After the nurse-thing finishes distributing all the medication bags during her nightly rounds, she will inevitably return to the station. When she discovers that the notebook is missing from its usual place beneath the counter, she will almost certainly begin searching for it. Chen Ge estimated that the confrontation, if it came to that, should be manageable. Based on everything he had observed, she seemed only slightly more powerful than entities like Xiaoxiao or the Pen Spirit—lingering spirits with limited agency and no real capacity for complex strategy. In a direct fight, he believed he could hold his own or even come out on top, especially with the hammer and cleaver already in hand.
Chen Ge gripped Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer more firmly and advanced deeper into the third-floor corridor. If this were any ordinary person standing in his place, they would already have been paralyzed by terror—frozen in place, mind blank, unable to think or plan. But Chen Ge had long since passed that point. He moved methodically, opening each door one by one, sweeping the flashlight beam across every corner and shadow. Most rooms stood empty or contained only more piles of discarded mattresses and broken furniture. He found no new clues, no hidden messages, no signs of recent activity—until he reached the door to the third-floor bathroom.
The sound of a door opening had come from downstairs earlier, which strongly suggested that the primary "blood door" or mirror portal was not located here. Still, Chen Ge needed to confirm it for himself. He could feel the white cat on his shoulder growing increasingly anxious—its small body pressed tighter against his neck, claws digging deeper into his jacket. Taking a slow breath, Chen Ge pushed the bathroom door open. The interior was swallowed by absolute darkness; the flashlight beam seemed to stop just past the threshold, unable to penetrate more than a meter or two before being absorbed completely.
A row of squat toilet cubicles lined one wall, their doors hanging crookedly on rusted hinges. Unlike public restrooms in schools or malls, none of these cubicles had locks—an intentional design choice, most likely to allow quick access in case a patient suffered a medical emergency or violent episode inside. Chen Ge stepped inside and conducted a slow, thorough sweep of the space. Nothing appeared out of place at first glance: cracked tiles, leaking faucets, mildew-blackened grout. He eventually stopped in front of the long sink counter that faced a large wall-mounted mirror.
The mirror's design immediately struck him as unusual and deliberate. A heavy, dark curtain had been mounted above the glass, rigged so that it could be pulled down easily to cover the entire reflective surface in a single motion. The detail reminded Chen Ge strongly of features he had incorporated into his own Haunted House—small touches meant to disrupt or contain mirror-related entities. It strongly suggested that the hospital staff, at least at one point, had known there were problems with mirrors in this wing.
Chen Ge reached up and slowly drew the curtain aside. The mirror beneath was heavily smudged—covered in overlapping handprints, streaks, and greasy marks as though dozens of people had pressed their palms and fingers against the glass over many years. The surface was so clouded that Chen Ge could barely make out his own distorted reflection staring back at him from the murk.
The bathroom layout held no trace of a blood door or active portal. Satisfied that this was not the source of the midnight disturbances, Chen Ge stepped back out into the corridor and used the adjacent stairwell to descend to the second floor.
The closer he drew to the first floor, the stronger and more nauseating the stench became. It was no longer just mildew and decay; there was something sweeter, more organic underneath—something that made the back of his throat tighten. What surprised him most, however, were the strange changes that had appeared along the second-floor corridors and walls. Large patches of the concrete bulged outward irregularly, as though something had pushed against the surface from the inside. These protrusions carried a faint reddish hue, like the color of badly bruised skin. In places, the cracked floor tiles glistened with dark, sticky residue that looked suspiciously like dried blood that had once seeped up from below and hardened over time.
The atmosphere on the second floor was completely different from the eerie stillness of the third. If the upper level had been unsettling and watchful, the second floor felt actively dangerous—hostile, predatory, urging every instinct to turn and run. The air itself seemed thicker, pressing against Chen Ge's chest with every breath.
Could this really be real blood? Chen Ge crouched and carefully scraped a small flake of the dark residue from the floor with his fingernail. He rubbed it between his fingers; it felt gritty, almost clay-like. There was no metallic scent, no coppery smell of blood. "Probably just oxidized red soil or paint," he told himself, though the doubt lingered.
The mattresses scattered along the corridor were more numerous here and far more obstructive. As Chen Ge stepped past one, he used the hammer claw to yank it open again. The doll inside looked noticeably different from those on the fourth floor. The proportions were more accurate, the limbs less lumpy, the overall shape more convincingly human. It wasn't that the craftsmanship had improved dramatically—it was that the thing inside gave off a stronger, more visceral impression of being alive, as though it were only pretending to be inert.
When I finally reach the first floor, will the dolls inside these mattresses actually crawl out on their own? The question was no longer hypothetical. Chen Ge was seriously weighing the possibility as he continued forward.
He passed room after room along the corridor. Most doors stood ajar, revealing empty interiors or more discarded furniture. But as he approached the corner where the hallway turned, several rooms stood out as unusual. Unlike all the other patient rooms he had seen so far—which had small viewing windows built into the doors for staff observation—these particular doors were completely solid, no windows at all. One of them even had a small metal plaque still attached to the wood.
The director's office? Chen Ge had explored nearly the entire hospital by now, and this was the first time he had encountered any door with an identifying label. He pushed it open carefully.
The room beyond was significantly larger than any patient quarters he had seen. It had clearly been created by knocking down the walls between three adjacent rooms, forming one expansive space. Dead potted plants lined one wall, their shriveled leaves drooping like forgotten memories. Empty bookshelves stood bare against another wall, next to a wide office desk that had been cleared of everything except dust. A separate resting area occupied roughly half the room's size: a single narrow bed and, most noticeably, a disproportionately large dresser that dominated the far corner.
Chen Ge closed the door behind him with a soft click, sealing himself inside. The floor was littered with hundreds of loose patient records—paperwork that had been scattered and abandoned. Unlike the edited, red-marked files in the nurse's notebook upstairs, these documents were untouched originals. The diagnosis boxes had not been overwritten. No red pen had scrawled "Confirmed Dead" across the pages.
In other words, these were records of patients who—according to the hospital's last official documentation—were probably still alive somewhere.
The mental hospital had operated continuously for at least ten years before its abrupt closure, and during that time it had processed an enormous number of patients—far more than Chen Ge had initially imagined. Compared to Jiujiang's population of several million people, the actual number of individuals suffering from severe mental illnesses was statistically quite small. Yet the city possessed only two certified government-run psychiatric hospitals, and even at full capacity, those facilities could accommodate no more than about a thousand patients combined. Mental illnesses, by their very nature, often required long-term or repeated treatment, creating a constant demand that the official system could never fully meet. This chronic shortage of beds and resources was precisely why private institutions like Jiujiang Third Psychological Convalescence Centre had been allowed to open and thrive.
The hospital had held all the necessary official certifications and licenses, but at its core it remained a for-profit private facility. Its primary focus had always been financial gain rather than patient welfare, and that priority had led to serious, systemic problems in management and oversight. Because mental patients were often unable to advocate effectively for themselves or report abuses, many serious issues were ignored, downplayed, or deliberately concealed. The fact that Wang Haiming—someone who, according to all available evidence, had not been severely mentally ill—was accepted and held long-term was just one glaring example of how far the hospital had strayed from ethical standards.
Chen Ge picked up several of the scattered patient records from the floor and flipped through them quickly. His interest faded almost immediately. The diagnoses listed were repetitive and formulaic, almost interchangeable; the treatment plans followed the same narrow patterns of heavy medication, isolation, and electroshock therapy. There was no individuality, no nuance, no attempt to understand the unique circumstances or histories of the people involved.
"A real doctor is someone like Doctor Gao," Chen Ge said quietly, almost to himself. "These so-called doctors were not treating illnesses—they were trying to silence the patients' wills and souls, turning them into obedient puppets stripped of any remaining personality or resistance."
He continued his methodical search of the large office. The bookshelves stood completely empty, their surfaces coated in a thick layer of dust that had not been disturbed in years. The desk drawers were likewise vacant—no papers, no personal effects, no hidden compartments. Chen Ge moved into the separate resting area at the back of the room and flipped the narrow bed upside down. Nothing lay concealed beneath the frame or inside the thin mattress cover. Finally, his attention settled on the one remaining unsearched object in the room: the suspiciously oversized dresser that dominated the far wall.
"This dresser is large enough to hold two grown adults standing side by side," Chen Ge observed, his voice low. "Could the missing director still be inside—either alive, dead, or something worse?"
He raised Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer in a ready grip and slowly circled the massive piece of furniture, examining it from every angle. Thick strips of police evidence tape still sealed the dresser doors and drawers. The tape appeared old but intact; the edges were yellowed and slightly curled, yet none had been peeled back or broken since it was first applied years ago.
"Why would the police have sealed this dresser specifically?" Chen Ge wondered aloud. "Were they hiding a body? Evidence? Or something they couldn't explain?"
Other details about the dresser only deepened the mystery. All four vertical edges had been wrapped in multiple layers of heavy-duty duct tape. Strange mantras and protective symbols had been scrawled in black marker on each corner—characters that looked half-religious, half-superstitious. Most disturbingly, four long red nails—each roughly half the length of a human palm—had been driven deep into the wood at the four corners of the dresser front. Their heads protruded outward like warnings.
"It just feels like this dresser contains something extremely important," Chen Ge said. He gently lifted the white cat from his shoulder and placed it down near the door, far enough away to keep it safe. Then he reached out, carefully peeled away the brittle police tape, and wedged the flat end of the hammer beneath the dresser door. With steady pressure, he pried it open.
There was no horrifying scene waiting inside—no body, no blood, no sudden stench. The dresser's interior was surprisingly mundane: a few loose sheets of paper covered in dense handwriting and several unmailed envelopes tucked into the bottom drawer. Chen Ge picked up the topmost sheet of paper. The very first line that met his eyes made his heart lurch violently in his chest.
"The kid inside Room 3 is acting up again. He is the first person to have seen the 'door', so I suspect the appearance of the 'door' is related to him."
Chen Ge froze. Wasn't Room 3 supposed to be empty? Doctor Gao's records had listed nine patients across ten rooms—Room 3 had been left blank, unassigned. Where had this "kid" come from?
He continued reading the papers and letters inside the dresser. They told a chilling story of how a single mysterious "door" had slowly unraveled and ultimately destroyed the entire mental hospital from within.