After being poisoned by mushrooms, all the strange creatures became fascinated by me.

Ward 820.

At this time, patients were all receiving treatment in their respective examination rooms, and the corridor was quiet. Tang Li had watched too many TV dramas and was always worried that someone might be hiding in some corner of the ward to ambush her, so she left the ward door wide open, ready to escape at any moment.

As she moved around the room, her footsteps sounded all the more loud against the backdrop of the silence on the eighth floor.

Tang Li frowned; a strange feeling filled the ward.

First of all, this doesn't look like a man's room.

Tang Li's gaze traveled from the dresses hanging on the standing clothes rack behind the door to the comb in front of the mirror in the bathroom.

The private hospital's wards were all single rooms, which almost ruled out the possibility that Lao Ding was sharing a room with someone else. And she clearly remembered that Lao Ding had a buzz cut.

Tang Li's mind conjured up the eerie scene of Old Ding wearing a skirt, standing in front of a mirror and combing his hair, and she felt a vague unease.

She reassured herself: Lao Ding might just be a biological male who identifies as female.

There weren't any cosmetics on the sink. Tang Li breathed a slight sigh of relief and took two more steps into the bathroom.

She suddenly stopped in her tracks, her eyes fixed on the drain under the showerhead.

How could this be...?

The drain has a grid-like stainless steel cover plate embedded in it. This type of cover plate is very common and is generally used to block larger debris to prevent the sewer from getting clogged.

On the lid, there was a pear-shaped object, or rather, something that almost every girl is very familiar with.

It was a clump of jet-black hair that was blocked by the fence.

Tang Li's breath hitched: Even if Lao Ding considered himself a woman, he couldn't possibly conjure up a clump of long hair out of thin air.

Did a woman enter Lao Ding's room, or is there a problem with the information provided by Jiang Hui?

A vague sense of crisis lingered, and Tang Li left the bathroom and returned to her room. She began to search carefully on her pillow and comb, but found no more long hair.

She thought, maybe it was just that one of the female patients' showers was broken and they had borrowed Lao Ding's bathroom.

Aside from that, Tang Li didn't notice anything else unusual. She turned to leave, but suddenly stopped as she was closing the door.

A faint red glimpse appeared behind the door. As vivid as blood.

The ward door opens inwards. When Tang Li entered the room, she pushed the door open completely, so the wall next to the door was blocked by the door panel, becoming her blind spot.

What's behind the door?

Tang Li's heart began to pound. She reached into her pocket, grabbed the knife she had just taken from Jiang Hui, and with her other hand she gripped the doorknob, slowly pulling the door open.

Behind the door was a snow-white wall, on which were pictures painted with some kind of bright red paint.

It doesn't smell like blood; it must be red paint with such a pungent odor. Tang Li reassured herself, her gaze completely drawn to the picture in front of her.

The first picture shows two little figures, a man and a woman, holding hands as they walk into a square space capsule-like object, which looks like a machine.

The second image shows a small male figure walking out of a machine alone, while the small female figure has disappeared. The male figure's face is contorted; despite being a simple line drawing, his pain and grief are palpable.

The third image shows a small male figure standing alone, with an eerie, protruding belly. He holds his belly with both hands, his body hunched over in pain, yet strangely, the corners of his mouth are turned up high, clearly an expression of extreme happiness.

The last image shows a small male figure lying down, surrounded by several faceless men. A huge gash has been cut open in his abdomen, and one of the faceless men is pulling something out of his stomach. The other faceless men are clapping and cheering, while the small male figure still wears a smile on his face.

What exactly is inside his stomach?

Tang Li squinted, stood a little further away, and stared at the simple pattern.

In that instant, she seemed to be trapped in a strange vision. Her body, not even a little finger, could no longer move; she could only watch helplessly as everything unfolded.

A rusty, bloody stench suddenly replaced the smell of paint, assaulting her nostrils and making her want to vomit. The dried red brushstrokes on the wall now shone with a fresh brightness, as if they had just been applied. Then, each red mark on the brush became a fresh wound, from which red paint flowed continuously like blood.

Just as a four-panel comic strip has been transformed into the simplest animation, with the flow of red paint, all four panels begin to move.

Tang Li's ears were filled with a jumble of sounds: the two little figures in the first painting were whispering to each other; the little boy in the second painting was crying out in despair; the little boy in the third painting was laughing happily; and the faceless figures in the last painting were cheering, clapping, and applauding together. All the sounds burst forth in Tang Li's ears, or perhaps not in her ears, but in her mind.

At that moment, Tang Li understood what the faceless man had taken out of the little man's belly.

A baby's cry pierced through all the chaos.

An unseen revelation struck Tang Li.

So that's how it is. Those faceless people were delivering babies.

They pulled a baby out of the little man's belly.

It felt like a lot had happened, but it all happened in an instant.

Tang Li got burned.

She took a step back abruptly. Before her was still the wall painted with static patterns, the pungent smell of paint still lingering. There was no trace of the baby, no crying or laughing.

The only sound was her own heartbeat.

Another hallucination? Tang Li thought, her whole body drenched in cold sweat. But what about that scalding sensation just now?

As she thought this, even the last bit of heat from the "hot" sensation disappeared.

Tang Li didn't know that just a second ago—

All six layers of protective spells that Jiang Hui had placed on her body shattered.

After leaving ward 820.

Tang Li walked along the corridor, and although nothing happened in the end, she was somewhat absent-minded.

She hadn't been staring at the patterns for long, but the bright red strokes seemed to be imprinted on her retina. Whenever she glanced at the white walls on both sides of the corridor, the four images would faintly appear.

It can't possibly be some new type of floaters.

Tang Li briefly drifted off into thought, recalling the story Old Ding had told her in the restaurant that morning.

A man and a woman entered the machine, and the man came out alone. This story matches the first two of the four images.

The "beer belly" that she saw in the corridor earlier, and the woman's face that she might have seen in a hallucination, could probably be matched with the third image.

However, the cheers and applause from the faceless little man rang in Tang Li's ears again. She frowned and pondered: But she also felt a vague sense of déjà vu about the fourth picture.

Why? Had she seen such a scene before?

Tang Li tried her best to search her memories, while wandering aimlessly around the eighth floor.

She paused slightly, almost bumping into someone who had just appeared at the end of the corridor.

The long-necked nurse, with a neck as thin as a snake, stood very close to Tang Li during rounds and asked with a gentle smile, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Lord Karari?"