Horror Game Designer

“These rooms are completely different from when we came.” The inside of the back building was no longer silent. After the night arrived, the doctors at Li San Hospital started to work. The mutated patients moved around the rooms. Long lines appeared at the pharmacy. Everything was similar to how it was in the real world… if one disregarded the mutations in the patients. Some of them didn’t even look human. They were just meat blobs with a faces.

“Do not disturb them.” The big dog saw the shadow entangling the patients. They were citizens of the shadow world. The back building had been fully consumed by the shadows, but this place was their home. “We are deep inside the shadow world now. The longer we stay here, the more likely we’ll be corrupted by it.” The big dog was on high alert. “Normally, I wouldn’t even dare to enter a building in the shadow world. I fear running into places like this where they can self-produce shadows.”

“What do you mean?” Gao Ming suddenly had a question, “What is the shadow in the shadow world? You can move between the shadows freely. You should understand it, right?”

The big dog shook his big head. “The shadow is like a human emotion. When a human is angry, he will produce the emotions of anger. The shadow is like the emotions left behind when a world dies. It contains many things. There are despair and pain but the majority is sadness.”

The big dog’s fur fluttered in the wind like weeds in the water. “I can melt into the shadow because the emotions I generate are similar to the shadow. However, this is why I’m scared. I know my experience. A child who has no sight and hearing grew up in violence, darkness and panic. The shadow’s emotions are similar to mine. That means it has experienced the same thing as I do.”

“Will a world feel scared?”

“The shadow world is a dead world.” The big dog stopped before the gastroenterology department. Compared to the other departments, the door was very wide, and the space was large. The patients lined up in the corridor. When it was their turn, they would walk past the curtain and enter the treatment room. Most of the patients felt better and looked better after they left the treatment room.

The big dog lowered his head and whispered to Gao Ming, “There are two types of patients at Li San Hospital. The first kind is the patients who are sent to the hospital from the real world. Their mental conditions are not stable. Most of them have been tormented by the shadows until they go insane. Their mutations mostly have to do with their fears. The second kind is the patients we see now. They are natives of the shadow world. They are used to the life here. They have a thin layer of shadow on their skins. They are stable because, for them, anomalies are just parts of their lives.”

“Are the second kind still considered humans?” Just as Gao Ming said that, a nurse pushed a patient out of a room. His body was sliced into parts, but blood didn’t flow out. Only the shadow flowed around the wounds.

“I guess not.” The bodies of the natives had been hollowed out, and only their shells remained. Their life force had been sucked away, and the shells became a part of that despair. In other words, most natives were shadows.

When another number was called out inside the gastroenterology department, the big dog’s eyes darted about. He stared at the patient who was about to enter the treatment room and then swallowed them whole.

“This is not queue-cutting, right?” The big dog nudged the door open. He and Gao Ming entered the room.

“What’s wrong?” The bespectacled female doctor sat behind the table. She didn’t look old. Her beautiful eyes hid behind thick glasses. Even when she heard the door open, her gaze stayed on the computer screen. She didn’t look at her patient.

“I have a stomachache and a light fever.” Gao Ming wanted to find a place to sit, but there was no chair in the room.

The female doctor rambled as if to herself, “If you’re overeating or have eaten something you shouldn’t, go to the second room on the left to take the medicine. If your mind starts to tell you that the food is disgusting, and you start to see the food as other items like hair and fingers, please enter the third room on the left to receive treatment. If your stomach is in pain like something is growing inside it, please use the fourth room on the left.”

“What if I have other symptoms?”

“If none of the rooms can help, go into the first room on the left.” The doctor repeated the same thing. Gao Ming was suspicious. He walked to the other end of the table and realised the female doctor didn’t have a lower body. The end of her waist tapered to the shadow. The shadow curled around the wires. The female doctor’s soul appeared to be trapped inside the old computer.

“Li San Hospital exists in the shadow world. It has been treating patients many years ago.” The big dog moved his body in the room. “It was not Situ An who dragged the hospital from the real world into the shadow, but he swapped the hospital from the shadow world with the one in real life.

“Many years ago, Situ An’s fate was changed at the hospital. He might have accidentally entered the hospital in the shadow world when he worked here as a nurse.”

Gao Ming followed the female doctor’s orders. He took a left turn and walked from the second door to the fourth door. Each room had a big ghost inside them.

The three sick rooms were three resentment rooms. The big ghosts put on the white coats and armed themselves with various tools. The medicine was mind-numbing. There were strange bugs, smelly liquid and cursed items. There were murderers’ weapons, babies’ hair, and corpses’ clothes being used as medicine.

Different from the female doctor, when the three big ghost doctors saw Gao Ming and the big dog, they didn’t make any moves. They only shook their heads and told them to leave. The big ghosts didn’t act offensively. They were very polite. They reminded Gao Ming of the big ghost teachers at Han De Private School. They would selectively follow the rules. Since they didn’t respond to him, Gao Ming had to go to the first room.

“The female doctor said this is the room we should come to if the other three doctors can’t help us.” The big dog sniffed at the door. “What a strange smell. Shall we take a look?”

“We’re already here. Why not?” Gao Ming opened the door and sucked in a cold breath. It was not a normal room behind the door. It was not a resentment room but a moving tunnel that wiggled like an intestine.