At the end of the glass corridor was an elevator. Whether because of a malfunction or a power outage, its doors stood wide open.
The sanatorium had been abandoned for years. Even the lights along the corridors had long since lost power, let alone the elevator.
Under ordinary circumstances, there should have been little risk of a sudden ambush at the elevator doors, but they were dealing with the supernatural. In ghost stories of every kind, spirits stealing or somehow using electricity was hardly unusual. Nan Junyi therefore braced a hand against the elevator frame and leaned in just far enough to inspect the control panel.
Lin Xue kept watch for him. Then the two exchanged positions, and she stepped inside the elevator to take a look herself.
It was not that they distrusted each other. They were guarding against the possibility that the information either of them perceived might be interfered with, causing a discrepancy in what they saw.
Nan Junyi summarized, “Lowest level is B2, highest is the fourth floor. Six levels in total to search. The elevator has no power. Find the emergency stairs.”
Lin Xue naturally had no objection, and it did not take them long to find the stairwell to the right of the elevator lobby.
As technology had advanced, escalators and elevators had replaced the oldest staircases in everyday use. But traditional stairs had never actually been eliminated. They were required to remain inside emergency stairwells.
After all, elevators depended on electricity. If fire, mechanical failure, or even a natural disaster cut the power, people stranded on upper floors could trust their own legs more than anything else. That was when old-fashioned stairs became indispensable.
According to fire-safety requirements, stairwell doors were not supposed to be locked. In practice, many places locked them anyway for easier management and to prevent people from wandering in by mistake.
This sanatorium was no exception.
Fortunately, enough time had passed that the lock had rusted through completely. The door remained slightly ajar, rocking gently in the draft and producing a teeth-grating creak.
Lin Xue endured the harsh sound as the door was pushed open. Curled flakes of paint peeled away at the slightest touch and scattered across the floor. She instinctively brushed at them, then froze. “That’s strange. Why is there no way down?”
Nan Junyi frowned. “What?”
“B2.” Lin Xue pressed her lips together unconsciously. “The stairwell doesn’t go down to B2. Could it be a separate parking level, with the entrance outside?”
Nan Junyi considered it briefly, then nodded. “Possible. But the rain is too heavy right now. We’ll search the upper floors first and see whether we find any clues. Once the rain stops, we can circle the building outside.”
Lin Xue had no better idea and nodded.
As they climbed, she looked back toward the glass corridor again. The unnaturally ancient old woman had vanished. For some reason, an indescribable unease rose inside Lin Xue. “Will this rain really stop?”
Nearly every room on the second floor was locked. Only four could be opened. The two inspected all four and found that each was a single-occupancy patient room.
Water had seeped into two rooms, their walls and floors crawling with black mold that had bloomed after prolonged soaking. Something had happened to the other two: most of the wall connecting them had collapsed, burying nearly everything inside.
Scaffolding and several cans of dried paint still stood in the hallway, suggesting that someone had once intended to renovate the place.
The third floor added a library and dining hall. The fourth had fewer patient rooms but included a very large terrace and an indoor swimming pool. Outside the pool were two huge changing rooms, with shoes scattered all over the floor.
“This place has been completely abandoned. There’s no food.” After roughly checking the third and fourth floors, Lin Xue finally spoke, her frown deepening. “The dining hall on the third floor has nothing left except the fixed sinks that couldn’t be removed. Almost all the tables and chairs are gone, never mind refrigerators for storing food.”
“No food, no electricity, and B2 apparently requires the elevator.” Lin Xue wrapped one hand around her opposite arm. “The sanatorium is completely abandoned, and we can’t go into the city for help. The cruise ship wouldn’t simply send us here to wait for death. That leaves one possibility… the time hasn’t arrived yet. If that’s really the case, all we can do is wait.”
Lin Xue paced anxiously back and forth for a while, her footsteps echoing down the silent corridor. She soon stopped and leaned against the wall behind her, sinking into thought.
Waiting was frightening enough by itself. Waiting in silent darkness for an opportunity to appear, then relying on supernatural forces at the edge of life and death to uncover new clues, sounded not merely frightening but insane.
Nan Junyi looked toward the terrace. Plants had thoroughly invaded the doors and glass, blocking them almost completely. Rain seeped through the gaps in the vegetation and gathered into a cold puddle on the floor.
The only thing he could be certain of was that the rain outside was getting heavier and the sky darker.
The sanatorium was enormous. Even if all the newcomers joined them and worked together, thoroughly searching every area within a few hours in darkness would still be extremely difficult.
Had the accident not triggered a crisis of trust, the two groups would never have separated in the first place. Based on everything Nan Junyi had experienced so far, the cruise ship did not arrange environments that guaranteed death. A total wipeout on the very first day was almost impossible.
And if there was neither food nor electricity, and they were not meant to search the entire building, then what exactly had he overlooked?
There was also the hint: Keep Quiet.
The noise the newcomers made while starting the fire could not possibly have been small, not to mention all the talking after Nan Junyi and Lin Xue arrived… Or should he think in the opposite direction? Did they actually need to make noise?
No. That was wrong. Something was wrong somewhere.
Nan Junyi felt as if something flashed through his mind, but he could not grasp it. Lowering his eyes in thought, he asked, “Lin Xue, how much do you know about prisms?”
“Prisms?” Lin Xue paused, then answered instinctively, “Optical instruments? Dispersion experiments? Surveillance? Diversity?”
“And where did we see that old woman?”
Lin Xue understood at once. “The glass.”
“It was a mirror,” Nan Junyi said as he started toward the stairwell. “Back in the glass corridor, I noticed that the garden’s reflection in the glass was warped and chaotic. At the time I assumed it was caused by the rain. Then the old woman appeared.”
Lin Xue quickly followed. “You mean this place might have a surface world and an inner world?”
Bang!
Nan Junyi had not yet answered when a succession of violent impacts came from the first floor, followed immediately by the sound of glass cracking apart.
Both of them stopped for an instant, then abandoned conversation and rushed down the stairs toward the source of the noise in the first-floor glass corridor.
The terrified newcomers stood before the glass passage. Qiu Chen and two other young men were lifting a chair and smashing it hard into the glass wall. Normally a glass wall like this should not have been so fragile, but perhaps because of its age, spiderweb cracks had already spread from the center.
Floral Shirt sat on the floor in complete collapse, hugging his head and giving muffled sobs. A broad wet patch spread beneath him, and the air carried the smell of urine.
Fang Luyao was kneeling beside him, trying to comfort him.
“Jiang Ning isn’t here.” Lin Xue immediately noticed the missing person.
“What happened?” Nan Junyi moved around the three people hammering at the wall and grabbed Fang Luyao’s arm, preventing her from lashing out reflexively in fear. “What happened here?”
Fang Luyao startled first, then relaxed the instant she saw Nan Junyi’s face. Instead she clutched tightly at his sleeve, her face bloodless and her lips trembling. “Just now… when we got here, Jiang Ning disappeared. A-Ding was walking behind her. He said Jiang Ning was dragged inside.”
A-Ding was Floral Shirt.
At that moment, the glass wall could finally endure no more. As though pierced by a huge bullet, it suddenly collapsed inward. Yet no shards flew loose. The entire wall seemed frozen in the middle of breaking, curving into an arch while each fractured pane refracted brilliant seven-colored light.
The sensation was almost like a visual effect from a film. Broken glass refracted fragmented scenes, each one violently distorted until little remained but chaotic colors flickering on and off.
The outline of the light seemed to take on the shape of something material. It moved and pulsed: like a heart, like a brain, like internal organs, writhing, twitching, beating, drawing closer.
No one could react in that instant. As the glare forced everyone’s eyes shut, the flashing light abruptly ceased, and even the imagined beating of heart and brain seemed to slow.
Thump. Thump.
Nan Junyi forced his eyes open. Tears streamed uncontrollably down his face, not from grief but as a physical reaction to the light, and he immediately had to narrow them again against the lingering glare.
A soft handkerchief wiped away the tears, and a gentle female voice said, “There, there. The examination is finished. There’s no need to be afraid.”
A light bulb. Electricity.
Nan Junyi closed his eyes briefly to adjust, confirming that what he had just seen was a glowing light bulb. His hand should have been gripping Fang Luyao’s arm, but now it was wrapped around the armrest of a chair, and all four of his limbs were restrained.
He blinked rapidly and angled his face away from the light, forcing his vision to recover as quickly as possible. A woman dressed as a nurse was undoing his restraints. Two dim silhouettes drifted away nearby. By straining his eyes, he could just make out what looked like two doctors leaving through the door.
By the time the nurse released the restraint on his left ankle, Nan Junyi’s sight had finally cleared enough for him to understand where he was.
He was lying in a treatment chair. In front of him stood a collection of extremely old, cumbersome medical instruments, while numerous cables of unknown purpose sprawled across the floor.
“Shh, shh.” The nurse stood and stroked his forehead with an expression full of affection. “There, there, 302. It’s all over. Keep Quiet.”
302? Keep Quiet?
Nan Junyi was helped into an equally old-fashioned wheelchair. The nurse seemed very pleased with his cooperation, praising his performance today over and over and even fetching a blanket to cover him.
Nan Junyi used the opportunity to study her clothing.
She wore a white head covering reminiscent of a nun’s veil, wrapping her entire head and neck before falling heavily over her shoulders. Over an unusually thick white dress was an apron, and from one pocket hung a pair of surgical scissors that looked distinctly dangerous.
Rather than a nurse, the woman looked more like a religious devotee.