Chen Ge stepped out of the laundry room and made his way toward the second floor, intent on locating the exact room where Wang Haiming had once been confined during his initial low-risk placement. The narrow staircase echoed with his careful footsteps as he climbed, flashlight beam sweeping ahead to catch any unexpected movement. When he finally reached the correct ward and pushed open the door to the small patient room, he found it almost entirely stripped bare. Two simple bed frames stood side by side in the cramped space; the mattresses and bedding had long since been removed, leaving only the cold metal skeletons behind. For safety reasons, every potentially dangerous feature had been carefully eliminated: there were no sharp corners, no exposed screws, no protruding hardware. Even the edges of the bed frames had been deliberately rounded and smoothed to prevent any chance of self-harm.
"Wang Haiming was committed to this hospital by his second wife," Chen Ge said quietly to the camera as he slowly walked the perimeter of the tiny room. "There may have been genuine issues with his mental state, but nothing severe enough to justify indefinite confinement in a place like this. Looking at everything I've learned so far, I'm increasingly convinced this was a deliberate conspiracy directed against him—someone wanted him silenced, discredited, and locked away for good."
As Chen Ge mentally pieced together every fragment of information he had gathered throughout the night—from Xu Tong's recounting to the physical evidence left behind—a clearer picture of Wang Haiming's life began to emerge. It had been a trajectory of dramatic highs and devastating lows: early success, a wealthy period, personal betrayal through infidelity, the collapse of his marriage, financial ruin, forced institutionalization, brutal treatments, and finally a desperate fight for freedom. Through every reversal of fortune, one constant remained: Wang Haiming never stopped resisting. Whether battling the hospital staff, enduring electroshock therapy, or later struggling against the entity that had entered his body after escape, he refused to surrender. He was far from a saint—his cheating on his first wife had been a serious moral failing—but in Chen Ge's eyes, the punishment he ultimately endured far outweighed the original sin.
"Every patient room door in this hospital is fitted with a single-sided lock," Chen Ge observed as he examined the doorframe more closely. "Even if someone managed to steal or duplicate a key, the door could only be opened from the outside—never from within the room itself. On top of that, heavy security doors were installed every twenty meters along the corridors, and nurses and orderlies patrolled the halls every night. So how exactly did Wang Haiming manage to escape from this place the first time?" He sat down carefully on one of the bare bed frames, the metal cold against his legs, and tilted his head to study the window. Thick wooden boards had been nailed over it years ago, blocking out any natural light or view of the outside world.
Chen Ge stood again and began prying at the boards with the flat end of his hammer. They came away relatively easily—age and damp rot had weakened the nails. Beneath the wood he found steel security netting bolted directly into the concrete frame. There was no possibility of squeezing through or breaking out that way. Even if someone had managed to remove the netting, the hospital was completely encircled by a two-meter-high cement wall topped with broken glass and barbed wire. Beyond that wall stretched dense, overgrown forest in every direction. Without a guide or clear landmarks, getting lost in those woods was almost guaranteed—especially at night. And yet Wang Haiming had not only escaped the building itself, he had navigated the outer grounds successfully enough to contact his ex-wife and convince her to help arrange his release. The entire sequence of events was so improbable it could have been the plot of a feature film.
"It would have been nearly impossible for Wang Haiming to pull off that escape entirely on his own," Chen Ge concluded as he stared at the reinforced window. "He must have relied on the power of the entity—the monster—that had already entered his body by that point. They worked together out of necessity. Their shared goal was simple and absolute: get out of this mental hospital at any cost." He understood the logic behind the alliance, but one critical question still remained unanswered. "When exactly did that monster enter Wang Haiming's body?"
Recalling his earlier conversation with Xu Tong, Chen Ge began to notice something strange about the timeline of Wang Haiming's behavior. Not long after his first session of electroshock "therapy," Wang Haiming had suddenly become far more defiant and provocative. He deliberately hid his medication, argued with staff, and even physically assaulted a nurse—actions that seemed almost calculated to guarantee his swift return to the Third Sick Hall. For an ordinary patient, such behavior might be dismissed as simple insanity. But Wang Haiming had never truly been insane. His actions suggested intent.
"Was he doing this on purpose?" Chen Ge wondered aloud as he slowly paced the small room. "Did he want—need—to get sent back to the Third Sick Hall for some specific reason?" He scanned the sparse space again, searching for anything that might have been overlooked. The only possible hiding places were behind the heavy blackout curtain (now long since torn down) and underneath the two bed frames.
Chen Ge crouched down and pushed both metal frames aside with effort. The wall that had been concealed behind one of the beds was now exposed. Someone had used their fingernails—or perhaps a small, improvised tool—to painstakingly carve words into the thick white paint over many nights. Time and damp air had faded most of the letters, making large sections illegible, but Chen Ge could still make out enough of the text to grasp the overall meaning. It was clearly a diary of sorts—fragmented thoughts scratched out in desperation during sleepless nights.
"Is this Wang Haiming's handwriting?" Chen Ge asked himself as he closed the room's door to reduce ambient noise, then aimed his flashlight directly at the wall and began reading the carved words slowly and carefully.
"Have I really gone crazy?
"Two workers and a doctor hauled me into the electroshock room. The bunch of animals locked the door, so technically, no one should have been able to come in.
"Why did I see four people in the room after the therapy?
"Who was the one wearing the patient's garb?"
Chen Ge's pulse quickened slightly. Wang Haiming had almost certainly carved these words himself. In a room stripped of all entertainment, all distraction, all privacy, keeping this secret diary had become his only outlet—his only way to hold onto sanity while the hospital tried to break him. It was here, through long hours of pain and rumination, that he had first realized he was different from everyone else trapped around him.
"Is it a hallucination caused by the shock? Why could he talk to me? Why can only I see him?
"He said that he can help me escape, but in return, I have to agree to one of his conditions.
"This is truly a devil's bargain, but I have no choice.
"Perhaps something is wrong—could it be those pills? I find myself falling asleep so easily, like someone has poured lead straight into my brain. I have to leave this place.
"The devil doesn't seem able to leave the Third Sick Hall. If I want to escape this hospital, I'll need to find him there.
"The workers here are heartless animals! I will ruin this place, I swear!
"After entering that room for the second time, I agreed to his demand. After completing the ritual inside the bathroom, he entered my body.
"Have I really gone insane to believe there is a devil in this world and to accept his trade?"
The diary entries ended abruptly at that final, haunting question, as though Wang Haiming had either run out of strength to continue carving or had suddenly been interrupted—perhaps by the very thing he had just invited into himself. After agreeing to the devil's bargain, whatever happened next remained locked inside his own mind; no further words survived on the wall to tell the tale. Chen Ge stared at the last legible line for a long moment, the flashlight beam trembling slightly in his grip. The monster that now lived inside Wang Haiming had almost certainly originated from somewhere deep within the Third Sick Hall. The ritual itself had taken place in the bathroom of this very ward. A mirror was almost certainly required—most mirror-related entities demanded reflection as part of any summoning or possession rite. If that was true, then the thing that had possessed Wang Haiming wasn't some ancient or supernatural devil at all. It was far more likely a common, low-to-mid-tier mirror monster: cunning, patient, and opportunistic rather than overwhelmingly powerful. Chen Ge had encountered enough of their kind in the past to recognize the pattern. They thrived on deception, bargains, and exploiting desperation, but they rarely overpowered their hosts through brute force.
There were no additional clues hidden in the small, stripped-down room—no loose floor tiles, no messages tucked behind light switches, no forgotten objects wedged into cracks. The space had been picked clean by time and neglect. Chen Ge gave the carved wall one final sweep with his flashlight, committing the surviving words to memory, then turned and left the room without looking back. The door clicked shut behind him with a sound that felt far too final in the empty corridor.
The mirror monster that had fused with Wang Haiming had come from the Third Sick Hall. The tall, shadowy entity that had once attached itself to Wang Shenglong had also originated from the same sealed wing. Why did these things refuse to remain inside the Third Sick Hall where they belonged? Why did they seek hosts and escape into the outside world? The questions gnawed at Chen Ge as he descended the stairs once more. Every answer he found only seemed to multiply the unknowns. He needed more information—real, concrete evidence—and the only place left that might hold it was the very heart of the nightmare: the Third Sick Hall itself.
Chen Ge tightened his grip on Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer, the familiar weight grounding him against the growing sense of dread. He gave a short, low whistle to summon the white cat, which had been trailing silently behind him through the corridors. The animal appeared instantly at his ankle, pressing close against his leg in a rare display of dependence. Together they returned to the fourth-floor hallway that connected the Second and Third Sick Halls—the same path the twisted-face man had used to flee earlier. Chen Ge crouched beside the line of salt he had poured earlier as a marker. The thin white barrier remained perfectly undisturbed; no footprints, no smudges, no sign that anything living had crossed it since he left.
"No one has passed through here," he murmured, more to reassure himself than anything else. He reached out and slowly pushed open the heavy steel security door. The hinges gave a long, reluctant groan that seemed to travel far deeper into the darkness beyond than it should have. The moment the door swung wide, the corridor ahead swallowed the flashlight beam whole. The light simply stopped a few meters in, as though the air itself had grown thick enough to choke it.
The tiles beneath Chen Ge's shoes felt wrong—too slick in places, too uneven in others, shifting almost imperceptibly with every step like the slow undulation of something breathing beneath the floor. A deep, pervasive cold settled over him the further he advanced, not the crisp chill of night air but something heavier, damper, more personal. It clung to his skin and crawled underneath his clothes, raising gooseflesh along his arms and the back of his neck. Somewhere ahead—impossibly distant yet somehow very close—he felt watched. Not just observed, but studied, measured, weighed. The sensation pressed against his temples like cold fingers.
Even the white cat, which had faced far worse without flinching, now pressed itself tightly against Chen Ge's ankle, ears flattened, tail bushed, refusing to take a single step ahead of him. If not for the food-scented jacket Chen Ge still wore, the animal would almost certainly have bolted back toward the safer parts of the hospital. The cat's fear was contagious; Chen Ge felt it coiling in his own chest, tightening around his lungs.
The clue left behind by his parents was waiting somewhere inside this wing. No matter what lay ahead—no matter how strongly every instinct screamed at him to turn back—he could not retreat now. Chen Ge reached into his half-open backpack and pulled the handle of the cleaver upward until it sat ready and exposed, the blade still hidden but the grip within easy reach. One quick motion and he could draw it in an instant.
"It's almost time," he said quietly, glancing at his phone screen. The numbers read 11:51 p.m. Nine more minutes until midnight. The moment the clock ticked over, everything would change—he could already feel the shift beginning in the air around him.
The instant Chen Ge crossed the threshold fully into the Third Sick Hall corridor, a strange sensation washed over him. It wasn't just the darkness or the cold. The entire wing seemed to be… alive. Not in any obvious way—no pulsing walls, no visible movement—but in the way a great animal breathes. The cold drafts that brushed across his face and neck felt rhythmic, deliberate, like slow inhalations and exhalations. The building itself seemed to be watching him, sizing him up, deciding whether he was prey worth consuming or merely something to toy with for a while longer. Every step forward felt like walking deeper into the throat of something enormous and patient, something that had been waiting for him all along.