Chen Ge pushed open the bathroom door on the first floor. The mirror on the wall had been covered with black cloth, and the stall door had been sealed shut.
"Visitors tour the place during the daytime. The blood door in the mirror only appears at midnight. Under normal circumstances, the two should never cross paths. But that doesn't rule out someone with bad intentions sneaking into the haunted house late at night and accidentally opening the stall door — like Zhang Peng, back then." Chen Ge removed the black cloth and stood in front of the mirror.
He knew nothing about the blood-colored world behind the mirror. He didn't even fully understand how the door had formed, let alone how to shut it or destroy it.
"My parents once said the door to the Third Ward had been opened again, which means it was originally closed. There might be a method to close the door hidden inside the Third Ward. If the door in the Third Ward is the same as the blood door in the mirror, then this trial mission is even more important for me."
Chen Ge kept watch until the stroke of midnight. The instant the clock hand swept past the twelve, the blood-red door appeared in the mirror right on time.
Within the span of just one minute, all manner of strange sounds drifted out from inside the stall. Compared to before, it seemed that even more things had congregated around the door.
"Maybe once I come back from the Third Ward, I can finally shut this blood door in the bathroom for good."
Back in the staff break room, Chen Ge had no intention of sleeping. He sat in a chair with a pen in hand, listing out everything he needed to prepare for tomorrow's livestream.
"A butcher's knife stained with blood year-round, a live rooster, salt…"
He crossed things out and made revisions until 1:50 AM, and still Chen Ge sat at the desk. He felt no drowsiness. Every few minutes he glanced at the clock, a hard-to-describe emotion creeping through him.
"It's still not enough. The difficulty of a three-star horror scenario should be several times that of the two-star Muyang High School. And I'm going in alone — I have to be absolutely prepared." Chen Ge checked the notes he'd written on the white paper. Before he'd even reached the bottom, his phone suddenly buzzed.
"It's almost two AM. Who would be calling me now?"
Chen Ge picked up the phone, glanced at the caller ID, and answered immediately: "Doctor Gao? You're looking for me?"
"I'm sorry to disturb you so late." Doctor Gao offered a polite apology, then cut straight to the point: "I obtained Wang Shenglong's past medical records and case files from his father. Cross-referencing them with our internal patient database, I found something strange."
"What is it?" Chen Ge perked up. For Doctor Gao to make a special late-night phone call, it had to be something important.
"This Wang Shenglong is actually extremely dangerous. He was involved in a murder when he was very young."
"A murder?!" Chen Ge could hardly believe it — that dim-witted, chubby kid capable of something like that.
"Hear me out. This whole thing is very strange." The sound of keyboard typing came through the phone. Doctor Gao appeared to be searching for something on his computer: "Wang Shenglong first went to a hospital for treatment at the age of six. The hospital was called the Third Mental Health Rehabilitation Center — a privately-run facility operating under a public banner, located in a remote suburban area. It was shut down four or five years ago."
"I heard Wang Hailong mention that hospital. His family was very poor back then, and the Third Hospital was relatively close to home, so they went there for treatment. That has nothing to do with murder, does it?" Chen Ge said over the phone.
"When he was first admitted, six-year-old Wang Shenglong already displayed intensely extreme emotions. He couldn't control himself and attacked doctors and family members."
"A six-year-old child, no matter how aggressive, shouldn't pose much of a threat to adults, right?"
"That's exactly what I thought. But the records show that when the boy went into a frenzy, he bit off a finger joint of another patient in the same ward. I have photos here — would you like to see?" Doctor Gao sent over a photograph with absolutely no pixelation at all.
Chen Ge took a quick look. It was a medical report that rated Wang Shenglong as "dangerous" and recommended temporary isolation.
"Injuring someone was only the beginning. To protect the safety of other patients, the hospital transferred six-year-old Wang Shenglong into the Third Closed Ward. What happened after that was even more horrifying." Doctor Gao clicked through his screen, selecting a few pages that could be shown without violating patient privacy, and sent them to Chen Ge via their messaging platform: "In the second month of Wang Shengling's stay in the closed ward, a heinous murder occurred in the Third Closed Ward. An on-duty nurse was killed. After examining the scene, police determined that the killer was not a single person — the murder was very likely carried out by every patient in the Third Closed Ward working together!"
"The patients killed the nurse together?" What Doctor Gao was describing was connected to the Third Ward, and it was all internal material, so Chen Ge listened with great care: "Doctor Gao, could you go into more detail about this case?"
"I don't know the exact details myself. I'm a doctor, not a police officer."
"Then you should be able to find records on the other patients in the Third Closed Ward, right?" Chen Ge wanted to know everything related to the Third Ward.
"Why are you asking about all this?"
"Pure curiosity. Don't worry — I absolutely won't leak any of it."
After much persuasion, Doctor Gao finally agreed.
"In the Third Ward of the Third Mental Health Rehabilitation Center, there are a total of ten rooms housing nine patients. All of them have been classified as having a certain degree of danger and are therefore under isolated treatment."
"The one in Room 1 is Wang Shenglong. His diagnosis is Angelman syndrome — also known as Happy Puppet Syndrome. Symptoms include frequent laughter, seizures, lack of verbal ability, and intellectual disability. He is the youngest in the Third Closed Ward and has the lowest danger rating."
"Room 2 houses a woman. Her name has been redacted, there is no photograph, and only a damaged case file remains in the archive. She suffers from severe depression triggered by Dorian Gray Syndrome — an obsessive focus on oneself, heavy use of cosmetics, multiple cosmetic surgeries, and an extreme fear of natural aging. Many female celebrities suffer from a similar condition."
"Room 3 of the Third Ward is an empty room. I'm not certain whether a patient was ever housed there."
Hearing this, Chen Ge suddenly recalled the note his parents had left him — one that specifically called out the third room of the Third Ward. "No records found doesn't necessarily mean there was no patient. There's something wrong with that room!"
"You make a good point. However, room numbers are assigned according to danger level. Even if there was a patient in there, they wouldn't have been particularly dangerous. It's possible the hospital simply overlooked it." Doctor Gao took a sip of tea and continued.
"The patient in Room 4 lost an arm in an accident and consequently developed phantom limb syndrome. After the amputation, he continued to feel as though the limb was still attached to his body — he could even sense temperature and pain and itch."