Chapter 289 |
Shen Ge believed that starting to question “whether or not I’ve gone crazy” meant he was beginning to doubt himself, and that in itself signaled that something was fundamentally wrong.
What’s more, the key issue was that he had no memory of that period. Or rather, the memories he thought he knew were “false memories.”
But judging from Wang Han’s current memories, at least this portion wasn’t “false”—it’s just that what Shen Ge saw differed from what everyone else saw.
Shen Ge didn’t know whether his own real memories were the same, but one thing was certain: the “Shen Ge” in Wang Han’s memories could no longer tell the difference between reality and dreams.
Because from Wang Han’s perspective, everything about “Shen Ge” seemed normal—it was Shen Ge who was the abnormal one. Yet in “Shen Ge’s” vision, he really did see the old man and San Zai.
Shen Ge watched as the “himself” in Wang Han’s memories was treated like a circus monkey, darting around the hospital while a crowd chased after him, only to be caught and locked back in his ward.
The next memory scene shifted to a crowded hospital room of less than ten square meters. A young boy was pinned against the cold wall. A doctor used a tool that looked like a dentist’s mouth gag to pry his jaw open, then poured food and nutritional supplements down his throat.
But in Shen Ge’s memory, during those dream visits, it wasn’t he who was force-fed—it was San Zai who’d been caught, and what was poured down his throat was bugs.
“I am San Zai, and San Zai is me… so from the very beginning, San Zai never existed. It was all an illusion?” Shen Ge frowned. It wasn’t that he refused to accept this truth—it was that this truth was worlds apart from “reality.” If there was no such thing as the supernatural, then who exactly was the whole world fighting?
Even if the Freak Organization had designs on Shen Ge and could get an entire hospital, an entire department, even an entire city to put on an “act” for him, they couldn’t get an entire country—the whole world—to join in the performance.
Shen Ge continued sifting through Wang Han’s memories, searching for a breakthrough point to wake him up. The following memory fragments didn’t change much, so he began channeling the power of the Dream Fragments, trying to forcibly enter Wang Han’s dream and jolt him awake.
Shen Ge held his breath, focusing his mind. The next moment, his consciousness followed the power of the Dream Fragments into Wang Han’s “memory.”
When he opened his eyes again, Shen Ge was already sitting by the hospital bed. Taking in the familiar ward, he felt a slight novelty—this was his first time entering this way.
Just as he was looking around, he heard the door creak open.
With a groan, the door swung inward, and Wang Han wheeled a cart inside.
“Eat something. Plain congee, corn, fish soup. If you keep starving yourself like this, you’re going to waste away to nothing.” Wang Han stood by the cart and spoke in a low, coaxing tone.
Shen Ge looked up at him and couldn’t help but wonder—was Wang Han always like this in this world, or had Shen Ge’s own presence somehow influenced him? He was actually being nice to the dream-“Shen Ge”?
“Wang Han, don’t you think you’ve played this game long enough? There’s a supernatural disaster brewing out there, and you’re still here playing hospital make-believe?” Shen Ge said, his tone tinged with exasperation.
But the moment the words left his mouth, Shen Ge suddenly felt an immense pulling force, as if the entire world was rejecting him. The next second, his consciousness was physically ejected from his body, snapping back into the pitch-black space and awakening within his own form.
“?”
What the hell?
When Shen Ge had entered Wang Han’s memory world, he hadn’t felt any rejection at all. That sudden pushback seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Wait—was it something I said?” Shen Ge replayed the sequence from entry to eviction. The only possible culprit was that very sentence.
“What, I have to role-play even in there?” The thought of having to play himself was instantly exasperating.
Worse—he wasn’t even crazy, and now he had to pretend to be?
With a sigh, Shen Ge decided to dial it back. He held his breath, re-focused, and once again used the Dream Fragments’ power to enter Wang Han’s dream.
He opened his eyes. Wang Han was still trying to convince “Shen Ge” to eat.
“Man, talk about patience.” Worried he’d get booted out again and waste more Dream Fragment energy, Shen Ge decided to play along with Wang Han’s script and look for an opportunity to snap him out of it.
Seeing that Shen Ge was willing to cooperate and actually start eating, Wang Han let out a relieved breath. He wheeled the cart out of the room, leaving Shen Ge to eat in peace, careful not to provoke him. After all, in Wang Han’s eyes, Shen Ge was mentally unstable; he might seem calm now, but any trigger could set him off again.
After Wang Han left, Shen Ge set the tray on the table and sat back down on the bed. “I didn’t feel that repulsive force this time, so my guess was right. In a world where ‘the ending is already set,’ if my consciousness enters this world, I have to act according to the memories and experiences of this version of me.”
Still, something felt off to Shen Ge. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but it gnawed at him—a vague, unsettling feeling.
It was an inexplicable sense of oppression, one that felt eerily familiar—much like the feeling of being watched during his first foray into the dream world.
Then, Shen Ge suddenly felt the bed frame tremble slightly, letting out a soft creak-creak. Something seemed to be crawling beneath the bed, making faint rustling sounds.
“?”
What the hell is that?
Shen Ge froze—not from fear, but because from outside the memory world, everything had seemed perfectly normal. How was it that the moment he stepped in, things started going sideways?
“Oh, so that’s how we’re playing this?” Shen Ge was determined to see just what kind of tricks this Dream Fragment world could throw at him.
In the cramped ward, those faint sounds seemed magnified a hundredfold. Feeling that familiar pressure closing in, Shen Ge got up from the bed and lifted the bedsheet.
And then, he came face-to-face with a pale, deeply wrinkled face—like that of an eighty- or ninety-year-old—pressed against the small “dog door” in the adjacent wall, staring right at him.
An old man. A dog door.
But neither the old man nor the dog door had existed in Wang Han’s memories when Shen Ge reviewed them. Back when “Shen Ge” had gone out to play “role-playing hide-and-seek” with the doctors and nurses, he hadn’t crawled out through a dog door under the bed—he’d squeezed through the meal slot at the bottom of the main door.
“Interesting.”
Facing that intensely oppressive old face, Shen Ge crouched by the bed and crooked his finger at him. “Wanna come over and sit down for a chat?”
The old man didn’t directly respond to Shen Ge’s invitation. Instead, he just kept calling Shen Ge’s name over and over through the hole, his mouth opening and closing like he was performing some kind of soul-summoning ritual.
Shen Ge grabbed the nearby spittoon and raised it like he was about to throw it. “We’re way past formalities, old man. Don’t make me get physical. I’m trying to be respectful of my elders here—but don’t push it.”
Truth be told, Shen Ge was mostly testing the “boundaries” of this Dream Fragment world. To his surprise, after saying that, he didn’t feel any repulsion.
He immediately realized that as long as he didn’t interfere too much with this world’s “Shen Ge” trajectory—as long as he let things play out toward their predetermined ending—he wouldn’t get kicked out.
“Shen Ge!”
“Shen Ge!”
The old man’s voice grew louder, sharper, more piercing.
Shen Ge grabbed the spittoon and, with a perfect bowling swing, smacked it right into the old man’s face. “Why you yelling so loud? Can’t you see I’m trying to think here?”
The old man was probably cursing up a storm in his head—damn, even ghosts have it rough these days. Can’t even scare people anymore.
Just then, Shen Ge noticed movement near the doorway. He turned his head and met Wang Han’s eyes, peering in through the observation window.
There was terror in his gaze. He’d clearly seen something nasty too.
And that left ShenGe genuinely puzzled. Before he’d entered Wang Han’s memory world, everything here was “normal.” So why, the moment he stepped inside, did paranormal activity start flaring up?
Thump!
A loud bang came from the door—sounded like Wang Han had stumbled and hit it. Shen Ge picked up the spittoon, walked to the door, stood on tiptoe, and peered out through the observation window. He saw Wang Han picking himself up off the floor and asked politely, “Want to come in and sit for a bit?”
“…”
Wang Han was completely dumbfounded. He gave an awkward chuckle and went back to sit in his chair, looking like he’d been caught doing something shameful.
Shen Ge’s original plan had been to get Wang Han inside so they could investigate the old man under the bed together, but Wang Han clearly wasn’t interested in a joint research project.
Shen Ge didn’t push it—if he interfered too much with Wang Han’s actions, the world’s will might catch on and boot him out again, forcing him to start all over.
So Shen Ge lay back down on the bed. A while later, he heard the door creak open softly. Wang Han tiptoed into the room, apparently wanting to investigate on the down-low.
Shen Ge was about to see what he was up to when Wang Han suddenly let out a shriek and scrambled frantically toward the door.
“Wait.” Shen Ge sat up and saw the old man crawling out from under the bed, half his body already in the open.
“Hey, old timer, you’re still here? It’s the middle of the night—shouldn’t you be in bed instead of cosplaying Sadako?” Shen Ge leaned over the edge of the bed, looking down at the old man from above.
From the old man’s perspective, Shen Ge looked like he was hanging upside down from the bed. For a moment, it was hard to tell who was the ghost here.
“How about a chat? We’ve met six or seven times now, and I still don’t even know your name. Are you a hospital employee?” Shen Ge asked.
His expression and tone were so calm that the terrifying atmosphere in the room evaporated instantly. But Shen Ge also caught a flicker of surprise and astonishment on the old man’s face.
And that one detail was enough for him to conclude that this old man was no “ghost.” He was most likely something like a Freak. The question was—why was he here, and why hadn’t he been visible before? For now, that remained a mystery.
Since he’d confirmed the old man wasn’t a ghost but a Freak, Shen Ge had no reason to hold back. He was about to use the power of the Dream Fragments to materialize and trap him when he heard a commotion near the entrance—sounded like a bunch of people heading this way.
That one second of hesitation was all it took. The old man under the bed moved like a bargain-hunter grabbing eggs at a morning market—whoosh—and shrank back under the bed, vanishing without a trace before Shen Ge could even react.
“?”
Shen Ge was stunned for a long moment before letting out a brief, heartfelt exclamation—
“Damn!”
By now, the noise at the door was getting closer. He simply lay back on the bed. Soon, a group of doctors and nurses, led by Wang Han, filed into the room.
Shen Ge had wanted to get a closer look at Dr. Chen, but instead, the lead doctor was a stranger he didn’t recognize. From the conversation between Wang Han and the group, it seemed this was the doctor on night duty.
Shen Ge decided to keep playing possum. The night-shift doctor carefully examined him, then told Wang Han that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Wang Han clearly didn’t believe it. He insisted he’d really seen something creepy just now—but when they checked under the bed, they found nothing. In the end, the group left with a few laughs at Wang Han’s expense.
After they were gone, Shen Ge sat up and looked toward the door. It was left ajar—unlocked. But something else caught his attention:
It seemed that after he’d entered this memory world, only Wang Han was affected—only he could see the freaky things. The other doctors and nurses still saw nothing.
Shen Ge wasn’t sure if Wang Han was being influenced by him, but he recalled his previous visit to the dream world, where he’d discovered a headless Freak and a female Freak in the operating room upstairs. He wondered—if he brought Wang Han up there, would it scare him awake?
He decided to give it a try. He got up, opened the door, and stepped out. Sure enough, the hallway outside was pitch black, just like in his earlier visits to the dream world.
Recalling the situation from his first trip, Shen Ge went back to the room, grabbed a piece of bread from the tray on the table, picked up the spittoon again, and dragged the bread across the wall as he made his way step by step toward the stairwell.
Once he stepped into the dark corridor, he closed his eyes and opened the Ghost Eye on his forehead. In the next moment, through the Ghost Eye, he could see that the corridor wasn’t simply dark—it was shrouded in a thick fog of ghostly energy. And deep within the mist, he could sense a few faint light sources.
Seeing through the Ghost Eye under these conditions felt strange—like wearing thermal imaging goggles. His field of vision was reduced to a monotone of black and yellow.
“That must be Wang Han and the nurse on duty.” After spotting the two figures at the front desk, Shen Ge deliberately made some noise. Sure enough, he saw one of them head in his direction.
Pretending not to notice Wang Han, Shen Ge led him upstairs. And to his surprise, Wang Han actually followed.
“Heh. Curiosity killed the cat, huh?” ShenGe realized Wang Han must still be fixated on that old man under the bed, using this chance to look for the truth?
Regardless, the fact that Wang Han had followed meant Shen Ge could continue with his plan. He kept climbing, feeling his way up in the dark until he reached the third floor.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Just as Shen Ge reached the third floor, he heard the sharp sound of high heels clicking on the stairs above—a sound he knew all too well. It was the “neck-rolling” rubber-neck director!
As expected, the moment “he” started acting strange, the strange things in Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital began crawling out of the woodwork one by one.
The footsteps above seemed to keep climbing higher. Shen Ge suppressed the urge to charge up and take care of the director, deciding instead to get Wang Han to the operating room first.
When he turned his gaze toward the left corridor, something new stood out. Since he was now seeing through the Ghost Eye, he could clearly trace the flow of the ghostly energy mist.
On his previous visits to Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital in the dream world, he hadn’t yet had the Ghost Eye—so this was his first time seeing things this way.
“The trajectory of this ghostly energy mist… it looks like it’s emanating from this very building itself. Don’t tell me this is another fusion-type Freak?”