoping to lure either the Director or Doctor Chen. It turned out the Director was the one who came.
This gave Shen Ge a new hypothesis. He suspected that, for some reason, a distinction similar to “reality” and “Weird Space” existed here. Doctor Chen was likely on the “reality” side, while the Director resided in the “Weird Space” world. This would explain why the inpatient building seemed normal when he first arrived, only revealing its “monsters” after receiving the viral antibody injection.
At that point, through the “viral antibody,” he had transitioned from Doctor Chen’s real world to the Director’s Weird Space world.
The Mirror Freak had mentioned that the earliest defectors from the Haiya Institute, like the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and the Freak Association, had mastered the ability to open Weird Space using the Ancestral Weird. They also used the distorted space created by such weird energy collisions to generate one weird disaster after another.
Therefore, it could be deduced that the so-called “viral antibody” was probably something related to the Ancestral Weird. This medicine could activate the Ancestral Weird cells within Shen Ge, allowing him to control the “key” and open the door to the dream world.
“So, the whole point of bringing me to Rongshan Mental Hospital was to research how to stably open Weird Space?” Shen Ge frowned slightly, sensing a new clue.
Meanwhile, the Director, clicking along in her sky-high heels, stretched her snake-like neck forward, a ferocious grin on her face as she advanced towards Shen Ge.
Shen Ge pondered how to redirect the human torso freak’s aggression towards the Director, while also ensuring the spider-freak didn’t get killed by the head-spider too quickly.
“Hey, at least you’re my ‘teammate’ – show some fight!” Shen Ge couldn’t help but mutter. He materialized a large sledgehammer and swung it at the head-spider.
Just then, the Director stretched her long neck towards Shen Ge, aiming to bite. Timing it perfectly, Shen Ge sidestepped and deliberately collided with the human torso freak.
Clearly, the human torso freak, who had been chasing the elusive, eel-like Shen Ge, didn’t expect him to just walk right into its arms. Besides, lacking a head, it had no brain to speak of, operating purely on instinct.
In that moment of hesitation, the Director’s long neck tried to coil around both the human torso freak and Shen Ge. But Shen Ge, employing his eel-like maneuverability again, slipped out, leaving the Director only able to constrict the human torso freak.
Once trapped, the human torso freak’s first instinct was, naturally, to resist. Its massive frame unleashed brute force, instantly stretching the coiled neck taut.
Its struggle made the Director assume Shen Ge was resisting, so she tightened her grip even more.
Having successfully redirected the aggression, Shen Ge turned his full attention to the head-spider. Just as he and the spider-freak finished off the head-spider, he glanced back to see the Director had already devoured most of the human torso freak’s body.
“Tsk. You’re something else, old hag!” Shen Ge swung his double hammers, and several iron chains shot out from the top, latching onto the Director’s neck and binding her body.
He had used this trick before, combining it with the “Iron Maiden” to trap the Director for a while. But aside from the Director, the other three were only Rank 3, while she was a Rank 4 freak. Even with “Materialization” and “Hypnosis,” killing her wouldn’t be easy. The key, as before, was the mirror in the dormitory area.
The dormitory area was located in the basement of the inpatient building.
“Big Spider, do me a favor and hold them off!” Shen Ge dodged a sneak attack from the spider-freak, maneuvering it back towards the head-spider. Then, pulling on the chains, using his hypnosis-enhanced strength, he dragged the Iron Maiden coffin towards the lower floors.
The second and first floors were flooded with the blood pool, but Shen Ge had no choice but to charge straight through.
Strangely, when he came into contact with the blood, there was no adverse reaction. Instead, his weird energy seemed to recover slightly.
It felt like running a thousand meters, being utterly exhausted at the eight-hundred-meter mark, and then suddenly getting a two-minute break to drink water and catch your breath, your stamina noticeably returning.
Although Shen Ge’s main role in the previous fight was stirring the pot, actually restraining three freaks had consumed a significant amount of weird energy, not to mention materializing things like the Iron Maiden to trap the Director.
Now, dragging the Iron Maiden while maintaining the “Hypnosis” stat boost, running through the blood pool – not only did he not feel tired, but his weird energy was recovering. How could he not be amazed!
“Why didn’t you say so earlier? I would’ve chugged this whole blood pool!”
Of course, joking aside, Shen Ge naturally wouldn’t chug unknown blood just to restore weird energy… probably.
Shen Ge navigated the dark corridors and finally reached the underground dormitory area. Dragging the Director trapped in the Iron Maiden, he rushed into the innermost children’s room and slammed the coffin against the sink.
“Here we go!” Hypnotizing himself to lift the Iron Maiden, just as the Director was about to emerge, he hurled it towards the mirror.
Then, with practiced ease, he focused his weird energy on the mirror. Having previous experience compressing the mirror world to deal with the Mirror Freak and the Director, he smoothly opened a slit in the mirror. Once he sensed the spatial distortion reaction, he cut off the weird energy connection, sealing her inside.
“Done, finished!” Successfully trapping the Director again, Shen Ge breathed a sigh of relief. He had been worried that luring her out might leave him unable to deal with her, ultimately dying at her hands.
If he had died while stuck in the initial infinite loop, it wouldn’t have mattered much. But having made it this far, having to start over would be truly agonizing.
The next step was to kill the Director for good.
He chose to rest in the children’s room. He had half-expected to return to the “reality” here and see Doctor Chen, or for some other accident to occur. But surprisingly, after sitting idle all night, his weird energy was mostly restored, and nothing unusual happened. Strangely, the chaos upstairs hadn’t affected the dormitory area at all.
Shen Ge found this very odd, but the dream world wasn’t exactly governed by common sense. He intended to wait until his energy was fully restored, but then he heard a strange crack, crack. The mirror sealing the Director was showing cracks, as if she was about to break free from the Iron Maiden coffin.
Knowing he couldn’t wait any longer, Shen Ge expended nearly all his remaining weird energy to compress the mirror world, crushing the Director, Iron Maiden and all, into a tiny meat patty.
“Huh?” After killing the Director, Shen Ge was surprised to find that his weird energy wasn’t completely depleted. It had only… used about half.
This was a huge improvement compared to previous times. He was momentarily puzzled: had he genuinely grown stronger through repeated use of “Materialization” and “Hypnosis,” or was there another factor at play?
“Could it be that blood?” Shen Ge went back upstairs, hoping to find some blood to test his theory. Oddly enough, the blood pool that had been knee-deep was completely gone, vanished overnight.
Had it been absorbed by other freaks, or…
Shen Ge searched floor by floor and indeed found some mutated freaks. The spider-freak and the ones with prosthetic limb aberrations were most numerous, followed by the parasitic-type freaks in the specimen room. Further up, the stairwells were completely packed with freaks, making it impossible to ascend.
Shen Ge had considered going back to the pregnant female freak’s floor, finishing her off, and taking the “strange infant” from her belly, to see if he could bring it out along with the other collected freaks in his backpack. But judging by the sheer number of monsters in the inpatient building now, that would likely take weeks.
For now, Shen Ge had no way to return to Doctor Chen’s world, nor any method to wake up. He could only take it one step at a time and continue exploring this bizarre world.
Besides the “Three Freaks” in Rongshan Mental Hospital, over a hundred kilometers away in the high tower of Rong City, there was another freak, one identical to him.
Last time, seeing that doppelgänger was how he had finally left the dream world.
With his backpack full of collected freaks, Shen Ge arrived at the ground floor lobby. The narrow, dim lobby’s main door was locked tight. At the reception desk lay a dried corpse in a nurse’s uniform.
He had seen this corpse last time too, and hadn’t found anything conclusive. But this time was different. He had followed Doctor Chen’s path and met many people around him.
So, checking the corpse’s badge, he discovered it belonged to one of Doctor Chen’s former assistants. The degree of desiccation suggested it had been dead for a very long time.
“So, does that mean Doctor Chen’s reality exists after this Weird Space?” Shen Ge frowned, pondering a possibility.
Could it be that Doctor Chen and his team’s continuous research on freaks ultimately led to the Ancestral Weird cells spiraling out of control, resulting in this apocalyptic ending?
“So, once you enter this so-called ‘Freak Weird Space,’ does it mean the experiment has already reached its end point, an irreversible outcome?”
“No, if that were true, I wouldn’t have been able to see Doctor Chen again after first encountering the female freak and the human torso freak.”
“Then why is this dried corpse…”
Shen Ge found that more information wasn’t answering his questions; it was only creating more. Rubbing his aching forehead, he decided to stop thinking for now.
Leaving the inpatient building, the courtyard of Rongshan Mental Hospital was still overgrown with weeds, and a light drizzle continued to fall from the sky.
Shen Ge materialized a raincoat, put it on, and crossed the yard to the main gate.
Boom!
A flash of lightning split the sky, followed by a thunderclap. In that split second of light, the blood-red characters on the chipped sign next to the iron gate – “Rongshan Mental Hospital” – looked particularly eerie and chilling.
The same time, the same scene, even the lightning was this “punctual.” The bizarre repetition made Shen Ge feel profoundly that something was wrong.
The two black sedans that had brought him up the mountain were still parked outside the main gate. The doors were locked, and no keys were inside.
Again, Shen Ge materialized tools, easily opened a car door, started the engine, and drove down the mountain. All along the way, this unnerving sense of “repetition” grew stranger and stranger.
Driving on the narrow mountain road, fragments of memories about Rongshan Mental Hospital flashed through his mind. Oddly, these “memories” seemed to have changed significantly again. It was as if… the real-world memories of the hospital were being eroded by this new experience, slowly merging and becoming one.
Something’s wrong!
But what felt even more wrong was that from this moment on, everything seemed to be an exact replay of his previous dream world journey.
Until—
Bang!
Just as Shen Ge was lost in thought, the car rounded a bend and slammed directly into a large tree by the roadside. The deployed airbag nearly knocked him unconscious.
“This… how is this possible!” To test his theory, Shen Ge had deliberately slowed down and paid extra attention to that tree at the corner. But even so, an illusion had occurred.
In a moment of distraction, the car had simply crashed!
Shen Ge felt as if an invisible, giant hand was constantly planning his path from here on out, as if everything was destined to repeat endlessly!
This eerie feeling was suffocating!
