Global Ghost Stories: I'm Investigating Ghosts in My Nightmare!

Chapter 43 Observer and Seeker

The two white pills, like two stubborn rocks sunk into the deep sea, were relentlessly releasing their icy power.

A numbing sensation mixed with the smell of chemicals slowly spread through Bai Yu's bloodstream to his limbs and brain.

Bai Yu felt his thoughts becoming sluggish, as if he were struggling to swim in a pot of thick syrup, and the scenery in front of him began to appear slightly doubled and distorted.

This is Wen Maoran's "rules" at work.

It attempted to use physiological intervention to forcibly weaken his will, causing his self-identity as a member of the "Baiyu" community to gradually dissolve in this drug-induced fog.

“What a troublesome ‘debuff’.” Hei Yan’s voice carried a hint of impatient elegance. “The ‘gardener’ of this world has truly worrisome taste. Rather than weaving traps with ingenious rules and paradoxes, he seems to prefer this simple and brutal chemical castration. Bai Yu, if you don’t come up with a solution soon, our drama, which has only just begun, may have to end prematurely due to the protagonist’s forced exit.”

Bai Yu dragged his increasingly heavy body, step by step, to the dark red door called "House of Sunshine." He needed to find a relatively safe "observation point" immediately to gather as much information about this world as possible before the drug's effects fully took hold.

He opened the door and walked in.

The scene before him gave his already dulled nerves another strong shock.

This was a vast, empty meeting room. But there was no sunlight, only an unsettling, dim yellow light cast from a few chandeliers on the ceiling. The eerie stench of crayon, rust, and blood in the air was far more vivid than anything he had smelled in the real world.

The graffiti on the wall, filled with pain and despair, seemed to come alive at that moment.

Under the dim light, the distorted lines and glaring blocks of color seemed to be slowly writhing. The faceless doctors in the painting grinned, their mouths covered in stitches, silently mocking everyone who entered the place; the children locked in cages seemed to have black tears constantly welling up in their empty eye sockets.

The entire room is an exhibition hall materialized from nightmares.

More than twenty "patients" live in this nightmare exhibition hall.

They were all wearing the same white hospital gowns as Bai Yu, like robots with pre-programmed instructions, each carrying out their own "activities".

In the corner of the room, a tall, thin man was squatting by the pool of building blocks, stacking a tower with blocks over and over again.

His movements were precise yet numb; each time he would stack the tower to the same height, and just as he was about to place the last block, he would suddenly reach out and push the entire tower down.

The building blocks scatter all over the ground with a "clatter," and he falls silent, then repeats the process starting from the first block.

It goes round and round, never ending.

At a small table not far away, a woman was frantically scribbling on a piece of drawing paper with a red crayon.

Her movements were incredibly fast and powerful, the crayons making a piercing "scratching" noise on the paper. She drew one vortex after another, connected end to end, spiraling inwards, as if trying to suck in the gaze of everyone who saw it.

There was also a little boy sitting on a rusty toy tricycle, his feet off the ground, motionless.

His head was tilted to one side in an extremely unnatural position, and he kept repeating the same sentence in a very low voice: "The wheel... why isn't the wheel turning... why isn't the wheel turning..."

Each of them is like a broken videotape stuck on a certain frame, forever imprisoned in the obsession of their own memories.

Bai Yu forced himself to endure the waves of dizziness in his brain and pretended to be as dazed as they were.

He found an inconspicuous corner and slowly sat down. He needed to observe, to find the inherent "order" within this seemingly chaotic scene.

Just then, a tall, stern-faced middle-aged woman in a white nurse's uniform walked in through another door of the activity room, carrying a tray full of medicine cups.

Her steps were steady and powerful, and her high heels made a crisp "tap, tap, tap" sound on the floor, like a precise metronome.

Her appearance seemed to solidify the already oppressive atmosphere in the activity room. Even the rustling sound of the woman frantically drawing became softer.

"Head Nurse..." Bai Yu silently recited the title in her mind; she was clearly the direct manager here.

The head nurse walked up to the man who was stacking blocks, handed him a glass of medicine filled with a thick, green liquid, and said in a completely emotionless tone, "Number 12, take a break, it's time to take your medicine."

The man seemed not to hear, continuing to numbly build his tower.

The head nurse showed no sign of impatience.

She simply gave that tower, which was about to be completed, a gentle push.

"Wow--"

The tower collapsed again.

The man's body jolted violently, as if he had been jolted awake from a dream. He raised his head, and for the first time, a trace of human pain and anger appeared in his empty eyes.

"No... my tower... my tower!" he roared hoarsely, reaching out to grab the scattered blocks.

The head nurse looked at him coldly.

She held the glass of medicine up to him, her voice rising a few decibels: "Number Twelve, would you like to spend some time in the 'Meditation Room'?"

The words "meditation room" sounded like a magical incantation. The man's newly ignited anger was instantly extinguished by a bucket of ice water. His body began to tremble violently, and the anger in his eyes was quickly replaced by a deeper fear.

He stopped resisting and obediently took the medicine cup like a well-behaved child, drinking the green liquid in one gulp.

After drinking the medicine, the last glimmer of light in his eyes disappeared, and he returned to a numb, empty shell, once again beginning his endless game of stacking.

Bai Yu took in the whole scene.

Clearly, this mental hospital has a set of "rules" with clear rewards and punishments.

Only cooperative patients can engage in these meaningless "free activities" in the activity room, while uncooperative patients will be locked in the terrifying-sounding "contemplation room."

The head nurse, like a queen surveying her territory, distributed medications to each of the "patients." Her actions were precise and efficient, devoid of any superfluous emotion.

Bai Yu knew he had to find a way to avoid being "medicated" again, otherwise he would eventually lose his ability to think completely due to the cumulative effects of the drugs.

His gaze began to wander around the room, searching for possible clues and a breakthrough.

He began to carefully observe the patients' behavior.

The woman who drew whirlpools, the little boy who kept talking about wheels... Do their actions also hide some kind of message?
Suddenly, his gaze was drawn to a patient sitting in the far corner.

He was a young man who looked to be only in his early twenties. Unlike the other patients, he did not engage in any "activities".

The man hugged his knees tightly, burying his face in his arms, motionless, like a statue of despair.

The aura of isolation he exuded, refusing to communicate with the world, made him stand out as an "outlier" among a group of zombies.

Bai Yu's dizziness from the drug was getting stronger, but he still forced himself to stand up and pretended to sleepwalk towards the young man.

He walked over to the young man and slowly sat down.

The young man showed no reaction to his arrival, remaining in his withdrawn posture. Bai Yu didn't speak, simply sitting quietly. He glanced at the floor beside the young man out of the corner of his eye.

In the dust on the floor, he saw a very subtle mark drawn with a fingernail.

The trace was twisted and complex, woven from many irregular lines, looking like both a closed eye and a distorted vortex.

It is the mark of the "Tower of Ten Thousand Heads"!

Bai Yu's heart skipped a beat.

This young man... is Ruan Bo?
He was assimilated, but with his strong willpower, he left behind a final clue before being completely devoured, and resisted the world's erosion by isolating himself.

Just as Bai Yu was preparing to try to make contact with him.

The head nurse, who had just finished distributing the medication, was walking towards this corner.

Her gaze was already fixed on Bai Yu, the "unsociable" patient.

……

Just a door separates two completely different worlds.

Inside the door lies a "surface world" filled with a false order and numb despair.

Outside the door lies the "inner world," filled with real decay and painful memories.

Lu Yueqi lurked in the darkness of this "inner world," like a cat holding its breath, peering through a crack in the door that had been hastily nailed shut with a broken wooden board, observing the scene inside.

Her heart was being torn apart by a complex mix of emotions.

She found it.

She finally found Baiyu.

However, what she saw was not Bai Yu, who was always calm, always strong, and could hold up the sky for her.

What she saw was a patient dressed in the same white hospital gown as the other patients, with vacant eyes and a face as pale as a sheet of paper, sitting blankly in the corner, known as "Number Seven".

In that instant, Lu Yueqi felt as if her heart had been crushed by an invisible hand.

A powerful urge compelled her to push open the door, rush in, and pull him out of that cage of despair.

But she can't.

She bit her lip hard, her cold reason telling her that if she acted impulsively, she would not only fail to save Bai Yu, but also completely destroy both of them here.

She can only watch.

Like a desperate seeker, after traversing countless mountains and rivers, she finally saw the lighthouse she was looking for across an insurmountable chasm. But the lighthouse's light was so faint, as if it might be extinguished at any moment.

She saw the cold-hearted head nurse and how she used the "meditation room" to threaten patients and force them to drink that strange medicine.

She saw Bai Yu sitting next to the desperate young man, and saw him discover the marks on the floor.

Although she couldn't see what the mark was, she could read the seriousness of discovering a clue in Bai Yu's frozen eyes.

Bai language...

He hasn't been assimilated! He's still fighting!

A glimmer of hope was rekindled in Lu Yueqi's heart, which had almost sunk into an icy sea.

She had to do something. She couldn't just stand by and watch.

She condensed her "deep cold" power into a thread thinner than a hair, carefully threading it through the crack in the door and extending it towards Bai Yu.

She dared not make any direct contact, as that would likely be detected by the "rules" of this world.

She wanted to use this method to convey her "existence" and the idea that "I am here, I have come to find you".

This is an extremely dangerous act, requiring unparalleled precision in controlling one's mental power. For Lu Yueqi, who was just an ordinary person a month ago, this was almost an impossible task.

But she did it at that moment, supported by a strong will.

That icy blue spiritual thread, like a ballerina dancing on a knife's edge, silently slipped through the crack in the door, avoiding the senses of all the patients and the head nurse, and slowly and gently touched the hem of Bai Yu's clothes.

Bai Yu, who was about to get up to deal with the approaching head nurse, suddenly shuddered.

A chill, carrying both tranquility and sorrow, emanated from the hem of his clothes.

That was neither the false coldness of this world, nor the deathly stillness deep within his own soul.

That chill carried within it a stubborn warmth belonging to the living.

It's Lu Yueqi!

A truly monstrous wave surged within the depths of Bai Yu's usually calm and collected eyes.

How did she get in here? She shouldn't have come in!

Endless shock, worry, lingering fear, and the relief of seeing a glimmer of light in the midst of despair.

The head nurse, who had already walked up to him, also stopped.

She looked down at "Number Seven," whose body had just begun to tremble slightly, and a hint of suspicion flashed in her emotionless eyes.

“Number Seven,” her voice was icy, “you’re spacing out again. Tell me… what did you just feel?”

One inside and one outside.

One is the "observer" trapped in the center of the chessboard, facing scrutiny from the rule enforcers.

One is the "seeker" who is outside the chessboard and has just sent the only signal to his partner inside the chessboard.

At this moment, their fates were tightly linked together through that invisible spiritual thread.

The indicator light of the surveillance camera, hidden in the ceiling ventilation duct at the very top of this huge event room, flickered silently after years of silence.

(End of this chapter)