Trigger warning: Suicide
Chapter 33
After figuring out the High-Dimensional Creature’s trick, Si Chen hurried downstairs in big strides.
He ran all the way to the 10th floor.
Then, he slowly stopped.
The scene here was different from what he’d seen when he came up.
The walls of the 10th floor had become un-plastered cement, brimming with retro feels. Si Chen has only seen such a wall in some nostalgic historical documentaries.
There were actually sound-activated lights in this stairwell, orangey-yellow lights.
As soon as the lights came on, he saw that the walls on either sides were covered with advertisements painted in red paint.
Si Chen looked them over one by one. They were all “Certified XXXXX”, “Plumbing Maintenance: XXX”, “Locksmith XXX”…
Amidst this bunch of junk advertisements, he found a piece of useful information.
House of the Mind Clinic: Always looking after your physical and mental health. Contact number XXXX (Doctor Xiong).
This message was written on the ceiling of the stairwell.
Si Chen leaned over and raised his head. He turned on the flashlight and narrowed his eyes slightly.
Dr. Xiong’s contact number was covered by a brush of black paint.
There were also several lines of small characters written in different handwritings below: “Pay your debts, you murderer!”, “Liar! Don’t fall for his lies!”, “I’m sorry. Mom was wrong. Mom misses you so much.”
It was a little cold in the stairwell and it was also completely deserted. There were no other people and there were no signs of a fight.
Although Yu Lian was afraid of ghosts, he was nevertheless a Second Tier Evolutionary. If some ordinary ghost captured him and started eating him, it would take them a while to pick him clean.
This obviously wasn’t the scene of the crime.
Si Chen continued heading down. But the scene he was expecting did not appear and he simply found himself back on the 10th floor.
The number “10” pasted in the middle of the half-floor landing of the stairwell, like brightly painted mockery.
Obviously, this was the ghost trapping him here.
Si Chen stopped trying to leave. He stood under the sound-activated lights and pondered.
He activated his prosthetic eye and searched for Yu Lian’s location.
Si Chen harbored no expectations at first so he was surprised to see the dot of light representing User Yu Lian right above his head.
He turned and walked up. But ten seconds later, reappeared at the entrance of the tenth floor.
Si Chen raised the flashlight and looked towards the black mist shrouded 11th floor. Not even light could penetrate through the mist.
He said loudly, “Yu Lian, are you there?”
There was movement above his head and Yu Lian’s voice, teary and filled unexpected rejoicing, said, “I’m here! Dad! Your good son is here!”
Si Chen: “…Which floor are you on?”
“The 11th floor!” Yu Lian yelled in the direction of the voice, “I kept going down but when I reached the junction between the 11th and 10th floors, I ran into a… oh, shit, I don’t know how to describe it to you. I bumped into a person crawling on the ground.”
“His legs were folded back to hang on both sides of his neck. Like this, walking like this, covered in blood. I was so scared that my head hit the ceiling and I turned around and ran.”
Yu Lian must have received quite a big shock. He spoke extremely fast, gasping for breath, choked with sobs. “I wanted to come to you, but I couldn’t get out on the 11th floor. The High-Dimensional creature also disappeared. Ge, are you okay? I-I don’t know where the flashlight went and now I can’t see anything.”
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.
“I’m downstairs.” Si Chen said, “Can you try going down?”
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Vl Jtfc tfjgv obbarafqr mbwlcu ogbw jybnf tlr tfjv.
Lf gjlrfv tlr oijrtiluta jcv qblcafv la ja atf fcagjcmf.
Mgbw jwlvra atf yijmx wlra, ragfamtfv bea j qjif tjcv klat agfwyilcu olcufgalqr, jr lo ugbqlcu obg rbwfatlcu.
Yu Lian’s voice trembled, “Ge, where are you? I’m going to freeze to death. It’s so cold here.”
Si Chen felt it too. This coldness had nothing to do with their surroundings. It was like the coldness rising from the depths of the soul, straight to the top of the head, giving chills to the back of the head.
A vague outline was formed in the prosthetic eye’s field of vision.
Si Chen was silent for a moment. He then grabbed the hand and interlocked their fingers.
Despite having done some mental preparations, when Si Chen pulled Yu Lian out of the mist, Si Chen still couldn’t help his scalp tingling slightly.
Yu Lian’s legs were broken backwards and were hung over his shoulders, on either side of his neck, with his heels facing forward.
Not only his body was distorted but so was his neck.
Yu Lian’s neck was twisted to the left, an abnormal angle from being subjected to severe external force.
Si Chen thought back for a moment, remembering when he had seen this posture before.
— Jumping off a building and landing head first.
Yu Lian wasn’t dead; he’d been invaded by the High-Dimensional creature. His Rubber Man properties allowed him to withstand this abnormal distortion.
In other words, he was possessed by a ghost.
Si Chen, with the Eternal Life Abyss implanted in him, was, in a sense, also invaded by a High-Dimensional creature.
Yu Lian had a particularly gloomy expression. In his eye sockets were pale and gray eyeballs. It tilted its head, looked at Si Chen with its blank eyeballs and said nothing.
The coldness began to spread from the where they held hands.
A scarlet seam appeared on the back of Si Chen’s hand and the Eternal Life Abyss’ tentacles squeezed out from the seam, wrapping around Yu Lian’s arm.
If Si Chen wasn’t strong enough, he too will be distorted by the High-Dimensional Creature in front of him, just like Yu Lian.
Si Chen was thinking about whether to strike or not. The High-Dimensional Creature has no entity and it was obviously attached to Yu Lian’s body.
The two didn’t have any deep friendship. The reason why Si Chen decided not to do anything was because he wasn’t sure if after taking care of Yu Lian, he’d be able to deal with the entity in his body.
There was a sudden pulling force on his arm.
Yu Lian pulled Si Chen down the stairs, beckoning him to follow.
Si Chen thought about it and chose not to resist.
After turning around the second staircase, Si Chen saw an open door on the platform between floors, on the wall that was originally covered with advertisements.
There is a wreath in front of the door, with black and white characters, and a “奠” written on it. There were several half-dead white chrysanthemums in the corner. It was a very gloomy atmosphere.
A bowl of cold white rice was placed by the door, piled up like a little hill.
There were no chopsticks for the rice. Instead, three sticks of incense were inserted in the center.
The incense was half spent and the fire had gone out but no one minded it. The rice was covered with incense ash.
Yu Lian firmly held his hand and led him into the apartment.
The owner of this house didn’t seem very well off. The furnishings in the room were very old and cheap.
Upon entering the apartment was a square living room. The lights weren’t turned on and the living room was pitch black.
Si Chen raised his flashlight. A black and white posthumous photo hung on the wall of the living room. The girl in the photo had a shy smile on her face and was wearing a skirt. She looked to be about only seventeen or eighteen years old.
Paper money was scattered on the floor of the living room and the fruits in the basket placed on the dining table had already rotted.
The door to the master bedroom was open and the room was lit.
In the room, came the sound of a grief-stricken woman crying like a wounded beast.
“You’ve reached the House of the Mind. I am the attending physician of the hospital, Dr. Xiong…”
The desperate mother questioned, “Didn’t you say that she was cured and can be discharged from the hospital to study and live normally? Why did she jump off the building?”
“Ma’am, we are sorry for what happened to you…”
Her hoarse voice was filled with anger, “To cure her illness, I paid you 270,000 yuan in medical expenses! And just how did you cure her?”
“Ma’am, after leaving our rehabilitation center, didn’t your daughter admit herself that she’d realized her mistake and that she wouldn’t like the same sex anymore? She even vomited when she saw a picture of her friend. How can you say that we hadn’t cured her?” Dr. Xiong said softly, “What you wanted us to treat was her homosexuality and not her clinical depression, isn’t that right?”
The Alliance has long recognized same-sex marriages. Si Chen has only ever encountered this absurd notion of “homosexuality as a mental illness” in long outdated literary works.
Yu Lian dragged him into the bedroom step by step.
Si Chen conducted a preliminary scan. There was no one in the bedroom. There were no High Dimensional Creatures.
“I found her diary after she came home. You pricked her with needles, subjected her to electric shocks. You didn’t give her food and made the other patients laugh at her. You…”
Dr. Xiong interrupted her, “Ma’am, these are all part of the normal treatment. Before, we asked you to sign the informed consent form, didn’t we?”
They entered the bedroom. The lights were on but there was no one inside. There was only a red desk phone, the handset was wired to the unit and was hanging from the edge of the bedside table. Though there was no wind, it swung slowly in mid-air.
There was murmuring on the phone; the conversation between the doctor and the woman had become indistinct.
Si Chen could only vaguely hear the mother’s wailing and cursing. “Suffer and die…go to hell!”
The doctor laughed. “Ma’am, if we truly are the murderers who caused the tragedy, then you, who sent her here for treatment, must be origin of all this tragedy, don’t you think?”
His voice remained elegant and gentle, like a well-trained news anchor.
Their conversation was replaced by a busy tone.
This room must have been unoccupied for a long time. The floor and bed were covered in a layer of dust. It wasn’t easy to breathe in the room and a thick layer of grease covered the wooden bedside table.
In the corner of the room, hung the body of a woman.
The stockings had been passed through the steel wire hole at the corner of the ceiling where the ceiling lights originally should have been installed.
A woman was hung by the knotted silk stockings like a piece of dried bacon. Her body looked as though it’d been weathered long ago, her skin was charred black like dry tree bark.
Yu Lian watched her quietly. Its eyes were still ashy gray but a thin layer of tears had welled up in its eyes.
It pulled Si Chen to the bedside table. There was a yellowed leaflet.
House of the Mind Rehabilitation Center: Winner of the Best Psychiatric Clinic in Pinglin City for 6 consecutive years!
The attending physician, Dr. Xiong, graduated from Salo University abroad with a doctorate in psychology and has been practicing for 11 years.
With a focus on the mental health problems of children and adolescents. Cure rate of as high as 100%!
For inquiries: Tel: 0***8999.
Address: No. 13, Li’an Street, Pinglin City.
Probably afraid that interested customers would not be able to find them, this leaflet even included a detailed map.
The location of House of the Mind Rehabilitation Center was indicated by a red arrow.
Yu Lian handed him the flyer and then let go of his hand.
Yu Lian, who had been twisted for a long time, trembled; his bones made “ke ke ke” sounds and his legs hung over his shoulders, snapped back to their original position.
“That scared me to death, scared me to death for sure!” Yu Lian gasped for breath, full of joy at having escaped with his life, “Thank god I’m super flexible, otherwise I would have been a goner. Ge, you’re too effin’ gutsy!… Also, you also took biological transformation?”
Though he couldn’t control his body, he could see what was happening.
Yu Lian thought he was going to die. Either killed by the High-Dimensional Creature or by Si Chen.
Si Chen didn’t answer immediately. He put the handset back on the phone and then pressed the hands-free button.
The landline seemed to be working. Si Chen entered the phone number on the leaflet.
The sound of “beep – beep -” rang out in the silent night.
The call was trying to connect.
After a while, the call was answered.
“Hello, welcome to the House of the Mind. I am your attending physician, Doctor.”
After the doctor finished speaking, he fell into silence.
Si Chen said calmly, “Firstly, you can use any carrier to make outgoing calls but when someone calls you, similarly, you cannot reject.”
“Secondly, you can’t leave the House of the Mind. Therefore, you use different dolls to act on your behalf. And you’re the one supplying these dolls with energy.”
“Thirdly, you can’t control the High-Dimensional Creatures in this Space Fold. Some High-Dimensional Creatures even hate you. But they’re restricted by the domain and your abilities and cannot take revenge on you.”
“Is that right?” Si Chen asked.
Doctor replied mildly, “Interesting guesses, my lovely patient.”
Si Chen also laughed. “I’m not your patient. You better watch your words.”
He hung up the phone.
*
Because it was a hidden map, Si Chen made sure to search around this small apartment.
The only energy fluctuation he detected was from a blank diary.
The written pages had been completely torn off and only a dozen or so pages were left in the diary which wasn’t thick to begin with.
No matter how you looked at it, it didn’t seem to have any attack properties.
Si Chen threw it into the containment bag and left Room 1001 with Yu Lian.
As soon as the two closed the door, the door disappeared. Only the white wreath remained in its original place.
When Si Chen entered the room, the incense sticks at the door were only half burned but now they are all burned out, leaving only the sticks.
The white rice in the bowl had also disappeared, leaving only an empty bowl.
Si Chen thought for a moment, then poured half a bottle of nutrient solution into it. May the little ghost from an age long past experience the warmth from the future.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The black mist in the corridor had disappeared and they managed to smoothly exit the stairwell.
When they walked out of the residential building, Yu Lian breathed a sigh of relief.
But they had barely taken a couple of steps when the sound of something having crashing to the ground came from behind them.
Si Chen looked back. The person in the posthumous photo was sprawled on the ground. She’d landed head first and gravity caused her body to twist abnormally.
Blood stained the ground.
This time, it didn’t stand up again.
The author has something to say:
Suicide by Jumping Ghost: takes the elevator to the top floor and jump off the building every day. Goes through infinite revivals. Because Si Chen cut the wires, she is now forced to climb all the way up to the 22nd floor.
was it something from the past? i thought the invasion only affected space and time wouldn’t be involved, is it because it’s a supernatural one?
Maybe because it’s a supernatural invasion it uses the “memories” of the place to recreate a scene, just like it reads the memories of the people entering the zone
I like that in this supernatural world everything is interconnected
Thank you very much for the translation 💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝
Thanks for the chapter 🌹
The authors note is sad for the girl but it’s also funny I imagine she hates Si Chen for making her walk up 22 floors. Thanks for the chapter!!
22 floors…hahaha…ahem. Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️🤣