Edited—

At the beginning of the video, Zhou Jiayu had indeed thought it was human experimentation. But as the footage continued, he began to doubt his own guess.

Neither the doctors nor the patients in the video seemed to have professional equipment. Besides that one syringe of medicine and the record book in their hands, there was nothing that suggested any connection to experimentation. And the malicious smiles on the doctors’ faces instead made people feel like they were simply enjoying the process of the patients being tormented by pain.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen — the numbers on the patients’ hospital gowns kept growing larger. Finally, when the scene switched again, Zhou Jiayu saw a familiar face — Jiang Zhu.

He too was wrapped in a straitjacket like the previous patients, sitting in that chair, facing the several doctors with twisted smiles before him.

“Help, help…” Jiang Zhu was screaming for help. “What are you all trying to do, help—”

Zhou Jiayu showed an expression of unbearable distress. At this time, Jiang Zhu’s appearance was still quite young; one could tell he wasn’t very old. Presumably, this was footage from when he had first been admitted to this psychiatric hospital.

But those terrifying monsters didn’t soften because of Jiang Zhu’s pleas for mercy. They still injected that strange liquid into Jiang Zhu’s body, watching him emit mournful screams.

These several people wearing doctor uniforms could no longer be called doctors. They were more like demons who took pleasure in human suffering. Whether in their laughter or their behavior, everything was filled with distortion.

Jiang Zhu seemed to have been tormented for a very long time. Although each scene in the footage was only brief, one could still see the changes in his age. He went from a youth to a young man, from screaming and struggling at the beginning to numb endurance.

This kind of life continued until the arrival of a certain turning point.

The final segment of footage seemed to have been recorded by hand with a phone. The image was very crude and constantly shaking, but one could hear the excited panting of the person recording.

“It’s about to begin.” Someone said this.

The camera tilted upward. Zhou Jiayu saw a building emitting black smoke. After careful observation, Zhou Jiayu realized the building emitting black smoke was the hospital they were in. The hospital seemed to have caught fire. The specific location of the fire was on the fourth floor — where the dean’s office was located.

“It’s beginning.” That person began panting heavily again. He said, “I’ve waited for this day for too long, too impatient, too impatient…”

The image suddenly shook violently. The person holding the phone began running. The destination of his run was the courtyard in front of the hospital. When he arrived there, the place was already filled everywhere with patients wearing hospital gowns.

The patients’ expressions were all excited. Facing the fire, they didn’t seem afraid at all. They raised their heads, excitedly looking at the fourth floor. Some were screaming, some were laughing, and some were even excitedly banging their heads hard against the walls.

“Now it’s our time—” Jiang Zhu’s voice rang out. The video image shifted, and Zhou Jiayu saw Jiang Zhu standing in the crowd. He wore a hospital gown, his body hunched as he squatted on the ground, a mask on his face. He said, “Now it’s our time—”

More neurotic repetition of sentences. Zhou Jiayu watched as the patients responded one after another, as if they had fallen into some meaningless fanaticism.

The flames grew more and more fierce. Black ashes fell in the air. Jiang Zhu and the others stood below the building, cheering and celebrating as if at a carnival.

With such a large fire and no firefighting measures whatsoever, if it continued, it was very likely to burn the entire hospital down. But what was very strange was that the flames were isolated to the dean’s office and didn’t spread to other places.

Zhou Jiayu suddenly remembered the peculiar structure of the dean’s office and the walls painted black. It seemed the peculiar decorating style and this fire had an inseparable relationship…

Just as tongues of flame burst from the window, Zhou Jiayu saw in the video a person climb out from the dean’s office window. He wore doctor’s clothing on his body — seemingly a doctor here.

“Help, help—” He stood at the window calling for help toward the outside.

The patients turned their gazes toward the window.

“Help—” This cry for help sounded so familiar. Once, it was the patients standing below who had called for help. And at this very moment, the object of the plea for help had become the high-and-mighty doctor.

No one wanted to save him.

The patients raised their heads, expressions of utter indifference on their faces. Their eyes stared fixedly at the person driven to desperation by the flames at the window. The look in their eyes was even more terrifying than the scorching flames, as if wishing they could tear that person apart and devour him.

“Help…” Looking at the reactions of the people below, he finally seemed to understand his situation. In the end, the man gave up on calling for help and began attempting to climb out from the window. But there was nothing below the fourth floor — only hard concrete. Whether to fall to death or be burned to death was indeed a difficult multiple-choice question.

But living creatures’ most instinctive fear of flames still made him make his final decision. Seeing that the room was about to be completely engulfed by flames, he gritted his teeth, leaped with his whole body, and finally jumped from the building.

The height of the fourth floor was already enough to be fatal for an ordinary person, not to mention there was only hard concrete below. The instant the man landed, Zhou Jiayu saw his feet twist into a distorted posture. And the mournful screams that followed also proved that his feet had suffered severe damage.

“Ahhhh…” He screamed miserably, lying on the ground unable to move.

But at least he had preserved his life. After the intense pain, he seemed to faintly relax a bit. He used both hands with effort, just about to crawl forward, when he noticed that the patients who had originally been looking up at the fire were slowly surrounding him.

“What are you looking at me for, do you want to die! Scram! Scram! How dare you still look, when I get better, I’ll kill you all—” Probably the pain had made him lose his rationality. He didn’t even notice the patients’ abnormality and instead continued to threaten them.

Jiang Zhu slowly walked to his side, crouched before him, and used his toes to slowly poke at his exposed flesh.

“What are you doing—” He finally sensed something was wrong.

“Exposed, the bones.” Jiang Zhu said this. He exerted force with his foot and directly stepped down, followed by the man’s screams once again.

“Ahhh, what are you doing—are you crazy—” He wanted to break free but discovered he couldn’t move at all. He could only use both hands to move with difficulty, like a pathetic maggot.

“Don’t be afraid.” Jiang Zhu said, “I’ll heal you, just like you healed us.”

The man’s expression froze. At this moment, he finally realized something. His gaze swept around his surroundings and discovered that in the entire first-floor courtyard, not a single doctor’s figure could be seen.

Several hundred patients gathered in the courtyard, surrounding him in layers, watching him with cold eyes.

“What did you do, where are the other doctors…” The man felt fear and began involuntarily wanting to retreat.

“Doctors? Where are there any doctors here, they’re clearly all patients.” Jiang Zhu laughed. He forcefully stepped on a section of the man’s bone, slowly grinding it against the ground. “Mm… perhaps tomorrow we can work hard and see if there are any other people willing to be doctors for a few days, so they can treat you all.”

The fear in the man’s eyes reached its peak. But it seemed everything was already too late. The camera went black, and the footage ended here.

Everyone fell into silence watching the black screen.

Lin Jue smoked, glancing toward the door: “Am I seeing wrong, isn’t that person outside the one who had his hands and feet cut off just now?”

“Yes.” Zhou Jiayu said. “This person is the hospital’s dean?”

Lin Jue said, “Ninety percent probability.”

Actually, when they had first seen that person, their hearts had been filled with sympathy and anger toward Jiang Zhu. After all, a living person had been turned into that state. But after watching the video, everyone’s mood became complicated. After seeing so many innocent patients being tormented, they all hesitated over whether his fate was appropriate.

“Call the police first.” Lin Jue said. “Let the police handle it. So many patients need to be resettled. This hospital’s current situation hasn’t been normal for a long time.”

There was almost no normal person left here. Perhaps Jiang Zhu had still been normal when he first came here, but after so much torment, he had clearly also departed from the realm of normalcy.

“Let’s go to the back mountain.” Since arriving here, Lin Zhushui had rarely spoken. Now he suddenly opened his mouth, but it was to propose a strange suggestion.

Zhou Jiayu remembered that the back mountain was where the mental patients were buried. He didn’t know what Lin Zhushui meant by going to the back mountain, but since he had said so, there was no harm in going to take a look.

So they divided the work. Xu Ruwang and the others would watch the human stick, while Zhou Jiayu and Lin Jue followed Lin Zhushui to the back mountain to see the situation.

The mountains here were also very desolate. The small path leading up the mountain was overgrown with weeds; who knew how long it had been since anyone passed through here. Zhou Jiayu walked at the very front and quickly reached the mountaintop. He had originally thought these graves would at least have tombstones or something, but clearly he had overestimated this psychiatric hospital’s humanitarianism. Because on the mountaintop, there were only some mounded earth piles without any tombstones. And every earth pile was densely covered with weeds. These weeds had grown to a full half-meter in height. Zhou Jiayu even suspected there were corpses beneath his feet that he just couldn’t see.

“Jiayu, have Xiao Zhi help out.” Lin Zhushui said, “Dig down from here.”

Zhou Jiayu responded upon hearing this and instructed Xiao Zhi to start digging in the soil at Lin Zhushui’s indicated location. Xiao Zhi, as usual, rolled up his sleeves, stuck out his rear, and got to work. He was indeed strong. Soon he had dug out a massive pit at the spot Lin Zhushui indicated. Just as Xiao Zhi was about to continue, Lin Zhushui suddenly called for him to stop. Then he casually picked up a long wooden stick from the side and brushed away the remaining loose soil.

Beneath the loose soil was a wooden box. The box was very crude, like a rough handicraft made by a child. Zhou Jiayu again smelled that foul odor belonging to a corpse in his nostrils. Although the scent wasn’t obvious, it was very pungent, making him involuntarily cover his nose with his hand.

Shen Yiqiong muttered very unpleasantly, “What is this? Did they chop people into pieces and bury them?”

There was no crematorium or anything like that here. With such a small box, if they wanted to fit a person inside, it probably really would require what Shen Yiqiong said — chopping them into pieces.

Lin Zhushui didn’t speak. He directly used the stick in his hand to lift the lid of the wooden box. The moment the lid opened, Zhou Jiayu and Shen Yiqiong were both stunned. Inside the box was actually that black liquid they had seen in the hotel before. The liquid was placed inside the box but didn’t flow out from the gaps. Instead, it seemed because the concentration was too high, it was firmly stuck inside the box.

This liquid was all too familiar to Zhou Jiayu — wasn’t it the same kind of black liquid he and Shen Yiqiong had seen in the refrigerator that night? He had never expected to see the same thing on the back mountain.

This thing was truly too foul-smelling. Everyone involuntarily retreated a few steps.

Zhou Jiayu covered his mouth and nose with his hand, but noticed that the thing placed inside the box was actually slowly writhing. Although the speed was very slow, it was indeed moving.

“This thing is moving—” Zhou Jiayu spoke.

“Damn, I thought I was seeing things.” Lin Jue frowned, her expression truly not good-looking. “What exactly is this thing?”

Inside the black liquid were fingernails, hair, and some shattered bones. To say this was a person, yet it made one unable to imagine what method could have been used to turn a human into this.

“There seems to be something by the edge of the box.” Zhou Jiayu pinched his nose, enduring the assault of the foul odor, and looked at the soil layer by the edge of the box. In that thin layer of soil, there seemed to be something covered. Lin Zhushui moved his hand and directly fished that thing out from beside the box.

Zhou Jiayu bent down to pick up the item and discovered it was a packet of documents wrapped in plastic paper. He said, “…What is this.” He carefully lifted a corner and saw that inside were actually many documents. Among them was an ID card with an unfamiliar name written on it. Clearly, this ID card and that puddle of liquid at the bottom of the pit had an inseparable relationship. And inside there weren’t only ID cards. There were also some relatively important documents. Zhou Jiayu even found hospital employment certificates and some qualification certificates among them — all these documents indicated that, if nothing unexpected, the puddle of black liquid at the bottom was a doctor from the psychiatric hospital.

“This black water was indeed made by Jiang Zhu…” Zhou Jiayu said, “Wait, what’s this…” He pulled out from the documents a page that looked like torn paper fragments. This fragment was very inconspicuous, but because of its special texture, Zhou Jiayu still noticed it.

This paper fragment was yellow in color and had the unique texture of kraft paper. Zhou Jiayu held it in his hand and immediately remembered the kraft paper Xu Jinghuo had mailed him.

“Isn’t this that kraft paper?” Zhou Jiayu looked at Lin Zhushui. “Sir…”

Lin Zhushui reached out and took what was in Zhou Jiayu’s hand, bringing it to his nose and lightly sniffing it: “It’s the same thing.”

Zhou Jiayu pressed his lips together. He somewhat regretted not carefully inspecting the black liquid when he saw it in the refrigerator before. He felt he had missed a key clue.

But Lin Zhushui directly said, “Keep digging.”

So Zhou Jiayu instructed Xiao Zhi to continue digging downward according to the directions Lin Zhushui gave. Soon, over a dozen large pits appeared before everyone. In every pit was a black wooden box. Beside each box was a packet of documents wrapped in plastic paper. And inside every packet of documents were torn pieces of kraft paper mixed in.

They collected the messy fragments. Zhou Jiayu looked at the appearance of the fragments and thought of puzzles. He began trying to piece them together. He had originally just had a sudden whim and hadn’t expected to actually guess right. After effort, those fragments were actually pieced together into paper. But the paper was only half a sheet. On it was a strange pattern drawn with black charcoal. At first glance, it looked somewhat like a spell array.

Lin Jue also couldn’t understand this pattern. Zhou Jiayu was thinking about how to tell Lin Zhushui when he saw him stretch out his hand toward him.

“Here.” Lin Zhushui said to Zhou Jiayu.

Zhou Jiayu understood tacitly. He took Lin Zhushui’s hand and used his fingertips to lightly trace on his palm, bit by bit conveying the pattern of the spell array to Lin Zhushui.

The pattern was only half, and rather complex. In order for Lin Zhushui to understand, every stroke Zhou Jiayu drew was very careful. After he finished drawing, Lin Zhushui turned his hand and grasped Zhou Jiayu’s palm, lightly squeezing it: “Drawn well.”

Zhou Jiayu said, “Mm… but Sir, this spell array is only half. Can we tell what it’s used for?”

Lin Zhushui said, “This is also my first time encountering this spell array, but the pattern in the middle looks somewhat familiar.”

Zhou Jiayu said, “The pattern?”

Lin Zhushui’s words paused slightly: “Yes, the pattern in the middle is a three-legged golden crow drawn only halfway.”

Zhou Jiayu immediately remembered the pattern in the upper right corner of his kraft paper and also Jiba in his mind.

“I suspect this array is the source of the black water.” Lin Zhushui’s tone also carried some hesitation. “You all say these things are indeed water?”

Zhou Jiayu said, “Right, it’s a puddle of black water, somewhat thick, placed inside a box.”

“Very strange.” Lin Zhushui said softly, “I can’t see it. Instead, I feel that the ‘water’ you all speak of… has the aura of a living person.”

A living person? This puddle of black water clearly couldn’t be a living person. And if Lin Zhushui’s feeling wasn’t wrong, then the kraft paper had become a key clue. Whether it was the charred corpses in the Meng ruins or the thick black water before their eyes, both had an inseparable relationship with the kraft paper…

“Jiba.” Zhou Jiayu called out to the little black bird in his mind, “What exactly is going on?”

“This should be a type of array.” Jiba said, “A failed array… used to resurrect people, but only half, so the resurrection effect isn’t very good either.” He explained in a small voice, “That Jiang Zhu did it on purpose.”

Zhou Jiayu fell silent. He understood what Jiba meant. If Meng Yangtian’s resurrection of the Meng clan was sincere, then Jiang Zhu’s resurrection of the doctors buried in the soil clearly carried other intentions. When people died, everything was settled. He hated those deceased, so he used an incomplete array to resurrect them, turning them into things that were neither human nor ghost.

“But what does it have to do with you? Why is a golden crow in the center of the array?” Zhou Jiayu said.

Jiba said slowly, “How would I know, I’m just a little bird…”

Zhou Jiayu thought to himself, I believe your evil — what kind of little bird has a name like Jiba. But since Jiba wasn’t willing to tell the truth, Zhou Jiayu temporarily had no way.

When Xu Jian called the police, he had originally thought the police wouldn’t come until the next day. He hadn’t expected their efficiency to be quite high. They called in the afternoon, and by evening they had hurried over.

At the time, everyone was sitting in the first-floor hall resting. Having not eaten all day, they were all somewhat wilted. Zhou Jiayu leaned against Lin Zhushui, listening to that little bastard Shen Yiqiong reciting a menu nearby.

Lin Jue said, “I beg you, Shen Yiqiong, I’m already so hungry. Can you not recite the menu?”

Shen Yiqiong said, “But I’m hungry.”

Lin Jue said, “Then why are you looking at Zhou Jiayu, he doesn’t have milk.”

Shen Yiqiong silently moved his gaze away from Zhou Jiayu.

Zhou Jiayu: “…” A chill ran across his chest. Shen Yiqiong, what the hell were you just thinking.

When the police arrived, the first thing they saw was the person placed in the cage. Although it had already been explained quite clearly over the phone, actually seeing this person who had been turned into a human stick before their eyes still made everyone somewhat uncomfortable.

One of the newer police officers even ran outside to vomit.

Next came the handover work. Speaking of handover, it was actually just them giving the tape Jiang Zhu had given them to the police. Inside was footage of the doctors’ actions in this hospital. The police should conduct a rectification of this hospital and transfer the patients to new psychiatric hospitals.

Lin Jue was somewhat worried that these patients would encounter some other bad situation, so she proposed that she was willing to donate a sum of funds for these patients as treatment expenses. She wanted them to receive good treatment in other regular psychiatric hospitals, hoping they could recover their health and return to normal life.

As for that dean who had been placed in the cage and turned into a human stick, everyone’s mood was even more complicated. Jiang Zhu hadn’t killed him — that was his greatest torment. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and probably only starvation could kill him. As for whether he had the courage to let himself die by such a painful method, no one could say.

Because they had watched the video, everyone didn’t have much sympathy for this person. So many patients had been tormented by him for so many years. His current appearance was, to some degree, a form of paying his debt.

Everyone finally left this psychiatric hospital in a police car.

In the car leaving, the paper crane Lin Zhushui had released earlier returned. When it came back, its body was covered with a thick layer of black ash. Lin Zhushui lightly touched it, and he watched its body burn up.

Later, Zhou Jiayu learned that at this time, Lin Zhushui had planted a fire seed on Jiang Zhu’s body.

This psychiatric hospital case still couldn’t be kept under wraps and caused great controversy in society. Zhou Jiayu only learned from the news afterward that this psychiatric hospital had originally been shut down years ago due to illegal operations, but because of certain circumstances, it had been secretly preserved.

In the end, the patients in that hospital were dispersed and sent to new psychiatric hospitals. Probably because they were afraid that if they gathered together, they would cause some other incident.

After returning home, everyone planned to make a sumptuous meal to reward themselves. Zhou Jiayu asked Lin Zhushui what dishes he wanted to eat. Lin Zhushui said in a very serious tone: “Pan-fried small yellow croaker.”

Zhou Jiayu: “…” Huh?

Lin Zhushui said: “The kind that’s golden brown on both sides.”

This was originally a quite normal sentence, but Zhou Jiayu inexplicably felt his ear tips begin to turn red. He made an “mm” sound, put on his apron, and entered the kitchen.

Outside, Lin Jue said to Lin Zhushui in a small voice: “Zhushui, are you being a hooligan?”

Lin Zhushui raised his hand, picked up his teacup, and took a sip, ignoring her.

Lin Jue said: “When are you planning to start eating?”

Lin Zhushui was quiet for a moment, then put down the teacup in his hand: “At the right time.”

Lin Jue sighed deeply: “Bro, how come I never discovered you had such good patience before.”

Lin Zhushui, however, smiled slightly, the corners of his mouth hooking upward: “He naturally deserves the best timing.”

__

Author’s Note:

Xiao Zhi leaned over in front of Zhou Jiayu, kissed his cheek, and said he wanted to drink milk.

Zhou Jiayu: ??? Shen Yiqiong, what the hell did you do again??

Shen Yiqiong wailed grievously and burst into tears, saying he really didn’t, this time it was definitely the Master’s fault.

Zhou Jiayu: emmmmm…