Breathing suddenly became difficult, as though Chen Ge had stepped into a thick, cloying fog that refused to part. Moisture clung to his exposed skin almost instantly, a damp chill that felt unnatural and invasive. Everything around him carried a faint, pervasive sheen of red—walls, floor, ceiling, even the air itself seemed tinted with it. This is the world behind the door? The thought hit him with quiet dread. The transition had been instantaneous, seamless, yet the difference was absolute. The real hospital had felt decayed and abandoned; this place felt alive in a way that made his skin crawl.
Chen Ge remembered Men Nan's urgent warning: do not speak. He pressed his lips tightly together and kept his mouth shut. With the cleaver gripped firmly in his right hand and Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer in his left, he slowly turned in a full circle, scanning the room. The layout of Room 3 was identical to the one in the real world—same bed frame, same sink, same placement of walls and fixtures. The only difference was the color and the oppressive atmosphere. Everything here was drenched in that same deep, arterial red, as though the room had been painted from the inside out with fresh blood.
He turned around slowly and looked toward the door he had just stepped through. His heart rate spiked. The door to Room 3 stood half-open behind him, exactly as it had been in the real world—but the corridor visible beyond it was completely transformed. There was no trash, no scattered mattresses, no pillow-faced dolls. The hallway was clean, almost pristine, the floor polished and reflective, the walls freshly painted white. It looked like a place that received daily cleaning and maintenance. The contrast was so drastic it felt like stepping between two entirely different buildings.
Chen Ge approached the open doorway with extreme caution, every step measured and silent. He extended his arm slowly through the threshold. His hand and forearm passed through without resistance or disappearance. The door appeared to function only one way—allowing entry from the real world into this blood-red version, but not necessarily the reverse. He had crossed an invisible boundary, and now he was on the other side.
Since Men Nan had warned him not to speak, Chen Ge could not call out for Zhang Ya. He had no way of knowing whether she could even hear him in this place. Bracing himself, heart pounding against his ribs, he stepped fully out of Room 3 and into the crimson corridor. The moment both feet cleared the threshold, he nearly collided with something standing directly in his path. It was not a monster, not a zombie, not a corpse—but a crude doll made from knotted bedsheets and a stuffed pillow for the head. And it was not alone. Dozens more stood silently along both sides of the corridor, like a row of scarecrows planted in a field.
They stood motionless, their drawn-on faces displaying blank, unchanging smiles. Chen Ge could not tell whether the expressions were meant to convey happiness or something far more sinister. The painted eyes stared straight ahead, unblinking. Why are there such things in the world behind the door? The question burned in his mind. Earlier, he had dismissed the pillow dolls buried under mattresses as nothing more than a sick prank or childish game. Now, seeing them standing upright and arranged like silent sentinels, his opinion shifted completely.
Chen Ge had once assumed the dolls were merely stand-ins, crude imitations created for some twisted amusement. But after witnessing the nurse-thing's nightly ritual of "prescribing" medication to them, after seeing the labeled bags and the careful records, he understood the truth. These were not random toys. Each doll carried the name and lingering spirit of a real patient who had died in this hospital. Lingering spirits were far weaker than baleful specters individually, but when their numbers reached into the dozens—perhaps hundreds—the sheer volume could overwhelm even a powerful ghost like Zhang Ya.
Chen Ge studied the nearest doll for several tense seconds. One of them suddenly seemed to sense his presence. Its head—previously lowered—slowly lifted. The body turned stiffly toward him. That childishly drawn face stared directly at Chen Ge, and cold sweat immediately broke out across his back and neck.
The doll's body began to move—slow, jerky, like a marionette with half its strings cut. Chen Ge instinctively raised the cleaver in a defensive grip. The distance between them closed step by awkward step, but the doll showed no sign of aggression. It did not lunge, did not reach for him. With its strange, wiggling gait, it simply walked past him and continued down the corridor, eventually stopping to lean against the wall as though exhausted. It reminded Chen Ge of a wind-up mannequin that had run out of power—moving aimlessly until it simply stopped.
He had encountered many lingering spirits before. Their existence was usually driven by a single, powerful obsession they could not let go of—an unresolved grudge, a desperate wish, an unfinished task. But the lingering spirits inside these dolls felt fundamentally different. They seemed to have lost their memories entirely, or perhaps they had deliberately silenced their own hearts. They wandered without purpose, without malice, without direction. Since the doll had not attacked him, Chen Ge saw no reason to provoke it. He slid past quietly and began inspecting the walls of the corridor for any trace of Zhang Ya.
Long, jagged scratch marks marred the walls at irregular intervals—clear signs of Zhang Ya's passage. The black hair had torn through plaster and concrete alike, leaving deep gouges that still bled faintly. Chen Ge followed the trail upward to the second floor. When he exited the stairwell onto the second-floor landing, the sight that greeted him nearly made him cry out in shock.
The entire second-floor corridor was filled with dolls—hundreds of them—teetering and swaying aimlessly. They wandered without pattern or purpose, bumping gently into one another or leaning against the walls when they grew "tired." Some lay fallen on the floor, black scratch marks slashed across their pillow faces and sheet bodies—evidence that Zhang Ya had passed through here with devastating force.
Walking among the teetering, silent dolls, Chen Ge felt a surreal, disorienting sensation creep over him. If a person were surrounded by madness long enough, would they begin to question whether they themselves were the sane one? The dolls did not attack, did not speak, did not even seem to notice him. They simply existed, filling the corridor with their blank, painted stares. The further he walked, the harder it became to breathe. A heavy, oppressive pressure settled over his body, as though he were slowly sinking into deep water. Thankfully, none of the dolls made any move to stop him. He successfully reached the end of the second-floor corridor. The trail of Zhang Ya's black hair scratches ended abruptly there.
At the very end of the hallway stood a single special room—one Chen Ge had not had time to investigate earlier before the nurse-thing chased him down to the first floor. This was the electroshock therapy room mentioned in the director's letters and Men Nan's fragmented memories.
Chen Ge pushed the door open slowly. The scene inside surprised him. It was different from what he had expected. There was only one bed in the center of the room—a wooden frame fitted with thick leather binders at the wrists, ankles, and neck. Strapped tightly to that bed was a small boy, no older than five years old. Chen Ge stepped closer, heart pounding, and compared the child's face to the old photograph he still carried. There was no doubt. This was the young Men Nan—the childhood persona trapped behind the door.
A single, burning question rose in Chen Ge's mind as he stared at the bound, silent child.
Why is he still here?
Chen Ge's mind raced as he pieced together the fragmented memories Doctor Gao had uncovered in Men Nan. A bold and chilling speculation formed: an accident must have occurred to Men Nan's main persona—the original childhood self—while he was trapped behind the blood door. That single catastrophic event likely caused the door to lose its natural guardian. Without that anchor, the portal had spiraled out of control, bleeding into the real world and corrupting the hospital over the years. The director's failed attempts to seal it, the spreading red veins, the return of possessed patients—all of it pointed to the same root cause: the door had been left untended for far too long.
The trail of Zhang Ya's black hair scratch marks came to an abrupt end inside the electroshock therapy room. The deep gouges and tears in the walls and floor proved she had definitely been here before, unleashing her full fury. Yet there was no sign of any struggle inside the room itself—no overturned furniture, no splattered ichor, no lingering traces of combat. The bed and binders remained undisturbed except for the small boy strapped to them. Whatever had happened to Zhang Ya after she entered this space, it had left no visible evidence behind. She had simply vanished.
Chen Ge had no clear idea where Zhang Ya had disappeared to or what had pulled her away, but he now stood before the bound form of Men Nan's childhood persona. Rescuing this boy became his immediate priority. Only by awakening the original Men Nan—the one who had once successfully closed the blood door—could Chen Ge hope to gain a deeper understanding of the world behind the door and perhaps secure a powerful new ally in the process. The boy represented the last real chance to turn the tide of this nightmare.
That was the ideal outcome, the best-case scenario Chen Ge could envision. Reality, however, was far less certain. No one knew what would truly happen if the childhood persona awakened after more than a decade trapped behind the door. He might be broken beyond repair, hostile, or simply unresponsive. Still, Chen Ge had no other viable option. He could only place his bet on success and hope the gamble paid off. With careful movements, he used the cleaver to slice through the thick leather binders restraining the boy's wrists, ankles, and neck. The straps parted easily under the sharp blade. Once the restraints were gone, Chen Ge gently nudged the small body, trying to rouse him.
The boy remained completely unresponsive. Whether he was locked in an unnaturally deep sleep, unconscious from years of confinement, or trapped in some kind of psychic stasis, Chen Ge could not tell. No matter how persistently he shook the child's shoulders or patted his cheeks, the boy's eyes stayed tightly closed, his breathing slow and shallow. Chen Ge could not speak aloud in this blood-red world, so he tried other methods—light taps on the forehead, pressing cold fingers against the boy's wrists, even whispering silently with his lips to see if lip-reading might reach him. Nothing worked.
Chen Ge's mind raced to fill in the gaps. The culprit—whatever force or entity controlled this place—had not killed the boy despite having every opportunity. Instead, they had kept him alive and restrained inside the electroshock therapy room for more than ten years. That single fact carried enormous weight. The boy was still useful to the culprit in some way. They needed him alive, needed him here, and therefore would not allow any serious harm to come to him—at least not yet.
A dark, almost unthinkable idea flashed through Chen Ge's thoughts. He slowly raised the cleaver, blade gleaming faintly in the red-tinted light. He moved the weapon up and down several times above the boy's exposed neck, testing his own resolve. Narrowing his eyes, he focused on the space just above the child's throat and brought the cleaver down in a swift, decisive arc.
The blade stopped two centimeters short of the boy's neck—blocked by a sudden, hairy arm that appeared from nowhere. Chen Ge had been watching intently, yet he still had not seen where the limb originated. It simply materialized between the cleaver and the boy, catching the strike with impossible speed.
Chen Ge yanked the cleaver back and immediately put several steps between himself and the bed. Only then did he see the monster in its full, horrifying form. It had no true body—only a single broken arm, severed at the shoulder yet somehow still animated and powerful. The arm hovered protectively over the boy, fingers splayed like a shield.
The arm was clearly guarding the child. To test the theory, Chen Ge launched another deliberate attack toward the boy's body. Just as before, the broken arm intercepted the cleaver with perfect timing, blocking the strike without hesitation.
Chen Ge repeated the motion several times—each slash aimed at different parts of the boy's body. Every single attack was intercepted by the same relentless arm. As the exchanges continued, fine cracks began to appear along the limb's surface, spreading like fractures in stone. The arm trembled under the repeated impacts, its strength visibly waning.
Just as Chen Ge thought the arm was about to shatter completely, more broken arms erupted from beneath the bed frame—dozens of them, pale and withered, reaching upward like a forest of skeletal limbs. They wrapped protectively around the boy, forming a grotesque shield of flesh and bone.
The struggle between Chen Ge and the guardian arms grew louder and more violent. The bed frame rattled, the binders creaked, and the room filled with the sound of cracking bone and straining muscle. After roughly ten seconds of intense back-and-forth, a faint twitch finally appeared on the sleeping boy's face—his eyelids fluttered once, then again, as though something deep inside him had begun to stir.