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

Chapter 39 Falling into the Painting
As the hallucinations in ward 214 receded like the tide, the suffocating sense of oppression also dissipated.

The tense nerves of everyone finally relaxed briefly, but everyone's face was filled with solemnity.

"All personnel report status!" An Mu's voice broke the silence, his sharp gaze sweeping over each team member.

"I'm fine..." Mo Fei got up from the ground, rubbing his chest which was still sore from the impact, his eyes filled with lingering fear. "That old woman was really strong! I almost thought I had broken my ribs."

"Lu Yueqi... has exhausted a lot of mental energy, but is physically fine." Lu Yueqi leaned against the wall, her face a little pale, but her eyes were much more determined than before. Successfully using her own strength to help the team just now gave her an unprecedented courage amidst her fear—the courage to protect her teammates.

All eyes were on Lan Ce.

Lan Ce pushed up his glasses, which were about to slip off his nose, took a deep breath, and calmed his still somewhat disordered breathing.

He glanced down at his mental pollution index on the tactical tablet, which had just retreated from the yellow warning zone, and his voice was slightly dry, a trait he himself hadn't noticed: "Lan Ce, condition... stable. Cognitive system has been recalibrated. The memory intrusion just now directly affected my emotional cognitive layer... I underestimated the level of danger here."

This was a rare instance of Lan Ce so frankly admitting his "mistake." For someone who holds data and logic as his guiding principles, the experience of being overwhelmed by emotion and losing his rationality was undoubtedly a huge shock.

“This isn’t your fault,” Anmu said in a deep voice. “We all underestimated it. The nightmare here doesn’t fight us; it uses our most cherished memories as weapons to turn us into a part of itself. This is much harder to deal with than physical attacks.”

He walked to the empty wheelchair and picked up the glass marble. The marble was cold to the touch, yet it seemed to retain a trace of the warmth that the old woman had held onto throughout her life.

“Bai Yu,” An Mu turned to look at Bai Yu, who had remained silent, “you just said that this is a collection of ‘memory bubbles.’ This room… is just one of them?”

Bai Yu nodded, his eyes reflecting the endless corridor: "Yes. This hospital is like a giant beehive. The obsession of each patient who died here forms an independent 'honeycomb,' which is a 'memory prison.' We just entered one of them. And in this hospital, there are at least 158 ​​such 'prisons.'"

One hundred and fifty-eight...

This number sent a chill down everyone's spine. It meant that every step they took from here on out could lead them into a new trap with unknown rules.

"What about Ruan Bo, the one we're looking for?" Mo Fei asked. "Are we supposed to break into each house one by one? If we do that, we'll probably forget who we are before we even find him!"

“No.” Bai Yu shook his head. He raised his left hand, and the faint “Eye of the Vortex” mark on the back of his hand was transmitting a different signal. “The mark of the ‘Tower of Ten Thousand Heads’ can sense the remnants of another power of the same origin. Ruan Bo… he shouldn’t be here.”

"Not here?" An Mu frowned.

“This corridor is just the outer perimeter. It’s the first layer of defense for this memory hive.” Bai Yu’s gaze drifted deeper into the corridor. “The real core area, or rather, the place where Ruan Bo last disappeared, should be over there.”

Everyone followed his gaze.

Deep within that dark corridor, there seemed to be a double door painted dark red, quite different from the other white hospital room doors.

"What is that place?"

“According to the hospital’s original floor plan,” Lance quickly pulled up the data on his tablet, “passing through the corridor of ward A, there should be… the children’s rehabilitation center and recreation room.”

Children's Rehabilitation Center...

The word instantly became associated with that eerie nursery rhyme and that glass marble.

"It seems our real game has only just begun." An Mu put the glass marble back into his pocket, his voice regaining its usual composure. "Rest time complete. Target: Children's Rehabilitation Center. All personnel, maintain maximum alert. Let's go!"

The team set out again.

This time, they encountered no further obstacles. The tightly closed ward doors on both sides of the corridor seemed to have fallen asleep, and no sound came from them. But this silence only made the atmosphere more oppressive.

They are heading from shallow waters into a real abyss.

After walking for about five minutes, they finally arrived at the dark red double doors.

A wooden sign hangs on the door, with balloons and smiley faces painted on it in faded paint, and four words written crookedly in the middle: "Sunshine Home".

The warm and inviting name stands in stark contrast to the eerie and terrifying surroundings.

Mo Fei reached out and pushed open the door, and a smell even more complex than that in the ward wafted out.

It smelled of rust, dust, colored crayons, and a faint hint of milk and blood.

Behind the door was a hall that was much more spacious than I had imagined.

The room was cluttered with children's-sized tables and chairs, a deflated ball, several rusty toy tricycles, and a dusty pool of building blocks.

But what's most striking is the room's walls.

The four walls were covered with graffiti.

The brushstrokes in these paintings are childlike and chaotic, and the colors are so vibrant they are almost blinding. At first glance, they seem to depict common things: the sun, houses, grass, flowers...

But if you look closely for a few seconds, you'll discover maddening details hidden in these paintings.

One painting depicts a "doctor" in a white coat, with no facial features, only a huge, wide grin that stretches to his ears and is covered in stitches. His ten fingers are ten enormous, gleaming syringes.

In another painting, a girl is locked in an iron cage. Her eyes are painted as two black holes, and her mouth is wide open, as if she is making a silent scream.

Another painting depicts an "operation." Several faceless doctors are surrounding a "patient" lying on a bed. Instead of scalpels, they are using spoons to scoop something out...

"My God..." Lu Yueqi only glanced at it before feeling a wave of nausea wash over her. She quickly looked away, not daring to look any longer.

"This is Dean Wen Maoran's 'Memory Stripping Therapy'." Lan Ce's voice was icy cold and devoid of any emotion. "This is not 'Sunny Home,' this is an exhibition hall of hell."

"That bastard Wen Maoran!" Mo Fei's fists clenched so tightly they cracked, and the anger in his eyes was almost bursting out.

“He has already paid the price for his actions,” An Mu said in a deep voice. “Now, our task is to find Ruan Bo. Spread out and search, stay alert, and don’t stare at the paintings on the wall for too long!”

The group immediately dispersed and began a thorough search of the eerie activity room.

Bai Yu did not act immediately. He simply stood quietly in the center of the room, his gaze slowly sweeping over the graffiti on the wall.

“What wonderful primitive art.” Hei Yan’s voice was full of admiration. “No technique, no rules, only the purest and most primal fear. The final cries of these souls before they are crushed are far more moving than those pretentious paintings. Bai Yu, look at that painting, that child, he painted himself as a tree, and the fruit on the tree is all his own eyeballs… What imaginative despair!”

Bai Yu's gaze finally settled on the wall at the very back of the room.

There was only one painting on that wall.

But it was larger than all the other paintings combined, taking up almost the entire wall.

At the center of the painting is a gigantic humanoid silhouette. It wears a white lab coat, but its body is composed of countless intertwined black tentacles. Its head has no face, only a huge, empty vortex. At its feet kneel countless stick figures, all with their hands raised, as if offering themselves up to this monster.

This painting is stylistically quite different from the others. Its lines are precise and powerful, as if it were not painted by a child.

Just then, out of the corner of Bai Yu's eye, she caught a glimpse of something in a corner beneath the huge mural.

He walked over and squatted down.

It was a hardcover notebook tucked into a corner and a gap between a pile of building blocks. The cover was badly worn, but its quality was still evident.

Bai Yu's heart skipped a beat.

He reached out and took out the notebook.

Turning to the first page, a line of neat yet powerful handwriting comes into view.

“I am Ruan Bo. If you see this notebook, it means I have failed. But please don’t give up, the truth about the ‘Tower’ must be revealed.”

found it!
"Captain!" Bai Yu called out immediately.

The crowd quickly moved closer to him.

Bai Yu quickly flipped through the notes. The contents shocked him.

Not only did Ruan Bo find this place, but through the notes left by his friend and his own professional knowledge, his understanding of this nightmare of the mental hospital was even deeper than the Bureau of Investigation's initial assessment.

"...The core issue here isn't resentment, but rather a collection of 'passive information entropy.' Wen Maoran's experiment wasn't simply about stripping away memories; he shattered all the patients' memories, turning them into a chaotic 'information soup.' And he himself became the 'ladle' of this soup. He was attempting to achieve what he called 'spiritual immortality' through this method..."

"...I made a mistake. I shouldn't have tried to understand it. When I started analyzing its structure, it 'read' my memories as well. It began to mimic my thinking, constructing traps that I was familiar with. We must find its 'singularity' immediately and destroy it before my 'self' is completely diluted..."

“…I understand. The singularity isn’t in any physical entity, but in the ‘concept.’ It’s that painting! It wasn’t painted by the children; it’s Wen Maoran’s own ‘spiritual coordinates,’ his ‘throne.’ It’s the ‘backstage control room’ of the entire prison of memories…”

The notes ended abruptly there. On the last page, only an arrow drawn in blood pointed to the enormous mural.

Just as Bai Yu closed the notebook.

The entire activity room shook violently without warning!
"What's going on?" Mo Fei immediately raised his battle axe.

"Oh no!" Lan Ce exclaimed, staring at the tablet. "The mental pollution index of the entire space is skyrocketing! It's been enraged! We took something we shouldn't have!"

Before the words were even finished, the eerie graffiti on the wall began to "come alive".

The vibrant paint in the painting began to drip slowly from the wall like melting wax. It gathered on the ground, wriggled, and finally reconstructed itself into hideous monsters!

Monsters "seeped" out from the walls on all sides, stood up unsteadily, and let out a series of disturbing shrieks. They slowly surrounded the five people in the center of the room.

"Fire!" An Mu shouted, pulling the trigger first.

A melee broke out instantly!
With each swing of Mo Fei's battle axe, he could cleave one or two monsters into countless points of light, but those points of light would quickly recombine elsewhere.

Lancer's sonic jammer can temporarily throw them into disarray, but it cannot cause any real damage.

Lu Yueqi's "Deep Frost" power could effectively freeze them, but there were simply too many monsters, and she soon felt her mental strength failing.

“This won’t do! We’ll be worn down here! Bai Yu, do you see anything?” An Mu shouted to Bai Yu while firing.

Bai Yu's gaze was fixed on the huge mural at the deepest part of the room.

Ruan Bo's judgment was correct; that was the root of everything.

If it isn't destroyed, these monsters will keep coming.

"cover me!"

Bai Yu stuffed Ruan Bo's notes into her bosom and charged toward the mural like an arrow released from a bow.

"Bai Yu!" An Mu was both shocked and furious, but it was too late to stop him.

"I'll clear the way!" Mo Fei roared, sweeping his battle axe and forcefully clearing a path for Bai Yu through the monster horde.

Bai Yu's figure moved through the monsters' attack, getting closer and closer to the mural.

He could feel a massive spiritual force, filled with madness and malice, emanating from behind the painting, like a giant vortex trying to suck his soul in.

“Come on, come on, my dear little Baiyu.” Heiyan’s voice was filled with morbid excitement. “Let me see what kind of magnificent scenery lies behind this ‘hellish landscape’ drawn by a madman. Go, place your hand on it, and let’s… become its new masters!”

Finally, Bai Yu rushed to the mural.

Without the slightest hesitation, under the horrified gazes of his teammates behind him, he pressed his right hand heavily onto the center of the mural, onto the huge, empty vortex that represented Wen Maoran.

hum-

In an instant, Bai Yu felt as if her soul had been gripped tightly by an invisible hand and then pulled backward!
The world before my eyes instantly lost all color and sound.

His consciousness seemed to have fallen into an abyss composed of black and white.

In the real world, Bai Yu's body jolted violently, her eyes instantly lost all their luster, and she slowly slumped down like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Bai language!"

An Mu and Lu Yueqi simultaneously let out a desperate cry.

The monsters surrounding them seemed to receive some kind of command and all stopped attacking at that moment.

They all turned around in unison, silently "staring" at the unconscious young man lying in front of the mural with their empty or distorted faces.

They are waiting.

Will this new "intruder" be completely swallowed by the torrent of memories... or will it become their new "king"...?

(End of this chapter)