Mo Yi’s fingers were pressed against the cool door. His hands were stiff and curled up due to the force, his whitened knuckles seemingly casting a faint shine in the dark.
His breathing was extremely light, as if he’d pressed all the potential sounds which he could produce deep into the bottom of a vast lake, and encased all his turbulent movements within a thick layer of ice.
A faint light came through the gap of the ajar door. Muffled footsteps came from outside, thudding against his eardrums.
The shrill, slightly metallic sound was even more pronounced.
It seemed to be from a sharp edge dragging on the ground.
The thing which put Mo Yi the most on edge now did not come from outside the door.
—but from behind him.
The whole room seemed to be permeated with an unusually low temperature. The gloomy and damp air pierced his skin like a cold blade, and the sharp pain spread from the periphery all the way to the top of his head, causing goosebumps to rise on his exposed skin.
Mo Yi couldn’t help but recall the state of the map. The lingering sight of that bloodstain which was like an ominous ink blot, painted thick and dark over the room.
The unknown darkness behind him felt like a thorn stuck into his back. All the muscles in his body tensed up.
Right at this moment, a section of the corridor lit up without warning—an electric buzzing came from above, and the resulting dim and weak light illuminated half of the corridor.
The light flickered violently, then the corridor plunged back to darkness.
Mo Yi’s palm on the half-closed door stiffened instinctively. His pupils constricted, and his breathing became slightly unsteady.
During that brief second when the light came on earlier, he saw a figure in the corridor—
It was a tall and blurry figure within Mo Yi’s narrow and limited field of vision under the light. It was moving slowly, dragging a huge long knife behind him which was scraping the ground with a sharp and piercing metal sound.
The sound of the soles rubbing against the ground was synchronised with his movements, and the resulting rustling echoed down the silent corridor, making one’s scalp tingle.
After that—the lights went out.
The footsteps in the corridor stopped immediately when the light vanished.
—Not moving away at the same slow pace, but disappearing entirely.
A dense swamp-like darkness and dead silence enveloped Mo Yi. A chill so thick and dense that it seemed solid, approached him, slowly climbing up Mo Yi’s back.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He held his breath and listened closely—there was no sound. It was as if the world around him no longer existed, and such a deep silence made Mo Yi tremble involuntarily.
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Bang!
It was deafening in the silent darkness—
The door slammed shut violently.
Mo Yi’s throat tightened. In this second bout of silence, he could only hear his rapid breathing and the thudding of his heartbeat. A ridiculous yet somehow reasonable guess suddenly surfaced in his heart, which made him feel cold…
Everything which had happened earlier, seemed to be to manipulate the course of actions he would take.
Its purpose was… to lure him into this room on his own initiative.
The sharp increase of adrenaline made Mo Yi’s forehead break out in fine cold sweat. His palms were icy cold and the heart in his chest was beating as if it was about to jump out of his throat, but his mind was surprisingly calm.
It was as if his soul had been separated from the body and was now watching everything indifferently and calmly.
He closed his eyes fiercely, took a deep breath, suppressed the surging emotions in his heart, and turned around.
The depths of Mo Yi’s dark eyes were like liquid mercury. They were hidden under his long and straight eyelashes, as they stared at the bottomless darkness in front of him.
With a brief movement of his fingertips, he turned on the flashlight in his palm.
There was a soft ‘click’ and the cold and pale light immediately illuminated the room. The circular beam was obstructed by the object before it, twisting into an irregular shape.
And that object was a cold iron bed which reflected the light from the flashlight. Numerous restrictive belts were wrapped on it from top to bottom. Their edges were rough, faded, and fraying, showing signs of wear and tear.
Mo Yi held his breath. He moved the flashlight in his hand, moving the light to the old equipment beside the iron bed—
There were countless wires densely hanging down from it towards the ground. The ends of the wires were connected to electrodes which were unmarked by any colours.
An unbearable stench exuded in the darkness. It was like the smell of salty, rusty blood was mixed with that of rotting corpses fermented by dust and bacteria.
Mo Yi’s Adam’s apple bobbed—
This was the electric chair which was used to treat mentally ill patients with electroshock therapy.
He took several steps closer and found that the thin leather belts covering the iron bed were full of painful scratches and tears, scattered dark brown spots, and broken nail fragments.
What an alarming sight.
Mo Yi raised his wrist and the beam of light illuminated the distant scenery with his movement—
He realised that this room was much larger than he imagined, covering an area almost equal to five or six wards. There were many tattered curtains separating each area, making it impossible for him to get a full view of the whole room at a glance.
Each curtain was spotted with dark and light brown stains, along with countless complete and half-handprints on the material, and it was impossible to discern if they were dirt or dried blood.
And among these, there was a single curtain near Mo Yi which had blood slowly and steadily flowing out from under it, spreading out across the ground. The thick pool of oozing blood was a dirty dark red under the light, moving like it was a living thing.
The whole room was still, as if it was cut off from the whole world, and only the silence of death remained.
Mo Yi’s fingers tightened around the flashlight. The edges, corners, and shape of the metal dug into his cold and sweaty palm.
He took a step forward, stretching out his free hand to grab the curtain, then pulled it open with a flourish.
The ear-piercing sound of rusty metal sliding and the rustling of fabrics sounded, and it revealed the sight previously hidden behind it—
Even though Mo Yi was mentally prepared, he still couldn’t help the sudden clenching of his heart, before he grimaced.
There was another iron bed in front of him. However, unlike the empty electric shock bed just now, this bed…was occupied by someone.
A man was firmly tied on the mottled and rusted iron bed with a belt. His limbs were tightly restrained. His head and face were covered with blood, and his head was firmly fixed on the iron bed by an iron hoop, while a long ice pick pierced straight into the skull from his eye socket. The edge of the iron bed was covered with semi-coagulated blood and the pool of blood on the ground was mottled, making one’s heart chill.
Mo Yi’s gaze fell on the table next to the iron bed. There were iron tools such as awls and hammers scattered on it, and it was impossible to tell if the dark brown traces on them were rust or old blood.
He pursed his lips. His eyes darkened slightly.
—Lobotomy.
In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a very popular treatment method for mental illness which supposedly achieved the purpose of ‘cure’. The procedure involved inserting an awl similar to an ice pick into the patient’s eye socket, and severing a part of the nerve fibres of the front lobe of the brain.
This man was utterly dead—the ice pick had gouged out his eyeball and pierced straight into the very centre of his brain.
Mo Yi turned his body sideways and opened the other curtain beside him.
Behind it was also an iron bed with a bloody man lying on it. His belly was cut wide open, his bloody organs exposed to the cold air. A big hole was drilled into his head too, exposing a mass of red parts and white brain matter.
The man’s face was horrific and distorted. Even the belts restraining his wrists were so tightly buckled into his flesh that they were dripping blood.
After seeing the medical instruments by these two iron beds just now, Mo Yi quickly thought of the treatments involved:
Craniotomy and Surgery.
This method of treating mental illness was achieved by exposing the patient’s brain and cutting out the ‘ill’ parts.
Furthermore, Mo Yi noticed that although the clothes on the two men were muddied with blood, he could still discern them as modern clothes—in other words, they should also be the players who died in this instance.
The rancid stench of blood in the air became more and more intense. Mo Yi coughed twice in a low voice, and he took two steps back while facing slight difficulty in breathing.
However, as if right on cue, a slight metallic sound sounded without warning in the gloomy and dark silence—
‘Click’.
The sound was especially piercing and clear in the dead silence, and it nearly made Mo Yi’s heart stop.
His breathing stagnated and he turned in the direction of the sound.
Under the cold and pale beam of the flashlight, the metal buckles of the restraint belts tightly fastened on the two beds were automatically loosening, making a series of ‘click’ sounds.
The man on the bed in front of him turned his head slowly. The long ice pick in his damaged eyeball swayed, and the man stared at him blankly and absently with his other blood-drenched grey-white eye.
—’Click’.
On the other man’s distorted and twisted features, the bloodshot eyes turned one by one, slowly shifting towards Mo Yi, and the bones of his cervical vertebra rubbed against each other and creaked.
‘Click’.
Mo Yi took a step backwards subconsciously, then turned around and ran towards the door. He clasped the handle of the door tightly with his sweaty palm, and shook it vigorously.
However the door remained motionless as if welded to the door frame with copper and iron, seemingly completely unaffected by his struggles.
Mo Yi could hear his own hot and rapid breathing and the sound of blood rushing through his body. All other sounds seemed to have vanished from his mind, and only the metallic sounds remained loud and clear—
‘Click.’
T/N: We just can’t have an asylum arc in any UF novel without mentions of lobotomy haha Everytime I read/describe the process… *shudders*
Thanks for the update
Lobotomy is the symbol of medical mistakes
Thank you for your translation 💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝
Thank you so much for your hard work! And yes, everytime I read about lobotomy it always reminds me how freaky those decades were…
Well people need to remember all stupid things done in past to avoid making the same mistake. Seriously how could one look at lobotomy and said ‘this looks fine let’s make messing up human’s brain a common things!’
And I will stop before I make a long rant :X
having a lobotomy arc in every UF makes sense to me because it’s real life horror. It’s absolutely terrifying, and it actually happened to people irl. nothing can top that IMO