Breathing grew difficult, as if he had waded into a thick fog. His body felt damp, and everything before his eyes was draped in a thin veil of blood.
Was this the world beyond the door?
Chen Ge remembered Nan's instructions. He didn't speak a word. Pig-slaughter knife in one hand, skull-crushing hammer in the other, he surveyed his surroundings.
The walls, the floor, the furnishings inside Ward Three — everything was identical to the world on the other side of the door.
He turned around and looked back. His heartbeat quickened.
The door to Room Three stood open, but what lay beyond it was not the real corridor.
The difference was stark. It was a long, immaculate hallway — no debris, no clutter, nothing piled along its length.
The bedding and dummies that had littered the floor were gone entirely. The ward behind the door looked as though someone cleaned it every day.
Chen Ge silently approached the doorway. He reached his hand outside. His arm didn't vanish. The door appeared to be one-way.
He couldn't speak — there was no way to call out to Zhang Ya. Gritting his teeth, he stepped out of Ward Three. The instant his head emerged, he saw someone in the corridor.
Not the monsters he had imagined. Not the living, not the dead. They were dummies — figures stitched together from pillows and bedsheets.
They stood along the corridor like scarecrows, their crude faces painted with vacant expressions, grinning blankly, impossible to tell whether they were happy or in pain.
Why were these things here, too — inside the world behind the door?
Chen Ge had initially assumed the dummies hidden among the bedding were just some kind of prank. But after seeing them here as well, he reconsidered.
The nurse fed the patients their medicine every night. She even kept a dedicated notebook, recording each patient's name and maintaining their medical files.
Most critically, these patients had all died in the real world. The dummies before him very likely carried their residual thoughts.
Residual thoughts were far weaker than vengeful ghosts, but when their numbers were dozens of times greater, even a vengeful ghost might not hold its ground.
While Chen Ge studied the dummy, the one that had been hanging its head seemed to sense something. Its body swiveled, and its crude, childlike features stared blankly at Chen Ge.
Standing at the entrance to Room Three, Chen Ge felt sweat bead in his palms.
The dummy's body began to slowly shuffle forward. Chen Ge raised the pig-slaughter knife.
The two drew closer, but the dummy had no interest in Chen Ge. It swayed past him and tottered down the opposite end of the corridor.
No purpose, nothing it wanted to do. It drifted along in a stupor, and when it grew tired, it stopped to lean against the wall and rest — like a marionette with its strings cut.
Chen Ge had encountered many residual thoughts. They formed when an obsession was too deep to forget, binding the soul to the mortal world.
But the residual thought inside this dummy was entirely different. It seemed to be missing its memories, or perhaps it had sealed its heart completely, locking its soul away in some inner chamber.
The dummy didn't attack Chen Ge. Naturally, he wasn't about to go looking for trouble. He slipped quietly out of Ward Three and examined the walls on both sides.
The fog-draped walls bore obvious scratch marks. Zhang Ya must have left them.
He followed the trail to the second floor. The moment he stepped out of the stairwell, Chen Ge nearly cried out.
The second-floor corridor was filled with dummies swaying back and forth, drifting aimlessly, indifferent to everything around them.
There were too many of them. Some had toppled to the ground, their bodies marred by scratches from black hair. Zhang Ya had likely carved a path straight through them.