The main door of the office was locked securely from the inside.
Because it was designed specifically to be both burglar- and blast-proof, it
didn't even budge when Xie Qingcheng and He Yu threw themselves at it.
Sensing that something was wrong, the receptionist hastily rushed upstairs
with the key in hand.
"There're sounds coming from inside," He Yu said.
Xie Qingcheng slammed his hand against the door. For as long as He
Yu had known Xie Qingcheng, he had never seen such a terrifying
expression on his face. He seemed to have gone berserk.
"Xie Xue! Xie Xue!! Are you there?!" Xie Qingcheng yelled.
"Whoever's inside, say something if you can hear me!! Xie Xue!!"
No one responded.
There was only the gentle sound of that woman's voice, drifting eerily
in the air. "Drop, drop, drop the hanky…"
"Th-the key… The key!!" The receptionist rushed over and handed
him the key.
Xie Qingcheng took it from her. His hands were trembling so
violently that it took him two tries to line it up with the keyhole. After a few
turns, the lock clicked, and he threw the door open with a bang. The heavy
stench of blood assaulted them as Xie Xue's grisly, mutilated body
immediately came into view before Xie Qingcheng's eyes!
Xie Qingcheng fell apart at once, his vision going dark as though he'd
been struck over the head, like the sky had fallen and smashed down onto
his body. His tall figure tipped forward; if he hadn't grabbed the doorframe
in time, he might have ended up falling to his knees.
The fan was still wobbling in its orbit, circulating the sickening
stench through the air.
Xie Qingcheng didn't usually get dizzy at the sight of blood, but at
this moment, it was as if he were about to drown in the vivid shades of
crimson. At the sight of Xie Xue, it felt as though Xie Qingcheng's soul had
wrenched itself out of his body, lest he break down completely. He began to
lose his sense of awareness, hearing, sight, touch… The world had been
reduced to a haze.
Someone seemed to be screaming behind him, perhaps the ‐
receptionist who had accompanied them upstairs, he wasn't sure. He
couldn't hear anything clearly anymore.
Yet, his sense of smell alone had become horrifyingly acute.
The sickly stench of blood overpowered everything else as it surged
into his sensory and internal organs, purifying and disintegrating his lungs.
He stumbled into the room. Mortality and danger meant little to him
—even if the murderer inside were to rush up and kill him right now, he
wouldn't care.
That was his little sister!!
He could hear someone mumbling, though he didn't know who it
was. "Xie Xue… Xie Xue…"
That voice trembled alarmingly, but it also sounded like the quavering
cry escaping from his own shattered, hoarse throat.
"Xie Xue!!"
"Don't go over there!!" Someone seized his hand and grabbed him
around the waist, forcefully pulling him back. "Don't go over there!! Xie
Qingcheng!!"
He didn't even blink or try to throw that person off; all he cared about
was moving forward, which he did so with astonishing strength. He had already gone numb. There were only so many people he cared about in this
world…
In that moment, it was as though an earth-shattering deluge had
suddenly poured down over everything before his eyes. The scent of the
rain was putrid, and he stood there like a withered husk in the downpour.
That had been the first time he ever witnessed death…
His parents had died in a pool of blood, their mangled bodies
smashed to bits. Half of his mother's body had practically been crushed to a
pulp, and one of her severed hands had fallen far into the distance. He
staggered to that severed hand, right until it was at the tips of his toes.
He looked at it with vacant eyes…
"Xie Qingcheng! It's not Xie Xue! Wake up! Take a good look!!"
It was as though these words had shattered the curse of a terrifying
demonic mirror. They slammed into his chest, and the sudden jolt dragged
his sense of reason back from the overwhelming fear that had consumed
him.
He slowly turned his head, his peach-blossom eyes focusing on the
face of the person who had spoken those words to him.
It was…
He Yu.
It was He Yu who had spoken those words.
It was fake.
It wasn't real.
Xie Xue wasn't dead…
All of a sudden, Xie Qingcheng snapped out of it, abruptly turning
around to stare…
The faculty uniform that had belonged to Xie Xue was the most
glaringly eye-catching item on the dead body. But upon closer examination,
he realized that the height and build of that mutilated corpse didn't resemble
Xie Xue at all. Xie Xue's uniform had been forcibly wrapped around it—
the buttons couldn't even be fastened over the chest. It was the corpse of a
man.
Xie Qingcheng's legs gave out; it felt as though his escaped soul had
been relentlessly shoved back into his body in an instant, the force so brutal
he could hardly bear it.
He closed his eyes, taking a moment to gather his wits. Only then did
he manage to swim through the inundation of shock and terror from a
moment ago and climb ashore. However, he was already soaked through,
his body and forehead covered in cold sweat.
Normal people would not have been able to identify a corpse that had
been mutilated to this degree in such a short amount of time. The smell of
blood alone would have been sufficient to make one lose their sense of
awareness and muddle the mind.
But He Yu had a rare mental illness called "psychological Ebola." He
was psychological Ebola's Case #4, who had the highest tolerance for
blood.
He wasn't afraid of blood; in fact, during flare-ups, he actually
became bloodthirsty. That was why he could tell that the deceased wasn't
Xie Xue in such a short amount of time.
He asked "Liang Jicheng" in a cold voice, "Where's the girl?"
"Liang Jicheng" raised her head.
She was exactly the same as Xie Xue had described in her final
message to He Yu—an exceptionally attractive woman who had prevailed
remarkably untouched over the cruel march of time, far more beautiful and
alluring than most women her age.
Upon seeing "Liang Jicheng's" face clearly, the receptionist behind
Xie Qingcheng and He Yu, who was so frightened she'd fallen to the floor
and wet her pants, let out a twisted scream that could have been better
described as an anguished wail.
"It's her!! It's her!!"
Right then, the security guards rushed over. They had intended to ask
what was going on, but the scene that greeted them frightened them out of
their minds. Only a few people had the wits to shout hoarsely.
"Jiang Lanpei!!"
"How did she get out?!"
Jiang Lanpei was considered an "elder" at Cheng Kang Psychiatric
Hospital. There was an unspoken custom in these institutions, as well as the
morgues of normal hospitals, to refer to the patients without anyone to bring
them home or corpses that were left unclaimed for too long as "elders."
Jiang Lanpei had been here for nearly twenty years. Nobody had ever
come to visit her.
Due to the switch from paper to digital records, even the files
containing the information about how she had come to the hospital had
been lost.
The people at Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital only knew that she
was a madwoman who shouldn't be provoked because her condition wasn't
obvious. While other patients looked messy and unkempt, and spoke
unclearly, she styled herself every day to look bright and beautiful and was
able to respond to others without missing a beat.
However, everyone in the hospital knew that, despite the logical
consistency of her words, this was just an act. To put it bluntly, it was
deranged nonsense that sounded very much like normal speech.
"Don't interact with her too much and leave right after you've
finished attending to her. This madwoman is a skilled manipulator."
This rule had remained unchanged since the former boss, Liang
Zhongkang, had established it. Even when he died and the hospital was
taken over by his younger brother, Liang Jicheng, and other associates, it
remained the same.
The man lying on the ground was the real Liang Jicheng.
Jiang Lanpei regarded the growing crowd outside the door with a
menacingly cold expression. "Do not call the police."
"Hurry up and call—"
"Don't you dare!" Jiang Lanpei raised the scalpel with a sweeping
motion and pointed it at everyone before her, her eyes flashing with a gleam
of madness.
"I've been here for almost twenty years, and I've had enough! I want
to leave now! I want to go home! My children are still waiting for me!"
"Wh-what children are you talking about, Jiang Lanpei?!" The
captain of the security guards, bravely leaned forward and shouted
nervously at Jiang Lanpei, "You don't have children! You're alone! We've
cared for you for twenty years—"
"Bullshit! You guys cared for me for twenty years? How could that be
considered care? Let me go! I want to leave, right now! Get out of the way!
All of you, get out of the way! Otherwise… Otherwise, you'll never find
the other girl!"
Upon hearing this, He Yu and Xie Qingcheng's expressions darkened.
"Where is she?!" Xie Qingcheng demanded sharply.
"Do you think I'm stupid?! Why would I tell you?! If I tell you,
they'll just take me away!"
Xie Qingcheng's complexion paled as he suddenly thought of
something. He stepped forward.
Jiang Lanpei retreated a few steps, pointing the sharp scalpel that was
still dripping blood at Xie Qingcheng's chest. "What are you doing? I told
you not to come any closer!"
"You took her to use as a hostage, right?"
Jiang Lanpei said nothing.
Xie Qingcheng lifted his hand and, as he stared into her eyes,
suddenly grabbed the bloody blade. Jiang Lanpei shrieked and tried to pull
the scalpel out from his grip. Xie Qingcheng's palm was immediately cut
open and blood dripped down in rivulets.
"What are you doing?! You want to throw away her life? You—"
Xie Qingcheng pulled the blade toward himself and pressed it against
his chest.
The entire room was shocked.
Without blinking, Xie Qingcheng said, "Take me."
Jiang Lanpei froze.
Slowly releasing the blade, Xie Qingcheng spoke with deliberate
emphasis. "I'll take her place. Tell them her location right now and have
them bring her out in front of me! I'll wait right here. If a single strand of her hair is out of place, I don't care if you're insane or just pretending to be,
I'll fucking kill you!"
Jiang Lanpei considered his offer for a moment, but her muddled
mind couldn't come to a decision.
Xie Qingcheng's gaze was much too terrifying. Even a crazed corpse dismembering murderer like her found it difficult to so much as breathe as
she returned his stare. Thus, she gave up on thinking and yanked him closer,
pressing the blade to Xie Qingcheng's carotid artery.
"Xie Qingcheng!" He Yu cried.
"That little girl is in my room, B3009."
"We've checked it already! Don't believe her lie!" one of the security
guards shouted. "Jiang Lanpei! There's no one in your room!!"
Jiang Lanpei scoffed. "Move the bed aside—there's a loose
floorboard underneath. Pry it open. It's a very small secret chamber. You'd
best go together. Other than that little girl, there's another surprise waiting
for you as well."
The security guards looked at each other in dismay before making to
leave.
"Wait a minute!" Jiang Lanpei suddenly exclaimed. After a pause, she
continued, "All of you, take out your phones and throw them onto the
ground."
They had no choice but to comply, and so they followed her orders.
Because there were no telephones installed in any of the other rooms on this
floor, and the stairwell was fully within view, the three phoneless security
guards were now allowed to go to the nearby room B3009 to look for Xie
Xue. The others remained where they were.
Shortly thereafter, the security guards who had left rushed back.
Who knew what the three of them saw inside the secret chamber, but
sure enough, their faces were as gray and pallid as unevenly mixed wet
concrete. They had used a bedsheet as a makeshift stretcher to carry the
unconscious Xie Xue over.
The moment Xie Qingcheng saw Xie Xue, his heart couldn't take it
anymore.
On the one hand, he could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Xie Xue
truly was fine and had likely only been drugged unconscious. On the other
hand, he was overcome with devastation because Xie Xue's clothes had
been taken off. With fall still approaching, it was sweltering hot outside, so
Xie Xue had worn the bare minimum amount of clothing. With her school
uniform removed, she was clad in nothing but her thin, lacy white
underclothes.
Xie Qingcheng looked away after a single glimpse, his body
trembling in rage. He reached up—
"What are you doing?" Jiang Lanpei shouted. "Don't move!"
"That's my fucking sister!" Xie Qingcheng took off his shirt and
tossed it to He Yu even as Jiang Lanpei's trembling blade was still viciously
pressed against him.
He commanded He Yu with bloodshot eyes, "Drape it over her!"
He Yu didn't need him to say so—he'd already taken the shirt and put
it on Xie Xue, covering her up. Her entire body leaned limply into his arms
when he picked her up. He turned to ask Xie Qingcheng, "What about
you?"
"What do you think?!" Xie Qingcheng snapped. "What else can I do?
Whenever I meet you, it's always bad luck. Why didn't you dig through the
Cinderella one back then—you should've just mistaken the poison for
candy and died right there!"
He Yu immediately narrowed his eyes.
He knew what Xie Qingcheng meant with these reproachful words.
He knew, but Jiang Lanpei didn't.
"All of you, follow me to the roof, " said Jiang Lanpei. "Once we're
on the roof, I'll let him go."
When a murderer who was trying to escape took a hostage, they
would usually say something like, "Get me a car, and don't call the police.
I'll let them go once I drive away." This Jiang Lanpei really was a lunatic
who looked normal on the surface. Not only did she not head downstairs,
she wanted to go to the roof instead.
Could there be a helicopter waiting?
But since she had given this order, the others present could only
comply.
"Go! All of you, go first! Walk in front!" Jiang Lanpei snapped. "To
the top of the building! Hurry up!"
She rushed them along, one after another. It was only after everyone
had gone out that she carefully went up to the roof herself, Xie Qingcheng
in tow.
Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital was located in a remote area, rather
far away from the city. The lighting on the roof was sparse, and the strong
night wind blew so hard that it dried the cold sweat on their bodies and
caused gooseflesh to rise in its wake.
Jiang Lanpei ordered everyone to sit down some distance away from
her. She retreated to the side of the water tower with the scalpel still pressed
to Xie Qingcheng's neck.
"What is your goal?" asked Xie Qingcheng.
"I said, my goal is to escape!"
"That's not your goal."
"What do you know?" said Jiang Lanpei. "The people in the sky will
come and take me away…" The blade pressed firmly against Xie
Qingcheng's skin; blood had already begun to trickle out.
She stood up on her tiptoes and whispered in Xie Qingcheng's ear,
"When the time comes, you'll all die."
After determining that Xie Xue was safe, Xie Qingcheng had calmed
down completely. His mind was perfectly clear—to him, his own life truly
didn't matter that much.
"If that's the case, then why don't you kill me right now?" he asked
Jiang Lanpei, his voice cold. "According to you, we're all going to die
anyway."
"You!"
"Are you too afraid to do it?"
Jiang Lanpei didn't respond.
"What are you waiting for, people to come down from the sky?" Xie
Qingcheng continued. "What people are there in the sky? The smog is so
dense we can't even see the stars."
"Just you wait," Jiang Lanpei said darkly. "You'll see."
At this point, she had probably also felt that her strength was waning
even as she spoke. After all, she was a woman in her fifties, and she had to
stand on her tiptoes and tense her whole body to reach Xie Qingcheng's
neck; she could not constantly coerce Xie Qingcheng into obeying her
while simultaneously keeping a watchful eye on the others for an extended
period of time. Realizing this, she glanced out of the corner of her eye
around the water tower and caught sight of a length of hemp rope that had
been left behind during construction. Hooking a foot around the rope to
bring it closer, she continued to press the blade against Xie Qingcheng's
throat.
Rope in hand, she began to tie him up. Using plenty of knots, she
bound him firmly to the water tower.
"You seem quite experienced," Xie Qingcheng scoffed. "Is this the
only thing you practiced for the past twenty years in the loony bin?"
He seemed to have struck a sore spot. She sharply backhanded him
across the face and spat, "Shut your mouth!"
After tying him up tightly, she backed away a few steps and finally let
out a sigh of relief.
Hatred flashed through her eyes. "All of you men are beastly
bastards."
Behind them, the security guards couldn't help but whisper among
each other. Those who hadn't gone to save Xie Xue asked the three who
did, "Was there really a secret chamber in Jiang Lanpei's room?"
The three security guards were clearly disturbed in comparison to the
others. Two of them couldn't collect themselves at all as they fixed their
terrified eyes on Jiang Lanpei.
Only one could barely eke out an answer. "There was."
"What was inside?"
What was inside? Collectively, the three security guards began to
tremble.
Jiang Lanpei had overheard this question. Before the guards could
speak, she slowly turned her head, the sharp blade still gripped in her hand.
She smiled. "What was it?"
The hatred in her smile began to blaze, the scent of smoke and flame
seemingly materializing in an instant. "What's inside? Ha ha…ha ha ha
ha… Love! A very, very intimate sort of love! Isn't that right?" Jiang
Lanpei's face contorted—she truly was a madwoman.
The only security guard who could still speak, a man slightly older
than the others, clutched his head with his hands. His own daughter on his
mind, the guard explained, "Liang Jicheng was raping her."
The other guards stared at him in shock.
"For more than ten years… He did it every night, no matter what
condition she was in… And every night, Liang Jicheng left a photo, so that
when you enter the room, it's on every wall, everywhere…"
"That's not all," Jiang Lanpei smiled slightly. "Did you see the
skeleton in the corner?"
No one responded.
"That was a tasty little morsel that Liang Jicheng brought," Jiang
Lanpei continued, as though sharing a secret with friends, but in a voice that
was loud and hoarse, like a crow cawing and wailing. "He was afraid he
would leave crumbs and that the scent would attract cats if he ate outside!23
So, he brought his food here, to the secret chamber in the mental hospital he
and his brother shared. They nibbled away at their tasty little morsel…but
that little girl couldn't stand the defilement and killed herself by hitting her
head against the wall!
The more she spoke, the more horrified the listeners' expressions
became.
Only He Yu's face remained calm.
Xie Qingcheng's, on the other hand, grew increasingly hateful and
furious.
"The morsel killed herself in the end, but she couldn't be thrown in
the trash can, could she? So, they kept her in the secret chamber, immersed
in sulfuric acid. It didn't take long for the flesh to disappear, and there
wasn't much left of the bone either…but they still left some for me to look
at, to scare me. To keep me from trying to seek death because I would end
up the same way if I did." As Jiang Lanpei recounted these memories, her
mind crumbled into delirium and her speech became disjointed, but the
madness in her expression never faded.
"I pretended to be scared and catered to their whims every day…
Later, he died…and there was only his brother left… Pfft! That brother was
even more disgusting—a perverted deviant through and through…"
"Why didn't you tell us?! Why didn't you ask us to call the cops?!"
The young nurse couldn't bear it anymore, and her eyes brimmed
with tears. "If you reported it, we could have helped you!"
"Who would have believed me?! I'm a madwoman! A madwoman!!
They told you not to talk to me! They told you to stay as far away from me
as possible! Every single day, you fed me medicine! Medicine! You didn't
care! Did anyone ever listen to me? Did anyone ever believe me?!" Jiang
Lanpei raged. "I'm a lunatic! To all of you, I'm just a dangerous beast! You
don't have to take me seriously, you don't have to care for me sincerely—
what would I dare to tell you? If I told you, Liang Jicheng would just turn
around and kill me!"
B3009 was like a rusting forge, filled with almost twenty years of lust
and depravity.
Because of her illness, normal people wouldn't be able to see past
their preconceived notions. Between an insane woman and the asylum's
director, who would believe her? Gradually, the secret chamber beneath the
woman's bed became a spider's lair untouched by sunlight, a web where the
flesh of women turned to rot.
"All of you disgust me. I hate all of you!!" At this point, the light in
Jiang Lanpei's eyes grew even more terrifying. Her voice gradually
softened as she clutched at her head. "No one can help me… I've long
since…long since forgotten who I am, forgotten where I came from… I can
only… I can only return to the sky."
She suddenly looked up at the others and announced, "All of you
must come with me."
Just as she finished speaking, she realized that one of the security
guards was looking at her with an odd anxiety. She was stunned for but a
moment before she reacted, turning swiftly.
At that very moment, she suddenly felt a gust of wind behind her.
Though she just barely managed to dodge, she was immediately and
ferociously kicked down by her opponent's long legs and pinned to the
rough cement floor of the roof. She stared in disbelief at the man standing
before the cloudy nightscape, the man with a bare upper body, wiry
shoulders, and a sharp expression.
"The knots, how…how could you…"
"I forgot to mention," Xie Qingcheng said icily. "My parents were
both police officers. I've been playing around with knots like these since
fucking childhood."