"I pushed this door open. You're in my world now."
Time seemed to slow. As Dr. Gao's emotions shifted, the entire blood-red world was affected.
"There has never been absolute good or evil in this world, no perfectly fair right or wrong. Even the so-called sin and punishment are nothing more than rules made by man."
Dr. Gao stood quietly where he was. Blood threads emerged from his body one by one, forming a series of different faces.
"I know you'll think I'm making excuses for myself, but if you truly stood in my position, you'd realize that what I've done wasn't wrong — or rather, can't be simply described as wrong."
"Dr. Gao, stop trying to justify yourself. Anyone else in your shoes — even I — would never do something so insane!" Chen Ge had already raised his skull-cracking hammer. He was very close to Dr. Gao. "Everything in this world is relative. Where there is good, there is bad. Where there is virtue, there is evil. The only difference lies in the choices you make. Since you've already made yours, why bother finding so many lofty reasons to justify them?"
Xu Yin and Xiong Qing's battle was going poorly, and Men Nan was far from being a match for Dr. Gao's wife. What had looked like an even standoff would completely collapse in a matter of minutes. If Chen Ge wanted to turn the tide, he had to take Dr. Gao out before the others finished fighting. Any mercy at this point would drag him into the abyss. He had no intention of dying and then having his soul fall into a madman's hands, tortured day and night.
Blood rain drifted down, pelting his body. Dr. Gao listened carefully to every word Chen Ge had said.
He watched the iron hammer swinging toward him, his eyes filled with an indescribable complexity.
"You still don't understand the true nature of this world. This world is made up of people. The world looks different to every single person. Like you said — if everything in the world is relative, and virtue is opposed by evil, and good is opposed by bad, then tell me: what is opposed to people?"
"What's opposed to people?" Chen Ge's heart skipped a beat. He had heard this question somewhere before but couldn't remember where.
The skull-cracking hammer was nearly upon him. The wind it kicked up stung his face, yet Dr. Gao still didn't dodge. He gazed at Chen Ge, and in his eyes there seemed to be an entire world.
Something stirred dimly in Chen Ge's mind. He felt as though he'd once had a similar conversation with someone, somewhere: "What's opposed to people are beasts, or monsters, or ghosts."
"All wrong. I studied people for years, and in the end I discovered that if you must find something truly opposed to humanity, it should actually be God."
Blood threads spread densely. A single drop of bright red appeared from within, blooming across Dr. Gao's white coat. Like a spider lily in full flower, it spread rapidly across that garment symbolizing redemption and life.
"For these past five or six years, I've spent almost every night accompanied by corpses, living down here in the underground morgue, building a world of my own. Slowly, I forgot what it means to be human. I even forgot that I myself was one."
"I've seen thousands of patients. I've witnessed the different worlds reflected in each of their eyes — twisted, grotesque, pallid. I kept wondering: people who seem to live in another world entirely, can they still be called human?"
"Or perhaps, from a different perspective, all abnormal people — they are the gods of their own respective worlds."
When those words left his mouth, Dr. Gao's white coat was thoroughly dyed red. He had become a doctor clad entirely in crimson.
"This is my world. I am the god here. How can mere humans hope to stand against a god?"
The skull-cracking hammer struck down upon Dr. Gao's head. If you looked closely, you'd notice that the hammer's face had only touched his hair, bending a few strands.