Chapter 95: Death in Progress

I didn't dare speak. Pressing myself against the wall, I moved slowly. The sudden darkness was disorienting, and I took every step with extreme caution.

About fifteen minutes later, someone suddenly took my hand. "Jiang Fei? Is that you?"

The touch against my fingertips was cold and smooth. It had to be a woman's hand.

Just as I was about to lift my phone, the lights in the hall came back on.

Dim light washed over my face. I frowned and looked around. Jiang Fei and the two children were standing about two meters away. 'If it isn't Jiang Fei, is it Wang Yingnan holding my hand?'

A sudden sense of foreboding washed over me. I turned my head. The door to the rehabilitation room was open, and a pale, skinny woman was gripping my hand.

'A patient? When did they get out?!'

I studied her face. She had short hair and seemed incredibly nervous, her lips trembling as she muttered a single phrase over and over: "It wasn't me, it wasn't me..."

"What's wrong?"

"It wasn't me!" The female patient suddenly grew agitated. Her left hand dug directly into the wound on my palm, while her right hand, previously hidden behind her back, swung up to reveal a half-foot-long Scalpel!

"Calm down!" I had zero experience dealing with psychiatric patients. They were completely unpredictable; their actions lacked pattern or logic, making it nearly impossible to guess what they would do next.

I took a step back. My foot landed in what felt like a puddle, and the sole of my shoe stuck to the floor.

"What is this?" I looked down and gasped. A pool of blood had spread beneath my feet, and Wang Yingnan was lying right in the center of it!

He was coughing up bloody froth, trying to speak, but opening his mouth only caused more blood to spill out.

My pupils shrank to pinpricks as I stared at Wang Yingnan's neck. There was an incredibly deep slash across it.

I wanted to lean in for a closer look, but the female patient was still grabbing my hand. She was surprisingly strong, her bony fingers digging in like fishhooks.

"It wasn't me! It wasn't me!" The woman also saw Wang Yingnan on the floor. She began to lose control, swinging the Scalpel in wider and wider arcs.

"Don't do anything rash! I know it wasn't you!" But reasoning with a psychiatric patient was completely futile; she wasn't listening at all.

Left with no choice, I grabbed the wrist holding the knife and pinned her to the floor.

"Jiang Fei, help me!" Only after wresting the Scalpel away and subduing the crazed woman did I have time to examine Wang Yingnan's body.

"A single, fatal slash. But why does the technique used to slit his throat look a bit strange?" I gestured over Wang Yingnan's neck with the Scalpel a couple of times.

"Gao Jian, what do we do with this woman?" Jiang Fei was holding down the madwoman's wrists by herself. The look on her face was sheer terror; this had to be the first time the eldest miss of the Jiang family had ever seen a dead body.

"Don't panic. There was more than one person in that ward earlier; the killer might not be her." This wasn't the time to figure out who the murderer was. Our first priority was escaping.

There was no way out here. Some of the corridors were barred with chains, and the keys I had couldn't open them at all.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" I forced the madwoman to look at me. She would suddenly turn violent, then scream, doing everything but answering my question.

"Jiang Fei, take the Scalpel to defend yourself. I'm afraid we're already being targeted." With nowhere to run, I just wanted to retreat. Dawn was only a few hours away. We could find a safe place, lock the door, and wait for morning, or hope the police arrived sooner.

This livestream was different from past ones. It wasn't the work of yin souls or ghosts causing trouble; a living person was behind this!

Unlike vicious ghosts that acted solely on their obsession, humans were far more complex, meaning there was much more I needed to consider.

'The safest method right now would be to kill off every suspect, but if we did that, what would be the difference between us and those abusers?' Once the short-haired madwoman finally calmed down, I steeled my nerves and entered the rehabilitation room. The other patients were still standing around inside, looking vacant.

"What are you doing?" Suddenly pinned by several icy stares, my forehead was instantly slick with cold sweat. I gripped the door tightly with one hand; if any of them made an aggressive move, I would lock it immediately.

"Receiving treatment."

"No, we are atoning for our sins."

To my surprise, someone in the room actually answered my question. I had finally found someone I could communicate with normally!

"Who said that just now?"

"It was me."

"No, it was me."

There were four people standing in the room: an old man in his fifties, a vacant-looking pregnant woman, a middle-aged man with a sinister gaze, and a frail-looking young man in his twenties.

The one who had spoken was the young man. He had several cigarette burn scars on his face.

"I said it."

"No, I said it."

The young man clawed at his own face, arguing with himself, his expression twisted in conflict and pain.

I watched him for a long moment. "Could this be multiple personality disorder?"

"I'm not sick!"

"I'm not sick!"

Even when conveying the exact same meaning, he would say it twice, then plunge right back into the contradictions he wove for himself.

"I'm not sick! You're the one who's sick!"

"No, it's all your fault we got locked up in here!"

Even though communicating with him was exhausting, I managed to glean a lot of valuable information from the argument between the young man's two different personalities.

Henshan Psychiatric Hospital was a privately run psychiatric testing facility. Their director was reportedly a psychologist with a doctorate from overseas. To the outside world, the hospital was still operating normally, except they generally didn't accept ordinary psychiatric patients.

Normally, psychiatric hospitals were divided into a Level 1 Ward and a Level 2 Ward. Newly admitted patients would be observed in the Level 1 Ward with limited mobility, and only after showing good behavior would they be allowed into the Level 2 Ward.

Those whose conditions continuously deteriorated and had been stuck in the Level 1 Ward for years would be transferred to the Isolation Ward.

The majority of the patients admitted to Henshan Psychiatric Hospital came from these Isolation Wards. Through illicit channels, the facility took in patients that other hospitals had given up on, bringing them here to conduct all sorts of psychological experiments.

The word "experiment" sounded benign and harmless, but in reality, it represented unimaginable cruelty.

With methods like localized electroshock stimulation and testing various dangerous drugs, more often than not, this hospital wasn't helping patients recover—it was actively destroying their minds.

It took months or even years to return a madman to normal, but turning a madman into a complete vegetable only took a few hours.

During the arguments between the young man's two personalities, I also learned their names. The old man in his fifties was named Zhang Zhongyou, a vagrant taken in by the hospital, suffering from dementia.

The pregnant woman was called Beautiful Pig—a nickname given to her by the Doctor. As for her real name, even she couldn't remember it.

The middle-aged man with the sinister gaze was called Old G. He suffered from multiple psychological disorders: claustrophobia, intermittent explosive disorder, persecution paranoia, and more.

The short-haired patient outside holding the knife was named Strawberry. Supposedly, she really loved strawberries.

The young man himself was named Han Le. He suffered from dissociative identity disorder and possessed three distinct personalities, though his primary personality didn't like to speak.

After getting a general understanding of their situations, I asked a question that had been bothering me for a while. "You patients are receiving treatment in the rehabilitation room, but how come I don't see any sign of the Doctor?"

"The Doctor just left."

"No, he's been gone for a while."

According to Han Le, there were originally six people in the room. The one who had vanished was the Doctor.

"It seems very likely that the person who killed Wang Yingnan is the missing Doctor." I had seen the wound on Wang Yingnan's neck. The technique was highly professional; only someone used to holding a Scalpel could make such a clean, fluid cut.

But at that moment, another doubt surfaced in my mind. 'Wait, why would someone who treats mental illnesses be so adept at using a Scalpel? Are they secretly practicing on living people in the dark?'

As I was thinking, the lights outside flickered a few times. Right after, all the lights inside the building died once again!

"Crap!"

Deep darkness brought terror crashing over me. I dashed out of the room, but I was still a step too late.

A piercing female scream rang out from outside. Hearing that sound, my heart skipped a beat.

Stepping through Wang Yingnan's still-wet blood, I struggled forward down the pitch-black corridor. The killer was hiding who-knew-where, and a deadly Scalpel could shoot out from any blind spot.

'Someone dies every time the lights go out! I should have realized that sooner!'