Xie Qingcheng was the last person to descend the rope ladder with the firefighters.
By the time he made it to the ground, the blazing flames had already begun to approach them. The dense, roiling smoke made it difficult to keep their eyes open. After their perilous escape, the rescue workers ran over immediately to examine his injuries.
Xie Qingcheng caught sight of Xie Xue in the crowd, surrounded by several doctors and nurses. He rushed over. "How is she?"
"And you are…"
"I'm her brother."
"Oh, don't worry. She's fine now. Her vitals are stable, so she should wake up once the drugs in her system wear off."
At last, Xie Qingcheng let out a sigh of relief.
The paramedics took in this tall, bare-chested man. It wasn't the time or place for lustful distractions, but the mere sight of this handsome man seemed to invigorate them, so they couldn't help but steal a few more glances as they worked.
However, Xie Qingcheng wasn't aware of his effect on the paramedics. The allure of his well-proportioned shoulders and back and his long, slender waist tapering into his silver-buckled belt was lost on the stoic man who paid little attention to his own appearance or the gaze of others. The stares of the enamored paramedics went unnoticed as he looked up from his sister to watch as Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital continued to burn.
A myriad of emotions welled up in Xie Qingcheng's heart as he watched the raging fire engulf the rooftop. Patients who had yet to be rescued shrieked in terror from their windows, banging against the casements that were securely bolted shut with metal bars.
"Help!!"
"Save us! Fire! The fire's almost here!!"
"I don't want to die yet… I'm begging you, please save me!!"
The bars that had originally been installed to prevent patients from jumping out of the windows and running away had now become their greatest obstacle to a timely rescue. Unable to utilize their usual tactic of a rope ladder, the rescuers' only option now was to risk their lives by rushing into the building and unlocking each of the rooms to save their occupants.
The ghoulishly desperate shrieking transformed Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital into an earthly purgatory under Jiang Lanpei's curse. In the ward closest to the linen room, an old man wailed continuously, calling out for his mother and father. The old man had dementia and would often have spells of madness, prompting his children to shun him and send him here.
Perhaps he was vaguely aware that they would rejoice at his death.
His parents, who were long gone, were the only ones who truly loved him. Thus, with death approaching, he sobbed and bawled like a child, screaming continuously for his mom and dad…
The firefighters attempted to break the windows using brute force, but it was too late—the old man's room was too close to the origin of the fire. As the crowd looked on, he was swallowed by the towering flames, with one hand still trying to reach beyond the metal bars, frozen in place…
No one knew if, in his final moments, he was ultimately an old man abandoned on account of his illness or a child longing for his parents.
Lips trembling, a firefighter turned their head to the crowd and bellowed, "Where are the keys? When all of you escaped, did anyone take the keys?"
"N-no… Who could possibly remember…"
"They're hanging in the director's office on the third floor!"
Another deafening explosion sounded as window glass and wooden
debris flew outward.
One of the workers who had just been rescued stood up and said, "Comrades, don't go in there anymore!! It's much too dangerous!!"
"That's right… It's too late… It's impossible to rescue them…"
There was even someone who said in a hushed voice, "Those are all severely ill patients… The higher up you go, the worse the patients' symptoms. Even if you were to get them out, it wouldn't be worth it…"
Order broke down as chaos reigned.
Suddenly, Xie Qingcheng noticed a lone figure standing amid the bedlam. That individual looked up at the burning building for a short spell before turning to head away from the locus of everyone's attention, deeper into the thick undergrowth and winding around toward the northern entrance.
Xie Qingcheng was astounded.
He Yu?!
"Excuse me, let me borrow a mask."
Xie Qingcheng took a moment to gauge the state of the fire as he grabbed two protective masks and ran after He Yu.
"Hey! Comrade!" The paramedic abruptly came back to her senses. Fucking hell, even if he was hot, he couldn't be this impulsive! "What are you doing?!" she shouted after him. "Don't go back into the fire!!!"
Ignoring her shouts, Xie Qingcheng stared at He Yu's back as hechased after him like a cheetah.
He never could have imagined that He Yu would go back into the fire —what was he planning to do?
Unexpectedly, He Yu did not head over to the northern entrance where the firefighters were gathered. Instead, he grabbed one of the rope ladders that had yet to be removed and climbed directly up to the rooftop from which they had just escaped. Xie Qingcheng followed suit. As they climbed, flames licked at the rope under them, burning the fiber into ash. With the rope gone, there was no hope of anyone coming after them.
He Yu flipped over the roof's railing and shot a glance over at the area below the water tower. Only one thing remained there: a still-burning, charred black body, curled up in a fetal position.
Jiang Lanpei's corpse.
Throwing the door open with a loud bang, he quickly assessed the intensely burning fire before running toward the director's office.
Xie Qingcheng thought He Yu really was a madman—but, of course, he had always been one.
Catching up, he grabbed He Yu's arm, yanking him back outside of the door and rebuking him severely, "What are you doing?! Do you want to die? Come with me to the northern entrance, now!! The fire on this side hasn't gotten so bad yet. We can still make it."
Puzzled, He Yu stared at Xie Qingcheng's face. "What are you doing up here?"
Xie Qingcheng couldn't be bothered to waste words with him. With sharp eyes, he yelled, "Fucking come down with me!"
"I can't. This time, it's different. This time, I want to save them."
"You—"
"They're my kin. Only I can save them. Only I can help get all of them out in time. You heard what those people said down there. That old man was burned alive, just like that, before their very eyes. There are still more people who are about to die, yet they just said, 'forget about them.'"
He Yu's eyes almost terrified him.
Softly, He Yu said, "The mentally ill are not worth saving, and in these circumstances, they should all be abandoned. They deserve to die."
He stared into Xie Qingcheng's eyes. The corners of his mouth slowly curved into a grim, bone-chilling smile. "Is that what you think as well, Doctor Xie?"
"They only say that because there really isn't enough time… Be reasonable! You can't possibly open the doors one by one." Xie Qingcheng's voice had gone hoarse. "There's simply no time left."
He Yu did not speak any further. He threw Xie Qingcheng's hand off with great strength and turned to run toward the office.
Fortunately, the office was separated from the area where the fire raged most fiercely by a large section of lavatories. Back in the day, the construction workers had skimped on the job by only using ceramic tiles without bothering to set any wooden frames. Consequently, the fire spread slowly here.
After finding a large panel full of jangling keys in the office, He Yu headed for the section of sickrooms that remained untouched by the fire on the third floor.
"Help…"
"Save us!!"
"I don't want to die yet… I don't want to die yet!!!"
"Waaah, has the devil's fire burned its way here? It's the devil's fire!!"
The lights in the corridor had long been extinguished. Though sounds of sobbing filled both sides of the hall, there were even more rooms from which such noises would never be heard again…
The keys were labeled with room numbers. He Yu grabbed the one for the nearest room and began unlocking the door.
By the time Xie Qingcheng managed to catch up to He Yu again, he had already opened the first door. A woman with disheveled hair ran out, shouting hysterically. A chill went through Xie Qingcheng's heart—she was completely out of control.
Even normal people would lose their sense of reason under these circumstances, so it went without saying for these patients.
With a shrill scream, the woman darted mindlessly toward the fire like a headless chicken. Xie Qingcheng was about to stop her when he saw He Yu reach out and drag her back. "Don't go that way!" He Yu said.
"She won't listen to you—" Xie Qingcheng began.
"Fire! There's a fireeeeee!!" the woman wailed.
A flash turned Xie Qingcheng's attention away from the chaos to see He Yu holding the blade that he had taken from the office. He clutched it in one hand and slashed his palm.
Blood immediately began to ooze from the wound. Xie Qingcheng didn't understand why at first, but like a computer displaying old data, he unconsciously remembered something that sent a chill down his spine.
The next second, his eyes widened as he saw He Yu remove one of the rings of keys from the panel and smear it with his own blood. He spoke to the insane woman in a light but commanding voice, "Take this ring of keys and go open the doors. With every opened door, give the person inside some of the other keys and order them to open even more doors. Go quickly. The faster you go, the more patients we can save. Go on."
Something terrifying had happened. The moment that woman, who had only just been in a state of hysteria, smelled the scent of He Yu's blood, her eyes suddenly became extremely calm, as though she had been injected with a tranquilizer.
It was as if He Yu's blood had triggered some reflex in her brain through her sense of smell, allowing him to control her.
The woman took the ring of keys and immediately ran off toward the other metal doors.
The scene lasted but a few moments yet sent a chill down Xie Qingcheng's entire body, right down to his fingertips.
Case #4, He Yu. The comorbid ability that he had manifested after reaching adulthood was…
Blood toxin! Among all the abilities linked to psychological Ebola compiled by computational modeling, this was the one whose existence had always been regarded as the most dubious.
Given the lack of clinical data on the disease, the medical community's only option was to refer to the previous three cases and design a series of computational models to simulate a patient's future condition. Thus, it could be determined that, in addition to the baseline characteristics, every patient that suffered from this type of mental illness had their own unique comorbid abilities.
Simply put, the disease would continue to evolve inside the body. Given that each person possessed different genes, the evolutionary pathways would also vary by person. This differentiation typically occurred as the patient grew older, stabilizing and becoming fully apparent with the onset of adulthood.
The comorbid ability that Case #1 developed was acute hyperosmia, or an enhanced sense of smell.
The illness altered her olfactory nerve, causing her nose to become unusually sensitive. Generally speaking, the olfactory epithelium of dogs is four times as sensitive as that of humans. After her disease mutated, Case #1's sense of smell became more than eight times as acute as the average human; even the slightest odor in the air was sufficient to irritate her olfactory nerve and cause her such torture that she became increasingly mentally aberrant.
Cases #2 and #3 had also exhibited their unique comorbid abilities before their deaths.
As for Case #4, He Yu had not shown any signs of disease ‐ differentiation while under Xie Qingcheng's care.
Xie Qingcheng had originally thought that perhaps disease differentiation in psychological Ebola did not occur in all cases, that perhaps He Yu was an exception. He never would have expected that of all the abilities predicted by computational modeling, He Yu would have the most terrifying comorbid ability of them all—blood toxin.
This so-called blood toxin meant that, under certain conditions, He Yu's blood had the hypnotic power of persuasion, specifically over those afflicted with mental illness. Like serotonin, it could immediately stabilize a patient's mood, and, like a drug, it could stimulate the reward system in the patient's brain, causing them to develop the misconception that by following his orders, they could receive more. Thus, in this way, the patient would fall under the control of He Yu's words, as if becoming intoxicated.
The conclusions reached by researchers back then had been mere conjecture. When the computational models had predicted the blood toxin disease variant, there were even some researchers who had refused to believe the results.
But now, the patients under He Yu's influence opened the doors, one after another.
Their speed was astonishing. With every opened door and rescued patient, another fell under He Yu's spell to rescue others themselves. With the efficiency of a unit of well-trained soldiers, the blood-intoxicated and crazed patients distributed all the keys and unlocked every door.
He Yu wove between them with a stern expression, like a spiritual leader surveying his congregation. He strode to the very end of the corridor to the northern entrance—the last remaining path to safety. The firefighters' voices were already echoing through the corridor; they would soon reach the third floor.
By that point, however, the flames at the end of the corridor had already closed in, rushing toward them like a roaring dragon of fire accompanied by billows of choking smoke, as though trying to slay them in this ominous corridor with suffocating poison gas and all-encompassing heat.
There was no water here, nor was there any way to moisten fabric to cover their faces; they could only go faster.
Standing before the fire door, He Yu turned his head slightly as he issued an order to the patients. "Get as low to the ground as possible and come this way. Go downstairs and find the firefighters. Quickly."
The patients surged forward into the corridor with such robotic obedience and coordination that even mind-controlled zombies in a sci-fi movie couldn't compare.
By the time the last patient had run downstairs, the inferno was dangerously close. The smoke grew thicker and thicker, leaving only a thin layer of breathable air close to the ground. He Yu watched as Xie Qingcheng approached him with a deeply unpleasant expression. Without a word, he merely stepped to the side to allow Xie Qingcheng into the corridor as well.
The fire door closed behind them with a heavy thud, cutting off the fiery dragon's approach for the time being.
In the dark corridor, ice-cold almond eyes met shocked peach-blossom eyes. "Xie Qingcheng. Do not tell a soul."
Xie Qingcheng's face turned terribly ashen, but he could not think of how to respond. Instead, he passed a gas mask to He Yu, saying, "Take that. Let's go."
The flames raged against the fire door as He Yu and Xie Qingcheng rushed downstairs, following the rescued patients.
"Ge!! Ge!!"
Xie Qingcheng and He Yu were the last two people to run out under the firefighting crew's support. Two cries from a voice nearly cracking with emotion welcomed them, and Xie Qingcheng took off his mask when he saw the now-awake Xie Xue charging at him with a face full of tears. She ran so fast that the shoes the firefighters had found for her fell off her feet.
"Ge, aaaaaaah… Dage!! Dage!! Are you trying to scare me to death? Huh, are you?! I thought even you were abandoning me too!! Even you!! Ge, waaaah…"
She threw herself into Xie Qingcheng's arms and held him so tightly she nearly snapped his waist in half. The sounds of explosions and screams of those they couldn't save continued around them.… She was so scared, it was as though all the blood had been sucked out of her body, leaving nothing behind but a thin painted skin in the human realm. It was only when she was tightly embracing her brother's tall figure, choking on sobs as she breathed in Xie Qingcheng's scent, that her heartbeat finally recovered and warm blood flushed through her veins once more.
Tears streamed down her face, splotching it like the patterns on a cat's fur. She opened her mouth and wailed with absolutely no concern for her image, tripping over her words as she yelled, "You can't abandon me like Mom and Dad!! You just can't, Dage!! I was so scared… I was really so scared… Hug me, hug me!!"
"Everything's all right, okay? Everything's all right."
Xie Qingcheng very rarely accepted such intense displays of emotions. Although his love for his family was strong, it was also reserved, and often only expressed in the form of scolding.
But at this moment, he also found it a bit difficult to maintain his usual demeanor. He held his sister as she shivered beneath a long coat and leaned down to kiss her messy bird's nest of hair. The rims of his eyes were tainted red as he spoke soothingly, "Everything's all right, Xie Xue."
Xie Xue wailed in Xie Qingcheng's arms for a long while before spotting He Yu. Despite just managing to calm down a bit, she broke down once again and threw herself, sobbing, into He Yu's arms—or rather, to be more precise, she dragged He Yu over and hugged both him and her brother at the same time. As a result, He Yu was forcibly squeezed against Xie Qingcheng as well.
An awkward expression surfaced on He Yu's handsomely refined face. He had never been so close to another man before; and considering the fact that the man in question was Xie Qingcheng, he felt extremely unsettled. One look at Xie Qingcheng's expression told him the feeling was mutual.
But out of consideration for Xie Xue, neither of them moved. They allowed her to squeeze the three of them together into an unyielding hug, carving out a little reunion for them amid the chaos.
"Help! Help me!! Comrades! There's someone here! I'm over here!!"
A man with salt-and-pepper hair was screaming in panicked fear beside the door of the elevator in Cheng Kang Psychiatric Hospital. He was one of Cheng Kang's oldest directors, a friend of Liang Jicheng, who had recently broken his leg while playing polo with Liang Jicheng, confining him to a wheelchair for the time being. If it weren't for the fact that there had been some matters that he needed to take care of at the office today, he wouldn't have been there in the first place.
The man trembled in the wheelchair, urine trickling down the legs of his trousers from his already-soaked crotch. It was his first time experiencing just how terrifying it was to be in a condition where he couldn't look after himself. The blazing fire was pressing toward him at that very moment, and although he probably knew that he couldn't take the elevator, that it was likely already broken, he still couldn't stop himself from frantically pressing the button.
"Quick! Quick… Someone come save me… I have money… Who's gonna come and save me… I have a lot of money!"
The muscles in his cheeks twitched violently, spasming from anxiety.
Suddenly, as if the heavens had heard his pleas, someone wearing a gas mask who looked like a firefighter ran out of the pitch-black escape corridor and saw him sprawled in the wheelchair.
It was as though the man had seen a god appear before him. "Comrade!! Save me!! Quick, save me!!!"
His nostrils trembled in agitation, and fine beads of sweat hung from the pale flesh of his nose. His pupils dilated in excitement, reflecting the figure of the person walking up to him with firefighting equipment in hand.
A moment later, he froze, and his pupils abruptly shrank.
A sinister sneer flashed from behind the goggles of the person in the firefighting uniform. Then, they took the lid off the equipment in their hands… It wasn't a fire extinguisher! It was…gasoline!!!
"You, you're—!"
"This shithole Cheng Kang is beyond saving. I'm the 'janitor' they sent over to clean this place up." The muffled sound of a man's voice came from under the mask. "You can take your time spending that money of yours on the other side."
"NO!!!"
The newcomer simultaneously tossed the gasoline and lighter into the man's panicking and grotesquely contorted face.
A massive boom ripped through the air, and that face seemed to resemble the warped visage in Edvard Munch's The Scream as it was completely swallowed up by the flames…