A number of blankets and quilts were scattered across the dim corridor, their lumps bulging as though concealing something underneath.
The craftsmanship was crude, but the shape of a person was just barely discernible.
What made it truly disturbing was that a face had been drawn on one of the pillows with colored markers — eyes, nose, a split-open mouth. It looked exactly like a child's doodle, and yet it made Chen Ge's skin crawl.
"That doesn't make sense."
He forced down the urge to smash them all with his hammer and started thinking.
"The twenty-four mannequins in my haunted house are far more terrifying than these pillow-and-sheet dummies in every respect. I didn't feel a shred of fear standing in front of those mannequins, but just being near these things puts me on edge."
He turned the dummy over. On the back of the pillow, an unfamiliar name was written — Li Chunyan.
"Why are there names on them?" The dummies looked like children playing house — sometimes kids would use dolls or stuffed figures to stand in for mom and dad, or use them to represent a real person.
He tossed a handful of salt onto the dummy's face and watched for two or three minutes. Nothing changed. Then he walked a few paces forward and flipped open another blanket. Beneath it lay another dummy made of bedsheets and pillows.
"Zhang Qisi?" Another name was written on the back.
Chen Ge looked down the corridor at the heaps of tattered blankets and felt a chill creep up his spine. "Does every dummy have a name? Are these dummies supposed to represent real people?"
The mounds of blankets rising from the corridor floor looked like row upon row of grave humps. Chen Ge's hand tightened on his skull-crushing hammer until sweat slicked the grip. He had a feeling that after this trial mission, his nerves would be sturdier than ever before.
He had barely walked ten meters before both bags of salt were used up.
It turned out that salt wasn't all that effective against whatever lurked here. The oppressive, unpleasant aura in the corridor hadn't weakened at all — if anything, it was growing stronger.
"I'll save the last bag of salt. I can't afford to waste any more." With every few steps, Chen Ge glanced back over his shoulder. He was half afraid he'd walk into a classic horror movie scene — a whole line of dummies swaying along behind him.
Every muscle in his body wound tight, Chen Ge made up his mind: even if one of those dummies did stand up behind him, he'd charge straight at it, pound it into pulp with his hammer, and finish it off with his butcher's knife.
"No need to panic. I've still got plenty of cards left to play." Whether he was explaining this to his livestream audience or reassuring himself, Chen Ge wasn't sure. Either way, as he pushed deeper into the Third Ward, the stream's viewership was climbing at a frightening rate. Meanwhile, Qin Guang's broadcast had hit a plateau, his numbers steadily declining — propped up now only by the big spenders' tips.
The patient rooms in the Third Ward were different from the other two. Every single one was a private room. What struck him as odd was that there wasn't even a bed in any of them, as though nobody had ever been admitted.
"I heard Dr. Gao say that the Third Ward only has ten rooms and only nine patients are on record. So what are all these extra rooms for?"
None of the rooms were numbered. They all had the same plain doors painted the same white, but they appeared to have never been opened. They couldn't have been meant for housing patients.
"The First Ward was packed to the brim — beds were even set up in the hallways. Yet here in the Third Ward, it's completely empty. They'd rather leave the rooms vacant than put patients in them. Is there some deeper reason for that?"
Chen Ge crept forward with extreme caution. When he reached the midpoint of the fourth-floor corridor, the stench in the air suddenly intensified.
Alongside the cold draft, a new sound reached his ears.
It was hard to describe — like countless people gasping and struggling to wake from a nightmare.