When Wang Han realized the problem might be with the “mirror” in the restroom, he shouted and ran towards the bathroom, blocking the way for the female representative and her team as they retreated from the lobby.
Just as they stepped out of the lobby, the slow movements of those faceless monsters suddenly sped up, and they surged rapidly toward the main entrance.
Wang Han reached out his left hand. The arm wearing the strange energy mechanical gauntlet was fully charged in an instant. Then, with a punch, he struck the monster at the front, knocking it back.
Bam!
“Ahhh—”
“AHHH!”
The body of the faceless monster split in two right after being hit. And inside its belly was a twisted human face, wailing and writhing.
Once that wailing face appeared, red liquid began to overflow from the bodies of the surrounding monsters, and one ghostly face after another burst out from their stomachs.
Luckily, the female representative was already fleeing down a hallway with her security team. She didn’t see this horrifying scene, otherwise she would have definitely fainted on the spot.
Wang Han could handle one or two monsters, but taking on twenty or thirty that were in the middle of transforming was basically no different from asking to be killed.
So, he decisively chose to fully charge the strange energy mechanical arm, and after delivering that one punch, he turned around and ran without the slightest hesitation.
“Hey, where are you going? I told you to hide in the bathroom!” Wang Han turned his head and saw the security team carrying the female representative as they ran toward the stairwell, completely ignoring his suggestion.
The head of the security team thought very simply: they had first encountered something weird in the restroom. Why would they go back there now? That would just be walking right into a trap!
Even if Wang Han was a “professional” paranormal investigator, who knew if his judgment was right? Maybe he didn’t realize the restroom was still haunted?
Wang Han felt a headache coming on as he watched the security team run off. As a paranormal investigator, the thing he feared most was survivors who “had their own ideas,” because those actions often got them killed.
Sure enough, the security team soon ran into deadly trouble because of their bad decision. The moment they reached the stairwell, they found that there was no passage leading up or down—only endless “darkness” filled with black mist.
By the time they tried to run back, it was already too late. Pale, ice-cold hands reached out from the black mist, grabbing their bodies and pulling them into the fog.
“Save me.”
“Help!”
“Please save us!”
Their screams and disappearance happened in the blink of an eye. Wang Han wanted to help, but he had the will without the power. He wanted to save them, but he wasn’t Shen Ge, and he didn’t dare recklessly jump into that strange energy black mist.
With the passage ahead filling with strange energy black mist and the “faceless monsters” with faces growing from their bellies closing in from behind, Wang Han didn’t hesitate for a second. He jumped into the restroom on the side.
Inside the dim restroom, the only light came from a faint glow in front of the sink. In the mirror, a pale, expressionless “Wang Han” was silently staring at him.
The footsteps of the “faceless monsters” in the hallway grew closer and closer. Wang Han didn’t have time to overthink it. He raised his mechanical arm and smashed it against the mirror with a loud BAM.
As the mirror shattered with a crash, something strange happened. The space around Wang Han seemed to crack like the mirror itself. Cracks appeared in the air, and two or three seconds later, everything collapsed.
Suddenly, a hand reached out from behind the broken mirror and grabbed his throat. It became incredibly hard to breathe, and his consciousness slowly began to fade.
In a daze, Wang Han vaguely heard thunder and lightning. Then a flash of lightning streaked past the window, jolting him awake in an office.
He nervously looked around. He wasn’t in the Rong City branch’s operations office, and this didn’t look like any place he had worked before.
In a daze, his memories felt like a chaotic mess.
Who am I? Where am I?
“Hey, Wang Han, what are you standing around for? Hurry up and come with me to pick someone up.” Just as he was feeling confused, a familiar voice came from behind him.
Wang Han turned around. It was Ma Chao. But unlike his usual combat uniform, Ma Chao was wearing a white coat like a doctor.
“Oh, coming.” Wang Han responded instinctively, got up, and followed Ma Chao out of the office. As he passed the mirror hanging behind the door, he took a quick glance and saw that he was wearing a security uniform with the word “Captain” on his shoulder.
Security captain?
Before joining the Special Countermeasures Department, Wang Han had indeed worked as a “security guard” at a bar—though to be more accurate, he was more like a “bouncer.”
“Hurry up, they’ve already arrived, and you’re still dragging your feet.” Ma Chao urged impatiently.
Wang Han wanted to talk back, even thought about firing off a “What’s your rush?” kind of retort. They joked around with each other all the time, and he wouldn’t get upset over something this small.
But strangely, when that familiar foul-mouthed greeting reached the tip of his tongue, it came out as a single word: “Okay.” Then, as if his feet had a mind of their own, he followed Ma Chao out of the office building, through a gloomy courtyard, and up to a large iron gate.
BOOM!
At that moment, a flash of lightning tore across the sky, followed by a thunderclap. In that one second of light, the faded sign on the iron gate revealed a few bloody red characters that were especially terrifying—
Psychiatric Hospital.
“Psychiatric hospital?” Wang Han was stunned. But before he could think about it further, he saw two men, nearly two meters tall and extremely burly, dragging a little boy into the hospital.
Soon, several “doctors” and “nurses” in white coats came out of the nearby building and gathered around the boy to examine him.
Seeing Wang Han frozen in place, Ma Chao couldn’t help but urge him again. “What are you standing there for? Go help. I hear that kid is really difficult to handle.”
“Oh.” Wang Han responded absentmindedly and walked over to the group. Just as Ma Chao had said, the little boy was struggling hard, shouting things like, “I’m not crazy! Everything I said is true! Monsters—there really are monsters!”
But the doctors and nurses didn’t care what he said. They mechanically went about their work and asked Wang Han to help strap the boy onto a cart.
Wang Han felt like he had seen this little boy somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where. So he just numbly followed the doctors’ orders, took the boy to a locked room in the inpatient wing, and only then untied the ropes.
The room was very small, only about ten square meters. There was nothing but a bed—not even a window for ventilation. It was like a standalone prison.
After being thrown onto the bed, the little boy kept struggling and screaming hysterically, shouting things like, “I’m not sick! Let me go!” “I’m not crazy!” “They’re the ones who did this to me!” “Let me go!”
But the doctors and nurses ignored his struggles and anger. They silently injected him with a sedative, locked him in the room, and left.
After Wang Han came out of the room, Ma Chao stopped him and handed him a file folder, speaking seriously. “The orders have come down from above. This kid is a key test subject. Your job from now on is to watch him and make sure nothing goes wrong. That’s all you need to do—nothing else. Remember your job. Don’t do anything unnecessary.”
“Yes, sir.” Wang Han was very unhappy with the way Ma Chao spoke to him—like a superior dressing down a subordinate. But strangely, every time he wanted to argue or fire back, the words turned into agreement the moment they reached his mouth.
After Ma Chao left, Wang Han glanced at the file folder. It contained detailed information about the little boy.
“Shen Ge, age ten, claims to have seen a monster by the sea. The monster was his father, transformed, who then ate his mother in one bite…”
“…”
“What kind of nonsense is this? Did he get brainwashed by monster movies?”
“Shen Ge… Shen Ge? Why does that name feel so familiar? That’s weird. I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before.”
“Though, gotta admit, that name is a real bargain. Whoever says it has to call him ‘Ge’—which means ‘big brother.'”
Still muttering to himself, Wang Han walked up to the door and looked through the small window. Inside, the little boy lay on the hard wooden bed. The sedative had left him in a daze, still mumbling things like “Let me out.”
Wang Han was about to close the window and leave when he saw the boy struggle to sit up, then sit on the edge of the bed, gasping for air.
After resting for a bit, the boy seemed to be observing the room. Then his gaze landed on the small window in the door. The two of them, one big and one small, stared at each other through the glass.
But the next second, a look of “terror” appeared in the boy’s eyes, as if Wang Han outside the window was some kind of horrible monster.
“Hey, are you okay?” Wang Han saw the boy fall off the bed and quickly opened the door to help him back up.
The boy’s condition wasn’t good. His breathing was getting faster and faster, like he couldn’t catch his breath. Wang Han hurried outside to call for doctors and nurses.
The doctors strapped the boy to the bed, wheeled him out, and took him into a sealed operating room. Wang Han was shut outside.
After nearly two hours, the operating room door opened, and the boy was wheeled out—unconscious.
After the boy was taken away, a bespectacled doctor stopped Wang Han and told him to keep a close eye on the boy during this time and make sure nothing happened to him.
That was the second person today telling him to watch the boy carefully. It made Wang Han even more curious about who this kid really was.
For the next period of time, Wang Han acted as the boy’s “supervisor,” monitoring his every move in the room to prevent any emergencies.
Every day, the boy was taken to the operating room for a while, then wheeled back to his room in a sleepy state to rest.
Months passed like this. One day, Wang Han was standing outside the door as usual, scrolling through his phone and listening for any noise from the room.
In a daze, he thought he heard voices coming from inside.
He frowned, feeling a bit strange, so he carefully opened the small window on the door and peeked through the crack.
At first glance, the boy was nowhere to be seen. His heart jumped into his throat. Just as he was nervously about to open the door, he heard a rustling sound from under the bed.
Wang Han stood on his tiptoes and looked under the bed. There was the little boy, lying on the floor, with a “pillow” thrown in front of him, staring at it.
“Found you.”
“Found you.”
He kept repeating those words to the pillow. Although Wang Han couldn’t see his expression, he could hear a morbid, twisted tone in that eerie voice.
Then the boy tilted his head and asked in confusion, “Who are you?”
The next second, his voice turned into that same sickly laugh. “Hehe, I forgot what my name is. They call me Number Three. People who like me call me ‘San Zai.’
“The door here is locked. How did you get in?”
“Hehe, come here…”
Wang Han watched the boy lying on the floor, and his expression turned strange. Because the boy wasn’t just talking to himself—he seemed to be having a “conversation” with someone invisible.
Has he gone crazy from being locked up too long? Split personality? Wang Han felt complicated. He had watched over this boy for months, and seeing him go from a normal person to someone losing his mind made him feel pretty bad.
Then, something even stranger happened. The little boy crawled out from under the bed, went to the small opening in the door used for sliding in meal trays, and moved the cover aside.
“Hehe, I dug this hole. I’ve dug lots of holes. Come on, I’ll take you out to play.”
“But… I saw lots of people outside the window just now. Aren’t you afraid they’ll see us?”
As he spoke, the boy had already crawled halfway out of the room. Wang Han was standing right by the door, but the boy acted like he couldn’t see him at all, still “talking to himself.”
“There’s no one there. Oh, did they inject you with that medicine? After they inject that stuff, you start seeing all kinds of strange things. Don’t worry, it’s all fake. No need to be scared. Come on, I’ll take you out to play. Even though there are lots of guards and we can’t actually escape, no one really watches this building.”
“What?”
“Shh.”
The boy squatted by Wang Han’s feet, turned around, and made a “shush” gesture to the empty air near the door, lowering his voice.
“There’s a patrol on each floor. They love eating brains and guts. You have to stay far away from them.”
“I heard they’re researching new materials. Wanna go check it out?”
Wang Han had no idea what the boy was trying to do. He watched him sneak forward with his body hunched over like a thief, then decided to follow him. At the same time, he used the walkie-talkie to contact the doctors and report the boy’s condition.
Soon, the boy reached the specimen room at the end of the hallway, hunched over the whole way. Inside were many lab instruments and some human body models.
After going inside, the boy squatted in front of a human model, turned back, and waved at Wang Han, who was standing at the door. “What are you standing there for? Hurry up!”
Wang Han was startled, but then realized the boy probably wasn’t talking to him—he was talking to that invisible friend.
The boy pushed a chair over, climbed up on it, squatted down, and leaned in to carefully observe a rather terrifying-looking human model.
Just then, footsteps sounded from outside the door. It seemed the doctors Wang Han had called had arrived.
“Oh no, they found us! We have to go! If they catch us, they’ll definitely feed us bugs. You don’t want to eat bugs, do you?”
The boy nervously jumped off the chair and ran toward another door.
