Translator: Reina Editor: Killian
“You shouldn’t have lied to me, Lu Xia,” Sun Zheng’s smile widened. “I almost softened my heart.”
Lu Xia kept looking back and forth between Sun Zheng’s face which was in front of him and the one that was on his shoulder.
Two identical faces, he couldn’t find any difference.
But he couldn’t feel any breath. The ‘Sun Zheng’ on his back didn’t breathe.
“I never thought it would be like this,” Sun Zheng slowly approached Lu Xia. He stretched out his hand, placing it on the crown of the head on Lu Xia’s shoulder.
Sun Zheng gradually increased the force, tightening his grip.
Lu Xia averted his head, not wanting to look at the ensuing bloody scene.
The weight on his shoulder vanished suddenly but there was no blood splashing onto his body.
The man patted him on the shoulder and told him to open his eyes. “Look behind you again.”
Lu Xia leaned on the wall and turned the flashlight to shine behind him. He staggered, feeling as if he could hardly stay standing up.
Those bloody things lay densely on the ground behind him. They raised their faces and looked at him in unison.
It was all Sun Zheng’s face, all Sun Zheng’s eyes.
“They look familiar, right? Do you like them?”
Lu Xia slumped onto the ground.
Impossible… Impossible…
Sun Zheng also crouched down, looking at Lu Xia closely. “Are you okay? I’ll help you up.”
He stretched his hand out to Lu Xia. Lu Xia hastily blocked it with a wave of his hand, and looked up at Sun Zheng with an indescribably desolate look in his eyes.
Sun Zheng snorted, then let out a chuckle after a while. “That’s right, there’s no need for me to be impatient, aren’t you going to be the same as them soon…”
Lu Xia’s chest heaved violently. He felt his breathing becoming more difficult.
Maybe it was not Sun Zheng.
Maybe this was a trick played by ‘it’.
He tried comforting himself in this manner, but more and more conflicting details came to his mind. His thoughts were like straws floating on water, moving to the left sometimes, flowing to the right sometimes, without a definite conclusion.
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Sun Zheng watched him. His smile faded away, and a momentary glimpse of sadness appeared on his indifferent face, only to be concealed again by another smile.
After a while, Lu Xia suddenly opened his eyes, and asked calmly, “What’s going on with this chasm?”
This question surprised Sun Zheng. As though he couldn’t be bothered to answer directly, he tossed the tape recorder in his hand to Lu Xia. “I picked this tape up in 315, listen to it yourself.”
Lu Xia picked up the recorder calmly and wiped it. However, his hands trembled when he moved to hit the play button and ended up pressing the fast forward button instead. He hastily pressed stop, followed by the play button.
The tape hissed. Lu Xia spread his hands and leaned back against the wall, as if his energy had been completely sucked dry.
Sun Zheng picked up the recorder expressionlessly, pressed rewind, and went straight back to the very beginning of the tape.
Somehow, the noise in the tape lessened considerably.
Lu Xia listened to Yan Yang getting on the elevator, chasing Lu Xiaoyun all the way into chasm, and heard them talking about everything they saw in Ward 315.
When he heard the part about the upside-down hanging corpse, his lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but his voice caught in his throat and he ended up not asking anything at all.
Then, just after Lu Xiaoyun said ‘this is… the exit… Sun Zheng shut off the recorder.
“Are you sure you want to know the story that comes next?”
Lu Xia turned to him. His eyes were dull, dazed, but he still nodded slowly.
–
Thud!
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.
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Why did you faint?
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Creak.
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Yan Yang asked, “Who is it?!”
“What great timing. He doesn’t understand ‘it’, only I, only I can be ‘it’.” The middle-aged woman’s hoarse and ugly voice spoke brokenly.
Yan Yang, who couldn’t see anything in the darkness, seemed to have bumped into something. A sound rang out on impact. “Liu, Liu Qin?!”
The woman did not answer.
“Aren’t you dead! Oh no, you’re not dead? What are you doing here?!”
The woman took two steps.
Yan Yang immediately exclaimed nervously, “Don’t you dare touch him!” One could clearly imagine him standing guard before Lu Xiaoyun, as if he was a cat which had his tail stepped on.
“I don’t have to do anything, ‘it’ will take him away.” Lu Qin let out a sudden cackle. “You know the secret. ‘It’ won’t let you go too.”
“Secret? What other secret is there here besides these disgusting dried corpses and a necrophilic woman like you?” Yan Yang was getting anxious. “If I became that ‘it’ thing, the first one I take away would be a noisy person like you!”
“Hahahaha!”
Liu Qin’s laughter got even harsher and sharper.
“You don’t know, don’t understand what the chasm is. Neither of you know.” Liu Qin’s sharp voice penetrated the tape. “Everywhere in this world, there are countless evils and crimes, and never-ending new lives emerging daily. Without the chasm, these evils will continue to accumulate, to pass down to the new lives…”
“What do you mean?”
“The chasm is a continuous, circular channel. All the sins and filth in every city are filtered from here, so every new life can have a new start… None of you understand it, none of you respect it, none of you protect it… The chasm is a natural process, but only yin-followers protect it, guard it, from a place where you all will never ever find…”
Yan Yang didn’t speak. He was speechless.
“Look, this is your so-called exit…”
Yan Yang moved, then alarmedly exclaimed, “No, I can’t look at it!”
Lu Xiaoyun said he couldn’t look at it, so he definitely wouldn’t look.
“You are scared,” Liu Qin cackled. “An exit, what is an exit? Here and there, are nothing but two opposites. What’s the difference between these two worlds? Look… This door, this room, they all appeared long before the hospital ever existed, but you all were afraid of it, sealed it away… until I, I opened it properly…”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying!”
“Simple, everything is simple. I dedicate sacrifices to ‘it’, dead, soulless corpses—those are its sacrifices. I use them to attract ‘it’ out. Everyone that it’ touches will enter the chasm…”
“Impossible! How could you, those are lives!”
Liu Qin ignored Yan Yang and continued speaking. “Every ritual needs a dead person, the one hanging here, and a living person, as well as a substitute which ‘it’ will bring into the chasm. By using two people, I can exchange for one life from ‘it’.”
“Don’t tell me this is why, why this hospital would… why the people here would keep falling into the chasm, and were unable to find an exit…” Yan Yang’s voice sounded strained, thin and painful. “But I still don’t understand…”
“That’s right. It was me. I disrupted the natural cycle of the chasm. I didn’t expect that all of these would not be taken into the cycle. It hindered the cycle, so ‘it’ continued to absorb more and more evil into the chasm, but it was not able to absolve the evil… so it found more people, more substitutes, and many, many, many more people fell into the chasm.”
“You insane bitch!”
“No, but I don’t fully understand why either. It’s okay though. When I become ‘it’, I will understand everything.”
“What has the people who entered the chasm have to do with these mummies hanging here? No, no no, it’s impossible. No one can ever change the flow of life. Trading life for life, what evil and resentment, what new life, all of these don’t make sense, they don’t make sense at all!”
Nothing made sense.
Liu Qin was subverting Yan Yang’s entire outlook on life.
Unless this ‘it’…
If ‘it’ brought all the people it touched into chasm, and gave those who are dead a new lease of life, then wouldn’t it mean that ‘it’ was the existence which could change the flow of life and death?
“If you want to use the concepts that already exist in the world already,” Liu Qin paused. “Then ‘it’ is the Reaper.”
The Reaper?
“We… were wrong…” Yan Yang repeated this sentence in a murmur, not knowing if he meant it as a question or was pondering about the statement.
This was why Liu Qunfang’s grandfather said that after fighting with ‘it’ for so many years, he realised he was wrong.
Because this ‘it’… was never supposed to be the enemy.
“Okay,” Liu Qin’s tone turned cold. “The time is nigh, ‘it’ should be making a choice soon.”
There was the sound of a rope being dragged in the tape, followed by the sound of tinkling metal.
“It reeks. What are you trying to do?” Yan Yang covered his nose. His voice was muffled but his tone remained indignant. “With Lu Xiaoyun and I both here, do you still think that your plan will work?”
Liu Qin chuckled lightly.
“Us three are people who entered the chasm. ‘It’ will choose me to become the new ‘it’, and he—will be the dead corpse. You… can just stay here with me forever…”
Yan Yang had his eyes closed. He couldn’t see Liu Qin’s movements, but there was seemingly no hint of retreat in his tone. “How is that possible?! I don’t know what you are planning to do and I don’t have any special abilities either, but no matter what you try, I swear I’ll stop you even at the cost of my life, so your plan will never come to fruition.”
“The choice to be made is neither yours nor mine. The virus chooses its host. Likewise, ‘it’ will be the one choosing the next ‘it’. You don’t understand,” Liu Qin’s voice sharpened. “When I was 12, there was a ritual. ‘It’ chose me, but my mother let me go… So this time, ‘it’ will definitely still choose me. It will choose the host which can best bear all the sins, grievances, and injustices of this world.”
Liu Qin took another step.
“No, don’t you fucking dare to touch him,” Yan Yang’s voice began to tremble. “Lu Xiaoyun, Lu Xiaoyun, wake up…”
There was a rustling sound.
“It’s no big deal. I-I’ll carry you on my back. Let’s escape, Lu Xiaoyun, you…”
He stopped talking all of a sudden.
Because the familiar steady voice finally appeared.
“I told you before, you wouldn’t, because it is impossible for you…” He had just woken up and his voice was still low and hoarse.
“Lu Xiaoyun… You are really like a big hero superman, I really love and hate you so much…” Yan Yang was surprised and delighted at the turn of events.
“Yan Yang,” Lu Xiaoyun interrupted him.
“Mm, hn?”
This was probably the first time Lu Xiaoyun called him directly by his name.
“Remember, after you get out of this place, you must forget everything she said about the secret of the chasm, and everything related to what you’ve seen and heard here.”
“But…”
“If you can’t forget, then you would have to keep it as a secret for the rest of your life. All the people who come out of the chasm have a short life. I don’t think you would be an exception. So, you wouldn’t need to keep all of this a secret for long, and it shouldn’t be too painful for you either…”
“I won’t tell anyone. Who’d believe all this batshit crazy stuff even if I told them about it…”
“You can’t tell anyone anything about this until your death… not even my brother.”
“W-Wait…” Yan Yang became a little irritated. “Death, death, death, why do you keep talking nonsense? Are you still dizzy? We have more important issues to deal with, like, exactly how are we going to solve the problem in this hospital? How are we going to get out of this place?”
“You can’t bring the tapes with you. You can never return to this hospital either.”
“Lu Xiaoyun?!”
Lu Xiaoyun did not answer Yan Yang. He spoke to the other person in the room.
“Yin-follower, do you dare to bet with me?”
Hahahaha, Liu Qin laughed sharply again.
“I’ll accept the bet,” she said. “What are we betting?”
“Bet his life, and this hospital.” Lu Xiaoyun had obviously meant Yan Yang, who was standing beside him.
“Lu Xiaoyun?!” Yan Yang was both surprised and confused.
Buzz.
There was noise.
Buzz.
The buzzing noise was getting louder.
“I’ve already won,” Lu Xiaoyun announced calmly.
“Hahaha,” the woman laughed loudly. “How is that possible?”
“Look at me. You’ve recognised this since you were 12.”
A loud, sharp sound pierced through the recording. It was like a sudden brake, like a knife scraping across glass. It was the sound of the woman’s shriek.
“How is that possible? How could you have won me?! I was the one ‘it’ chose…”
Her last mournful cry of disbelief came to an abrupt end.
Thud.
There was a loud sound of something heavy falling to the ground. The crazy and persistent woman finally felt the taste of failure and fear at her last moments.
The afterimage she left in this world would be her endless resentment.
Liu Qin died. This time, she was really dead.
In fact, ‘it’ had long since made a choice. It was at the moment when Lu Xiaoyun fainted.
It was just that Yan Yang hadn’t noticed it yet, hadn’t noticed the distance between himself and the man in front of him. He still thought that the man was still the cold and elusive Lu Xiaoyun who had few friends.
“Lu Xiaoyun, what did you see at the end of the rope… It was like a circle of darkness, like a bottomless…”
“…Life. Colourless life.” Lu Xiaoyun’s voice seemed to come from afar. Every time he said a word, there were bursts of hissing sounds, making the conversation that was difficult to discern because of the distance, grow even more blurred.
“Life? What’s life like then? How do you know that that’s life?”
No one answered him. No matter which of them took several steps forward, the other person would closely follow behind.
“Lu Xiaoyun, can I open my eyes to see?”
“No.”
“When can I open my eyes then?” Yan Yang spoke anxiously.
“When there is light.”
“Then I will be able to see you when I open my eyes, isn’t that right, Lu Xiaoyun?”
Someone laughed all of a sudden. The laughter sounded strange, as if the owner had never laughed before. “Don’t be silly. There is no longer any Lu Xiaoyun here.”
Only ‘it’ can take you from the operating room to 315A. Only ‘it’ can take you out.
Because, he had already become ‘it’.
And Liu Qin was the substitute.
No one had ever escaped from the chasm in Tonghua Hospital. But perhaps, there will be one exception. There were no exits in the chasm in Tonghua Hospital. But perhaps, there will be one from now on.
He had won the bet, and his spoils were these two aspects. There was no Lu Xiaoyun.
The air seemed to stand still for a moment.
.
“Yan Yang, look up.”
“No… I don’t want to look anymore…” Yan Yang’s voice was suppressed and choked up.
“Look up.”
“No.”
“Look, there is light.”
Many years later, a photo left by someone unknown fell out through the crack of the door. In that photo, there was a bright smile bathed in the sun.
A/N: Confess to Lu-gege TAT
So wait, is that a picture of Yan Yang? Why is there not Li Xianyun? Is that actually Sun Zheng? WILL ONLY ONE OF THEM MAKE IT OUT???? 😭😭😭
Yes, it’s Yan Yang. Lu Xiaoyun won the bet and became ‘it’. In that sense, he wouldn’t be able to leave, at least not in the sense of returning to the original world. This is also why he went missing for years, causing Lu Xia to head to the hospital to find him.