"Why are you asking this question?" Xu Tong regretted the words as soon as he left his mouth. He glanced at the skull-crushing hammer in Chen Ge's hand, and his tongue suddenly became much more nimble: "Wang Haiming used to be a patient here. He was locked up in Building Three several times for constantly breaking the rules. That guy was quite interesting."
"Be specific."
"He was originally just a regular patient in the general ward, living on the second floor of Building Two. It's just that there was something wrong with this man's head — he kept insisting that he wasn't mentally ill." Xu Tong forced out an ugly grin. "We all know perfectly well that we're sick, but only this fool went around blurting out the truth."
Being called a fool by a diagnosed mental patient — if Wang Haiming were still alive, he'd probably feel pretty insulted.
Xu Tong's grin carried a hint of the macabre. His perspective was different from a normal person's; he probably still believed even now that he wasn't sick.
"What happened next?" Chen Ge discovered that talking to mental patients was actually quite dangerous, especially patients like Xu Tong, who were always able — without even trying — to灌输 their own warped view of the world into other people.
"Wang Haiming not only refused to cooperate with the doctors' treatment, but when the hospital tried to take coercive measures, he got into a physical altercation with the orderlies."
"Assaulting medical staff — that's the most serious offense in a psychiatric hospital. Wang Haiming was punished by the hospital that very day. At first they just locked him in the isolation room, but this guy was far gone. Not long after he came out, he got into a fight with a nurse over refusing to take his medication. He fantasized that he was a multi-millionaire who could buy half the hospital, and threatened that once he got out, he'd make all the doctors and nurses pay. About ten minutes later, the fool had to pay for his own words. The hospital used a straitjacket and sent him to the isolation room in Building Three."
"That was his first time in Building Three. When we saw a new arrival, we all got pretty excited, but he was not friendly at all — he even spat on me."
"He looked full of energy, cursing the whole way. This poor new guy had no idea what being sent to Building Three meant, but he was about to find out."
"The isolation room in Building Three has another name — electroconvulsive therapy room. It's one of the physical treatment methods commonly used in psychiatry. The doctors who use it on patients all say it's quite effective."
"Of course, as a proper private hospital, to improve patient comfort and safety during treatment, they typically administer intravenous anesthetics and muscle relaxants as well."
"The isolation room had excellent soundproofing. When Wang Haiming came out again, he was much more well-behaved. We all thought the treatment had been very effective."
"He stayed quiet for a few days before getting into another dispute with the orderlies over secretly hoarding medication. This man had a natural adventurous spirit — maybe before he entered the hospital, he really was a successful businessman with tens of millions in assets."
"The second time he came out of the isolation room, we all thought Wang Haiming had finally resigned himself to his fate. But who could have guessed — the guy actually plotted an escape in the dead of night. And what no one expected was that he actually succeeded."
"Granted, he was caught and brought back the next day. But during that one night of freedom, he managed to contact his ex-wife. Nobody knows what they discussed, but less than a month later, his ex-wife had all the paperwork sorted out and came to take him home."
Through Xu Tong's words, Chen Ge gained a much deeper understanding of Wang Haiming. "How do you know all this?"
"After he was brought back, his freedom was restricted. The hospital decided to put him in the vacant Room Three in Building Three. But after just one night in that room, he nearly died. The hospital had no choice but to let him stay with me temporarily." Xu Tong's twisted face had gradually returned to normal.
"Do you know what happened to him in that room that night?"
"It seems like he saw a lot of people. The room was full of — full of so many people."
"All this — he told you?" Chen Ge hadn't expected things to be this complicated. Wang Haiming had actually stayed in Room Three of Building Three.
"Why would I go talk to a fool?" Xu Tong said dismissively. "That madman talked to himself every night. I just happened to overhear a part of it."
Chen Ge nodded. If he wanted to get to the bottom of all this, he'd probably have to enter Building Three himself.
"Second question — after the hospital was sealed and shut down, why did you patients from Building Three come back here?"
"Coming back here, well, everyone had their own reasons. I don't know about anyone else; I only know my own situation." Xu Tong looked at Chen Ge. "Only here can I avoid being watched by the likes of you, and only here will you people not bother me."
"It's time for your medicine." Chen Ge stood up. Xu Tong really might not be lying.
The old man and the woman had both trembled when they mentioned the one-armed man, but when they saw Xu Tong, they didn't show much of an emotional reaction. The old man had even dared to bite his hand raw. That alone showed that Xu Tong was different from the deformed face and the one-armed man — he hadn't done any of those horrifying things.
The iron cage had been hammered into an unrecognizable shape by Chen Ge. He silently set the hammer aside. "I heard that a female nurse once died in Building Three. Do you know anything about that?"
"I know. The hospital even held a memorial service for that fat woman in the second-floor activity room, hoping that patients, patients' families, and doctors could come to understand each other." Xu Tong seemed to sense what Chen Ge was going to ask next. He waved his hand. "The nurse's death had nothing to do with me. The police questioned me about it. That night I stayed right in my room, didn't say a single word to her, didn't even lay eyes on her."
Chen Ge nodded and asked Xu Tong a few more questions about Building Three and the hospital's director, but unfortunately his knowledge was quite limited.
Xu Tong was one of those very docile patients. His condition was that he couldn't come into contact with living people. The more people he saw, the more agitated he became — he felt that everyone's face looked the same and wished he could kill them all. But when he was left alone in a room, he would appear perfectly normal, just like any ordinary person.
"I hope everything you've said is the truth." Chen Ge found two cameras and set them up. He pulled out his phone for a quick glance.
The screen had gone black for so long, but his viewer count hadn't dropped — it had actually broken through one hundred and fifty thousand. His livestream channel name had even appeared on the donation leaderboard.
"What's going on?" After checking the chat, Chen Ge finally realized what had happened. Although he'd taken down all the cameras and covered them, the microphone was still clipped to his collar!
Xu Tong's scream from earlier — along with the entire conversation about the nurse's death — had been broadcast live!
It was an accidental stroke of luck. The heat was skyrocketing, his ranking was shooting up the charts, and the entire screen was flooded with messages: "Holy crap! This is so real!"
Chen Ge didn't know what to say at this point. Things had already gone this far — rather than looking over his shoulder, he might as well throw all his worries to the wind.
"Thank you all for the gifts, thank you Silly Little Fairy for the donation, thank you to every single one of you watching the stream!" Chen Ge pointed the camera at himself. "What you're seeing, what you're hearing — it's not necessarily all fake! Tonight, I'm going to bring each and every one of you a livestream that can never, ever be replicated!"