"The youngest persona?" Doctor Gao repeated, his voice crackling with static and disbelief. "Men Nan's third personality is extremely well hidden and rarely surfaces. I cannot promise I'll be able to invoke it successfully—you'd better prepare yourself mentally for the possibility of failure." In the background, the sound of a door opening and keys jingling came through the line; Doctor Gao was already rushing out of his home, footsteps echoing on what sounded like a tiled hallway.
"Only the youngest persona will have the answer I need," Chen Ge insisted, his voice low and urgent. "Doctor Gao, no matter what it takes, you have to wake him up—right now!" Behind him, another violent slam rocked the blood door, the impact vibrating through his spine and shoulders. Through the phone, Doctor Gao clearly heard the heavy, repeated banging; the noise left no room for doubt about the severity of Chen Ge's situation.
"I'll try my best!" Doctor Gao promised, his tone shifting from professional calm to genuine concern. He had first met Chen Ge through his daughter, Gao Ru Xue, and initially regarded him as just another young man with an unusual interest in psychology. But when Chen Ge voluntarily stepped forward to help cure both Wang Xin and Men Nan—patients Doctor Gao had struggled with for years—his opinion changed dramatically. Respect grew, and with it came many new, unspoken questions about who Chen Ge really was and how he knew so much about such complicated cases.
Especially that night at Hai Ming Apartments, Doctor Gao had witnessed something deeply questionable—something he had never shared with anyone. He had kept it buried inside, quietly searching for answers on his own. Now the phone line stayed connected as Doctor Gao hurried to his car and began driving toward the hospital where Men Nan was currently admitted. Meanwhile, Chen Ge braced his entire body against the blood door, muscles straining to hold it shut against the relentless pounding from the other side.
About three minutes later, the slamming showed no sign of stopping. Worse, a new and far more alarming sound joined it: the unmistakable click and grind of gears unlocking from Room 8, just a short distance down the corridor. That room had been fitted with a reinforced steel door—one Chen Ge had tried and failed to open earlier. Now it slowly creaked open to a narrow slit, the sound scraping like nails on metal.
A face that was grotesquely uneven on both sides peered out from the darkness. The twisted features belonged to the same man Chen Ge had fought earlier, now wearing a stained doctor's coat. He extended his neck unnaturally far, as though his spine had lengthened to allow him to look around the corner without fully stepping out.
"The man was hiding inside the sickroom all along," Chen Ge realized. He had tried forcing that door earlier without success; now it made sense—the twisted-face man must have tampered with the lock from the inside. Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer still leaned against Room 3's door, wedged to keep it from opening. That left Chen Ge with only the cleaver in hand.
Chen Ge locked eyes with the twisted-face man and coldly weighed his options. He was seriously considering whether to push this new threat directly into the blood door as well.
"I wonder what happens to a living person if they're pulled behind that door," Chen Ge thought grimly. "If he dares to attack me, he'll be the perfect test subject."
The more dangerous the situation became, the calmer Chen Ge grew. Cold clarity replaced panic. He adjusted his stance, cleaver raised defensively in front of his chest, and used his foot to reposition the hammer slightly—creating a makeshift barricade so that even if he stepped away from Room 3's door for a moment, it would not swing open immediately.
After midnight, the twisted-face man's appearance had changed noticeably. His expression had grown even more unhinged, eyes wild and bloodshot. He strode slowly toward Chen Ge—empty-handed, weaponless—yet radiating a confidence he had not shown earlier in the Second Sick Hall.
"Something's not right," Chen Ge noticed instantly. "When we were on the second floor, he ran away without hesitation even though he had an axe. Now, after entering the Third Sick Hall, he dares approach me—someone armed with both a cleaver and a hammer—completely unarmed."
The white cat hissed dangerously from his shoulder. During the earlier fight with the nurse-thing, it had leapt down to safety; now it perched again, fur bristling, teeth bared at the approaching figure. Facing both Chen Ge and the cat, the twisted-face man's expression shifted dramatically. His surgically altered, uneven face split into an ugly, leering smile.
He walked slower and slower with each step, as though an immense weight had settled onto his shoulders. Every movement appeared painful, labored, deliberate—like someone carrying an unbearable burden.
"His posture… it's almost exactly like Wang Shenglong's back then…"
With the cleaver held protectively in front of his chest, the thing Chen Ge least wanted to see finally happened. The twisted-face man's lips cracked open wider and wider in that grotesque smile. Then, from behind his shoulders, a second head slowly emerged.
It was a perfectly normal human head at first glance, but attached to it was a thin, elongated monster nearly two and a half meters long. The creature's lower body remained fused to the twisted-face man's back, as though it had grown directly out of him. It rose upward until its head brushed the ceiling, then curved forward in a serpentine motion—like a human-headed cobra slithering toward prey.
"What is this?" Chen Ge breathed, shock momentarily overriding his composure. Even though he had mentally prepared himself for something horrific, the sight still hit him hard. The monster was unnaturally thin and long, draped in a large white cloth crudely sewn together from multiple pieces. Through the gaps and tears in the fabric, Chen Ge glimpsed several silent, expressionless human faces staring out—trapped, embedded, or fused into the creature's body.
At first, the monster had probably not been so tall or massive. But over time, it had climbed onto people's shoulders, consumed them, absorbed them, and grown larger with each victim. Chen Ge suddenly remembered the painting Wang Shenglong had once created to describe his relationship with a monster: in that artwork, Wang Shenglong had been at the bottom, crushed beneath the weight, while the creature stood triumphantly on his shoulders. Now Chen Ge was seeing the real-life version of that nightmare image unfolding right in front of him.
The twisted face and the monster that emerged from his back shared a relationship markedly different from anything Chen Ge had encountered before. Unlike the parasitic entity that had once ridden Wang Shenglong's shoulders like a rider on horseback, this monster did not merely perch or cling to the twisted-face man. It grew directly out of his back—fused at the base of his spine, an organic extension of his body rather than a separate invader. The connection appeared permanent, almost symbiotic, as though the two had merged into a single grotesque entity over time.
Is the twisted face actually the monster itself, or have they somehow achieved a mutually beneficial relationship? The question flashed through Chen Ge's mind in an instant. The man's face—already distorted from crude skin grafts—now served as the lower half of a far larger horror, while the elongated creature rising from his back provided reach, strength, and terror. They moved in perfect coordination, as though sharing a single will. There was no time to ponder further; the threat was immediate and closing fast.
Even though the twisted-face man had stopped advancing at roughly two meters away, the long, thin monster extending from his back had already stretched far enough to hover directly above Chen Ge's skull. Its face was disturbingly ordinary—plain, forgettable, the kind of features that would blend into any crowd and leave no lasting impression. Yet that very normalcy made it infinitely more horrifying; who could have imagined such an unremarkable face hid a body so elongated and grotesque, capable of towering over a grown man while still tethered to another?
"Let's play a game," the monster and the twisted-face man said in perfect unison. Their lips moved together, but the voice echoed directly inside Chen Ge's mind—cold, intimate, inescapable. "If you win, I'll let you go. But if you lose, you'll give me your body." A pause, then the same dual voice added, "The game is called 'Who Speaks First.'"
Chen Ge recognized the game instantly. It was one the player was destined to lose from the beginning. There was no time limit, no objective win condition—only endless psychological torment. Wang Shenglong had been the perfect example: once he agreed to play, the monster had climbed onto his back and never left. It would squat there indefinitely, whispering, pressuring, eroding the victim's will until they finally spoke and surrendered. Even if the victim never broke and spoke, the monster simply remained, turning existence itself into the punishment. The human faces Chen Ge had glimpsed through the gaps in the monster's white cloth were almost certainly previous victims—trapped, absorbed, reduced to silent decorations on its elongated body.
"If you want to play a game, sure," Chen Ge replied in a calm, measured tone that betrayed none of the adrenaline surging through his veins. "But you'll need to edit the rules first." He was buying time. Doctor Gao was racing toward the hospital where Men Nan was admitted. Every second he could delay the inevitable confrontation increased his chances of survival.
The monster paused directly above Chen Ge's head—about half a meter away—and drew in a slight, curious breath. This hesitation was new; it had clearly never encountered prey that responded this way before. After a brief moment, it turned its head slightly toward the twisted-face man below, as though silently asking for guidance. Shouldn't a normal person be screaming by now? Shouldn't they already be crumbling under the weight of terror?
The ugly smile froze on the twisted-face man's lips. He had clearly assumed Chen Ge was merely bluffing or stalling out of fear. With a sharp gesture, he pointed directly at Chen Ge's head. The monster understood immediately. It leaned downward in a slow, serpentine motion. A pair of shriveled, claw-like hands reached out from beneath the white cloth, aiming straight for Chen Ge's face. Its elongated body continued to extend smoothly, like a cobra preparing to strike.
Chen Ge watched the monster descend, but he did not panic. If anything, his mind had never felt clearer. He had already spotted the critical weakness during the creature's approach.
This is it—the monster's fatal flaw! When it moved to attack, only its upper body had extended forward; the lower half remained firmly attached to the twisted-face man's back. It could not fully detach or move independently. That explained everything: why it preferred psychological games over direct physical assault, why it needed victims to willingly "play" and accept it onto their shoulders. If it could simply leap from host to host, it would never bother with elaborate mind games.
Chen Ge took a single deliberate step backward, eyes gleaming with sudden understanding. The moment of transfer—when the monster moved from one body to the next—was likely when it was at its weakest, most vulnerable. That brief window of separation was the only opportunity to strike.
He adjusted his grip on the cleaver, positioning his body to maximize reach and speed. Every nerve ending felt electric. The monster was descending, hands outstretched, face inches away. Chen Ge waited—calm, cold, ready—for the exact instant it would commit to the leap.