Chapter 64
Lin Yi stared at the door, silent.
After a long while, I let out an ‘oh’ and said, “Mr. 203, I’m okay with anything, I’m not picky.”
Then after a pause, Lin Yi said, “Though tea eggs would be nice.”
Outside the door, it seemed like Patient 203 hadn’t expected Lin Yi to be so calm. After Lin Yi answered him properly, he was momentarily stunned.
After Patient 203 left, Lin Yi walked slowly to the window and watched Patient 203 walk into the cafeteria.
Lin Yi expression was actually quite wonderful.
Lin Yi even thought of that line from a poem, “The mountains are deep, the rivers rough, no road in sight; the willow trees make shade and the flowers give light, a village comes in sight.”
Calling out to stop Qin Zhou once he opens his mouth and attracts the attention of the 16-8 Monster was actually already a last ditch desperate maneuver.
But Lin Yi never expected for Patient 203 to simply lock him in their room.
If Qin Zhou sees that he isn’t by Patient 203’s side, he would definitely become suspicious and he would shelve his plan to use the exposure of the Rules of Death to lure in the 16-8 Monster.
“Ah, this…”
Lin Yi scratched his head, not knowing whether Patient 203 was an enemy or a secret ally.
He wasn’t the one who’d wanted to leave Patient 203’s side so Lin Yi wasn’t planning on jumping out the window. En, it was nice having someone bring him breakfast.
Lin Yi simply went back to the cubicle and lay back down on the narrow bed. Patient 203 had stared at him all night. Although Lin Yi was used to staying up until dawn, last night hadn’t been easy. Now, Lin Yi planned to sleep for a while.
He closed his eyes and was about to replay the audio in the MP4 in his head, his usual process of coaxing himself to sleep, when a strong earthy smell mixed with the stench of something rotten reached his nose.
Lin Yi paused. He then turned over and sat up.
Zheng Anjian had stopped eating at breakfast yesterday. Earthworms don’t eat fresh food. Zheng Anjian’s mutation must have matured. If Doctor Zhu regarded the patient as a test subject, he wouldn’t allow mature test subjects to appear in front of other patients since he’ll easily be discovered.
Therefore, this stench must be from Doctor Zhu coming to feed Zheng Anjian while the patients and nursing aides were going to breakfast.
Roor 101.
Doctor Zhu probably didn’t expect that Patient 203 would lock the nursing aide in the room and go to the cafeteria to have breakfast alone.
He spread the soil filled with organic matter on the floor of the room. He then took out some leftover food from a few days ago.
The vegetable leaves have rotted and Zheng Anjian, who was no longer able to walk and lay twisted on the ground, first rolled onto the soil, letting the wet soil cover the surface of his body. Bristles had grown on his body and it was through these bristles that he sensed the presence of food. He crawled vigorously towards Doctor Zhu.
Doctor Zhu threw the rotten vegetable leaves at him and while Zheng Anjian was eating, Doctor Zhu took out a saw.
In order to avoid soiling his white coat, Doctor Zhu took off his coat first. He then squatted down slowly. He put on medical gloves, picked up the saw and sawed down the center of Zheng Anjian’s body.
Zheng Anjian didn’t call for help. Earthworms don’t have vocal organs. Zheng Anjian’s voice had degenerated.
All he could do was roll over or curl up into himself. But neither helped. The saw in Doctor Zhu’s hand quickly cut off his new bristles and cut open his skin. The saw tooth edge penetrated into Zheng Anjian’s flesh. It pushed and pulled, slowly breaking Zheng Anjian’s bones.
There was blood running down the saw and onto the floor, the color was rose red, the color of earthworm blood.
Pool of blood on the floor, Doctor Zhu stood up and quietly admired his ‘masterpiece’.
The first half and the second half of Zheng Anjian’s body have already separated.
Doctor Zhu observed the incisions on Zheng Anjian’s upper and lower sections. He watched the contraction of muscle tissue on the open cross-section.
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.
If this experiment goes well, the muscle tissues will contract more intensely and some muscle cells will quickly dissolve and form new clumps of cells.
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Doctor Zhu’s eyes filled with mania. He wanted so much to see this feat.
Another individual, same as itself, derived from a life.
As he watched, the musculature on the sectioned surface began contracting. Blood gushed out from time to time. Doctor Zhu waited eagerly. But as he waited and waited, his face became gloomy.
The muscles stopped contracting. The upper and lower parts did not grow a head or a tail as Doctor Zhu had expected.
Zheng Anjian didn’t move.
Earthworms have no eyes. By dusk yesterday, Zheng Anjian’s eyes had already been unable to see. He could only stare wide-eyed, seemingly staring ahead but actually seeing nothing but darkness.
Doctor Zhu looked at him, disappointed and angry. After watching him for a while, he reluctantly squatted down again and touched the cut muscle with his hand.
The muscle tissues have indeed stopped contracting but there was no regrowth. The beating muscles were merely nerve reflexes, like fish whose muscles still spasmed and twitched after death.
This time, the expression on Doctor Zhu’s face tensed and his facial muscles trembled from fury.
He kicked Zheng Anjian away, then stood up and left Room 101.
After locking Room 101, he went to Room 102.
He opened the door to Room 102. Unlike the Room 101, which had its curtains drawn to block the sunlight, it was still bright in this room.
Doctor Zhu found at a glance that Shi Xuan was not in the room.
But he was in no hurry, he estimated that there was still some time before Shi Xuan’s mutation matured. That was why he hadn’t locked Shi Xuan in her room.
Doctor Zhu walked into the bathroom, took off the medical gloves and washed the rose-red blood that had splattered on his wrist. He then patiently sat on the sofa and waited for Shi Xuan to come back.
Shi Xuan won’t be eating the food in the cafeteria anymore since rice wasn’t what comb jellies wanted. Comb jellies wanted raw meat.
Shi Xuan, unable to eat anything, will come back to her room soon. The sun was shining bright today. Marine creatures, being as they live in water, wouldn’t like an environment that is too dry.
Doctor Zhu had hit a wall with Zheng Anjian. Now he wanted to check Shi Xuan’s gene fusion to avoid another failure.
While waiting for Shi Xuan to come back, Doctor Zhu casually picked up a magazine. It was a fashion magazine. Doctor Zhu vaguely remembered that Patient 101 and Patient 102 were running a clothing company together. Their brand was now very well-known but unfortunately the two bosses were old and their desperate struggle in their youth backfired in their later years and they both fell ill.
They were rich but unable to live a comfortable life. They heard that he could change their lives. So the couple dropped everything and came to him. In order to gain a spot for treatment, they gave Doctor Zhu a lot of money.
The patients here were all wealthy people. It was the patients who provided the funds to allow his experiments to run smoothly.
Doctor Zhu flipped through this magazine. He didn’t like this kind of books with pictures very much. After turning a couple of pages, Shi Xuan still hadn’t come back. This made Doctor Zhu feel more and more restless.
Just when his irritability was about to reach its peak, there seemed to be another sound coming from above him outside the window.
“Doctor Zhu.”
Doctor Zhu’s face darkened instantly. There were still people in the patients’ building?
“Doctor Zhu—”
After hearing it again, Doctor Zhu locked to the source of the sound. It was coming from the window upstairs. He threw the magazine aside, went to the window and pushed it open.
Sure enough, there was someone in Room 203 to the left upstairs. What was the name of the nursing aide who troubled him with a stomachache last time? Oh, Lin Yi.
Lin Yi waved to Doctor Zhu. He pretended not to see Doctor Zhu’s gloomy expression, and said, “Doctor Zhu, when you mentioned Li Hong last time, I suddenly thought that of something. It seems historians found a record stating that Li Hong had been killed by Wu Zetian.”
Doctor Zhu was stunned for a moment. Lin Yi called out again, “Doctor Zhu, are you free?”
Doctor Zhu opened the locked door of Room 203 and Lin Yi invited Doctor Zhu in.
Originally, Lin Yi had still been thinking about how to open their conversation but Doctor Zhu spoke first, “Oh, so it had been discovered?”
Lin Yi guessed that Doctor Zhu must be talking about Li Hong so he nodded.
Doctor Zhu continued to talk and Lin Yi listened, his mind spinning rapidly.
As before, Doctor Zhu gave Lin Yi the feeling that he had been Li Hong himself.
If Doctor Zhu had been Emperor Hui of Jin and Li Hong as well and he was able to live up to this time, why even use the patients to experiment with “eternal life”?
Before Doctor Zhu arrived in Room 203, Lin Yi had formed three hypotheses in his mind:
- The immortality method possessed by Doctor Zhu has failed.
- The immortality method possessed by Doctor Zhu has ‘retrogressed’ or it is difficult to implement. He thus wants to find a new method for immortality through these experiments.
These two hypotheses were relatively easy to come up with but Qin Zhou said that each suspicious point had to have at least 3 to 5 hypotheses or more so Lin Yi insisted on a third hypothesis.
- There was no such thing as ‘eternal life’. Everything was just Doctor Zhu’s imagination.
Lin Yi needed to confirm which one was correct and he needed to coax the answer out of Doctor Zhu. Lin Yi waited for Doctor Zhu to finish talking. He then asked, “Doctor Zhu, which dynasty’s history do you like the most?”
Doctor Zhu said, “I can’t really say which ones I like or don’t like.”
Lin Yi asked, “Are you also familiar with the period of the Three Kingdoms?”
Compared with the other dynasties, the Three Kingdoms period with its separate governments, was quite “messy”. The more chaotic, the more likely he’d get something wrong. After all, when talking about history, Doctor Zhu always seemed to substitute himself and was always filled with righteous indignation.
Moreover, before the Three Kingdoms was the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and after the Three Kingdoms was the Jin Dynasty.
The emperors of the Jin Dynasty were surnamed Sima and people from the Sima clan were also prominent during the Three Kingdoms period. If Doctor Zhu was indeed Emperor Hui of Jin who was given poisoned tea by his courtiers, no matter what, he should have some feelings for his “ancestors”.
Lin Yi was trying to see if he could find something out from Doctor Zhu’s words.
Doctor Zhu nodded. “I know something of that period.”
Lin Yi followed Doctor Zhu’s words and asked, “Do you remember Cao Cao?”
Sima Yi, the founder of the Western Jin Dynasty, had been under Cao Cao’s command.
Sima Yi had also been the great-grandfather of Emperor Hui of Jin. If Doctor Zhu had been Emperor Hui of Jin, that would mean that Sima Yi was also Doctor Zhu’s great-grandfather.
Doctor Zhu’s expression darkened immediately at Lin Yi’s first question, “He is the one I have the greatest impression of.”
Lin Yi looked at Doctor Zhu’s reaction and said deliberately, “That’s to be expected. Cao Cao is after all, a representative figure of our history, a hero for the generations.”
“A hero for the generations? Is this how history evaluates him?” Doctor Zhu said angrily. “He’s nothing but a womanizer, how can he be a hero for the generations?”
Lin Yi said, “You mean about Bronze Bird Terrace?”
Doctor Zhu gritted his teeth and said, “Not just.”
Lin Yi thought for a while: “Du Shi?”
In addition to the Bronze Bird Terrace, Cao Cao had also seized a beautiful woman, Du Shi to be his concubine.
Doctor Zhu immediately showed an expression of hatred and anger. “Du Shi’s beauty surpasses that of Diao Chan’s. This is not because I am partial towards her. Many people think so. She is very kind and gentle. I will never forget her even though I know that many people covet her!”
Lin Yi said, “Then you must remember Qin Yilu.”
When saying this name, Lin Yi paid special attention to Doctor Zhu’s expression. Du Shi had been Qin Yilu’s wife.
Doctor Zhu’s expression went a little sad, “I remember.”
Lin Yi asked Doctor Zhu. “The only thing known in history is that Qin Yilu was killed by Zhang Fei. It seems that he died in…”
Doctor Zhu said, “Year 199.”
Lin Yi glanced at Doctor Zhu.
Doctor Zhu remembered the date of Qin Yilu’s death so clearly. It must be because he’d experience it, that it created such a deep memory in Doctor Zhu. Doctor Zhu had probably been Qin Yilu whose wife had been taken away by Cao Cao.
This made Lin Yi guess that Doctor Zhu’s method of immortality was similar to the one used in the sanatorium at this time. Once the life in one body is nearly spent, he would transfer to another body.
He now wanted to determine whether the body transfer was the same as the one being carried out in the sanatorium’s, directly encroaching on the lives of another fully grown adult. Just like how Patient 101 became Zheng Anjian, did he become another person completely? Or did he start from a newborn?
Lin Yi asked, “Qin Yilu’s birth date is unknown and no one knows how long he lived. Do you know, Doctor Zhu?”
Doctor Zhu paused, “I don’t remember this.”
Lin Yi nodded. Since Doctor Zhu couldn’t remember the time of Qin Yilu’s birth, there was a high probability that Doctor Zhu’s “eternal life” didn’t start from a newborn. Hardly anyone would forget when they were born.
As long as he could clarify this point, of his three hypotheses, hypotheses one and two can basically be ascertained.
But Lin Yi was worried that Doctor Zhu might have gotten confused from experiencing too many body transfers, from living too many lives. In this case, it was normal to get confused or to not remember the birth date of a certain part of your life.
While thinking about how to verify it, Lin Yi sighed, “Only Da Qiao and Er Qiao are recorded in the history books. There aren’t even many people who know that Cao Cao had snatched away Du Shi. Even Du Shi’s actual name isn’t recorded in the history books. She’s only known by her surname ‘Du’.”
Doctor Zhu sneered and said, “As I said before, history is the stories made up by later generations.”
Lin Yi nodded in agreement and following Doctor Zhu’s words, said, “Doctor Zhu, so what was Du Shi’s full name?”
Lin Yi was simply thinking about how to bring the topic back to Cao Cao and then from Cao Cao to Sima Yi. And so, he only threw this question thoughtlessly, just something to keep the conversation going with Doctor Zhu.
Unexpectedly, it was like something got lodged in Doctor Zhu’s throat, “Du… Du…”
Lin Yi saw Doctor Zhu’s reaction with his own eyes but he was still momentarily stunned.
Doctor Zhu couldn’t remember Du Shi’s name but Doctor Zhu had just expressed his undying love for Du Shi.
This was impossible.
Unless Doctor Zhu never knew Du Shi’s name in the first place.
Doctor Zhu grabbed his hair. “Du…Du Shi’s name…Du Shi…”
“I’m Qin Yilu, Du Shi is my wife, her name…”
Seeing Doctor Zhu’s reaction, Lin Yi suddenly thought of the name of the sanatorium.
Yu City Huayuan District Sanatorium Hospital
From the very beginning, Lin Yi felt that there was something wrong with this name. But now, for some reason, Lin Yi suddenly had the idea how to fix it.
In ‘Yu City Huayuan District Sanatorium Hospital’, the words “sanatorium” and “hospital” was redundant and thus sounded cumbersome.
Change it to:
Yu City Huayuan District Psychiatric Hospital
It was perfect.
Mental hospital = Mental Illness. The director is probably a patient and most likely a schizophrenic based on his delusions.
Being trapped in a mental hospital is such a familliar horror trope I almost forgot that we didn’t already know this was a mental hospital. All the patients being unhinged enough to go along with this body swapping experiment also doesn’t help.
And that’s why history is important.. Who knows when all those time periods or ancient people come in handy.. 😑
😂
And here I thought we have real immortal in the story lol
Thank you for the update ❤️💯