"Who's there?" Chen Ge shouted sharply into the darkness without a moment's hesitation. He immediately charged down the corridor toward the stairwell, clutching the heavy mallet high above his head in a ready grip. He had no intention of giving whoever—or whatever—was lurking up there any time to prepare, react, or set up an ambush; speed and aggression were his only advantages right now.
"Come out right now!" he demanded again, his voice echoing off the bare concrete walls and empty rooms. The front entrance had already been locked from the outside, sealing his exit and exposing his presence completely. At this point, there was nothing left to lose by confronting the threat head-on—he might as well force the hidden figure into the open before they could gain any more control over the situation.
The man and the white cat raced together to the corner where the stairwell began, but when Chen Ge swept his flashlight beam upward, the stairs ahead were swallowed in total, impenetrable blackness. Nothing moved, no silhouette appeared, no sound answered his challenge—only silence and shadows stretching endlessly upward.
"Where the hell did it disappear to so quickly?" Chen Ge muttered, frustration mixing with unease. He had personally tested the white cat's abilities multiple times back at his Haunted House; the animal possessed an uncanny sensitivity to supernatural presences and had never once given a false alarm or reacted without cause. Its instincts were reliable in ways that defied ordinary explanation.
This time, though, the cat hadn't gone completely berserk or tried to flee in panic—it had merely shown clear aggression, baring its teeth and growling low. That subtle difference suggested the danger level of whatever was hiding here was likely lower than the extreme threat he had faced inside the Mu Yang High School scenario, where the cat's reaction had been far more intense and desperate.
Chen Ge recalled the two previous occasions when the white cat had acted up noticeably inside his own Haunted House. The first incident occurred during the Mu Yang High School mission, when the entity involved had been exceptionally malevolent. The second time happened when a blood door suddenly manifested in one of the toilet stalls, an event that carried its own unique and terrifying aura. By comparing those reactions to the cat's current behavior, Chen Ge had developed a rough personal gauge for estimating threat levels based solely on how strongly the animal responded.
But the most critical and frustrating question still remained unanswered: was the thing that had just vanished up the stairs a living human being, or something far less ordinary—a ghost or lingering spirit? Without knowing that fundamental fact, every decision he made carried double the risk.
Chen Ge returned to the nurse's station with purposeful strides. He raised the mallet and brought it down repeatedly on the wooden counter, smashing through the aged boards until the entire top surface could be pried loose and lifted away. What he uncovered beneath was deeply disturbing: numerous strands of human hair had been carefully gathered into small bundles, each one tightly bound with thin string and then nailed securely into the underside of the wood with small, rusted nails. "Why would anyone go to the trouble of nailing bundles of hair to a hidden wooden board like this? What possible meaning or purpose could this twisted ritual serve?"
Each bundle had been arranged with meticulous care. One lock consisted of soft, dark, glossy strands that looked well-maintained and healthy—most likely taken from a young woman who still took pride in her appearance despite her circumstances. Another was coarse, stark white, and riddled with split ends, clearly belonging to someone much older and more worn by time. After carefully comparing the color, texture, thickness, and approximate length of the various samples, Chen Ge concluded that the hair had come from at least four distinct individuals.
"Of these four people whose hair is nailed up here, at least one—and probably more—must still be alive and present somewhere inside this hospital," Chen Ge said quietly, his gaze shifting to the two large iron cages standing nearby. Their intended purpose was becoming disturbingly clear in his mind. "I'm not just dealing with ordinary trespassers or squatters. I'm up against actual crazies—people whose minds have been broken in ways that make them far more unpredictable and dangerous than any ghost."
He carefully set the dismantled wooden board aside and crouched down once more beneath the counter for a better look at the tiny handwriting scratched into the wall. This time, with the obstruction removed, he could read the words more clearly: "I will repay everything that you have done to me." The rest of the message dissolved into smaller, increasingly frantic scrawls—senseless fragments, half-formed thoughts, and repetitive nonsense that trailed off abruptly, as though the writer had been suddenly interrupted or lost the thread of their own rage.
"When certain patients experience a breakdown or become agitated, they often mumble incoherent phrases or ramble at empty air in exactly this manner—very similar to how ordinary people talk in their sleep or mutter during nightmares," Chen Ge observed, trying to impose some logic on the chaotic script. Unfortunately, the words refused to yield any coherent meaning no matter how long he stared at them.
Simply reading those fragmented sentences sent an involuntary chill racing up his spine. They strongly reminded him of the countless overlapping messages he had seen scrawled across the outer cement walls of the mental hospital earlier—each one obsessively mentioning someone's name in different handwriting styles. If only a handful of patients had exhibited this compulsive behavior, it might have been dismissed as isolated madness. But for an entire hospital's worth of former residents to have left behind similar obsessive writings… that pointed to something far more widespread and deeply rooted.
"It seems like every single patient who was ever committed here carried some kind of unresolved grudge, unfinished business, or burning obsession that never let them go—even after the hospital shut down," Chen Ge concluded grimly. He pulled out his phone and quickly snapped several clear photos of the hidden writing beneath the counter for later reference. Then he reached into his backpack, retrieved the live rooster, and securely tied its legs so it wouldn't wander off during the next phase of exploration. "Still, the more people are hiding in here, the greater the likelihood that one of them will slip up or make a critical mistake. It's time to move on to the Second Sick Hall and keep pressing forward."
Chen Ge vaulted back out of the demolished nurse's station and retrieved a small packet of table salt from his bag. He tore open one corner and carefully poured a thin, continuous line of salt around the entire perimeter of the station, encircling the iron cages and the broken counter. This wasn't some superstitious ward against bad luck; it was a deliberate trap meant to catch any living intruder who tried to return to this spot later—footprints in the salt would reveal their presence immediately. With the remaining salt clutched loosely in one hand, he headed toward the enclosed hallway that connected the First Sick Hall to the Second.
Just as he was about to step through the doorway into the Second Sick Hall, the white cat suddenly launched itself upward and landed lightly on the narrow windowsill beside him. It began scratching frantically at the glass with its claws, producing sharp, insistent scraping sounds that echoed in the quiet corridor.
"Careful—you're going to slip and fall if you keep that up," Chen Ge warned gently, stepping closer to the window to steady the animal if needed. Beyond the grimy pane stretched the same thick, impenetrable brush that surrounded the entire hospital complex; no artificial lights were visible anywhere in the distance, only the deep, suffocating darkness of the rural outskirts.
"Who could have ever imagined a massive building like this hidden so completely in the middle of nowhere?" Chen Ge murmured, scanning the view outside for anything unusual. To him, nothing appeared out of place—the overgrown weeds, the shadowed trees, the empty night sky all looked exactly as they should. Yet the white cat refused to budge from the windowsill. It kept its head tilted upward, ears pricked forward, and continued emitting a series of urgent, high-pitched meows directed at something above them.
"Is there something wrong with the window itself? Or is it coming from above us?" Chen Ge wondered aloud. He reached over and pushed the window open with a creak of old hinges, then leaned out slightly and craned his neck to look upward toward the higher floors. Just one level above—at the window directly overhead on the third floor—a grotesquely twisted human face was staring straight down at him through the glass. The figure stood with its back to any available light source, shrouded in shadow, but the instant it heard the sound of Chen Ge's window opening below, it jerked backward violently and vanished from sight without bothering to close the window behind it.
"That face…" Chen Ge breathed, his heart pounding from the sudden, unexpected encounter. The entire exchange had lasted less than a tenth of a second—barely enough time for their eyes to meet—but it was long enough to register that something about the face was profoundly wrong. It didn't look entirely human; the proportions were subtly off, the features distorted in a way that defied normal anatomy, yet he couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what made it so unnerving. The glimpse had been too brief, too shadowed, leaving only an indelible impression of wrongness that refused to fade.
Chen Ge came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the corridor and forced himself to stand completely still, focusing every ounce of his attention on his sense of hearing. He strained to catch even the faintest sound—footsteps retreating, a door creaking, fabric rustling, anything at all—but the hospital remained unnaturally quiet, with only the distant drip of water somewhere deep in the pipes breaking the silence. No hurried footsteps echoed away in any particular direction, which told him the person hadn't fled immediately after being spotted. "I have a strong feeling that the face I glimpsed up there was uneven or asymmetrical on both sides—maybe distorted in some way—but it was definitely still a human face, not something inhuman," he murmured to the camera, trying to reassure both himself and the viewers that the threat, while unnerving, remained within the realm of the living.
With the brief encounter still fresh in his mind, Chen Ge pushed forward and crossed the threshold into the Second Sick Hall. He had naturally assumed that the layout and atmosphere of the Second Sick Hall would closely mirror the First—similar cramped corridors, identical small rooms, the same sense of overcrowding and neglect—but the moment he stepped inside, he realized how wrong that assumption had been. The Second Sick Hall felt noticeably larger and far more open than its predecessor; the hallways were wider, the ceilings higher, and the overall space seemed deliberately designed to feel less confining. Instead of rows of crowded beds spilling into the corridors, individual patient rooms were properly separated, and between them sat scattered pieces of furniture: simple wooden chairs, small tables, and even a few old table lamps with cracked shades that still managed to cast weak, yellowish pools of light when he flicked them on experimentally.
"The living environment here is clearly much better than what we saw in the First Sick Hall—more space, more privacy, actual furniture instead of just beds shoved together," Chen Ge observed aloud as he paused near the entrance. Before moving deeper, he reached into his bag, grabbed another handful of coarse salt, and deliberately sprinkled a thick line of it across the floor right beside the staircase leading up to the higher floors. It was the same precautionary trap he had used before—simple, visible, and effective for detecting any living person who tried to follow or cross behind him unnoticed. Only then did he approach the first patient room closest to the entrance and push the door open wider.
Inside the room, the mattress on the single bed had been savagely torn open from top to bottom, its cotton stuffing and springs scattered across the floor like the aftermath of an explosion. A chipped porcelain chamber pot sat incongruously right next to a set of rusted eating utensils on a small side table, as though the occupant had been forced to live in the most basic and degrading conditions imaginable. Most disturbing of all were the walls: countless characters, words, and frantic phrases had been gouged deeply into the peeling plaster using fingernails—or perhaps some sharper improvised tool—leaving behind raw, jagged scars that looked almost like wounds in the building itself.
"It must have been incredibly difficult and draining for the doctors and nurses to care for patients in this kind of state day after day—dealing with violence, self-harm, and complete loss of control while trying to maintain some semblance of order and treatment," Chen Ge said quietly, shaking his head as he backed out of the room. The weight of what life must have been like here settled heavier on his shoulders as he continued moving forward along the corridor.
Unlike the monotonous uniformity of the First Sick Hall, the room types in the Second Sick Hall proved far more varied and specialized. He passed quarantine rooms with reinforced doors and small viewing windows, entertainment rooms that still held the skeletal remains of old board games and faded posters, dedicated chess and card-playing rooms with tables bolted to the floor, communal shower areas lined with rusted metal stalls, and even a small multipurpose hall at the very end of the main corridor. That final space featured a low wooden stage at one end, but the overall decoration inside struck Chen Ge as strangely off-putting and out of place for any hospital setting.
The hall clearly had not been intended for hosting cheerful parties, dances, or recreational gatherings. Every window had been permanently sealed shut with heavy boards and then covered by extra-thick, light-blocking curtains that hung floor-to-ceiling in somber black and gray. All the visible decorations and furnishings followed a strict, almost oppressive monochrome theme—everything either stark black or ghostly white—creating an atmosphere that felt cold, ceremonial, and deeply unsettling rather than therapeutic.
The moment Chen Ge pushed the door open and stepped just inside the threshold—without fully entering—he immediately noticed the large black-and-white photograph dominating the center of the low stage. The picture had been enlarged to nearly life-size proportions and hung prominently against the back wall, but it had been brutally sliced in half vertically by some unknown vandal or attacker. Even so, the remaining intact half clearly depicted a middle-aged female nurse. She was a large, imposing woman with broad shoulders and a severe, scowling expression that seemed permanently etched into her features, as though she had spent years glaring at unruly patients.
"An oversized black-and-white portrait, heavy blackout curtains blocking every window, rows of plain wooden chairs facing the stage like an audience—this entire setup looks exactly like a traditional mourning hall or funeral parlor," Chen Ge said, his voice dropping lower as the realization sank in. He couldn't fathom why such a space would exist inside a mental hospital, let alone why the staff would have organized or allowed something resembling a memorial service here. If the hospital itself had hosted this event, what possible meaning or purpose could it have served—commemoration, punishment, or something far darker?
"Could this female nurse have been one of the victims connected to whatever happened in the Third Sick Hall? But if that's true, why would her memorial portrait be displayed here in the Second Sick Hall instead of somewhere closer to the site of the incident?" The questions piled up in his mind without clear answers, but the nurse's stern face had already burned itself into his memory.
Chen Ge didn't linger any longer after committing the woman's features to memory. He pulled the door closed behind him with a soft click, then crouched down and poured another deliberate line of salt across the threshold—another marker, another trap. Without wasting another second, he turned and ran up the nearest staircase, heading straight for the third floor where he had glimpsed that fleeting, distorted face only minutes earlier.