After entering Room 0011, Chen Ge noticed this room was rather different from the previous two rooms he had visited. The interior design and the placement of the furniture was pretty much the same, but the place had a very suffocating presence to it. Just standing in the living room would give one the feeling that one was running out of air. The sense of pressure came from all sides, as if something extremely dangerous was left on every single piece of furniture in the room. “Xiao Sun and Wen Qing, don’t touch any of the furniture in this room. Something is very wrong about this place.”


  Many coats of paint covered the walls, but they were still not enough to cover up the large blood stains. The tiles were arranged neatly on the ground, but the gap between the tiles was black and red in color. From these small details, it seemed to suggest that something extremely scary had happened inside this room, and there had probably been more than one such incident.

  “Three different sickrooms, and the patient inside each room is scarier than the one preceding it. The cursed hospital appears to be cultivating some kind of monster by moving the rag doll into different sickrooms, using the other patients to unleash its full potential by completely and utterly destroying and twisting its worldview.”


  Chen Ge wandered about inside Room 0011. He looked through many drawers, but he was unable to find a diary.

  “Strange, did the patient inside this room not leave behind any clues?”


  For the most part, the world behind the door was made up from the door pusher’s memory, but Xiang Nuan’s door was quite unique. His memory had overlapped with the ghost fetus’ memory, just like how the few buildings from Jin Hwa Apartments and Jiu Hong Apartments had mixed together. They intertwined and intercepted one another’s existence peacefully, and it created this unique situation where two worlds were co-existing at the same time.

  “These few sickrooms should be a part of the rag doll’s memory. As long as it has seen the patient’s diary, then the diary should show up inside the room somewhere, unless of course Patient 0011 did not have the habit of keeping a diary.”


  Chen Ge’s condition was getting worse. His vision was getting blurry, and his body was slowly being assimilated by the darkness. Thankfully, though, he had Wen Qing accompanying him. This world behind the door appeared to have no effect on Wen Qing. Whenever Chen Ge’s mind was fraying, Wen Qing was the first to remind him of it. She was extremely worried about Chen Ge.

  It took almost half an hour for Chen Ge to find the diary of Patient 0011 inside a hollowed-out space underneath a tile. The diary was old and used. Every page was soaked in blood, and it had signs of being burnt. Weirdly enough, it looked rather similar to Zhang Ya’s bedtime stories.

  “It appears like the owner of the diary wanted to destroy this diary many times, but after realizing that was impossible, they chose to find a very secluded spot to hide it inside the room.”


  Chen Ge sat on the sofa inside the room, placed Doctor Skull Cracker’s Hammer next to his legs, and flipped open the diary.

  “Many people said I have the natural talent needed to become a psychiatrist. They say I have endless so-called qualities that would make a good psychologist, but only I know that those are the things that I showed the world because I wanted to become a psychiatrist to begin with. I chose this career not because I wanted to help those who were lost but because I wish to cure myself. From the very beginning, I knew that I am sick, and as I furthered my studies, my conviction of that truth has only became more affirmative.

  “x Year x Month x Date was a very important date to me. I was forced to remove my white doctor’s coat and put on the patient’s garb. The hospital has imprisoned me together with a monster who reeks of this horrible stench. I hate to write in a diary, but writing diary is one of the most effective and forced methods of treatment enforced by the hospital. I do not know whether I should write down the truth or insert some lies. How about I mix both of them together and see whether it will be able to force the doctors that they have assigned me to go crazy?”


  Chen Ge looked at the handwriting on the diary and felt that it was oddly familiar. He felt like he had seen them somewhere before, but when he put his mind to try to remember it, the name eluded him. It was just out of his touch.

  “Everyone has a part of their memory that is the most precious. For me, my daughter, who is just learning how to speak, and my wife are my everything. My story is very common. To provide them with a better future, I have chosen to work at this private hospital that is built at the border of Jiujiang and Xin Hai. Honestly, before I received their invitation, I did not even know such a hospital existed on the edge of Jiujiang. Initially, I wanted to reject the offer because the location was too far from my home, but the salary that they offered was too high for me to refuse. The income would have done wonders to improve my family’s living condition.

  “Skipping over my years of internship, the first day I arrived at work, I noticed how different this hospital was from a normal hospital. There were only a few doctors that worked in the day, and there were barely any patients in sight. However, strangely enough, there were many night doctors. The hospital was built at an isolated location. It was incredibly difficult to even find transport to and from this place. The closest bus stop would require a forty-minute walk. On the third morning of my posting, the leader asked whether I was willing to stay at the hospital at the staff dormitory. I adamantly rejected the offer.

  “Two days ago, I discovered many problems about this place. This hospital has many doctors and pictures of many doctors hung on the walls. But for the two days that I have worked here, I have only met a few of them, and they were all new doctors that had just been hired like myself. The one that had worked there the longest had worked there for only a month.

  “The salary was insanely high, but there was practically nothing to do in the morning. The ratio of payment to workload was seriously imbalanced. If this was not a charitable institution, then it could only mean that they were after something else from the doctors. Actually, it was at this moment that I prepared to hand in my resignation letter. The leader saw my intention to leave, and he arranged for me to work the night shift for one day. Then, he would have the accountant calculate and hand me the salary that I was owed for my few days of working there.

  “He did not say anything to get me to stay, and that made me feel very unsettled. There were already so many doctors on night duty. They were not in need of an extra pair of hands, so why did he want me to work a night shift before I left?

  “Anything that was illogical had a hidden danger. I would not risk such danger for some money. Perhaps it would look idiotic to others for me to forfeit three days’ salary, but I do not wish to explain my own action to anyone.

  “I did not report to work that night. In fact, I did not even finish my shift in the morning that day and returned home after leaving the leader’s office. My wife thought I was being paranoid, and I hoped that she was right, but what happened later proved that I was far from wrong.

  “No matter who you are, be it a patient or a doctor, if you are reading this, I have some advice for you. Try everything you can to leave this place. If there is a place on earth that is closest to hell, then this place will be it. After I escaped the hospital to come home, a series of unfortunate events trailed behind me. Many tragedies started to befall me and my family. None of these events could be explained using scientific theories. I used everything within my capability to protect myself, but I was unable to ensure the safety of my family.

  “I knew what the hospital wanted, so on one of the nights, I had returned to the hospital. This time, I reported as a night doctor. And it was then that I understood the meaning of those pictures on the wall. So far, my story could be considered normal, but be warned, things are going to get real absurd in a minute. Common sense will not help you to understand them. But strangely enough, I started to have this feeling that perhaps at this hospital, I will be able to cure this illness that I have.”


  At this point of the diary entry, a few pages were torn out. The missing pages were probably a description of the doctor’s working situation at the hospital during the night.

  “The detailed information about the hospital has been removed. Is it the work of the rag doll, or did someone enter this building before me?” Chen Ge continued to read.

  “I have successfully assimilated into this hospital and become a well-respected night doctor. To seek the treatment that would cure my own illness, I started to conduct some interesting experiments on the patients. Of course, I was probably the only doctor at the whole hospital who was sincerely trying to rescue the patients. The other doctors at this hospital were trying to lead them deeper and deeper into a despairing abyss.

  “As time went on, my ability gained the approval of everyone around me. One night, I finally met the director of this hospital. He was a very serious-looking man, but he had a very common face, the type that you would forget after you had met him. I had a very weak impression of the man, but with regards to why, even I could not explain it to myself. He seemed to have tempered with my memory somehow.

  “The director had a very long chat with me, and it was all because of one task that he wished to bequeath onto me. He wanted me to take care of Patient 0010. This would be the first time I would gain contact with patients in the first ten numbers. Before this, I’d only heard rumors about these patients at the hospital but never met them in person. It was like God often mentioned paradise, but not one living individual had seen paradise before. It was the same thing.

  “I was thankful for the director’s trust in me, but I shall not die. I still have my family that needs me. That was the first time I entered the door, and it was also the first time I saw ‘hell’.

  “The patients numbered one to ten were all kept behind that door, and the hospital behind the door was at least ten times larger than the hospital outside the door.”


  At this point, the diary had a few more pages torn out of it. Chen Ge could do nothing to help this. All he could do was continue reading.

  “I have cured the illness of Patient 0010, but in the process, I have exposed my own illness. It was on that day that they removed my doctor’s coat, I was no longer the Doctor Gao among the patients but Patient 0011 among the doctors. I have lost my name, but I will never forget my past.”


  At this point, Chen Ge’s heart skipped a beat. He stared at the name on the entry, and his eyes did not blink for a long time.

  “Doctor Gao? The same Doctor Gao that I know?”


  Chen Ge envisioned the timeline in his mind. The shadow left Chen Ge when Chen Ge was six years old, and it was locked inside the hospital in the shape of a rag doll. The diary mentioned that this Doctor Gao’s wife was still alive then, and his daughter was just learning how to talk. Then it later mentioned that Doctor Gao worked for some time as a night doctor before he was exposed, turned into a patient, and locked together with the ghost fetus.

  Chen Ge was about to be twenty-seven, and Gao Ru Xue was twenty-two. In terms of age, everything made sense.

  “Could Patient 0011 really be Doctor Gao?” Chen Ge focused his attention on the handwriting in the diary. The sense of familiarity hit him again. “This does look familiar to Doctor Gao’s handwriting.”


  “x Year x Month x Day, the patients that the doctors at this hospital hate the most are patient like myself because if they let their guard down, they will slowly be convinced by our argument and then gradually lose themselves, joining us. I know that I am hated. Many people at the hospital wish me dead. That’s probably why they locked me up with this monster. They want me to die in here. Perhaps, in their eyes, I am just a tool to incite this monster. They all believe that I will die by its hand, but in reality, they have all underestimated me.

  “The monsters were called monsters because we were looking at them from the perspective of humans. Perhaps in the eyes of a monster, what differentiates us humans from a twisted and pitiable monster?

  “To prevent myself from getting killed by my roommate, I started a systematic treatment on him. I have never tried my best to cure someone in my life before. Of course, the aim was not to cure him. I just wanted to try everything I could to turn him into my helper, to aid me in escaping from this godforsaken place.

  “Everyone called him a monster, but I was willing to refer to him by his name. I needed a whole night to uncover his name. The monster gave himself the name ‘Chen Ge’. Whether I escaped this place or not, I probably would remember this name for life.”


  The entries that followed were sporadic, and many pages were missing. Chen Ge had no clue what exactly happened inside this room, but he was certain of one thing. The ghost fetus’ collapsed and twisted worldview was slowly being rectified with Doctor Gao’s help.

  He was no longer a monster possessed by curse and hatred but an ‘anomaly’ who had a way of thinking that was different from normal. The doctors at the hospital hoped that Doctor Gao would be killed, but several weeks had passed, and Doctor Gao was still alive.

  In fact, he managed to gain contact with the other patients under the watchful gaze of the doctors. In the later part of Doctor Gao’s diary, Patient 0005 and Patient 0006 were mentioned several times. With the cooperation of most of the patients and a small number of doctors, the preparation was long and tedious, but they finally found the chance that they were waiting for.

  The diary did not go into detail about what that chance was, but from side notes and allusions in the diary, Doctor Gao’s chance was related to Patient 0002. Something happened in the hospital behind the door. Doctor Gao latched onto this opportunity that rarely presented itself and prepared to escape with the rag doll. They almost succeeded, but ultimately, they had underestimated the hospital’s horror.

  Doctor Gao’s diary did not mention how he was recaptured; it merely detailed the consequences of being captured. The rag doll was imprisoned behind a black iron door while curses were applied to Doctor Gao until he almost died from it.

  A normal person would have summitted at this point, but Doctor Gao was not a normal person. He chose to lie low for a while. To survive, nothing was beyond the man. Time was meaningless behind the door. He had started to accept the illness that he had, the one that he was born with and the one they gave him. Many unfortunate events were happening to him, but from the entries in the diary, the words were all uplifting and inspirational.

  This was more than a simple change of the mind; he had completely accepted the illness as part of his own making. He no longer sought ways to cure it but chose to accept it. The diary did not mention the illness in detail. Chen Ge believed that was Doctor Gao’s greatest secret. After all, he had encountered the maddened Doctor Gao in Li Wan City before. He was entwined by chains and was impossibly strong.

  The dates in the diary had all been crossed off. Who knew how long passed before Doctor Gao got his second chance? Similarly, the details of this second chance were not mentioned. It merely alluded to Patient 0001 and the red city. After learning the lesson from before, Doctor Gao and the ghost fetus, who had been preparing for a long time, managed to escape from that hospital with most of the patients.

  That was where the diary ended, but it had left a lasting impression on Chen Ge. Many pieces had started to fall into place. If his prediction was not wrong, many questions would be answered.

  “When Doctor Gao first heard my name from Gao Ru Xue, he became interested in me. When I was doing the mission at Mu Yang High School, he even personally called to give me guidance in the middle of the night. Other than that, I found a lot of information about the haunted house that Doctor Gao had collected at his house. He probably started the investigation into my haunted house a long time ago. Now that I think about it, perhaps the death of Doctor Gao’s wife was related to this hospital. The whole thing that he had set from when he was still alive to after his death was not only to revive his wife but perhaps to seek revenge as well.”


  Closing the diary, the question that Doctor Gao asked when they were at the underground morgue appeared in Chen Ge’s mind.

  “Good versus evil and sin versus punishment, there is a dichotomy to everything in this world.” The man held up the head in his palm. “Then, what is the opposite of human?”


  Now that he had gotten a better sense of Doctor Gao’s past, Chen Ge had a renewed understanding of this statement.