Chapter 160: You're Not Joking, Are You?!

After the woman's mouth was sealed, the old man and the middle-aged man in the iron cage reverted to their previous states.

They seemed to be extremely sensitive to the word "hand." The moment they heard it, it was like a switch had been flipped in their memories—their terror was reawakened, and the most horrifying recollections surged up from the depths of their minds.

"Why are they so afraid of hands?"

Chen Ge circled the room but found nothing related to hands. He examined the bodies of the three patients once more—there were no obvious wounds on them. That fear seemed to stem more from psychological trauma.

"What kind of thing could scare three people this badly?" Chen Ge gripped the tool hammer, his mind racing. A possibility occurred to him.

According to the records Doctor Gao had provided, the patient in Room 4 of the Third Ward had lost an arm in an accident and had subsequently developed phantom limb syndrome—constantly feeling as though the limb was still there.

This patient had no name. Chen Ge wasn't sure if Doctor Gao had simply forgotten it, or if someone with an agenda had deliberately erased it.

"As far as I can recall, the only person who could be connected to 'hands' is this one."

Phantom limb syndrome wasn't some terrifying disease—it was classified as a relatively mild psychological condition that could be gradually treated and recovered from through therapy.

Chen Ge knew all of this about phantom limb syndrome. What truly unsettled him was: why would someone suffering from phantom limb syndrome be locked inside a closed ward?

What had they done? Why had the hospital deemed this person dangerous?

Chen Ge walked back to the woman's side. The middle-aged man refused to communicate, and the old man seemed unable to speak, so the breakthrough point still lay with the woman.

He crouched beside the iron cage and looked into the girl's eyes. Since she couldn't communicate with him normally, he would have to use a different method to probe.

Leaning close to the cage, Chen Ge made sure the girl could hear his voice: "Did you see a lot of hands?"

The girl didn't show any abnormal reaction—she simply shrank her body into the far corner, as far from Chen Ge as possible.

"Then did you see a person with only one arm?"

Before he had even finished speaking, the woman inside the iron cage began shaking her head desperately, her head slamming hard against the bars.

The woman's extreme reaction said a great deal. The perpetrator who had given her nightmares and driven her mad might very well have possessed only one arm.

Chen Ge stared at the woman's face, watching every subtle shift in her expression: "Was that person carrying a weapon?"

Her eyes widened. Blue veins began to surface across her forehead.

"What were they carrying? A saw? A knife? Or an axe?"

"Mmgh!" The woman's mouth was stuffed with the pillowcase. She was emotionally agitated but unable to make a sound.

"So it's one of those. Let me think about what he did in front of you." Chen Ge's voice gradually dropped lower. "Hacking? Slicing? Did he tell you that you were born deformed, not perfect enough, and that he wanted to fix all of that? Or did he want to take your arm?"

"The number of people being held captive was decreasing. When they were 'correcting' the patients, you were right there beside them—you were an eyewitness. You saw the whole thing, didn't you?"