Chapter 3: The Evil of Human Nature

3. The Evil of Human Nature

Lin Ling has two identities; currently, he is the owner of this "Shenqi Miaomiaowu," and his other identity is that of an escaped patient from a Mental Hospital.

Rest assured, those people will never be able to catch him again.

Because that group of people in the hospital could never imagine that their missing Patient No. 8 actually escaped by transmigrating.

Having lost his memory since childhood and growing up almost entirely within the Mental Hospital, Lin Ling once turned the asylum upside down, often engaging in behaviors such as inducing fellow patients to self-harm, exacerbating patients' conditions through various means, and even teasing the staff until they developed psychological trauma. The Mental Hospital suffered deeply and was in utter misery, so in desperation, they locked Lin Ling in a single room.

In the single room, with no one left to tease, Lin Ling began to ponder philosophy out of sheer boredom. Then, suddenly one day, it was as if he had a breakthrough; he had an epiphany and actually recalled many things from his past. At the same time, he felt an indescribable connection established between himself and this cabin, which was originally located in an interdimensional space, as if the cabin had deeply bound itself to his spirit and soul, making him realize that he could rely on this small shop to leave the Mental Hospital at any time.

Regarding this, Lin Ling thought at the time that this strange cabin was just like the knock-off story "Harry Potter and Doraemon" told by Laowang, the old man in the next room—a Golden Snitch that could take people through time and space.

In short, Lin Ling, who still had a bit of familial affection for the Mental Hospital, decided to leave a letter for all the staff of the Mental Hospital before departing. From the old Dean, who was often driven to a heart attack by him, down to the red-capped mushroom under the third large tree in the backyard, he left a message for everyone, expressing his perfunctory reluctance to part, and incidentally mentioned the memories he had recovered. Only then did he leave the Mental Hospital with satisfaction, bringing this cabin loaded with eerie objects to this current world, and opened his small shop in a place rarely known to others.

Of course, what Lin Ling did not know was that after the old Dean saw the contents of the letter he left behind, he almost died of anger.

"Dear Grandpa Dean, I suddenly remembered my past; it turns out I was once a wealthy king with a heart yearning for world peace..." The old Dean didn't even finish reading a single sentence before his vision went black; he crumpled the letter in his rage and threw it on the ground.

This is the fourth autobiography Lin Ling has told so far, and each one is more outrageous than the last.

No one can trust a mental patient diagnosed with severe fantasy disorder and a certain degree of antisocial personality disorder...

To this day, Lin Ling considers himself a mature boss. Having arrived in this world for only three months, he has completed a total of three deals—a remarkable achievement!

Look, legends about his little shop have even started to circulate online.

"Ah, it's afternoon tea time." Lin Ling dug out a pack of spicy gluten strips from the refrigerator that refreshed with fresh ingredients every day. While complaining that the spicy strips were as tough as rubber bands, he walked toward the computer at the front desk and sighed, "Today is another day of high-speed grinding."

Chewing on the tough, hard-to-eat spicy strips, Lin Ling went to the most popular forum platform for sharing supernatural and mysterious matters, looking for the next little white rabbit like Yu Lianyun.

Soon, his gaze locked onto a pinned post about a missing person. He tapped away, typing on the keyboard: "Original poster, have you ever heard of a magical Forest Cabin?"

After returning to her hotel room, Yu Lianyun immediately paid extra to have the hotel staff get her an old-fashioned videotape player.

After setting up the equipment, Yu Lianyun rubbed her hands, which had developed chilblains, and then tremblingly inserted the black videotape into the player.

"I don't want to die yet..." Yu Lianyun murmured. She truly hoped this videotape could become a magical treasure to reverse her life, which was nearing its end; she was truly at the end of her rope.

The player made a distinct whirring sound, and the television began to display silent images.

At the start, the screen showed a four-second countdown. With each count, the image would blink, as if the countdown was being filmed by a mysterious eye. Yu Lianyun suddenly felt an inexplicable sensation of being watched by the screen.

The countdown ended, and the actual content recorded on the tape officially began. First, a woman appeared wearing a white gauze dress, her hair disheveled. She sat in front of a vanity mirror combing her thick, long hair. Most of her long hair almost covered her entire face, but through the motion of combing, the fair face, beautiful jawline, and heart-stirring eyebrows and corners of her eyes exposed beneath the parted hair made it easy to see that this woman had a stunningly beautiful face.

Yu Lianyun couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration for this fleeting glimpse. She continued to watch. The first half of the film seemed to be showcasing the daily life of this beautiful woman. Strangely, even though she was the protagonist under the lens, apart from that one image in the vanity mirror, the woman never showed her face again, and the other characters who appeared in the white-clad woman's life were the same... The recording angle of this footage was quite bizarre, giving one an indescribable sense of voyeurism.

In this first half, there was a segment that Yu Lianyun paid a little attention to: the interaction between the woman and one of her neighbors was somewhat confrontational.

Whenever the woman went out, two indifferent faces would always poke out from the doorway of the house next door—one old, one young. Their features were similar, seemingly father and son. They were always expressionless, but their eyes were full of dark desire.

They were clearly peeping, but when the white-clad woman felt their gaze and turned back to look at them, the father and son never unashamedly withdrew their gaze or hid; instead, they continued to stare, gazing at her with even more fervent eyes, and the two faces even revealed a morbid, wild laughter.

The woman lowered her head, wanting to leave, but at this moment, the mistress of the neighbor's house would always happen to return from her errands, then reveal a ferocious expression at the silent, head-bowed woman, cursing viciously. Unfortunately, this was a silent recording, and Yu Lianyun didn't know what the people in the video were saying. She could only guess roughly; in any case, it wasn't anything good.

This seemingly cyclical daily life recording repeated four times in total, each time slightly different. The white-clad woman, who often combed her hair and dressed in front of the mirror, became increasingly listless and perfunctory. Her smooth hair became more and more messy, and the neighbor's attitude toward the woman also intensified, from the initial verbal abuse to physical violence, and even later, she forcibly yanked out a large clump of the woman's hair, leaving the woman with a large bald patch.

The second half of the content connected seamlessly. Even though the white-clad woman was abused by the neighbor's mistress until she was in a very wretched state, and from her current appearance, she was in such a bad state that she could no longer be called beautiful, the peeping from the neighbor father and son never stopped.

It was a new day. The white-clad woman walked forward with her head down as usual, but stopped halfway. The subsequent footage showed a 10-second stillness, but if one observed carefully, one could see that the environment actually had tiny changes; it wasn't a freeze-frame, but rather the people in the footage had all stopped moving.

The woman paused on the road near her home, as if waiting, while the neighbor father and son still stared fixedly at the white-clad woman's back, as if expecting something to happen.

Just as Yu Lianyun was wondering what was going on, she suddenly noticed a smear of fresh blood flowing out from the T-junction of the road.

Immediately after, the footage switched. The white-clad woman arrived at the corner and discovered the neighbor mistress's inhumanly twisted corpse curled up under the wheels of a truck, with a gleaming silver kitchen knife still clutched in the corpse's hand.

This seemed to imply that the neighbor mistress had intended to stab the white-clad woman to death with the kitchen knife today, so she had been crouching at the corner the white-clad woman passed every day, waiting. She just hadn't expected that she would accidentally be run over and killed by a speeding truck today.

The neighbor mistress's death was too bizarre and miserable; Yu Lianyun felt a chill from the inside out.

This sense of horror stemmed from the malice of human nature; one could know its source, but it was hard to measure!

Yu Lianyun shivered, and then she actually felt a burst of ecstasy because she discovered that her lost body temperature was recovering. That shiver just now brought a bit of horror, but it also brought her clarity and warmth.

"This videotape... is useful!" Yu Lianyun felt both excited and terrified. Amidst these contradictory emotions, she watched the content of the tape to the end.

Then the footage switched, and Yu Lianyun saw the white-clad woman sitting sadly by a well, crying, her delicate body trembling, evoking pity.

Yu Lianyun guessed that the white-clad woman might be feeling sad for the death of the neighbor mistress. Although she did not support this overly tolerant "saintly" heart, she could not deny the white-clad woman's kindness.

But in the very next scene, Yu Lianyun saw the malice of human nature once again.

She saw two men suddenly burst into the frame—one old, one young—rushing toward the white-clad woman. A closer look at those two crazy, ferocious faces revealed them to be the neighbor father and son who were always peeping at the white-clad woman. They joined forces to push the panicked white-clad woman into the well, and then the neighbor's son even found a large rock from the side of the well and smashed it viciously into the well.

After doing all this, the crazy father and son still hadn't stopped their perverted behavior; finally, they even found a few stone slabs and, using cement, completely sealed the well.

Seeing this, Yu Lianyun couldn't help but clench her fists, her breathing becoming rapid. She felt it was unbelievable; she didn't understand why this father and son wanted to kill this white-clad woman so cruelly. Was it to avenge the dead neighbor mistress?

Immediately after, the television screen flickered eerily. Vaguely, Yu Lianyun saw the neighbor father and son dying miserably in their home, and a woman with a twisted torso standing in the middle of the two corpses, whose eyes were wide open in death.

That woman had a deformed figure, was dressed in rags, and had a twisted face, but those eyes, peering through the hair and revealing full malice toward the world, still allowed Yu Lianyun to recognize at a glance who it was. This woman, who had killed the father and son using unknown means, was the white-clad woman who had been trapped and killed in the well by the father and son.

She had actually returned with hatred and fury!

Yu Lianyun felt a sharp pain in her heart, as if it had been gripped tightly by an invisible hand, but the heartache was fleeting. She clutched her chest and insisted on watching the final content of the videotape. She saw the white-clad woman's eyes growing larger and larger, and a traditional Chinese numeral imprinted in the other party's eyes becoming clearer and clearer.

Written on it was a clear and distinct number: Seven!