Chapter 256: Union
The surrounding patients didn’t pose much threat to the current Gao Ming, but for Gao Ming from half a year ago, this trip would have been hell. A determined psychiatrist was torn apart by crazy people. In a way, it was an ironic ending. Gao Ming’s shadow on the ground started to run. Gao Ming followed his shadow closely.
The broadcast became shriller and shriller. Slowly, the patient’s shadow appeared on the tiles. The clean tiles were like the surface of the water. The past and present reflected and permeated each other.
There was a scream. A dishevelled nurse rushed out of a ward. Her uniform was frazzled, and she was holding a giant syringe. The nurse pushed away the other patients and aimed the needle at Gao Ming’s eyes.
Both Gao Mings evaded her. However, the past Gao Ming tripped, and the liquid in the syringe splashed into his eyes. Gao Ming perfectly avoided the needle. However, when his past self was affected by the liquid, his eyes burned as well. His movement became more difficult. The ward doors slowly moved past like windows in a slow-moving train. This was the first time Gao Ming felt the flow of time so clearly.
“Will I die if my past self is killed?”
Gao Ming couldn’t tell if he was in a dream or he had travelled back in time. All the boundaries blurred. Only the pounding of his heart was real. Gao Ming’s shadow climbed up quickly. He had no option but to run deeper into the corridor. More patients appeared. Gao Ming’s scalp was numb. Half a year ago, the anomaly hadn’t arrived, but there were already so many monsters at Li San Hospital!
Following his past self, Gao Ming didn’t stay. They raced down the dark corridor. The windows and doors faded away. They were on the train of time, and every stop was a cycle of pain and tragedy.
“Is this a dream? How can a dream be so realistic? But what if this is not a dream? How can this happen in real life?”
The broadcast was ear-piercing. Gao Ming’s past self ran until he was exhausted. When he couldn’t carry on anymore, the doctor in the white coat reappeared. He opened a door not far away. That seemed to be the exit. With his last breath, Gao Ming came to the door and looked in.
The sound of laughter, prayer, crying, and others swallowed him like a giant wave. Holding the door frame, Gao Ming saw a terrifying sight.Inside the room at the end of the corridor, the four walls were covered in black-and-white death portraits of different patients. A giant sacrificial altar was situated in the middle of the room. On top of it sat a few white bowls filled with pills and several figurines covered under black cloth. The sound of knocking came from everywhere.
The shadow on the ground slowly overlapped the reality. The black cloth on the table gradually slipped away. The figurines possessed careful smiles as the eyes looked around. The changing wards were like untouchable altars. The dead Gods stood at the end of time, turning around to examine everything.
Gao Ming stood before the portraits of many patients. He lowered his head to look at his past self. Wearing the uniform from Hen Shan Penitentiary, he was surrounded by endless ghosts. Doctors and patients had their separate uniforms. Bright red and pale white completed the world.
The spying eyes were like dancing fire. The greedy fingers hooked at flesh. The cruel growl caused the soul to tremble. Gao Ming from the past entered a room he shouldn’t. There were pills there, but the pills were made from his own flesh and blood.
His consciousness was cut through by a blade. A giant force pushed Gao Ming to the ground. This was a worship and a game.
The divine patterns painted on the walls gathered together. The bones collided, and the muscles were shredded. The human heads slowly turned around. The bowls on the table rang out. The sound of breathing came from under the black cloth. All the patients stared at Gao Ming. They were calling to him because they had already prepared the seat for him. Gao Ming couldn’t see how to escape this. Half a year ago, he didn’t know anything. How did he survive this?
“But I am alive now! How did I survive that night? How did I leave this room?”
His memory was foggy. There was only a sense of familiarity. The sense of fear cut from the past to the present. It soaked into his soul and nerves. He couldn’t breathe. Gao Ming looked at himself on the tiles as his hands pressed against them.
His reflection was the game. His hands pressed against the cold tiles. The vessels on the back of his hands popped. He was the centre of the ritual. He was the sacrifice.
The oppressive nature of death enveloped him. The birthday picture Gao Ming hid in his heart fell to the ground. When his past approached death, Gao Ming in the picture started to lose colour!
His parents in the picture revealed shocked expressions.
“I will die if my past dies?! Is this a dream or reality?”
Gao Ming was a copy of his past. He couldn’t tell if he had bled into the past or the past had caught up to him.
“I didn’t die on that day. That is the truth! Who saved me? Who helped me?”
In the death portraits, the patients opened their pupilless eyes. They had strange expressions. The figurines on the table cackled. The nearby wards opened. The terror from the darkest parts of the nightmare extended its neck. The toothy grin spread as it approached Gao Ming. Indescribable horror pinched his nerves. Death was coming for him.
Gao Ming, in the birthday picture, was losing colour fast. Breathing was hard, and his body was cold. Death memories in his heart clashed against each other!
“I’ve died so many times. I am not my former self anymore!
“If no one came to save me, then I’d save myself!
“Be it the past of the future, I will hold my own hands to walk out of the abyss and despair!”
The right hand that held the torture room chain slammed against the floor. Gao Ming’s reflection splintered with cracks. The bleeding hand smashed again.
Blood sipped through the cracks. Gao Ming, from the past, seemed to hear a voice, and he looked down.
His left eye, which was injured by the mud figurine, pulsed with pain. He forced his left eye open and saw another version of himself in the tiles!
Wearing the mask of death, the other him was cunning, vicious, crazy and unhinged like an Evil God.