Chapter 3: Eye of Insight

Lin Yan’s voice cut through the silence of the corridor, carrying just enough concern to make him sound like nothing more than an ordinary patient worried about his doctor.

The doctor froze mid-step.

His lifeless eyes slowly swiveled toward Lin Yan. Deep within those dull pupils, something seemed to writhe.

The air itself felt frozen. The reek of formaldehyde grew even more pungent, nearly suffocating him.

“What… did you say?” The doctor’s voice sank into an even harsher rasp. His grip tightened around the surgical scissors until his knuckles turned white.

Wearing the perfect expression of innocent confusion tinged with just a hint of fear, Lin Yan pointed at the doctor’s chest. “I mean… the earpiece on your stethoscope.” He hesitated, as though unsure of himself. “It looks like there’s something red on it. Is… is that blood?”

As he spoke, he subtly took half a step back. His right hand remained clenched around the Malevolent Eye of Insight. The rough fabric scraped against his palm, its icy chill making it feel as though he were gripping a real, ice-cold eyeball.

Instinctively, the doctor’s gaze dropped to the stethoscope hanging around his neck.

The instant his attention shifted, Lin Yan moved!

He didn’t run.

He didn’t attack.

Instead, he snapped his right arm forward. The crude little object, cobbled together from a fountain pen nib, fishing line, and a strip of bandage, sliced through the air with a faint whistle before landing near the doctor’s feet.

Tink.

The sound was barely louder than a raindrop hitting the floor.

At that exact moment, an invisible chill exploded outward from the object.

The Malevolent Eye of Insight has been activated!

Nothing changed in Lin Yan’s field of vision, yet he felt a thin thread of his mental energy peel away from him, forging a fleeting connection with the eye lying on the floor.

And then, he saw .

Not through his own eyes, but through an all-encompassing awareness, as though he were seeing the world from a God’s-eye view. Everything within a sixteen-foot radius came into focus in stark black and white.

He saw the doctor’s polished leather shoes, their soles caked with a layer of dark crimson filth.

He saw patches of peeling paint along the corridor walls. Black, vein-like tendrils writhed just beneath the exposed plaster, as though the walls themselves were alive.

He saw the pool of blood near the corner that hadn’t yet dried. Beside it lay a discarded woman’s shoe, stained with bright red lipstick.

Most importantly, he looked at the doctor.

Through this strange new perception, the doctor no longer looked human. His entire body was wrapped in thick, tar-like black mist. Countless tiny tendrils stretched out from the darkness, tethering themselves to his white coat and the stethoscope hanging around his neck. Embedded in the chest piece of the stethoscope was a vivid crimson heart!

It beat slowly. Each pulse radiated overwhelming malice and maddening chaos.

But something even stranger caught Lin Yan’s attention. The rubber tubing connected to the stethoscope’s earpieces was changing color before his eyes. The flesh-toned tubing was rapidly being overtaken by a spreading crimson, as though blood were coursing through it.

The marking had worked. In an instant, Lin Yan felt a chill run down his spine.

[Rule 2: You must obey every instruction given by a doctor. However, if the doctor is carrying a red stethoscope, ignore everything they say and proceed immediately to the nurses’ station for assistance.]

The doctor was changing. The stethoscope around his neck was turning red!

“What… did you do?”

As if sensing the invisible gaze fixed on him, the doctor snapped his head up, savage fury blazing in his eyes.

The disguise was gone.

The skin across his face split apart with a series of sickening cracks, exposing the rotting muscle beneath. Half of the stethoscope around his neck had already turned a lurid crimson.

“Looks like we’ll have to start your treatment early!”

With a guttural roar, the doctor abandoned all pretense of being human. Dropping onto all fours, he lunged at Lin Yan like a wild beast.

He was terrifyingly fast.

A fetid, blood-tinged gust slammed into him.

Run!

Without a second’s hesitation, Lin Yan spun around and bolted in the opposite direction.

He didn’t run back toward Ward 304 because that way was a dead end. Instead, he headed for Ward 307.

The note on the back of the little boy’s photograph had mentioned “the big sister in Ward 307.” She could be an important lead.

Roar!

The doctor barreled after him, closing the distance with frightening speed. The surgical scissors scraped across the floor, shrieking against the tiles with a grating metallic screech that set Lin Yan’s teeth on edge.

Lin Yan wasn’t exactly slow himself. Years spent at the workbench had taught him the importance of staying active, so he exercised regularly and stayed in good shape.

But the monster behind him was even faster.

Its icy killing intent felt close enough to pierce straight through his back.

I’ve got to lose it somehow!

Lin Yan’s gaze swept over the doors lining both sides of the corridor. Most were sealed shut, their room numbers too blurry to read. As he sprinted past, he shoved at one of the doors, but it didn’t budge, as though it had been welded shut.

“305… 306…”

He counted the room numbers under his breath as he ran.

Just as he passed a treatment room with its door left slightly ajar, something lunged from the darkness.

Creak!

The door burst open. A shriveled, bluish-purple arm shot out like lightning, clawing for Lin Yan’s arm. Its skin was riddled with old needle marks, and black grime was packed beneath its fingernails.

Lin Yan had been expecting an ambush. The instant the arm reached for him, he jerked sharply toward the wall, narrowly slipping past its grasp. Using that momentum, he slammed his foot into the treatment room door.

Bang!

The heavy door crashed into something inside with a dull thud. The arm recoiled in pain, and an enraged roar erupted from the room.

That split second was all it took.

The doctor was almost on him.

The stench of rot washed over Lin Yan. He could practically feel the rusted surgical scissors about to graze the back of his neck.

At the last possible second, he caught sight of a door farther down the hall.

Room 307.

There it is!

Resolve hardened in Lin Yan’s eyes. Instead of speeding up, he stopped dead, letting his own momentum carry him into a sideways slide as he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Miss Nurse! There’s a patient here who needs emergency treatment! He’s breaking the rules!”

It was a complete bluff, but he wasn’t shouting to just anyone. The one he was really calling out to was Room 307.

Bang!

Lin Yan hit the floor hard, pain exploding through his elbows and knees. Ignoring it, he rolled onto his back and fixed his gaze on the doctor bearing down on him.

The doctor seemed caught off guard by the sudden maneuver. Mid-charge, it hesitated, its blood-red eyes flicking toward the door to Room 307.

The corridor fell eerily silent.

Only Lin Yan’s ragged breathing and the monster’s wet, rasping wheeze broke the stillness, echoing down the corridor.

One second.

Two seconds.

The door to Room 307 silently eased open a crack.

From the narrow gap, an eye peered out.

It was a beautiful eye, framed by long lashes. Its pale brown iris held the clear, bewildered gaze of a young woman.

But something was horribly wrong.

The crack in the door was only about five feet above the floor, yet the eye rested almost level with the top of the doorframe. It was as though whatever stood behind the door was floating in midair, or had a neck stretched to an impossible length.

“Who’s… calling for me?”

A soft, timid woman’s voice sounded from behind the door.

The instant the doctor saw that eye, its entire body stiffened. For the first time, something resembling wariness flickered across its rotting face.

It let out a low growl, cast one reluctant glance at Lin Yan sprawled on the floor, then another toward Room 307 before slowly backing away.

The red tubing on the stethoscope around its neck gradually faded, returning to its original flesh-colored hue.

“When it’s time for your next treatment,” the doctor rasped, “you’ll receive special care .”

With that final threat, it turned and strode down the corridor, disappearing into the darkness beyond the corner.

The immediate danger had passed.

Lin Yan finally let out the breath he’d been holding. Only then did the aches throughout his body catch up with him. Every muscle throbbed, and cold sweat had already soaked through the back of his shirt.

Grunting through the pain, Lin Yan struggled to his feet and looked warily toward Room 307.

The eye was still there, peering at him through the crack in the door with quiet curiosity.

“Are you a new patient?” the woman asked softly. Her voice carried an innocent, almost childlike quality that seemed untouched by the horrors around her. “That doctor’s really scary. He’s always roaming the hallways, dragging off patients who don’t behave.”

Lin Yan dusted himself off and did his best to look harmless. “Yeah, I just got here. Thanks for helping me back there.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” The woman sounded almost bashful. “I didn’t really do anything… It’s just that the doctor doesn’t dare come near my room. Maybe it’s because I used to be a nurse here?”

A nurse?

Something clicked in Lin Yan’s mind.

The rules had mentioned that if he ever encountered a doctor wearing a red stethoscope, he should seek help at the nurses’ station. Could she be the breakthrough he was looking for?

“You were a nurse?” Lin Yan probed. “Then do you know where discharge papers are issued?”

The eye behind the door blinked slowly, as though thinking it over.

“Only the director can approve a patient’s discharge,” she answered after a moment. “He usually stays in his office on the top floor and rarely comes out.”

“What about the nurses’ station?” Lin Yan pressed. “Where is it?”

“It’s at the far east end of the second floor,” she replied, then her voice grew noticeably quieter. “But… it’s dangerous now. The other nurses… they’ve all become… different. I’m the only one who still remembers that I was a nurse.”

Her words were disjointed, but they revealed more than enough.

Lin Yan quickly pieced the clues together. The director’s office was on the top floor, while the nurses’ station was at the eastern end of the second floor. As for the woman in Room 307, she seemed to have retained at least some of her sanity. Unlike every other monster he’d encountered so far, she actually seemed willing to help.

“By the way…” Lin Yan suddenly remembered what was written on the back of the photograph. He pulled the black-and-white photo from his pocket and held it up from a safe distance so the eye behind the door could see it. “Do you know this boy? I think he mentioned you.”

The moment she saw the photo, the eye behind the door snapped wide open. Her pupil contracted sharply, fear and grief flashing across it.

“Xiao Zhe… It’s Xiao Zhe!” Her voice trembled. “He… he was one of the children under my care. He was such a good kid, and he always carried that ragged little doll around with him.”

“What happened to him?” Lin Yan asked gently, careful not to agitate her.

“They… they took him away.” Her voice cracked as she fought back tears. “That night, the doctors said he needed ‘special treatment,’ and he never came back. His doll was left behind in the corridor. I picked it up because I wanted to give it back to him, but…”

Her voice cut off abruptly.

The beautiful eye suddenly turned bloodshot. Blackness spread rapidly across the white of her eye until nothing remained but an inky black void.

“But they said I’d broken the rules! They locked me up! They slit open my throat! Then they hung my head on the door!!”

Her voice rose into a shrill, ear-piercing scream, thick with venomous hatred and madness.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The door to Room 307 began to shake violently, as though something inside were hurling itself against it over and over. Dark red blood seeped through the crack beneath the door, and the thick, metallic stench of fresh blood instantly filled the corridor.

“RULE BREAKERS ALL HAVE TO DIE!!!”

Lin Yan went pale. Without a second thought, he spun around and bolted.

So much for friendly monsters. Figures. In a world of urban legends, every bit of friendliness is just another trap.

Lin Yan sprinted down the corridor.

Behind him came the explosive crash of a door being smashed off its hinges, followed by the grating scrape of something massive dragging itself across the floor.

Drip… drip…

The sound of liquid hitting the floor chased after him, growing closer by the second.

Gritting his teeth, Lin Yan swept his gaze over the room numbers flashing past.

312… 311… 310…

The stairwell was just ahead!

He lunged through the fire door and hurtled down the stairs without a second thought. The rules never forbade using the stairs. They only said patients couldn’t leave their rooms at night. It is daytime now, so the stairwell should be relatively safe… right?

The stairwell was even darker than the corridor. A row of dim green emergency lights lined the walls, bathing everything in a sickly green glow.

It was an old grated steel staircase. Every step let out a rusty creak that reverberated through the empty stairwell, making it sound as though countless unseen footsteps were climbing up and down alongside him.

Lin Yan didn’t dare slow down and kept racing downward.

As he reached the landing between the third and second floors, something in the corner of his eye made him freeze.

A small figure was crouched in the shadows of the landing.

It had its back to him, its tiny shoulders trembling with quiet sobs. Clutched in its arms was a worn cloth doll with one button eye missing.

It was Xiao Zhe, the little boy from the photograph.

Lin Yan came to an abrupt stop.

Ahead of him was an unknown ghost child.

Behind him, the rampaging nurse was closing in.

He was trapped between two nightmares.