When he heard the unmistakable sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor from inside Room 3, Chen Ge did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He slammed the blood-soaked door shut with all his strength, the impact reverberating through the corridor like a gunshot in the silence. His hand closed tightly around the lock mechanism, fingers instinctively seeking purchase on the cold, sticky metal. A sudden, bone-deep chill leaked through the steel and seeped directly into his palm, spreading upward along his arm and throughout his entire body like icy water poured into his veins. He froze in place just outside the door, every muscle locked, every sense straining to pinpoint the exact source of the dragging noise.
"It definitely came from inside the door," Chen Ge whispered, barely moving his lips. "But I can't tell which direction it's coming from." The mental image flashed unbidden into his mind: a masked monster somewhere on the other side, slowly dragging a body down a mirrored corridor that perfectly reflected this one. The sound grew steadily closer—slow, deliberate, scraping—until it abruptly stopped, as though whatever was making it had paused directly opposite him.
Chen Ge's muscles remained tensed to the point of trembling. A curious, almost surreal feeling settled over him. The door in front of him now felt like a perfect mirror between two identical worlds. The monster inside was standing in the exact same position he occupied—hammer raised, breath held—separated from him by nothing more than a thin sheet of steel and blood. Neither side dared make any rash movement. The tension stretched taut between them, fragile and electric, ready to snap at the slightest provocation.
Eerie winds blew down the corridor from somewhere deeper in the building, carrying with them the faint smell of rust and old blood. Four long minutes passed in absolute stillness. Then, from the floor below, came the unmistakable sound of another door being pushed open—slow, creaking, deliberate. The female nurse-thing had caught up to him again. The situation had suddenly become dire. The nurse was approaching from behind, but Chen Ge was trapped in a standoff where even the smallest twitch might provoke the thing on the other side of the door to act.
This was a silent competition of nerve. The monster inside the door was hesitating, waiting for Chen Ge to make the first mistake. Outside the door, Chen Ge had no concrete plan yet for confronting whatever lay beyond. His overriding goal remained simple and desperate: find some way—any way—to temporarily close or seal this blood door and survive until dawn inside the hospital.
The nurse, having finished methodically inspecting the third and second floors, finally arrived on the first. The moment she spotted Chen Ge standing motionless before Room 3, she began charging toward him in her signature staggering, lopsided gait. In the darkened hallway of an enclosed sick ward, a madwoman in a tattered nurse's outfit barreling forward with broken limbs and a face half-hidden by matted hair was a terrifying sight. Green veins stood out starkly along Chen Ge's forearms as he gripped his weapons tighter; he watched her approach from the corner of his eye, calculating distances and timing.
"I already gave you back the notebook," Chen Ge said under his breath, voice strained. "So why are you still coming after me?"
If this were any other place and any other time, Chen Ge would not have panicked. But the unseen monster behind the door exerted crushing psychological pressure. He had heard its voice before but had never seen its face. The fear of the unknown—of something that could drag bodies across mirrored floors—always outweighed any known threat.
The nurse was relentless. Her claws lashed out as she closed the distance rapidly. Within moments she was only ten meters away. The wounds Chen Ge had inflicted with the cleaver had already begun to knit themselves back together; her misshapen body appeared more solid now, more dangerous. Chen Ge could even see the small wrist camera still dangling from a torn fold of her outfit, its lens glinting faintly.
"Don't push it," Chen Ge warned quietly.
When the nurse was only five meters away, Chen Ge made a quick, cold decision. Between the two threats, he chose the weaker one. He would deal with the nurse first—while he still had the element of surprise—and then face whatever was behind the door.
Slowly, carefully, Chen Ge pulled his hands away from the blood door. The moment the nurse came within striking range, he exploded forward with a burst of speed faster than her lurching advance. He rammed into her shoulder-first, knocking her off balance, and brought the hammer down in a brutal arc. The heavy skull-shaped head connected solidly with her torso. Not giving her a chance to recover, Chen Ge dropped the hammer momentarily, yanked the cleaver free from his backpack, and drove the blade deep into the center of her tattered nurse's outfit. There was a sharp, tearing sound right beside his ear as the fabric split wide open. Though no blood flowed, a visible chunk of her form simply vanished—dissolved or erased—leaving a ragged hole where solid matter had been.
"This cleaver is definitely usable against them," Chen Ge noted grimly.
The nurse's dead, expressionless face suddenly twisted with unmistakable pain and fury. She opened her jaws impossibly wide and lunged forward, shrieking, trying to clamp down on Chen Ge's face.
Chen Ge raised the cleaver to defend himself, but he had underestimated her aggression level. This thing was no longer bound by human limitations. Even though the cleaver had carved deep into her body, her forward momentum did not slow—if anything, she moved faster, more desperately.
The cleaver inflicted visible damage, carving away chunks of her form with each swing, but the nurse also closed the distance. Her grotesque face was now only inches away from Chen Ge's.
Chen Ge was seconds away from certain death. At that critical moment, the white cat perched on his shoulder suddenly launched itself forward like a white blur. The normally aloof stray cat turned vicious in an instant, claws and teeth sinking into the nurse's face. The attack momentarily halted her advance; she recoiled, shrieking, and redirected her fury toward biting Chen Ge's arm instead.
The nurse was ferocious and unrelenting. Chen Ge weaved left and right, narrowly evading her snapping jaws. There was a sudden metallic clink near his wrist—something falling—but he paid it no attention. His entire focus narrowed to survival: dodging her attacks while landing as many cleaver strikes as possible.
Though no blood flowed, the nurse's overall size was visibly shrinking with each cut. Her form began to waver and flicker at the edges, losing cohesion. After countless slashes—Chen Ge lost count—the nurse finally dissolved completely. The tattered remains of her nurse's outfit fluttered to the floor in lifeless pieces.
"It's over?" Chen Ge breathed, chest heaving. But even as the words left his mouth, he knew better. The real danger had never been the nurse.
"This is not where you belong!" Chen Ge shouted, his voice raw with exertion as he continued his relentless assault on the nurse-thing. Ordinary weapons and brute force alone could not permanently kill her; she reformed too quickly, her distorted body knitting itself back together with unnatural speed. In desperation, Chen Ge shifted tactics to the only method that seemed remotely viable: he planned to force her directly into the blood door. If the entity behind that door was powerful enough to drag victims inside, perhaps it could consume her as well—and maybe, just maybe, that act would temporarily close or weaken the portal long enough for him to survive until dawn.
Things unfolded far more smoothly—and far more terrifyingly—than Chen Ge had anticipated. As the nurse staggered closer to the half-open blood door, a thick, hairy arm suddenly shot out from the crimson gap. The hand reached precisely toward the spot where Chen Ge had been standing only moments earlier. During the chaotic struggle, Chen Ge had deliberately maneuvered so that he and the nurse swapped positions. Now it was her body that stood directly in the monster's path.
The massive palm clamped around the nurse's twisted torso with terrifying strength and yanked backward in one brutal motion. Her already grotesque face contorted further in shock and pain; she barely had time to thrash or struggle before she was dragged completely through the doorway. The instant her form vanished into the red darkness, Chen Ge lunged forward and slammed the heavy door shut with every ounce of strength he possessed. He threw his full body weight against it, shoulder braced, feet planted, refusing to let even a crack reopen.
BANG!
A tremendous impact crashed against the inside of the door, so powerful that the vibration numbed Chen Ge's entire back and rattled his teeth. He had experienced something similar once before—at his own Haunted House—but the difference was nightmarish. The blood door there only manifested for exactly one minute each midnight. This one might persist until sunrise, pounding relentlessly for hours if he could not find a way to seal it permanently.
BANG!
Another heavy blow landed, shaking the frame and sending fresh tremors through Chen Ge's bones. "Just what kind of monster is behind this door?" he gasped, voice strained. "Why is it so powerful?"
He had no idea how to close the door permanently. There was nothing nearby—no heavy furniture, no chains, no barricades strong enough to reinforce it. Worst of all, each thunderous slam echoed loudly through the empty corridors; the noise would almost certainly attract more threats from deeper within the hospital.
"This door has to be closed—even if only temporarily," Chen Ge told himself through gritted teeth. "If I don't find a way, I might not survive long enough to see the sun rise tomorrow morning." Forcing himself to stay calm despite the panic clawing at his chest, he kept his back pressed firmly against the door and fumbled his phone out of his pocket with his free hand. He scrolled quickly to Doctor Gao's number and hit call. "Please pick up… please…"
The line rang four agonizing times before connecting. Doctor Gao's familiar, slightly sleepy voice drifted through the speaker. "Chen Ge?"
The signal was poor—probably interference from the thick concrete walls or something far worse—making the doctor's words crackle and cut in and out. The intermittent connection only heightened Chen Ge's growing panic. "Doctor Gao, get me Men Nan right now! This is an emergency!"
"He's still hospitalized," Doctor Gao replied, confusion evident even through the static. "What do you need from him at this hour?"
"It's literally a life-and-death situation!" Chen Ge said urgently, pressing harder against the door as another impact rocked it. "He was born inside this mental hospital, and the hidden third persona—the one frozen in childhood—is the real Men Nan!"
Doctor Gao paused for a heartbeat, clearly thrown by the intensity and specificity of Chen Ge's statement. But the raw urgency in Chen Ge's voice cut through any doubt. "I'll drive to the hospital immediately. I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't hang up—tell me what you need, and I'll do it on the way."
"I might not survive twenty minutes," Chen Ge answered grimly. His back ached from the repeated impacts; strange noises were already beginning to rise from the nearby sickrooms—soft thumps, low whispers, the scrape of something moving behind closed doors. "Doctor Gao, you have to help me invoke the youngest persona inside Men Nan—right now!"