I will burn books and slay gods.

On the title page of the medical record, there was a line of delicate yet cold handwriting:

Name: Chen Ye.

Diagnosis: Delusional disorder of knowledge.

Danger level: High.

Chen Ye closed the last page of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the hardcover making a faint sound that was particularly clear in the excessively quiet hospital room.

He looked up, his gaze passing through his old, black-rimmed glasses and landing on the view outside the window.

The sun was shining brightly outside, but in his eyes, the sky was always covered by an imperceptible, flowing gray film, as if the world were an unfinished oil painting, ready to drip distorted paint at any moment.

This is Morning Star Mental Hospital, nestled deep in the mountains, isolated from the world.

According to official records, it is a special institution for treating severe mental illnesses.

But for Chen Ye, this place is a prison.

He was admitted as a patient with severe paranoia because he could "see" things that shouldn't exist—such as black slime seeping from the walls and phantoms of babies perched on the shoulders of passersby.

He tried to explain, but each rational explanation was seen by the doctor as proof that his condition was worsening.

So he learned to be silent, burying himself in the old books of philosophy, trying to find the ultimate answer to the world, or rather, to find a philosophical framework that could explain his own experiences.

"...Kant divided the world into the 'phenomenal realm' and the 'thing-in-itself,' and what we can know is only what has been processed through our innate forms of cognition..."

He muttered to himself, his fingertips tracing the cold words on the pages.

This is his weapon, and also his armor.

Only through rigorous logic and reasoning can he temporarily forget the absurdity of his surroundings and confirm the existence of his own rationality.

However, reason seems to have lost its effectiveness today.

He felt a sudden, inexplicable palpitation; the words on the pages seemed to come alive, twitching slightly.

The air was thick with the cloying smell of rust mixed with rotten candy, a harbinger of his "illness"—usually meaning that something was about to appear.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

"The confusion of perception is not terrible; what is terrible is the collapse of logic."

He told himself that this was his motto in his fight against madness.

Just then, a strange noise came from the iron door of the ward.

It wasn't the light tapping of a nurse delivering medicine, nor the rhythmic footsteps of a doctor making rounds.

That was a... chewing sound.

The heavy metal door was twisting and dissolving from its edges in a way that defied the laws of physics, as if it were being devoured by an invisible giant mouth.

The paint on the door peeled off, revealing a dark red, flesh-like texture underneath.

Chen Ye suddenly stood up, and the book fell to the ground.

He could feel his heart pounding wildly in his chest, but his mind was unusually clear, even carrying a cold scrutiny.

"Cognitive distortion..." he murmured, taking a step back until his back pressed against the cold wall. "Level 3 Nightmare, 'Wailing Wall'."

Outside the door, the familiar hospital corridor had vanished, replaced by a flesh-colored wall of writhing, screaming faces.

Those faces were twisted and deformed, emitting silent wails. They squeezed and merged together, exuding an aura of despair that was initially nauseating.

A gray area, representing "aphasia," was spreading out from the doorway, and the sounds in the ward were quickly absorbed, even his own heartbeat became barely audible.

Absolute silence is more terrifying than any noise.

Just as Chen Ye felt his own existence beginning to blur, a clear, cold voice pierced through the suffocating silence and rang out behind him.

"Your 'karmic obstacles' haven't manifested yet, have they, you scholar?"

Chen Ye turned around and saw Lin Su, the girl in the next ward.

She was wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown, leaning against the inner door frame connecting the two wards, a pale, lifeless flame dancing on her fingertips.

The flames illuminated her slightly pale face, but her eyes were as sharp as a drawn sword.

Chen Ye didn't answer her question. Instead, he bent down to pick up the copy of "Critique of Pure Reason" from the ground, quickly flipped to a certain page, and his voice was somewhat hoarse due to the pressure of the subject: "Kant believed that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, but we can construct the phenomenal world through transcendental categories..."

He seemed to be reciting some kind of incantation.

As he spoke, the relevant sentences in the book seemed to come alive, emitting a faint glow.

He raised his hand and pointed forward—not at the Wailing Wall, but at the distorted "space" between the Wailing Wall and himself.

An invisible force, framed by absolute "rationality," slashed through.

The Wailing Wall, composed of madness and pain, froze instantly. The expressions on countless faces were frozen. Their structures, under the impact of the absolute rational proposition of "the thing-in-itself is unknowable," underwent a logical collapse. Like wax figures thrown into a raging fire, they began to soften and collapse, eventually turning into a plume of foul-smelling black smoke that dissipated into the air.

The corridor returned to normal, except for the irregular hole in the door that had been gnawed through, proving that everything that had just happened was not an illusion.

The sound returned to the world, and Chen Ye could hear his own heavy breathing, and the faint voices of real medical staff coming from afar in the ruins.

"Not at the moment."

He then answered Lin Su's question, pointing to his temple, "I was just reading about 'innate comprehensive judgment' and it kept going on and on in my head."

The flame at Lin Su's fingertips quietly died down. She pursed her lips, walked to the doorway, and examined the twisted metal edges: "Be careful. If you use too much knowledge, you'll go even crazier than those things outside."

Her tone carried a casual indifference, as if she were discussing today's weather.

Chen Ye did not refute.

He walked to the window and looked at the invisible "film" outside.

To the average person, it was a beautiful mountain view.

But in his eyes, and in the eyes of "patients" like Lin Su, beyond that membrane lies the "inner world"—the gray area where the Nightmare Domain overlaps with the real world, a breeding ground for madness.

And this Morning Star Hospital is built on the most vulnerable point between two worlds.

"Where... exactly is this place?"

He asked softly, as if he were asking Lin Su, but also as if he were asking himself.

Lin Su didn't look at him, her gaze still sharply sweeping across the corridor: "Clinic, prison, cemetery... or, the front line. Define it however you like."

She paused, then finally turned her head, her eyes, which had burned with fire, staring directly at Chen Ye. "The important thing is that from the moment you 'saw' it, you were already a 'Night Watchman.' Either learn how to survive here, or you become utterly insane, just like those things from before."

After she finished speaking, she turned around and went back to her room, gently closing the inner door and leaving Chen Ye alone.

Chen Ye stood silently for a long time, then slowly raised his hand.

The fingertips seemed to still retain the cold and sharp sensation from when the "sword in the book" was activated.

That wasn't an illusion; it was the "karmic burden" he had to pay—the price he had to bear for using the power of "affinity."

Staring directly into his mind, whispering and trying to distort his perception.

He looked down at the seemingly normal world outside the window.

"If madness is the only rationality," he pushed up his glasses, his gaze behind the lenses gradually hardening, "then I will use all my knowledge to keep watch over this world for one night."