Luocheng City, autumn.

In the empty office, under the pale incandescent light, the middle-aged doctor pushed up his glasses.

“Hello, Chen Ji. I need to ask you some questions now. After you answer, I will rate your responses on a scale of five levels: ‘None,’ ‘Mild,’ ‘Moderate,’ ‘Severe,’ and ‘Very Severe.’ Is that acceptable?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to end your life?”

“…Whose life?”

“Your own.”

“No, not my own.”

The middle-aged doctor hesitated for a moment: “Do you hold grudges, or find it difficult to forgive those who have hurt you?”

“I don’t hold grudges.”

“Do you often forget things? What memories do you have from when you were twelve?”

Opposite the doctor, eighteen-year-old Chen Ji’s gaze drifted to the darkness outside the window: “Twelve? That summer, my deskmate, Ma Kai, secretly took one of my erasers. I really liked that eraser because it had an Uchiha Itachi design on it.”

The doctor’s gaze returned to the previous question about holding grudges. He crossed out “1 point, None” and rewrote “5 points, Very Severe.”

He seriously observed the young man opposite him. Eighteen-year-old Chen Ji had a rather handsome appearance; his skin was clear, and his eyes were bright and sincere, perhaps due to rarely going outside.

“Next question, can you tolerate loneliness?”

This time, Chen Ji finally paused to consider the question carefully. After a long silence, he replied, “Yes, I can.”

The questioning continued for half an hour. When the hands of the quartz clock on the wall reached ten at night, the doctor said, “Last question, do you feel like someone is trying to harm you?”

Chen Ji: “No, my family treats me quite well.”

The doctor’s eyelid twitched slightly. He quickly jotted down notes in his pad: “168 points for positive symptoms, 67 positive items, factor score 38. After the patient’s parents died in a car accident, he developed severe ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ with violent tendencies.”

“Chen Ji, the diagnosis indicates you have severe post-traumatic stress disorder. You’ll need to stay for observation. A nurse will take you to a ward on the sixth floor shortly. Your phone needs to be handed over to me; outside information could interfere with your treatment.”

“Oh,” Chen Ji didn’t seem surprised.

“Please wait here for a moment. I need to inform your family of this result,” the doctor said, standing up with the diagnostic report.

“Wait!” Chen Ji called out to him.

“What is it?” the doctor asked, turning back.

“I haven’t given you my phone yet,” Chen Ji said, pulling a phone from his pocket and handing it to the doctor.

“I’ll just hold onto your phone temporarily,” the doctor said, putting the phone in his pocket. He then turned and left, securely closing the door behind him.

Outside, in the empty, dim corridor, stood only a middle-aged couple, both looking anxious.

The man stepped forward: “Old Liu, did it go smoothly? Did he… find anything?”

“No, he even thinks you treat him quite well,” Old Liu, the doctor, nodded. “Here’s the diagnostic report. You can now go to court and apply to have him declared ‘a person without civil capacity’.”

The middle-aged woman gave an awkward laugh: “Thanks, Old Liu. We’ll treat you to a meal sometime.”

Doctor Old Liu gave a noncommittal smile: “No need for a meal. I don’t know why you want him declared mentally ill, and I don’t want to ask. But if the court reviews this, I can also retract my diagnosis.”

Chen Shuo, Chen Ji’s second uncle, quickly pulled a bulging envelope from his black briefcase: “Count it.”

Doctor Old Liu opened the envelope and glanced inside: “Alright, you can go. I’ll arrange his hospitalization now. He doesn’t seem to be resisting, but to be safe, I’ll call two male nurses.”

“Okay, I’m leaving then,” Chen Shuo said, walking towards the elevator with his wife, Wang Huiling.

In the dim corridor, Wang Huiling walked beside her husband, asking in a low voice, “How much money did you give him?”

“Fifty thousand.”

“That much? He just sat there and asked a few questions, what right does he have to take so much?” The plump Wang Huiling’s eyes widened.

Chen Shuo replied impatiently: “Do you really think a meal would be enough? Fifty thousand yuan is nothing compared to Chen Ji’s house! Go to the court tomorrow and submit the application quickly. Once he’s declared incompetent, we’ll transfer the house to our names, before things get complicated.”

Wang Huiling whispered, “Is Old Liu trustworthy? What if Chen Ji escapes from the hospital?”

“Don’t worry, I heard the sixth floor of this hospital is like a prison; no one can escape. Let’s not talk about this in this spooky place; I always feel it’s gloomy here.”

As they walked out of the psychiatric hospital, Chen Shuo inexplicably turned his head to look back.

In the darkness, twisted, dense ivy snaked across the building, almost entirely covering the windows. As his gaze swept over it, vague shadows seemed to stir in the gaps of the ivy, as if many ‘people’ were watching him.

Chen Ji was escorted, one male nurse on each side, down the dim corridor on the sixth floor. Only the emergency exit sign by the wall provided a faint glow.

There was no nurses’ station on this floor, and at the end of the corridor was an iron door that required a password to open. One male nurse covered Chen Ji’s eyes while the other entered the code.

With a click, the door opened.

Inside was a vast hall, with single beds placed every 1.5 meters. In the dim light, the single beds looked like coffins, hundreds of them.

The next moment, black figures sat up on each of those beds, turning their heads to stare silently in Chen Ji’s direction.

A male nurse whispered, “Ignore them. Let’s finish this quickly and get out.”

The two of them pressed Chen Ji onto a bed, securing his hands and feet with restraints.

“Wait!” Chen Ji said.

“What is it?” the male nurse asked impatiently.

Chen Ji: “Aren’t I supposed to change into a patient gown?”

“…Is he sick?” the male nurse muttered, then turned to his colleague and said, “Let’s go.”

With a clang, the iron door closed, and silence returned to the room.

Chen Ji twisted his head to look around. Stainless steel security bars were welded to all the windows of the ward.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

The sound of clothes and bedding rubbing together filled the ward, followed by soft, shuffling footsteps.

Chen Ji heard the sounds approaching him, growing more numerous and closer.

“Seriously…” Chen Ji helplessly opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Am I the only one getting tied up? How presumptuous.”

By the faint moonlight from outside the window, he saw five or six heads poking out like turtles, filling his view of the ceiling. Each dark face bore an eerie smile.

Chen Ji: “This is truly terrifying; it’s practically cured my mental illness…”

Someone whispered, “Tell me, does he usually poop before or after eating?”

“Let me call the UN and ask,” a middle-aged man said, pulling out a calculator and quickly pressing a series of numbers. A clear female voice reading out digits sounded particularly jarring in the ward.

Before he could finish, an old man placed a hand on the calculator.

“Zero.”

All sounds ceased, and the patients made way for the old man.

The old man came to the bedside, bending over to look down at Chen Ji: “You’ve really come.”

Chen Ji: “What do you mean?”

The old man took out a piece of paper: “Someone once said you would come here today.”

On that paper, his likeness was vividly drawn in pencil, remarkably lifelike.

Chen Ji was filled with respect: “That’s perfectly logical.”

People who end up in a mental hospital are either too foolish or too brilliant.

They merely contend with themselves in a world of delusion, an endless struggle with no release.

Chen Ji held a certain respect for mental hospitals.

So when he saw the sketch, he suddenly felt the world becoming mysterious: “My head feels so itchy, like I’m about to grow a brain! Old man, did you draw this?”

“I didn’t draw it, but I can take you to meet the person who did,” the old man said, undoing Chen Ji’s restraints. All the patients made a path for them.

At the end of the path, a young man sat vacantly by a bed, staring blankly out the window.

“What’s his condition?” Chen Ji asked.

“Severe delusion. He always claimed he lived in another world, that this world was his dream. Later, he developed dissociative symptoms and became completely unresponsive,” the old man replied.

“When did he come in?”

“He came in a year ago. He said you would appear today, which proves he wasn’t lying.”

Chen Ji looked at the old man in surprise: “What’s your condition? Your thinking is remarkably clear.”

“I’m not sick,” the old man said.

“That sounds exactly like something a mentally ill person would say…”

The old man retorted with exasperation: “I’m really not sick. I came here to hide after I did something. If you don’t believe me, ask me anything from the Paranoid Ideation Scale.”

Chen Ji: “Do you like Daddy or Mommy more?”

Old man: “Mommy.”

Chen Ji: “…”

He approached the young man with delusions: “Hello?”

But the young man just stared fixedly out the window in the darkness, not speaking.

Old man: “He hasn’t spoken for half a year.”

“What’s his name?”

“Li Qingniao.”

Chen Ji felt a little regretful. He carefully observed the vacant Li Qingniao and asked in a low voice, “Old man, has he ever mentioned what the world he lives in is like?”

“No,” the old man shook his head.

Chen Ji then asked, “Old man, has he received any treatment since he came to the hospital? Is there any way to restore his consciousness?”

“What’s the point of treatment? Everyone on the sixth floor has given up on treatment; as long as they’re alive, that’s enough.”

“Huh? No more attempts to save him? What if he recovers?”

“Well, some do recover,” the old man said, stroking his chin.

“How do they recover?”

“There was a little girl with severe depression before. She lost over 30 catties in just over a month after coming in. Later, her father won over twenty million in the lottery and took her home, and her illness got better.”

Chen Ji slowly turned to Li Qingniao: “I’ll give you twenty million too.”

Li Qingniao, who had been silent for half a year, suddenly said, “You’re going to that world too.”

The old man’s eyes widened.

Chen Ji quickly continued to ask, “How do I get to that world?”

Li Qingniao fell silent again.

Chen Ji: “I’ll give you another twenty million!”

Li Qingniao: “People from North Kuru will handle the smuggling.”

Chen Ji: “Another twenty million… What’s that world like?”

Li Qingniao paused for two seconds: “You only have a total of forty-something million in your card.”

Chen Ji: “???”

“Big brother, are you faking it?”

He reached out to pinch Li Qingniao’s cheek, but no matter what he did, Li Qingniao remained silent.

The old man, with his back hunched and hands clasped behind him, asked, “Young man, why are you here?”

Chen Ji replied, “My parents passed away, and I’ve been somewhat withdrawn for the past six months, so my uncle and aunt sent me here.”

The old man narrowed his eyes slightly: “Young man, how much inheritance did your parents leave you?”

Chen Ji: “A villa worth over twenty million, and tens of millions in savings.”

The old man mused, “Then you should be careful of your uncle and aunt. If they apply to the court to have you declared ‘without civil capacity,’ you won’t be able to hold onto your property.”

Chen Ji’s expression was swallowed by the dimness of the ward: “How could that be? They’re my own family.”

The wind picked up outside the window, making the ivy sway. The shadows of the leaves cast by the moonlight danced and flickered on the ground like black flames.