Chapter 181: The World Through His Eyes
The boy was awake?
He didn’t know how many severed hands were hidden under the bed, and there might be other monsters outside the door. Chen Ge couldn’t afford to linger here any longer. Risking injury from the severed hands, he raised his knife and charged straight into the cluster of them, grabbing the boy lying on the hospital bed.
The blade pressed against the boy’s neck as Chen Ge pressed his body against the wall, scanning the room.
He didn’t understand why these severed hands were stopping him from harming Men Nan. If they cared about Men Nan’s safety, why had they tied him to the hospital bed?
Tonight’s trial mission had spiraled completely out of control the moment he entered the door. Chen Ge had no idea what would happen next—this place was a completely foreign world to him.
Gripping the knife tightly, his only option now was to wake Men Nan. This child before him was his sole hope of breaking through the situation.
The blade was nearly cutting into the boy’s skin. The severed hands halted their attack, as if controlled by someone. Several of them scurried to the door and began knocking.
The dense, rhythmic knocking made Chen Ge uneasy.
He remembered Men Nan’s warning: after entering the door, he hadn’t spoken a single word, not even daring to walk too loudly.
Now the knocking echoed far and wide, shattering the silence of the world behind the door.
A bad feeling crept over Chen Ge, his heart racing. Before long, a tall, elderly man appeared at the entrance of the electrotherapy room.
The man was about 1.8 meters tall, with white hair, wearing a doctor’s uniform. The key detail was that his uniform was soaked through with blood, completely stained red.
His face pale, Chen Ge stared at the old man, two words surfacing in his mind—Red Garb.
Men Nan had repeatedly warned him not to make a sound, likely to avoid this very thing. Now that the monster had appeared, Chen Ge no longer needed to be so cautious.
“I didn’t expect anyone else to come in besides me,” the old man said, his face kind and gentle, appearing amiable—of course, that was only if you ignored the blood-soaked clothes. “This isn’t a place for you. Let the child go and leave quickly.”
Chen Ge remained unmoved. The boy was his only bargaining chip; he couldn’t afford to let him go.
The blade still pressed against the boy’s neck, Chen Ge stared at the old man at the door, the more he looked, the more terrifying he found him.
The old man’s hands were slightly deformed, as if they had just been struck by something heavy. His seemingly kind face also had issues—it lacked the vitality of a living person, like it had been crafted by a mortician.
This guy had been dead for a long time.
Perhaps due to his mortician talent, Chen Ge made his judgment instantly.
Seeing that Chen Ge hadn’t spoken, the old man’s expression didn’t change. He took a step forward, intending to enter the room.
Noticing his move, Chen Ge pressed the blade down further. The boy’s eyelids twitched slightly, as if feeling pain, showing faint signs of waking.
“Don’t hurt the child.” The old man stopped, saying meaningfully, “If something happens to this child, you’ll never be able to go back.”
He raised a finger, and the severed hands crawled back under the bed. Seeing this, Chen Ge quickly moved away from the hospital bed.
“You seem tense. Relax a bit.” The old man’s voice was convincing. Like Dr. Gao, he had a way of making people feel at ease during conversation, whether through psychological suggestion or other conversational techniques.
“In this place, I’m the only one who can talk to you, the only one who can help you.”
Without wasting words, Chen Ge raised the skull-crushing hammer with one hand and pointed toward the door.
“You want to leave?” The old man shook his head gently. “You’re free to go anytime, but that child can’t. He has to stay in this room.”
The electrotherapy room was the best soundproofed room in the entire ward, completely sealed with added soundproofing panels. No matter what happened inside, it was hard for anyone outside to hear anything.
Cornered by a Red Garb ghost at the door, Chen Ge grew anxious. He gritted his teeth, using force to press the blade down another three points.
The old man’s face twitched slightly but quickly returned to normal. “I’m not threatening you. I hope you’ll calmly hear me out before making a decision.”
He shifted his tone. “You might not believe this, but right now, we’re all living inside this child’s nightmare. If something happens to him or he wakes up, we’ll be buried here forever.”
“Nightmare?” This was the first time Chen Ge had spoken since entering the world behind the door. After saying it, he carefully observed the old man’s reaction, checked his own body, and found no abnormalities, finally relaxing.
“That’s right. This child grew up in a mental hospital, and due to various reasons, he built a sick, twisted worldview.” The old man’s next words shook Chen Ge. “You must have seen those mannequins made of pillows and sheets in the hallway. They symbolize the patients undergoing treatment in the boy’s eyes. Numbed by the side effects of medication, they become like mannequins, losing all hope for everything, drifting through each day in a daze.”
“He imagined all of this?” Chen Ge looked at the hospital bed. “And what about those severed hands? They don’t exist in reality.”
“The severed hands under the bed represent the child’s fear. When he was very young, because he misbehaved, a doctor deliberately scared him, saying that under every child’s bed hides a furry severed hand. If that child is naughty, the hand will grab their ankle in the middle of the night and drag them under the bed. Because of that story, the severed hand became a symbol of fear in the nightmare,” the old man said casually.
“There’s also a monster in the nightmare with a long, thin body that likes to stand on people’s shoulders. That thing represents desire. It was originally the same height as a normal person, but as it keeps jumping onto different people, draining and squeezing everything out of them, its body grows longer and longer. Desire is endless, and as it grows, the monster becomes uglier.”
“There are many similar examples. Everything in this world is manifested from the child’s subconscious.”
Chen Ge couldn’t tell if the old man was lying. He felt like the old man might be a madman himself.
“I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s the truth. The human brain has 150 billion neurons, 95% of which are unused. If you compare the brain to an iceberg, the conscious mind above the surface accounts for only 5%. What’s truly unknown is the subconscious beneath the water.”
“An adult’s brain is fully developed, but a baby’s is different. From zero to three years old, a child’s brain develops rapidly, a time when the subconscious quiets down and the conscious mind emerges.”
“If during this period, their thought patterns are constantly overturned and their brain is continuously stimulated, the subconscious becomes highly active, even replacing normal consciousness.”
To be honest, Chen Ge didn’t fully understand what the old man was saying. He felt the old man was lying, trying to cover something up.