Chapter 1187: Back to the Beginning (2in1)
Translator: Lonelytree
“all the hospital workers at the hospital also have the surname Chi, there has to be some kind of connection between them, it is unwise to stay here for too long.” Looking at the pool of blood on the ground, Chen Ge lost his appet.i.te. He skipped the meal and left the shop. He walked down the path for about 100 metres. When Chen Ge turned his head back to look, all the lights at the shop had been switched off already. The place was shrouded in darkness, he could not see anything.
“For me, this is a city that is perfectly beautiful, but Chi Longtou said this city is used to punish the patients. And then he mentioned something about a ‘door’, what kind of special significance does the ‘door’ play in this city?” Chen Ge was reminded of the door inside Zhang Ya’s Haunted House’s bathroom. Whenever he pushed the cubicle door open, the next he pa.s.sed the bathroom, he would notice the cubicle door would be closed again. Other than that, when he received the treatment at the hospital, when Doctor Gao pulled him into the brain maze, the turning point also came when he was supposed to push open doors. After he pushed open the door, the hospital outside was eerie and scary, it was as if the worlds inside and outside the door were completely different.
“Perhaps the exit to escape this city is a door hidden inside this large city.” Based on the direction provided by Zuo Han, at around 11. 40 pm, Chen Ge finally reached Ping An Apartments. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned apartment building that appeared to be quite abandoned. It was situated behind an abandoned village at the western countryside of Xin Hai, the location was extremely secluded. “Why would the author and Zuo Han signal for me to come here? Have the two of them met each other before?”
The leaves ruffled from the wind. Chen Ge walked past the abandoned village, there was not even a single figure around.
“It feels like I have been to this place before for some reason.” Looking at the tombstones outside the window and the uneven old locust trees that grew up gnarly like ghosts, such a scary atmosphere did not cause even a ripple of fear in his heart. “Just what kind of life I have led before? How come I feel nothing when I am around these things that should have scared a normal people? If anything, I feel some kind of familiarity around them?”
Chen Ge did not think there was anything abnormal about him, he chalked the formation of this att.i.tude to a deeper layer of consciousness in his mind. When he reached the end of the village, Chen Ge was about to move forward, when he suddenly saw a person kneeling on top of the tombstone next to it. The person appeared to have materialized out of thin air but at the same time, felt like he had been watching Chen Ge from that spot for a long time already.
When Chen Ge saw the man, the latter also saw Chen Ge. The two of them shared a look but neither of them felt there was nothing off about this. Neither of them spoke, they continued with their own work. The man continued to kneel on the tombstone while Chen Ge walked away from him. But after he took a few steps, Chen Ge suddenly realized the man who was kneeling on the tombstone earlier looked quite familiar to him. But when Chen Ge turned back to look, the only thing that he saw was a solitary grave.
“Where is the man? In the middle of the night, there was a person kneeling on top of a grave. This is definitely something unusual but how did I manage to accept it as an everyday thing? The person who was kneeling on the tombstone did not give me a sense of danger or warning either.” Ever since he made the decision to come to Ping An Apartments, Chen Ge realized more and more things that he could not explain started to appear around him. To get to Ping An Apartment, he had to move through the abandoned village. After Chen Ge pa.s.sed the graveyard, a piece of dirt road piled up with twigs and trash that extended before him. Next to the road there stood a sign, it said no trespa.s.sing. But because no one had pa.s.sed this place for a long time, the sign had seen better days and even the warning on it had faded away.
“The apartment is already so old, just what kind of people still insist on staying there?” Walking down the dirt path filed with holes, Chen Ge looked around him with curiosity. The two sides of the roads were hanging with funereal bouquets and flags. Many paper money littered around the ground, some of the paper money had been half buried inside the ground, obviously they had been there for quite some time already. White clothes were bound around tree branches and one could see shadows of grave through the trees. The tombstones flickered amidst the forest like eyes and they were extremely scary. If this was a normal Xin Hai citizen who had come here, they probably would have turned back out of fear already.
“This place is decorated so eerily, it feels like someone is purposely to hide something here so that people will not be willing to come any closer.” The path that he was walking on appeared to lead directly down to h.e.l.l. It was unclear how long Chen Ge had been traveling down it before he finally reached the end. There was an old apartment that was well hidden inside the forest. It had 3 storeys in total, it was not tall by any means. All the windows on the third floor were boarded up with wooden boards and you could see the sign of charring on the walls, signifying this place was once a site of a big fire. A big fire probably enveloped this place before but due to a probable lack of funds, the owner only refurbished the lower two floors and left the third floor the way it was.
“Ping An Apartments?” After wading through the small yard that was filled with wild gra.s.ses, Chen Ge saw the plaque with the apartment’s name on it. The building appeared to have had many names in it incarnation. The characters on the plaque had been changed many times, giving it a harried look.
“Is someone in?” Chen Ge pulled open the zipper of his backpack. With his hand inside the backpack, he entered the building carefully. The inside of the building was extremely old, the floor tiles were cracked and there were gaps on the wall. Occasionally one could see black worms wiggling inside them.
“From the outside the building looks quite small, I am surprised it can accommodate so many rooms inside it.” Chen Ge did not dare to wander down the hall aimlessly. His eyes scanned the doors one after another before his gaze finally fell on the door for Room 101. Knocking lightly on the door, Chen Ge stood for a long time outside the door but no one came to answer it. He leaned against the door and perked his ears up to listen. It was deathly quiet inside the room as if no one was staying there.
“What are you doing?” A man’s voice suddenly rang out from behind Chen Ge, it gave Chen Ge quite a fright. He immediately whipped his body around to turn behind him.
“It’s you! You were the person who was kneeling on the tombstone earlier!” It did not take long for Chen Ge to recognize the man behind him.
“This is not a place that you should have come. Before you awaken the other tenants, you better leave this place as soon as you can.” The man was standing a few steps behind Chen Ge. He walked with no sound at all. Chen Ge had no idea when did he arrive behind him.
“It is already too late, and I wouldn’t be able to find a transport to get back into the city even if I want to, do you mind if I stay here for one night?” Chen Ge stared closely at the man and remembered the man’s every movement deep inside his heart.
“But all the rooms here are occupied.” The middle-aged man kept urging Chen Ge to leave. “just go. Even if you stay outside, it is better than you staying here.”
“The place is occupied but how come I feel like none of the room here has people inside them?”
“Having no people inside them does not necessarily mean that they are not occupied…” Before the man could finish, there appeared to be something that fell down from the third floor, it sounded like a ball rolling down the stairs. Chen Ge turned to look but the man quickly shuffled his step to block Chen Ge’s view.
“Did something just fall down the stairs?”
“A tenant has lost her precious keepsake. I will go and help her, I need you to stand here and do not move.” The man walked towards the corner of the corridor. Chen Ge did not listen to his order and instead followed behind him directly. When he came to the corner of the stairs, Chen Ge saw the middle-aged man hand something over to a woman, or more precisely, he placed something on the woman.
“Thank you…” The woman touched her neck with both of her hands and then looked at Chen Ge with open curiosity. The strange thing was, when she saw Chen Ge’s face, she was unable to pull her eyes away. It was not until the middle-aged man coughed audibly for several times, that something occurred to the woman and she hurriedly to turn away. Being stared by that strange woman, Chen Ge’s back was drenched in cold sweat. Earlier he saw clearly that the middle-aged man had placed something for the woman. But there was nothing on the woman’s arms or body that could make a bouncing sound. Chen Ge’s eyes were fixated on the back of the woman’s neck. The woman’s neck was twisting abnormally, it was as if her head was t.i.ttering unevenly on her shoulders.
“it is time for you to go.” The middle-aged man stood on the stairs and looked down on Chen Ge. His face was strangely pale like a body inside the morgue.
“Actually the reason I am here is to look for a friend of mine.” Chen Ge did not want to hide the truth. This place was too strange, he felt like it was better if he came out with the truth.
“It is impossible for your friend to be here, the tenants staying here would not be your friends after all.” The middle-aged man walked to stand before Chen Ge. “This is the second time we have met tonight. The first time I have pretended to not see you, and now I can still pretend to not see you. So please leave now because there won’t be a third time.”
“You have been pretending to not see me? What will happen if you have seen me?”
“Then you will become a tenant here and it will be very hard to leave again.” The middle-aged man held Chen Ge up in the corridor. Moments later, a door that was close to the stairs on the second floor opened. A woman wearing gla.s.ses walked out from the room. She saw Chen Ge and the middle-aged man. When the woman saw Chen Ge, her expression changed as well. She seemed to share a good relations.h.i.+p with the middle-aged man. She walked directly to the middle-aged man’s side and then whispered softly into his ear. “Ol’ Zhou, has this young man been to Ping An Apartment before?”
The man who was called Ol’ Zhou shook his head. “I am chasing him away now.”
“If he is seen by more of the tenants, I am afraid he won’t be able to leave if he wants to then.” After dropping that piece of advice, the woman with the spectacles brushed past Chen Ge like he was not even there and headed up to the third floor. Chen Ge had noticed by then most of the people at Ping An Apartment treated him strangely. He suspected it had to do with Zhang Wenyu and Zuo Han.
“Erm… Brother Zhou, is there a tenant here that goes by the name Zuo Han, he is my friend. Actually we shared the same room when we were at the hospital.” Chen Ge gave Zuo Han’s name. His intention was to hope to get more information but to his surprise, after he said that, the att.i.tude of the middle-aged man towards him changed instantly.
“Wait, you and him are friends? You also came from that hospital?” Ol’ Zhou stared closely at Chen Ge.
“yes, we were staying inside the same sickroom. I guess you could say that i am one of the reasons he had escaped from the hospital.”
“Zuo Han is still out. If you are his friend, then you should go to his room to wait for him.” After Ol’ Zhou found out Chen Ge was someone who came from that hospital, he immediately changed his mind. He personally led Chen Ge to the room at the deepest end of the second floor corridor. “This is where Zuo Han stays. Coincidentally his room lock is broken, so you might as well go into his room and wait for him.”
Chen Ge did not stand on ceremony. He pushed the door open and he was greeted by b.l.o.o.d.y bandage and gauzes that covered the floor. “These were used bandage by Zuo Han. Today he went out to meet a friend, he had not returned yet.”
“The friend that he had gone out to meet was me.” Chen Ge pointed at himself.
“Oh? He went to find him but he failed to return and you have come to this place to find him?” The man who was called Ol’ Zhou smiled at him. “before he returns, you better stay in his room. This apartment will get quite noisy after midnight. No matter what you hear, do not leave this room. Just close your ears and go on off to sleep.”
The middle-aged man left after saying that. Chen Ge was left alone inside the room. The room was barely furnished but Chen Ge felt a sense of familiarity to the place. It felt like even though this was the first time he had been to this strange place, he had visited this very same room in his dream multiple times already. Sitting on the bed, Chen Ge held the backpack close to his body. “I believe I have come to this before. I cannot remember exactly what has happened here but in my mind, it was nothing good.”
Chen Ge waited inside the room until after midnight but Zuo Han still had not returned. He felt incredibly drowsy. Chen Ge rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “A normal apartment would not be situated behind an abandoned village and a graveyard, there has to be some problems with this place.” If based on the hospital’s original treatment, by now Chen Ge would have been deprived of the influence had on him due to his former memory already, then he would have arrived here like a normal person. However, due to the appearance of Doctor Sun, there was loophole in the hospital’s treatment. Chen Ge knew that he could not believe his own two eyes at any time, he had to maintain extreme collectiveness that was beyond human limit.
At around 2 am in the morning, Chen Ge suddenly heard a strange sound coming from upstairs, it sounded like someone was cutting through something with a saw. He remembered the warning by the man with the surname Zhou. He was supposed to stay inside the room obediently. The sound of sawing faded away but it was then replaced by the a fleeting screams and the sound of paints flaking down from the wall. Among the drifting sound, Chen Ge could have sworn he heard the name Zhang Wenyu being mentioned.
“There has to be a reason why he forbade me to leave this room.” Chen Ge was still seated on the bed but several minutes later, he heard a familiar name being mentioned from the conversation that drifted from upstairs—Zhang Jingjiu. Now that he thought about it, the screams earlier sounded similar to Zhang Jingjiu’s.
Chen Ge could not sit idle anymore. He carried his backpack and sneaked out from the room and came to the third floor. Everywhere had signs of burning. There were many broken furniture and burnt trash that crowded the corridor. The sound of conversation and sawing came from the deepest end of the corridor. Chen Ge slowly moved forward. A faded scent of blood tackled his nose. The world before his eyes were slowly being replaced by a hue of red. The blackened walls were covered in blood. Inside the darkened corridor, he could see a few figures moving about. Chen Ge trained his focus. There were many trash on the ground, if he was just a bit careless, he would make some noise.
“What are they doing?” Chen Ge slowly approached. When he reached the middle of the corridor, he saw the wall at the end of the corridor. His pupils narrowed and Chen Ge realized that was a doctor wearing a white coat that was pinned to the wall at the end of the corridor. The doctor’s coat was drenched red by blood and there was a patient with twisted limbs lying under him.
“Zhang Jingjiu?” His breathing became urgent. Chen Ge was not expecting to run into a doctor from that hospital and Zhang Jingjiu at this place. “It was the people from this apartment that have kidnapped them out of the hospital? But that is impossible!”
Chen Ge’s brain was working overtime, but before he came to a reason, he suddenly heard a soft sound that came from behind him. He whipped his head around and Chen Ge saw a young boy who was standing behind him. The boy was not tall and his body was thin and weak. However, his face had maturity and cunningness that did not match his age.
“My name is Men Nan. Big brother, what is yours?”