Having Chen Ge kill Zuo Han — that might have been the hospital's plan from the very beginning!
The way to make a madman even madder was to dig up the bloody secrets buried at the bottom of his heart and then present them to him all over again in a different form.
"Is this therapy?" Chen Ge's fist slowly clenched.
Compared to Chen Ge, Zuo Han appeared far calmer: "It seems the hospital had a treatment process mapped out, but for various reasons, they were forced to use their contingency measures ahead of schedule."
Both of these patients were extraordinarily unusual. Chen Ge had an exceedingly complicated past, and the hospital had devoted all its attention to him — in doing so, they had underestimated Zuo Han.
They hadn't anticipated that Zuo Han would even doubt his own memories, throwing the entire "treatment" process into disarray.
The original plan had been disrupted. Now these two highly perceptive patients were slowly seizing the initiative.
"Mm, the hospital's behavior has only confirmed our theory." Chen Ge set down his fork. "But why would they do this?"
"Exactly — that's the part that confuses me too. Whether you're talking about brains or practical value, I should be considerably more useful than you, shouldn't I? Even if I fall short in some respects, I shouldn't be reduced to just one more 'medicinal ingredient' in your treatment, should I?" Zuo Han's voice was gloomy.
"You're a medicinal ingredient in my treatment? Living people as medicine?" Something seemed to surface in Chen Ge's mind, but he stopped himself from thinking further. "It's going to be an eventful night. To keep the hospital from getting suspicious, I'm afraid you'll have to put up with a few inconveniences."
"You're planning to jab a few holes in me with that fork?" The conversation between Zuo Han and Chen Ge was sounding more and more like that of two patients.
"Nothing quite that dramatic." Chen Ge eyed the last remaining pill. "Do you think I should eat half a pill and see? Just to experience what it feels like?"
"Have you lost your mind?" one mental patient asked another, with complete sincerity.
"If you survive tonight, the hospital will probably keep feeding me this medication. I need to know what it feels like so I can act more convincingly." Chen Ge didn't know why, but when it came to honing his acting skills, he was deadly serious — it was professional instinct etched into his very bones. "Don't come too close to me tonight."
With that, he dipped a fingertip into the powder and touched it to his tongue. He didn't hesitate for a second.
"That's a bit extreme, even for you." Zuo Han took a step back. He was a very clever person — in terms of pure intellect, he was absolutely certain he was no inferior to Chen Ge — but he was slowly realizing that the gap between them was enormous.
"Tastes the same as the white pills. In other words, those black threads don't have any particular smell." Chen Ge pressed his lips together, turned to face Zuo Han, and sat down on his hospital bed.
To guard against any accidents, he deliberately picked up the restraint straps and bound his own wrists together.
"Is it because the dose was too small? I don't feel anything at all. What a waste — I used too much feeding those bugs earlier." Chen Ge's gaze was calm. The pain in his skull, while searing his soul, had also pried open a hairline crack in the "lock" branded onto his memories.
No suffering was ever endured in vain. Chen Ge had already figured out how to think while sidestepping that pain. As long as he didn't touch his past — didn't dwell on words with special significance — the pain, even if triggered, wouldn't knock him out cold.
"Any drug takes time to take effect. You can slowly feel the changes in your body and mind." Zuo Han had retreated to the far corner of the room — as far from Chen Ge as physically possible. His back was pressed against the wall, his face a mask of bitter resignation. "The hospital wants you to kill me with your own hands. That means killing me would trigger something deep inside you. I suppose we must have been good friends in the past."
"In your memories, you were a student at a forensic medicine academy — a completely different life trajectory from mine. How could we have become friends? Or rather, what was the bond between us?" Chen Ge couldn't think deeply. Right now, Zuo Han was his brain.
"Maybe you really were a haunted house owner before. I'm a person with an insatiable curiosity and a fierce competitive streak. I probably visited your haunted house at some point, and you got the better of me. I was too stubborn to accept that, so I kept coming back to challenge you, and eventually we developed a mutual respect? And from there, friendship?" Zuo Han knew his own personality well enough to say this off the cuff. "The hospital's behavior has actually revealed some very important information. At the very least, the two of us can trust each other completely."
Chen Ge sat on the bed, carefully observing the changes in his body. "There should be other friends of ours among the hospital's patients. Zhang Jingjiu, for example. I don't think he's the only one like that."
"But why would this situation arise?" Zuo Han thought back carefully. "When we went to find Zhang Jingjiu, he didn't react to my voice at all — but he responded to yours. None of us have any connection to each other. Everyone is only connected to you."
"Exactly. I've had the same feeling. I'm the center of every causal chain." Chen Ge looked at the metal fork on his tray. "It seems like every one of you was prepared by the hospital as a 'medicinal ingredient' just for me."
Layer by layer, the hospital's veils were being peeled back by Chen Ge and Zuo Han. What had appeared on the surface to be a place of hope and healing for its patients — its true face might shock every last one of them.
An hour later, black granules began to surface on Chen Ge's skin. Perhaps because the dose had been too small, those black particles couldn't link up into threads inside his body.
As the black granules appeared, Chen Ge's eyes turned bloodshot. His chest heaved, and veins bulged along his arms.
"Are you… alright?" Zuo Han stood at the doorway, gripping the door handle, ready to bolt at any moment.
"Those black granules seem to contain negative emotions and some kind of force. They're trying to seize control of my body. There's another force inside me that's suppressing them, preventing them from taking effect. That suppressing force seems to be emanating from my heart."
Chen Ge focused on the changes running through his body. "These black granules were designed to draw out the power in my chest. Could it be that my second personality is hidden in my heart? If I really am schizophrenic, shouldn't the second personality exist inside my mind?"
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Chen Ge murmured to himself. By the door, Zuo Han's expression was taut with anxiety, not daring to say a single word in reply.
Time ticked by, second by second. The black granules inside Chen Ge's body grew ever more active. His current state was deeply unstable — his eyes were laced with a web of red veins, and the sight was genuinely terrifying.
"After entering the body, the drug reaches peak potency in three hours. And unless it's released, that stimulation will persist indefinitely." Chen Ge's face was twisted into a grimace, yet his voice was calmer than it had ever been. "I only consumed a pinch of powder. If I'd swallowed the whole pill, my psychological defenses would have been shattered in an instant. I'd have killed my roommate in my sleep without even realizing it."
"Hey, I'm right here — at least consider my feelings when you say things like that."
"Then again, this drug does seem to have its benefits. Since taking it, the weakness in my body has noticeably diminished. That sensation of being bound up with no strength to move is gradually fading." There were pros and cons — and Chen Ge's greatest talent was finding something useful to hold onto even in the depths of a desperate situation.
At one in the morning, Chen Ge judged that the drug's effects would intensify no further. He forcibly snapped the restraints on his wrists and picked up the metal fork from the tray. "Zuo Han — if you don't run fast enough, you might end up with a few extra holes in you. But don't worry, I'll avoid the vital spots."
"Wait — you're starting already?!" The words had barely left Zuo Han's mouth when Chen Ge seemed to transform into an entirely different person.
A bloodthirsty gleam blazed in his eyes. His contorted face was suffused with a kind of morbid longing, as though he couldn't wait to destroy every living thing in sight — as though only blood and slaughter could soothe his soul.
"Holy—" Even though they'd planned this in advance, Zuo Han was terrified all over again. He simply couldn't believe Chen Ge was acting. The realism had surpassed two hundred percent. Fear was sprouting inside him like poisonous weeds, growing wild and unchecked.
One leg was in a cast, making movement difficult — but Chen Ge dropped to the ground and crawled like a beast.