Chapter 290 |
When Shen Ge had taken down the director the previous two times, it wasn’t that the thought of the building being a fusion-type Freak hadn’t crossed his mind. It was just that back then, once the director died, the other Freaks inside the hospital died along with him. Plus, he’d been focused on exploring the dream world, so he never got around to investigating Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital in depth.
Besides, later on, that key figure “Dr. Chen” had emerged—the one who’d orchestrated the “research” on Shen Ge and was suspected to be the mastermind behind the Freak Association. In Shen Ge’s eyes, the director had become just another “boss” of the Freak Association, and not worth spending too much time on.
But this time, through the Ghost Eye, he seemed to have glimpsed the “true face” of Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital—and it looked strikingly similar to the fusion-type Freaks he’d dealt with before.
“Interesting.” Shen Ge felt like he’d discovered a new continent, but investigating the hospital would have to wait—first, he needed to deal with Wang Han and the dinner party issue.
Shen Ge closed his Ghost Eye and opened his regular eyes. The thick fog of ghostly energy vanished from his sight, replaced by the dimly lit corridor.
Zzz—zzzz—
Just as Shen Ge’s hand touched the door to the operating room, Wang Han came up behind him—probably intending to carry him back downstairs. But before he could make a move, the corridor lights began to flicker wildly. Then, as if switching to energy-saving mode, the entire hallway went dark.
Click.
A sound like a circuit breaker tripping echoed through the hall. Several of the distant lamps went out entirely, while the ones nearby emitted faint zapping sounds and flickered sporadically, instantly cranking the creepy, ominous atmosphere to maximum.
Shen Ge was all too familiar with this scene; it was basically his home decor aesthetic at this point. So, taking advantage of Wang Han’s frozen terror, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Inside the operating room, severed limbs hung from the ceiling, dripping blood. On the central operating table lay a human torso Freak—its chest still faintly rising and falling, not yet dead.
“Ahhh—”
“AHHHHH!!!”
Wang Han stumbled backward in terror and landed hard on the floor, his head slamming against the door with a loud thud.
“…” Shen Ge turned around and shot a disgusted look at the terrified Wang Han. That sudden scream of his was way scarier than any Freak.
“Shen Ge!”
“Shen Ge!”
Wang Han’s first thought, after recovering from the shock, was of Shen Ge. He was convinced that being pulled into this eerie space had something to do with him.
“Huh?” Seeing Wang Han like this, Shen Ge suddenly thought that a fear-based strategy might actually work—maybe one more good scare would jolt him awake.
So, Shen Ge dragged a chair over, mimicked his first visit to the dream world, and started playing the “dissection game”—partly to see what secrets the human-torso Freak held inside.
Shen Ge cut open the abdomen, found the heart, and unexpectedly discovered a hard, spherical object inside it—something he hadn’t noticed before, or at least, hadn’t paid attention to.
He split the heart open, and to his surprise, there was a human head inside—and it was the head of that “old man” from earlier.
“Wait—does this body belong to that old man?” But then Shen Ge reconsidered—if that were the case, then who was the one that had appeared under the hospital bed?
An out-of-body experience?
Shen Ge didn’t believe in astral projection, but he immediately thought of the “soul” mentioned by the Ghost Driver in the “Ghost Vehicle.”
The two situations were remarkably similar. If this “old man” had achieved that kind of out-of-body effect through this method, it wouldn’t be surprising at all.
Shen Ge set the head aside and continued dissecting, hoping to uncover more clues. But instead, he saw dark, wriggling things crawling out of the opened belly.
“Worms… centipedes.”
These were the “raw materials” for parasitic-type anomalies—and the most commonly used bugs by the Freak Organization. Shen Ge had seen it all before.
Thump!
Suddenly, a strange noise came from behind him. Shen Ge turned to look and found Wang Han had fainted dead on the floor.
“…”
Dude, you’re the deputy captain of the Anomaly Response Squad—could you show a little backbone?
Shen Ge regretted not having his phone on him; he would’ve loved to capture this moment. Wang Han would probably be begging on his knees later to delete this embarrassing evidence.
A deputy captain fainting from a few bugs—Team Three would be a laughingstock for a long time.
“Now that he’s passed out, he should wake up in the real world, right?” Thinking this, Shen Ge once again used the power of the Dream Fragments to detach himself from that body.
When his consciousness returned to his own body, however, Wang Han was still fast asleep—no sign of waking up.
“…” So much for that.
Just as Shen Ge sighed over his wasted effort, he noticed Wang Han’s lips twitching, and then, from his swollen, battered face, came a terrified murmur: “Ah… ghosts… monsters… a head… a heart… and bugs… so many bugs…”
“Oh? It worked?” Shen Ge crouched down beside Wang Han, but the man only muttered in his sleep—he hadn’t actually woken up.
Shen Ge looked up at the memory projection beside him. It turned out that after Wang Han had been scared stiff, Dr. Chen had shown up with his team, taken “Shen Ge” away, and then had someone rouse the unconscious Wang Han. Wang Han told everyone about the horrifying things he’d seen, but of course, no one believed him. Dr. Chen even had someone take him back to rest.
Shen Ge had assumed that without his interference, Wang Han would have returned to normal. But then, when Wang Han got into the car with a security guard, something felt off.
First of all, this was Wang Han’s “memory,” so the perspective always followed Wang Han—unless Shen Ge used the Dream Fragment power to enter the memory, which would switch him to “Shen Ge’s” viewpoint. In other words, he couldn’t see what Dr. Chen and the others were doing behind the scenes through these memories, because Wang Han was also an “outsider.”
Secondly, Shen Ge remembered that in his previous dream visits, there had been no “guards”—or at least, he’d never seen any. Whether it was the eyes peeping through the ward window or the intermittent floor monitoring, all he ever saw were anomalies and Freaks.
This led Shen Ge to wonder: what if those “guards” did exist all along, but because of his unique perspective, he could only see the “essence” of things?
A bad feeling crept over Shen Ge. He suspected that the “Wang Han” in this Dream Fragment might also be a test subject. That was the only explanation for why Dr. Chen always seemed to show up “coincidentally” whenever something went wrong with Wang Han.
Wang Han left Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital by car. Shen Ge had hoped to see what Wang Han’s “home” looked like in this world, but instead… the car went off a cliff?
The funniest part? The security guard in the passenger seat caused the crash, then jumped out and tried to roll to safety—but he rolled in the wrong direction, tumbling straight toward the cliff edge and falling to his death as well.
“…”
Dude, been watching too many spy movies, have you?
Shen Ge felt like this cliff crash had way too many plot holes, and he didn’t even know where to start. So he turned his attention back to Wang Han.
But when he got a good look at Wang Han’s condition, his jaw dropped. The cliff was so high that the car was completely mangled. Wang Han, in the back seat, had no seatbelt or protection—his body was crushed by the twisted wreckage. His head was flattened, his legs sliced apart by bent door panels, his chest pierced through, and his internal organs squeezed out. It was obvious he wouldn’t survive.
“Dead?”
That’s it?
But then Shen Ge reconsidered: since he was dead, shouldn’t he wake up by now? In his own earlier visits to the dream world, “dying” had been how he escaped.
Wang Han’s situation didn’t seem that simple. Even though he was clearly dead in this memory frame, more memory images still followed.
Shen Ge followed the sequence, but when he saw the first frame, he froze. In this new image, the car was still mangled from the fall, but the back seat was largely intact. Wang Han had only suffered a minor injury—a piece of twisted door panel had pierced his calf.
“What… the hell?” Shen Ge glanced back at the previous memory frame. Wang Han was still a dead mess.
Instant resurrection? Since when did the miracle of life work like that?
“Wait—is this world’s Wang Han also a Freak?” Shen Ge suddenly realized just how inhuman that level of vitality was—clearly not normal.
In the next frame, Wang Han was struggling to crawl out of the car. After managing to escape, he trudged downhill through a torrential downpour. Shen Ge kept his eyes fixed on the sole “wound” on Wang Han’s calf—it was healing at an astonishingly fast rate, just like the effect of taking a Ghost Energy Potion.
If nothing else, even if this world’s Wang Han wasn’t a Freak, he was almost certainly a test subject who’d been given a Freak potion by Dr. Chen.
After descending the mountain, Wang Han arrived at a small village. Shen Ge remembered visiting this same village in the dream world before—it had been completely empty of people, but full of bugs. He’d even captured some and brought them back for Li Xiang to study.
Sure enough, after walking through the village and finding no one, Wang Han picked up a rock, smashed a window, and took shelter for the night.
The next memory frame showed Wang Han waking up inside the house, searching everywhere for food, and finding a basin of disgusting, rotting filth in a cabinet.
Then, Ma Chao returned. Shen Ge could tell that this Ma Chao was very different from the one who kept appearing in the hospital—this one looked more like a mindless zombie.
Right in front of Wang Han, Ma Chao ate the disgusting filth from the basin. Then he cooked an equally repulsive pig’s head from the fridge. But when he split it open, inside was the head of that “old man” again—bugs crawling out from its eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Wang Han’s legs immediately turned to jelly.
But Ma Chao clearly wasn’t done with him. He grabbed a handful of bugs, walked over to Wang Han, clamped a hand around his neck, and forced the bugs down his throat.
Strangely, the next memory frame “jumped” back to Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital. Wang Han lay on a hospital bed while Ma Chao, now in a white coat, and several other doctors examined the unconscious Wang Han.
When Wang Han woke up, Ma Chao told him that everything he’d experienced was just a “dream.” If Shen Ge hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he might have fallen for it too—just like Wang Han, unable to tell dream from reality.
What was certain was that Wang Han’s experience wasn’t a “dream within a dream.” It felt more like several different memories stitched together.
Shen Ge looked back at the earlier memory frames and noticed that several places had strangely “disjointed” gaps—like watching a movie where the transitions between scenes had been cut out, making everything feel jarring.
The biggest red flag was the cliff crash: in one frame, Wang Han was dead beyond any doubt; in the next, he only had a minor leg injury.
Shen Ge already had a theory—and a way to wake Wang Han up. He just needed to wait for the right moment to enter the memory world again.
At that moment, in the memory, after Ma Chao and the others left the room, the sleeping Wang Han encountered another paranormal event—and the situation was almost identical to what Shen Ge himself had experienced back then.
It was now almost certain that this world’s “Wang Han” was another test subject—and perhaps even Ma Chao and the others were, too.
With that in mind, Shen Ge once again focused his mind, channeled the power of the Dream Fragments, and transferred his consciousness into Wang Han’s memory shards.
When he opened his eyes again, Shen Ge was awake on the hospital bed.
He sat up and looked around. The ward hadn’t changed much—except that both of his feet were now chained to the bed, apparently to prevent him from “escaping.”
The “Shen Ge” of this world would have been helpless against those chains. But the one inside now was the Shen Ge who had mastered the power of dreams.
He reached down, grabbed the lock on the chains, and began using the power of dreams to hypnotize himself—boosting his strength tenfold, then fiftyfold, then a hundredfold!
Crack! The chains snapped in his grip. He released the dream power, dispelled the strength amplification, and stepped down from the bed.
“Based on the layout of Wang Han’s room, he’s probably in this same building.” Shen Ge opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
The hallway was pitch black, impossible to see through normally—so he resorted to his Ghost Eye. But just then, he felt that intense repulsive force again.
“This triggers it too?”
The Dream Fragment world had detected his presence much faster than expected, which caught him off guard. But to test his theory, he wasn’t about to get kicked out—so he directly used his dream power to resist.
So what if it drained him? Whatever he spent now, capturing this Dream Fragment later would make it all worth it.
Once he successfully mobilized his dream power, Shen Ge immediately began searching for Wang Han’s location. At that moment, Wang Han was escaping from a ward in another section. Shen Ge spotted him and gave chase.
“Hey.”
Shen Ge appeared behind Wang Han and called out. Wang Han was already shaken from whatever he’d seen in that room, so the sudden voice made him yelp and leap aside.
“S-Shen Ge?”
Shen Ge had no time for role-playing games now—he was still using his power to resist the world’s will. So he got straight to the point: “Do you want to get out of here?”
Wang Han was beyond terrified of this nightmare place. He didn’t hesitate—he nodded frantically.
“Follow me. Don’t fall behind.” Shen Ge did need to find a way to get Wang Han out of Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital—but first, he had to confirm his hunch.
Since he’d already blown his cover with the world’s will anyway, he figured—why keep pretending?