Lonelytree

  Millman97

  Breathing became difficult like he had walked into a thick fog. He felt moisture on his skin, and everything had a sheen of red to it.

  Chen Ge remembered Men Nan’s advice. He kept his mouth shut, and with the cleaver and hammer in his hands, he looked around. The walls, ceiling, and decorations in Room 3 were identical to the one in the real world.

  He turned around, and what he saw made his heart race. The door of Room 3 was open, but the scene outside the corridor did not reflect what it was in the real world. The difference was drastic; it was a corridor without any trash, clean and well-kept.

  The mattresses and dolls that littered the floor were nowhere to be seen, and it felt like there were cleaners who cleaned the place every day. Chen Ge nudged toward the door carefully. He reached his arm out, and his arm did not disappear; the door appeared to only work one-way!

  Since he had been warned to not speak, Chen Ge could not call Zhang Ya. Bracing himself, he walked out of Room 3, and as he stepped out, he ran into something on the corridor. It was not a monster as he expected, not a zombie or a dead body, but a doll made from bedsheets and pillows. And there was more than one.

  They stood along the corridor like scarecrows. Their drawn expressions had a blank smile, and Chen Ge could not tell whether they were happy or sad.

  Chen Ge assumed that the dolls buried inside the mattresses were just a silly prank, but after seeing this, his opinion changed. The nurse would feed the patients their medicine every night. She even had a special notebook to record each patient’s name and medical history.

  Most crucially, all these patients had died in the real world, so these dolls probably carried their lingering spirit. Lingering spirits were a lot weaker than baleful specters, but when the number of lingering spirits was at least ten times the baleful specters, the baleful specter might not win.

  When Chen Ge studied the doll, one of them seemed to sense him. Its head that was lowered suddenly raised, and its body turned. Its face that looked like it was drawn on by the hand of a child looked at Chen Ge, and Chen Ge started to sweat.

  The doll’s body slowly moved, and Chen Ge raised the cleaver. The distance between the two closed, but the doll did not seem to pay Chen Ge any attention. With its wiggling gait, it walked to the other end of the corridor.

  It did not seem to have any purpose. It walked down the corridor aimlessly and stopped to lean against the wall when it was tired. It reminded Chen Ge of a mannequin puppet. Chen Ge had met many lingering spirit. The reason for their formation was a deep compulsion that they could not let go of. It caused them to remain in the real world.

  However, the lingering spirit inside the doll was completely different. It seemed to have lost its memory, or it had completely silenced its heart. Since the doll did not attack Chen Ge, there was no reason for him to provoke them. He slid silently out of Room 3 and inspected the walls on the corridor.

  The wall had obvious scratch marks on it; they had probably been caused by Zhang Ya. Chen Ge followed the marks up to the second floor, and when he exited the stairwell, Chen Ge almost screamed from shock.

  Various dolls teetered on the second-floor corridor. They wandered about aimlessly and paid no need to their surroundings. There was a great number of them; some of them were fallen on the floor with black scratch marks on them, a sign that Zhang Ya had passed through this way.

  Walking amid the tipsy dolls, Chen Ge had this weird sensation that perhaps he was the crazy one. If one was surrounded by mad people, would the normal one think he was the crazy one?

  The further he walked, the harder it was for Chen Ge to breathe. There was a heaviness on his body like he was being tossed into the ocean and s sinking. Thankfully, no one attacked him. Chen Ge successfully reached the end of the second-floor corridor, and the scratch marks ended there.

  At the end of the corridor was a special room. Chen Ge had not had the time to examine it in real life before he was chased by the nurse to the first floor. This room that he had missed was the electroshock therapy room.

  After pushing it open, the scene that he saw surprised him. It was different from what he had expected. There was only one bed in the room, and a boy about five years old was tied to it. Chen Ge walked to the bed, and after comparing the picture, he was sure this was the young Men Nan.

  A question surfaced in Chen Ge’s mind.

  Based on the memory left in Men Nan’s mind, Chen Ge had a bold speculation. An accident did happen to Men Nan’s main persona inside the door, and it was because the door had lost its guardian that it started to go out of control.

  The scratch marks disappeared here, so this proved that she had been here before, but there was no sign of a struggle inside the room.

  Chen Ge had no idea where Zhang Ya had disappeared to, but since he had found Men Nan’s main persona, he decided to rescue him first. Only by waking up the boy would he gain a new understanding of the world behind the door and perhaps a new helper.

  That was the ideal situation, but what would really happen, no one knew. Chen Ge could only hedge a bet on it going well. The cleaver slit open the binders easily, and Chen Ge lightly nudged Men Nan’s body.

  It was unknown whether the boy was caught in a deep sleep or unconscious. No matter how hard Chen Ge shook him, his eyes remained closed. He could not speak inside this blood world, so Chen Ge tried other methods to wake the boy up.

  He did not know what happened to the boy, and his brain tried to fill in the blanks. The culprit did not kill the boy but detained him inside the electroshock therapy room. This meant that the boy was still useful to the culprit, so they would not see any harm come to the boy.

  A crazy thought flashed across Chen Ge’s mind. Chen Ge silently raised the cleaver. He moved the blade up and down several times. He narrowed his eyes at the space close to the boy’s neck and waved the cleaver downwards!

  The blade did not make contact with the bed. When it was about two centimeters away, a hairy hand appeared to block Chen Ge’s cleaver. Chen Ge had been paying full attention, but he still did not know where the arm came from.

  Chen Ge pulled the cleaver back and put some distance between them. Chen Ge saw the monster in its full form. It had no body; it was only a broken arm.

  The arm seemed to be protecting the boy. To try out this theory, Chen Ge unleashed another attack at the boy.

  His every slash was blocked by the arm, and as this repeated itself, the arm started to crack. Just as Chen Ge thought the arm was about to disappear, many other broken arms appeared from underneath the bed.

  The tussle between the two parties grew louder, and about ten seconds later, there was a slight twitch on the sleeping boy’s face.