After being left exposed to open air for any significant length of time, cooked meat naturally begins to harden and lose its initial tenderness as the surface cools and dries out. Chen Ge carefully adjusted the angle of the chest-mounted camera so it captured a clear, close-up view of the duck carcass still resting inside the iron cage. He reached in slowly and pressed a gloved fingertip against the exposed meat; to his surprise, the surface remained noticeably soft and pliable, and when he held his hand there for a moment longer, he could distinctly feel a faint residual warmth radiating from the flesh.
"This duck was cooked and placed here less than an hour ago—probably much more recently than that," Chen Ge said in a low, measured voice for both the livestream audience and his own recording. He shifted his body to get a better grip, then carefully pulled the entire duck out from the narrow confines of the cage so he could examine it more thoroughly under the beam of his flashlight. "Look closely: the innards clearly weren't cleaned out properly before cooking, and the neck was snapped clean through with raw, brute force—no knife marks at all. The head is completely missing, torn away rather than cut."
Chen Ge turned the half-cooked bird over slowly in his hands, inspecting every visible surface with intense focus. A distinct set of bite marks marred the tender meat along one side, deep enough to show teeth impressions, and the abdominal cavity had been savagely ripped open from the inside out. Strikingly, there were no loose duck feathers scattered anywhere on the floor around the cage or inside the nurse's station itself. That single detail spoke volumes: whatever creature—or person—had torn into the duck had consumed the feathers along with the flesh, swallowing everything without leaving a single trace behind.
"These iron cages were clearly designed to hold large dogs, or at least animals of similar size," Chen Ge reasoned aloud as he gently placed the duck back inside the cage exactly where he had found it. He then directed his attention to the opposite end of the enclosure, where two ordinary plastic bowls sat neatly positioned just outside the bars. Both bowls were filled to roughly the same level with a clear, colorless liquid that reflected the flashlight beam in small, shimmering pools.
"Why would there be two separate bowls placed right here in front of the cage like this?" Chen Ge wondered, crouching down for a closer look. "Does this mean the cage was meant to house two dogs at the same time, each with its own water dish?" The bowls appeared identical in size and shape, so he carefully lifted each one in turn and brought them close to his nose to sniff the contents. The liquid in the first bowl carried no discernible odor at all—most likely ordinary tap water. But the second bowl gave off a faint yet unmistakable pungent chemical smell that immediately set off alarm bells in his mind.
"That definitely smells like rat poison," Chen Ge stated firmly, lowering the bowl again with caution. Having purchased and handled rat poison on previous occasions to keep rodents away from set pieces and props during other investigations, he was very familiar with its sharp, acrid scent. "Two nearly identical bowls sitting side by side—one filled with plain water, the other deliberately laced with rat poison. Isn't the owner worried that their own pets might accidentally drink from the wrong one and poison themselves? Or is that exactly the point?"
The entire scene struck Chen Ge as deeply bizarre and unsettling, far beyond what could be explained by simple neglect or coincidence. He made sure to capture every detail on camera—the cages, the duck, the bowls, the positioning—leaving nothing out for the viewers to analyze later. As he straightened up, he glanced quickly at his phone screen; the chat was scrolling at breakneck speed with comments flying past. One particular message caught his eye for just a split second before it vanished upward—it mentioned something about a "cage" in connection with a "page," though he couldn't pause long enough to read the full context amid the flood of text.
Chen Ge didn't have the luxury of scrolling back through the wall of comments right then. Instead, he turned his attention to the iron bars of the cage itself, running his flashlight along their length. Near the locked door mechanism, he discovered a large, uneven splattering of what looked like dried white paint smeared thickly across several of the bars—clear evidence that someone had gripped them with desperate force, knuckles white and hands unwilling to release their hold even as they were pulled away.
"Could it be that these cages weren't meant for animals at all… but for holding humans?" Chen Ge voiced the chilling possibility out loud, the words hanging heavily in the stale air. Scattered across the abandoned nurse's station counter and floor were dozens of empty prescription pill bottles, along with small plastic bags bearing patients' handwritten names in faded marker. A few of those bags still contained oddly shaped, discolored pills that looked neither standard nor recently dispensed. "Someone—maybe more than one person—has been living here in this mental hospital that's supposedly been abandoned and sealed for the past five years. They're not just passing through; they've made this place their home."
The realization made Chen Ge instantly more cautious and alert. Every preparation he had made up to this point—the rooster, the mallet, the white cat, the various talismans tucked into his backpack—had been geared specifically toward dealing with ghosts, lingering spirits, and supernatural threats. He had never seriously anticipated the possibility of encountering dangerous, living occupants still occupying the derelict buildings. Moving carefully, he scanned the walls on either side of the nurse's station as he climbed back out over the counter and stepped into the corridor once more.
Whoever had been confined inside that iron cage had clearly been forcibly dragged out against their will. Their hands, coated in thick paint from gripping the bars so tightly, would have left unmistakable traces during the violent struggle. Chen Ge took only a few steps forward before his flashlight beam revealed exactly what he was looking for: long, frantic claw marks gouged into the peeling paint of the corridor walls, and smeared across those same scratches were fresh streaks of dark red blood that hadn't yet fully dried.
"Injured… and bleeding," Chen Ge murmured, following the disturbing trail with his eyes. The marks led unmistakably upward, toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. He tracked them all the way to the second floor, where the corridor split into two distinct paths: one continuing deeper into the First Sick Hall, while the other curved off toward the connecting walkway that led directly into the Second Sick Hall. As the hand-drawn map had indicated earlier, all three main buildings remained interconnected through these internal passages.
Chen Ge spent a full twenty minutes meticulously searching every accessible corner and room of the First Sick Hall. He checked behind every door, under every remaining bed frame, and inside every shadowed alcove, but the building offered almost no genuine hidden spaces large enough for an adult to conceal themselves long-term. Despite his thorough sweep, he found neither the person who had been trapped in the cage nor any additional concrete evidence—beyond the blood and claw marks—that anyone was currently hiding or residing within this particular wing.
"Could they have been dragged all the way to one of the other sick halls instead?" Chen Ge wondered aloud as he began descending the stairs back to the ground level. Halfway down, his phone suddenly vibrated sharply in his pocket—a call coming through. He answered immediately. "Yes?"
"Chen Ge, slow down—you're moving way too fast!" Liu Dao's voice came through clearly, tinged with both amusement and mild exasperation. "We're planning to keep this livestream running straight through the night, and you've already finished exploring the entire First Sick Hall in just twenty minutes. What exactly are you planning to do for the remaining hours? The audience needs more interaction." Liu Dao had obviously been watching the feed in real time from the tent. "Right now, Qin Guang's stream has already broken 600,000 concurrent viewers, while you're still hovering around barely 50,000. Don't just focus on rushing through the exploration—try talking to the viewers more, build some engagement, react to the chat."
Chen Ge listened attentively to the advice as he reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped back onto the ground floor of the First Sick Hall. When he turned to look down the long, familiar corridor toward the main entrance he had entered through earlier, his pupils suddenly contracted sharply in alarm. "Wait—hold on. Who closed the entrance door? I distinctly remember leaving it wide open when I first came inside."
"What did you just say?" Liu Dao's tone shifted instantly from casual to concerned. "In any case, don't put too much pressure on yourself right now. Just stay careful, alright?"
"Okay, I'll talk to you later." Chen Ge ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Without hesitation, he raised the mallet in a firm grip and broke into a quick run toward the entrance. As he passed by the nurse's station again, he instinctively glanced sideways into the small booth out of pure habit—and froze mid-stride. "Something has definitely changed in there."
However, with his primary concern fixed on the front entrance that had somehow been sealed shut, Chen Ge resisted the urge to immediately vault back over the counter into the nurse's station. Instead, he sprinted straight toward the main steel door he had originally entered through, his footsteps echoing loudly in the empty corridor. He grabbed the handle with both hands and shook the heavy door with every ounce of strength he possessed, rattling it violently in its frame. "F*ck! It's locked from the outside now! When the hell did that happen?" he cursed under his breath, the realization hitting him like a cold wave.
Chen Ge pressed his face close to the narrow gap between the door and the frame, angling his flashlight so he could peer through to the exterior. Sure enough, a brand-new padlock—shiny and clearly recently installed—now secured a thick metal hasp on the other side, completely barring any exit. He threw his full body weight against the door in a powerful shoulder charge, slamming into it repeatedly, but the reinforced steel didn't budge even a millimeter under the assault; it held firm as though it had been welded shut.
"The fact that they managed to swap out or add this lock so quickly and quietly means this definitely isn't the first time the culprit has pulled this exact trick," Chen Ge muttered to himself and the camera, his mind racing through the implications. Whoever was responsible had clearly practiced this before—perhaps many times—turning the abandoned hospital into their own controlled trap.
There were living people occupying this long-abandoned mental hospital, and Chen Ge strongly suspected they were former patients who had somehow returned after the facility closed its doors five years earlier. These weren't individuals suffering from simple intellectual disabilities or easily manageable conditions; if anything, from a certain twisted perspective, many of them possessed a sharper, more unpredictable kind of intelligence—one honed by years of institutionalization, survival instincts, and perhaps deep-seated resentment. That made them far more dangerous than ordinary intruders, and Chen Ge knew he could not afford to underestimate their cunning or their willingness to act.
He wedged the flat end of his mallet into the narrow seam between the door and frame, attempting to pry it open with leverage, but no matter how hard he strained, the tool only bent slightly while the door remained stubbornly locked. Frustrated, he gave up on the main entrance and quickly checked the rooms immediately adjacent to it. Every single window in those ground-floor spaces had been meticulously sealed from the outside with heavy iron netting bolted deep into the concrete frames—impossible to remove without specialized tools or a great deal of time and noise. Standing there surrounded by the barred windows and the locked door, Chen Ge suddenly gained a visceral understanding of the despair that must have gripped the patients who were once involuntarily committed here: this place didn't feel like a hospital at all anymore—it felt exactly like a giant, inescapable prison designed to contain and isolate.
Should he call for help? Reach out to the police and report that he was trapped inside with unknown hostile occupants? Chen Ge pulled out his phone and glanced at the livestream interface; the viewer count was still steadily climbing despite the relatively low numbers compared to Qin Guang's stream. If he ended the broadcast early or involved authorities, the entire livestream would collapse instantly, wasting all the effort Liu Dao's team had put into securing the recommendation slot. More importantly, he still had the mandatory Trial Mission hanging over him: he was required to survive inside the Third Sick Hall until dawn in order to complete it and potentially uncover vital clues about his missing parents. Bringing in the police would almost certainly void the mission entirely and ruin any chance of progress.
"I remember noticing earlier that the second-floor windows didn't have any of this iron netting installed," Chen Ge said quietly, speaking both to himself and the audience as he weighed his options. "That could serve as a viable escape route if things get truly desperate. For now, there's no immediate need to call the police—I can handle this myself." Determined to see the Trial Mission through to the end and chase down every possible lead regarding his parents' disappearance, Chen Ge steeled his resolve and refused to back down.
He returned to the nurse's station at a cautious pace, finally ready to investigate what had felt "off" earlier. As soon as he leaned over the counter again, the change became immediately obvious: the two plastic bowls that had previously sat neatly outside the iron cage had both been deliberately knocked over. The colorless liquids they once contained had splashed across the dusty floor in irregular puddles, already beginning to soak into the cracked tiles and evaporate in the stale air.
"They must have been worried I'd figure out that one of the bowls was poisoned and use that knowledge against them somehow," Chen Ge reasoned aloud, though the exact motivation still eluded him. Why go to the trouble of tipping over the bowls now, after leaving them untouched for who knew how long? As he prepared to stand back up, something else caught his eye—rows of tiny, densely packed handwriting scrawled along the underside of the wooden counter, barely visible unless someone deliberately looked beneath it. Intrigued, Chen Ge twisted his body awkwardly and leaned his head deep into the cramped space under the counter to get a clearer view of the faint script.
Before his eyes could fully focus on the words, something light and feathery brushed against the top of his head, sending an instinctive shiver down his spine. It felt exactly like dozens of tiny worms wriggling and trying to burrow their way into his scalp through his hair. Chen Ge froze for a split second, then reached up slowly with one hand to investigate the sensation. His fingers immediately made contact with something soft and stringy that also grazed the back of his hand in return, almost as though it were alive and reacting to his touch.
He jerked his head around to look—and his heart skipped a painful beat in his chest. Thick strands of human hair had been meticulously taped to the underside of the counter in uneven clusters. Some locks were long and dark, others short and coarse, with no discernible pattern or origin. The sight was so grotesque and unexpected that it took Chen Ge a moment to process what he was seeing. "Why the hell is there hair taped up here like this? Did it belong to whoever was locked inside that cage earlier?"
Suddenly, from just outside the nurse's station, the white cat let out a shrill, piercing purr that bordered on a warning growl. Chen Ge scrambled out from under the counter in an instant and whipped his head toward the sound. The cat stood rigid near the base of the stairwell leading up to the second floor, its teeth bared in a low snarl, every hair on its body standing on end. Its mismatched, multi-colored eyes were locked intently on a single fixed point higher up the darkened stairs, staring with unwavering focus into the shadows as though it had just spotted something—or someone—lurking there.