The lights in the sanatorium corridor were bright, and there was occasionally a slight scent of air freshener in the air. Yu Sheng was carrying a small puppet, following Little Red Riding Hood behind the "director" — occasionally, staff from the Special Service Bureau appeared in the corridor, greeting the "director," who responded politely and amicably.
Everything seed so "normal" — if you ignored the fact that the director was actually a goldfish.
The towering figure, over two ters tall, walked ahead, with a fish tank perched on his shoulder, emitting a series of tiny bubbles. The goldfish within slowly swam, its gaze occasionally landing on Yu Sheng.
"You seem quite curious about this place?" the goldfish asked.
To be honest, every ti this fish spoke in that lazy, magnetic voice, Yu Sheng felt a bit on edge — the last ti he felt this way was when he first heard a cat speak with Zhao Zhongxiang's voice when encountering the "King."
"I was just a bit surprised," despite the unsettling voice of the fish, Yu Sheng quickly replied, "I thought this special... 'ntal institution' would be more oppressive, or more strict in regulation, that's how it seed when I looked at the building from outside. Yet inside, it's quite relaxing."
"Putting a group of spiritual ability users who already have ntal issues in a stressful environnt is not a wise move," the goldfish swam in the water, the nearly transparent ends of its fins seed to stir illusions, "My job is to get those on the verge of loss of control back on track, or at least prevent their situation from worsening, not to guard a prison. As for strict regulation..."
The goldfish suddenly released a bubble, reflecting faces with constantly changing emotions.
"The regulation here is certainly strict, the entire sanatorium operates according to high-level containnt facility standards — you don't need to doubt Baili Qing's abilities in this regard. However, strict regulatory asures don't contradict a relaxed and comfortable living environnt, the forr is for safety, and so is the latter."
"How is that 'Sun Chen' doing here?" Little Red Riding Hood suddenly asked.
"'Sun Chen'... is a very special 'patient'," when this na was ntioned, the "director" seed to pause slightly in his steps, but soon returned to normal, "He's the only 'patient' who ca here voluntarily with complete consciousness, and according to the sanatorium's rules, 'normal people' like him can't stay here in principle..."
"So that person Sun Chen isn't crazy, right?" Little Red Riding Hood's eyes widened instantly, then she was startled again, "In principle, he can't stay here, so how did he end up living here?"
"The doctor who talked with him went mad." The director replied.
Yu Sheng & Little Red Riding Hood: "…?"
Erin couldn't hold back: "What's with the doctor going mad?"
"Literal aning," the director said leisurely, "According to the rules, even seemingly normal people must undergo basic inquiry and examination by a psychiatrist after submitting a residency application, even if they don't et admission criteria, before they can leave the sanatorium. So I arranged a doctor — they conversed for twenty minutes, during which Sun Chen underwent simple hypnotic inquiry and 'psychological piercing' examination. Twenty minutes later, the automatic alarm in the ward was triggered.
"When I arrived, the psychiatrist responsible for the examination was repeatedly writing indecipherable symbols and chaos-ridden phrases on the wall, completely unable to communicate, while the 'patient' was soundly asleep on the exam bed.
"The good news is, the psychiatrist only experienced temporary madness, recovering after a week of treatnt. The bad news is he completely forgot what happened in the ward at the ti and couldn't explain the aning of the symbols he wrote during his ntal aberration.
"Afterwards, 'Sun Chen' was placed in the ward with the second-highest containnt level in the entire Jinglin Sanatorium, and until today, he still behaves like a... perfectly lucid normal person."
"Why only the second-highest containnt level?" Erin suddenly asked, her attention obviously differing from the others, "Such an eerie situation, shouldn't he be in the highest containnt level? The doctor went mad!"
The towering figure stopped, the fish tank serving as a head slowly turned with the small goldfish inside: "In this facility, the highest containnt level is my room."
Erin thought for a mont: "…Wow."
Yu Sheng didn't speak, he fell into a contemplative state after hearing the "director's" account.
After a while, he suddenly broke the silence: "So Sun Chen himself isn't mad, but has so sort of 'thing' on him?"
"Perhaps, but even the psychiatrists sent by the Special Service Bureau are helpless regarding this. For several months, our 'diagnosis and treatnt' of Sun Chen has made no progress," the director slowly spoke, "On the other hand, patients as 'odd' as him are not uncommon here; this sanatorium gathers nearly half of Boundary Land's spiritual ability users with 'complicated cases.' We don't have unlimited manpower and resources to analyze his peculiarities.
"So now I'm very curious, why did our Director Baili suddenly issue a special visitation permit for you to et this patient — what has happened 'outside'?"
Yu Sheng looked up, staring intently at the goldfish in the tank, while the goldfish curiously looked back at him.
Evidently, although this "entity" generated by the sanatorium is currently a "special collaborator" of the Special Service Bureau and controls the entire Jinglin Sanatorium, Baili Qing did not tell it about the On Goddess.
"Oh, so this is a secret," the goldfish suddenly shifted its gaze, "then I won't ask."
The straightforward attitude left Yu Sheng a bit unprepared, "Uh, I thought you'd be more curious."
"Cats are curious, not goldfish—goldfish just want to avoid the gaze outside the tank," a languid, magnetic female voice spoke slowly, and then the "entity" stopped walking, "We're almost there, the room with the blue door..."
"Puff—"
A strange and faint muffled sound suddenly reached Yu Sheng's ears, like the noise of sothing bursting after swelling to the limit.
Everyone instinctively paused their steps, the director's speech was abruptly cut off, a bad premonition quickly erged, and imdiately Yu Sheng heard an exclamation by his ear, "Oh no!"
The next second, he saw that towering figure more than two ters tall abruptly dash out, the goldfish in the bathtub swirling rapidly— the "director" rushed to the blue door and delivered a direct punch.
With a loud "bang," the seemingly sturdy and heavy door was shattered by the "director," and imdiately a strong scent of blood wafted into everyone's noses.
Little Red Riding Hood reacted instantly, the intense bloody sll causing a pair of wolf ears to pop out from under her hair—she swiftly pulled Yu Sheng, rushing towards the patient room at the corridor's end.
The scene inside the patient room confird Yu Sheng's earlier ominous premonition.
In the spacious single occupancy room, a body dressed in a shirt and long pants was sitting at a desk by the window, its head missing, and a large amount of blood was splattered around, even reaching the high ceiling, the entire room almost covered in horrifying bloodstains and scattered tissue fragnts.
Even Little Red Riding Hood, who was accustod to various terrifying scenes and bizarre incidents, instinctively took a cold breath, montarily on edge at the sight.
"Damn…" Yu Sheng's expression wasn't much better, the grueso sight and the abrupt interruption of critical clues brought about an impact that caused his brow to furrow instantly, and in the next mont, he sharply noticed the other "things" in the scene besides the bloodstains—
On the walls, the floor, and even on the bed linens, were dense symbols, numbers, and geotric figures.
The dazzling characters filled every visible inch of the room, so written with pens, others clearly etched with sothing after the pen stopped working, and so even had suspicious bloodstains intermixed, densely chaotic symbols and unrecognizable text jumbled together, layered upon one another, to the point that even a re glance would cause dizziness, creating an illusion of being surrounded and buzzed by words.
Little Red Riding Hood quickly pulled out a Sanity Blocker from her bag and injected herself.
The first to burst into the room, the "director," had by now taken a strange small device from his coat, quickly pressing a button on the device, and Yu Sheng heard a slight vibration coming from below the room, then outside the glass window on the other side of the patient room started to rapidly darken—a thick cent-like material began spreading up from the window ledge like living sludge, beginning to seal off the entire patient room.
After completing the ergency sealing, the "director" stepped quickly to the headless body at the desk.
The "goldfish" swam out of the fish tank.
The fish tank was completely sealed, with no openings on the spherical glass container, yet at that mont, the goldfish seed to beco an illusion, silently passing through the solid glass tank—it wagged its tail in the air, swimming slowly as if collecting sothing, circling the corpse twice, then swiftly returned to the tank.
"It's no good," the goldfish said, "the spirituality is dissipating rapidly..."
But before it finished speaking, Yu Sheng interrupted, "Let !"
The next second, Yu Sheng directly placed his hand on a nearby pool of blood.
"Co and speak with !"
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