"The youngest personality? Men Nan's third personality is deeply hidden and rarely shows itself. I can't guarantee I can do this — you'd better prepare yourself mentally for the possibility of failure." The sound of a door opening came from Dr. Gao's end of the line. He had already rushed out of his house.
"What I encountered can only be clarified by that childlike personality. Dr. Gao, no matter what method you use, you have to wake him up!" The door was being slammed against from the other side, the thuds ringing out without pause, and Dr. Gao could hear every last one of them through the phone.
"I'll do my best!" He had come to know Chen Ge through Gao Ruxue. At first, he had only regarded Chen Ge as an ordinary psychology enthusiast, but after Chen Ge stepped in to help him treat Wang Xin and Men Nan for free, his impression of Chen Ge changed dramatically — and it also stirred up some doubts in his mind.
Especially in Heming Apartments. That night, he too had seen something extraordinary. He just hadn't told anyone, burying it deep inside, wanting to find the answer on his own.
The call wasn't disconnected. Dr. Gao drove toward the hospital where Men Nan was staying. Chen Ge had his back pressed against the door, straining to hold it.
After roughly two or three minutes, the banging on the door showed no sign of stopping. Worse still, from Ward Eight not far away came the sound of chains sliding.
That specially reinforced iron door slowly shifted open a sliver.
A lopsided, deformed face peered out. Its neck stretched long, and wearing a psychiatrist's coat, it stepped out from the room.
"So this one was hiding in the ward." Chen Ge had tried to open the door earlier without success. Thinking it over carefully, the deformed face had probably been pulling tricks from inside.
The skull-crushing hammer was propped against the door of Ward Three at an angle, so all he had to work with now was the pig-slaughter knife.
"This guy is just a mental patient — dealing with him should be simpler than the nurse. If he were truly powerful, there would have been no need for him to flee back in the laundry room of the Second Building."
Chen Ge studied the deformed face, weighing whether to lock him inside a room as well.
"I wonder what would happen if a living person entered the world beyond the door. If he makes a move on me, that would be a perfect chance to run an experiment." The more dangerous the situation, the calmer Chen Ge became. He gripped the pig-slaughter knife tight and adjusted the position of the skull-crushing hammer to form a fulcrum. This way, even if he stopped bracing the door with his body, it wouldn't swing open immediately.
After midnight, something subtle changed about the deformed face. His expression grew even more deranged, and with both hands empty, he walked toward Chen Ge at a pace that was neither fast nor slow.
"Something's off." Chen Ge's sharp senses caught the discrepancy at once. Back in the Second Building, this guy had fled in a panic even while wielding an axe. Yet now, after entering the Third Building, he dared to approach Chen Ge empty-handed when Chen Ge was armed with a blade and a hammer.
The white cat's fur bristled as well. Earlier, when fighting the nurse, it had leapt from Chen Ge's shoulder and was now baring its fangs at the deformed face.
Facing both a man and a cat, the deformed face behaved entirely differently from before. That face, which looked as though it had been surgically altered, twisted into an ugly grin.
He walked slower and slower, as though weighed down by something immensely heavy. His shoulders sank, and every step appeared to require tremendous effort.
"That posture looks a bit like Wang Shenglong..."
Chen Ge held the pig-slaughter knife horizontally across his chest. The thing he least wanted to see was happening.
The deformed face's mouth split wider and wider, and on his back, a second head emerged.
It was a perfectly ordinary head. The truly horrifying part came next. Like a person crouching on the ground slowly rising to their feet, a gaunt, elongated monster nearly two and a half meters tall unfolded itself from the deformed man's back.
Its lower body was fused to the deformed face's back, while its upper body pressed against the ceiling, curving forward like a human-headed serpent reaching toward Chen Ge.