Chapter 180: The Main Personality
Breathing became difficult, as if stepping into a thick fog. His body felt damp, and everything before his eyes was veiled in a thin layer of blood-red.
Was this the world behind the door?
Chen Ge remembered Men Nan’s instructions. He didn’t speak, gripping the meat cleaver and skull crusher as he surveyed his surroundings.
The walls, the floor, the furnishings of Ward Three—everything was the same as the world outside the door.
He turned around, and when he looked back, his heartbeat quickened.
The door to Ward Three was open, but the scene outside wasn’t the corridor of reality.
It was vastly different—a clean, tidy hallway with no clutter whatsoever.
The bedding and mannequins on the floor were all gone. The ward behind the door seemed as if it had been constantly cleaned by someone.
Chen Ge quietly approached the door and reached his hand outside. His arm didn’t disappear. The door seemed to be one-way!
Unable to speak, Chen Ge couldn’t even call out to Zhang Ya. He steeled himself and stepped out of Ward Three. As soon as he poked his head out, he saw someone in the hallway outside.
Not the monsters he’d imagined, nor living people or corpses, but mannequins made of pillows and bedsheets.
They stood by the corridor like scarecrows, with blank, painted expressions, grinning foolishly—impossible to tell if they were happy or in pain.
Why were these things also in the world inside the door?
Chen Ge had initially thought the mannequins thrown among the bedding were just a prank, but after seeing them in the world behind the door, he changed his mind.
The nurse fed the patients medicine every night. She even had a dedicated notebook recording each patient’s name and preserving their medical records.
Most crucially, these patients had already died in the real world. The mannequins before him likely harbored their lingering thoughts.
Lingering thoughts were much weaker than vengeful spirits, but when their numbers were dozens of times greater, even a vengeful spirit might not be able to withstand them.
As Chen Ge studied the mannequin, the one that had been lowering its head seemed to sense something. Its body turned, and its features, like a child’s crude drawing, stared blankly at Chen Ge.
Standing at the entrance of Ward Three, Chen Ge’s palms began to sweat.
The mannequin’s body started to move slowly, and Chen Ge raised the meat cleaver.
They drew closer, but the mannequin showed no interest in Chen Ge. It swayed and shuffled toward the other end of the corridor.
Aimless, with no desire to do anything, it wandered mindlessly, stopping to rest against the wall when tired, like a marionette.
Chen Ge had seen many lingering thoughts before. They formed because an obsession was too deep to forget, causing them to linger in the human world.
But the lingering thought inside the mannequin was completely different. It seemed to have lost its memories, or perhaps it had completely closed off its heart, locking its soul away in a chamber.
The mannequin didn’t attack Chen Ge, so he naturally didn’t seek trouble by striking it. He quietly slipped out of Ward Three and checked the walls on both sides.
The walls, shrouded in the blood-red mist, bore clear scratch marks, likely left by Zhang Ya.
He followed those marks to the second floor. The moment he stepped onto the staircase, Chen Ge nearly let out a sound.
On the second-floor corridor, mannequins swayed, wandering aimlessly, indifferent to everything around them.
There were too many. Some lay on the ground, marked by scratches from black hair. Zhang Ya might have passed through them.
Without hesitation, Chen Ge entered the second floor.
Walking among the dazed mannequins, Chen Ge felt a strange sensation—as if he were the odd one out.
If everyone around you is a patient, wouldn’t a normal person start to think they’re the crazy one?
His state wasn’t great. The further he went, the harder it was to breathe. His body grew heavy, as if he were being thrown into the sea, slowly sinking.
But luckily, no one attacked him. Chen Ge made it to the end of the second floor, where the black hair marks disappeared.
At the deepest part of the second floor was a special single room. In the real world, Chen Ge hadn’t had time to search it before being chased by the nurse to the first floor. This missed room was the electrotherapy room.
He pushed open the door, and the scene inside was different from what he’d imagined.
Inside the electrotherapy room was only one bed, strapped to which was a boy about four or five years old.
Chen Ge walked to the bedside and compared him to a photo. He could confirm that this child was the young Men Nan.
Why was he here?
A question arose in Chen Ge’s mind. Recalling the fragments of Men Nan’s memories, Chen Ge made a bold guess.
Men Nan’s main personality had indeed met with an accident in the world behind the door. From that accident onward, without a gatekeeper, the blood door had begun to spiral out of control.
The marks from Zhang Ya’s hair ended here, proving she must have come to this place, but there were no signs of a struggle in the room.
Chen Ge didn’t know where Zhang Ya had gone afterward. Since he’d found Men Nan’s main personality, he planned to start with the boy. If he could awaken the child, he’d gain a clear understanding of the world behind the door and an extra ally.
In an ideal scenario, that’s how it would go. What would actually happen, he didn’t know himself. He could only gamble.
Using the meat cleaver, he cut the restraints binding the boy. Chen Ge gently shook Men Nan’s body.
The boy seemed to be in a deep sleep or a coma. No matter how Chen Ge shook him, his eyes remained tightly shut.
Unable to speak in this blood-red world, Chen Ge tried every method he could think of but couldn’t wake the boy.
He didn’t know what had happened to the boy. His mind raced.
The person behind this hadn’t killed the boy, only tied him up in the electrotherapy room. That meant the boy was still useful to him. The other party wouldn’t just let him die.
A crazy idea flashed through Chen Ge’s mind. Silently, he raised the meat cleaver above his head. He made a few downward motions, his pupils fixed on a spot on the bedboard beside the boy’s neck, and then he suddenly thrust down!
“Clang!”
The blade didn’t hit the wood. An inch or two away from the boy, a hand covered in fur grabbed Chen Ge’s meat cleaver.
Chen Ge had been on alert, but he still hadn’t noticed where this hand had come from.
He decisively pulled back the cleaver and stepped away, getting a clear look at the monster.
It had no body—just a severed hand.
This hand was protecting the boy from harm. To test it further, Chen Ge attacked the boy again.
Each strike was caught by the severed hand. As the number of blows increased, cracks began to appear on the hand. Just as Chen Ge thought it couldn’t hold out and would flee, the bedsheet was lifted, and several more severed hands emerged.
The commotion of their fight grew louder. After about ten seconds, the boy, who had been sleeping all along, blinked his eyelids slightly.