Translator: Reina Editor: Killian
Bang.
A door somewhere opened with a loud bang, followed by the sound of dozens of chaotic footsteps. Some sounded from a distance away, some sounded close by.
The volume of the rushed, panicked footsteps seemed to be shaking the entire hospital, and noise in the tape was louder than ever. It was just like the gurney, the nurses with infusion tubes, and everyone in the hospital were all simultaneously rushing over towards the recording device.
“That afternoon, a group of more than a dozen wounded people were brought to this hospital. They were all film crew members who were filming nearby. There was an ancient town not far from the county, and they were filming the scene where a flying car would explode. The roads in the ancient town were narrow and the house was dilapidated, and the explosion just happened to collapse the building next to it.
“You probably never saw the accident on the news, right, Lu Xia? That makes sense, because most of the injuries were only superficial ones. The screenwriter, that year… he was only about 24 at that time. He had just entered the industry and followed the crew to the filming scene. He was crushed under a fallen beam and was sent to the hospital.”
“Have you recalled it now? It wasn’t too long after the lecture at C University either. The emergency department said it was a fracture. They took an x-ray and sent him into Operating Room (4). At that time, he didn’t know what kind of place Operating Room (4) was. He was lying on the stretcher, was anaesthetised, and wheeled in.”
“No one noticed the pulmonary embolism until it was too late, until he started coughing up blood, until there was a heart failure… No, don’t worry, the man wasn’t dead yet.”
“Before the doctors could locate his family, Dean Lu and the director arrived there. He hasn’t died yet, so Dean Lu wheeled him all the way to Ward 315A and told him: “You will be staying here for a while. The director and the others are waiting for you to come out. If you can’t make it through, the director and Xiao Chen who drove that car will be guilty for the rest of their lives.”
“There was someone waiting for the patient in that room, a blind person. He didn’t wait until Dean Lu proclaimed the patient dead before he began his work. The Hanged Man, doesn’t that sound scary? Hahahahaha!!!” Sun Zheng bursts into laughter suddenly, his facial features distorting. “I wasn’t dead then! I was alive from the start to the end! I was conscious!”
Lu Xia seemed stunned by this story. He stared blankly at Sun Zheng.
That movie, it was the ‘Dark Redemption’ they had previously talked about. It was filmed a year after the lecture at C University.
Indeed, it was something many, many years ago.
At that point in time, Tonghua Hospital had been quiet for many years. He had been wandering around, doing some simple jobs while searching for news of his brother. Meanwhile, Sun Zheng was lying on the operating table, while the Director and Lu Xiang reached some kind of agreement.
Sun Zheng, who was single with no relatives, became the largest victim in this whole conspiracy.
Ward 315A was reopened after Lu Xiang became the dead, and the first person sent in was Sun Zheng. Everything which Lu Xiaoyun painstakingly sacrificed himself to end back then, started up once again.
“The ritual uses a very ingenious technique. You needed to use a needle, a very thin needle, and you had to pierce it in many places on the scalp of the person who was hanging upside down… Since blood coagulates very quickly, this person has to be someone who had just died. This was a very delicate process, and was also Liu Qin’s secret method, just like marinating a piece of meat. Do you want to stop listening?” His tone suddenly became very soft, and his eyes were also very gentle, looking at Lu Xia. “Do you not want to hear my story too?”
“Sun Zheng…”
“Why was I still conscious? I should have died then. But I didn’t, and I was still thinking about how I had to leave this place. I needed to go out to reassure the Director and Xiao Cheng, needed to tell them this accident was not their fault, that they didn’t need to feel guilty. Isn’t it ridiculous?”
“That was obviously… obviously not a room I could ever get out of… Or perhaps by then I was already dead, had already become that dried corpse with the wrinkled face, hanging upside-down… But Lu Xia,” Sun Zheng cupped Lu Xia’s face. “Why am I still alive?”
“I wanted to go out so badly. I hammered on the door for a whole day and night, until I had no strength left in my body. Then, when I had no strength left, I scratched at the door. I thought to myself, if I kept scratching on and on, then surely someone would hear it? Surely someone would come to find me? In the whole crew, there had to be at least one person who would ask, where is Sun Zheng?”
“But there wasn’t. I waited and waited and waited so long, but no one came. So I thought to myself again, I should have just rolled off that operating table earlier. I should have just dragged myself, twisting my legs, and crawled my way out. Even if I had to crawl through the entire hospital, I had to find a person to bring me out of her… find a person who was willing to bring me out, find a person who wanted to leave this place with me… Even if I had to crawl until my body was bloodied, until my legs broke, until all my wounds were ripped open…”
Sun Zheng saw something glinting on Lu Xia’s face. He reached over to wipe the wetness off.
“Why are you crying, Lu Xia? Even I have no more tears left to shed. For so many years, I’ve been thinking about going out, thinking about leaving. Then, later, I realised, I’ve died long ago. I have become that corpse, that dried mummy which was hung upside-down. I realised how stupid and ridiculous I was. That desire of mine to leave, the me that was scratching at the door, the me that climbed down from the operating table, even the me who turned into a normal person waiting and hoping to find someone who would bring me out, all those became different living fragments of myself. Those pieces of my thoughts were all scattered, and the only thing linking them up…was my desire to leave this place…”
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.
“You look like you doubt me, Lu Xia. But you said it before yourself, powerful thoughts might be able to materialise things. The me who had been with you all this time was also a fragment which was shaped by thousands of such broken thoughts.”
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“Is it because I was different from them? I don’t like to joke, I’m a student of Professor Yuan, I was too serious, too studious… so they don’t like me. Because I preferred being alone, I have no friends. Even when I am gone, even after the Director and Lu Xiang sold my life away just like that, no one cared or asked after me. Maybe they even applauded… Lu Xia, I didn’t do anything wrong, did I… I saw so many different sins here, each one worse than the previous, but I didn’t commit any crimes comparable to any of them…”
“The people who are trapped in this place, this chasm, are they the people who should be punished?
“Why must any group of people, even if there are only three of them, always reject another person and outcast them?”
“Because of fear.”
Fearing your difference.
“All of my broken thoughts, all of my resentment, it shrouded every corner of this hospital, until one day, I suddenly realised, I had already swallowed up the entire hospital… ‘it’ had yet to choose me, but it had already disappeared…”
“So, I became the ‘it’ in this chasm. You would probably never comprehend this wonderful feeling. You say that chasms are where the evils and curses gather, and ‘it’ is the heart of the chasm. But surely, if you were to see those things everyday, feel that same resentment everytime, hearing the voices of those people coming and going…”
“When you become ‘it’, you will understand… This chasm is a dead end. The ‘it’ which was baited out by those sacrifices had no other choice but to keep searching for the next person to replace them. It was the only way they could relieve this never ending pain… This is an instinct, Lu Xia.”
It was an instinct. It was its only instinct.
“The thing that gave me the most joy was watching Lu Xiang live in regret and fear for the rest of his life because of his one-time impulse. I finally understood how Liu Qin felt. This sensation is like an addiction. His entire life, his emotions, his thoughts, everything was being completely controlled by you. There is no greater power and joy! Dean Lu, Lu Xiang, his entire hospital became a mess because of this. He wanted to seal me, so he flipped through all the records, went to search for all the clues Yan Yang and the others left behind, but he couldn’t find anything. Hahahaha…”
“Don’t shake your head. I’m not suffering, not at all. Because I understand, I understand all too well now.”
“Evil? Hahahaha, what evil is there in this world?”
“Who defines evil and justice? Who will define life and death? No one. There is no evil in this world. The only thing we all have is this covering on us, in other words, our skin.”
“This skin constitutes our entire world. And this world constitutes all our voices, all our words, all our pictures, and everything that can interact with us. We live in this skin. Evil? Purity? Justice? They’re all just mere tags which we and others put on this skin.”
“Why do we think something is filthy? Because of social constructs. Because what we see, what we hear, what we learned, because this world told you—it is filthy.”
“I let so many people into this chasm. I didn’t strip away any of their sins, only their skins.”
“I restored to them the original colour of life, the original existence of life.”
“So why couldn’t they leave? Why were they unable to exist in your world anymore? Because I’ve removed their skin, their world, so they could no longer exist.”
“You can understand me, you will be able to understand me, I know. You’re so smart after all.”
“Sun Zheng, why me?” Lu Xia finally asked calmly. He looked at the person before him. He was still so alive, he was still a person with warmth and life. It was impossible to imagine that this person was once a corpse, or that this was once a twisted and crawling body on the ground, and it was even more impossible to imagine that there was such a dark story behind this person, let alone a chasm that was so large it could be an abyss.
Thousands of stars were shining in the abyss of this chasm. Each one with a story and a soul.
“You? At that time, I thought I was still the same old self, just visiting a hospital, but then you patted me on the shoulder and told me Dean Lu is your uncle. Yes, you reminded me, ‘Dean Lu’, do you remember saying these words?”
“Uncle. The dean is my uncle, and he bought this hospital!” Lu Xia couldn’t help feeling a little proud.
“But then you dragged me along, trying to escape. How stupid of you, Lu Xia. You aren’t as powerful as your brother, but you are so much more reckless than him. You couldn’t even save yourself, but you still wanted to save me? You gave me so much hope… I never had so much hope before…”
But I had nothing to give you in return.
“Do you know why they were always following you? Those crawling things?” Sun Zheng smiled. This was a sincere smile, reaching up to curve his eyes for the first time. “Because I like you, Lu Xia.”
“Because all of those things are me. They represent my every thought and desire. My desire to be closer to you.”
Lu Xia came to a realisation.
The first time it appeared was when he saved Sun Zheng, when the two of them were walking down the stairs holding each other.
The second time it appeared, was in the laboratory of the second floor, when he said,
“I understand her because we both have someone we like. Liu Qunfang was actually very scared…… And I’m more scared than her, Sun Zheng.”
“And the third time it appeared was because you told me you liked me. I saw them behind us, their eyes gleaming, as though they couldn’t wait to pounce on and devour that moment.” Sun Zheng leaned over, close to Lu Xia’s face. “This sentence, you probably don’t remember it anymore, do you?”
They have all ruined this moment, didn’t they?
“I do!” Lu Xia refuted immediately, his face pressed against Sun Zheng’s.
He could take away a layer of skin, but he would never be able to remove these feelings from him.
That face was already ice cold.
It reminded him of that face hanging upside down on the other side of the building.
The eyes of the two men finally met.
“You’re so cold, Lu Xia,” Sun Zheng said with a smile.
It was as if he was professing: I won’t let you escape anymore, Lu Xia.
Lu Xia seemed to be able to see tears glistening in those eyes.
That sentence seemed to jog a certain memory in Lu Xia’s mind.
“Let’s get out of here together.”
Impossible!
There is no way to escape from here. If you can’t get out, I won’t leave either.
“I almost let you leave,” Sun Zheng said, raising his eyebrows. “But to think, you would decide to remain in this place alone because of ‘it’. What about ‘it’? In the worst case, we’ll just both stay here together, right, Lu Xia?”
In the worst case, we’ll just both stay here together…
Sun Zheng took Lu Xia’s hand. Lu Xia obediently followed and slowly stood up.
“Look, I won’t choose the next ‘it’.” Sun Zheng turned his head and smiled at Lu Xia. “You said it yourself, Liu Qunfang as the matchmaker, Lao Zhang and Lao Mao’s ghosts as witnesses, do our three bows in the archives room, use the operating room as a nuptial chamber, adopt the little ghost outside the door as a son, and become a ghost couple. What do you think?”
Lu Xia followed Sun Zheng and took two steps forward. He numbly nodded, answering the question. “Pretty good.”
“I’m joking with you, you think it’s that easy?” Sun Zheng chuckled. “But, we can become two ‘it’s, can’t we?”
“We can.” Lu Xia squeezed out a smile. His forefinger lightly stroked across something on the hem of his clothes, as if cleaning off something.
The tapes. Lu Xiaoyun. Yan Yang. It.
Only ‘it’ can take you from the operating room to 315A. Only ‘it’ can take you out.
Sun Zheng did not notice Lu Xia’s movements. He merely nodded in satisfaction, and the two men walked to the door of Operating Room (4). Lu Xia took the initiative to open the door of the operating room.
“You must also want to see what the real me looks like, don’t you?”
Lu Xia nodded again.
The two walked through the dark corridor silently, as if they had already merged with the darkness.
They didn’t even notice when Lu Xia’s flashlight died.
The door of the operating room opened. Sun Zheng led Lu Xia in.
Creak.
It was a long corridor filled with pitch-black mist. The air was bone-chillingly cold.
What was at the end of the corridor?
Hands slowly groped along the wall to find the wall. Maybe in the next moment, they would accidentally touch another cold and dry hand.
Perhaps in the next moment, they would come into contact with another unknown space.
However, both hands touched a door at the same time. It was a door engraved with many traces, as if it was etched with the memories since ancient times.
What era was the memory left behind in this room? When the hospital was first constructed, it had been taken in as a part of the building.
Sun Zheng closed his eyes and touched the door handle.
They will become two ‘it’s. He thought so seriously.
Lu Xia opened his eyes in the black mist.
This was the exit.
They would go out together. They would leave this place together. No matter what he was.
Both men pressed their palms against the door and pushed it open together.
God I never knew it was gonna end this way.. I feel oddly happy for them? Everything is gonna end in the last chapter 😭