Chapter 378: Everywhere is Abnormal

Jia Yuanzhang watched Number 8, who was sitting cross-legged facing the wall in the surveillance video. After a full hour, he couldn't help but rub his tense brow, touching his sore, dry eyes through his eyelids.

Sometimes he felt a bit envious of mental patients like Number 8; even though they were insane and their minds were abnormal, they possessed a terrifying level of focus that exceeded that of ordinary people, and at times, their self-control was even more frightening than that of disciplined, normal people.

Take Laoba for example; he had just been catching Laoba, who had snuck out to play, and after ordering him to go back to his room and be quiet, Laoba had truly returned to the room where he lived, and then sat there motionless, like a stone statue, his breathing so slight that he looked as if he had no life at all.

Of course, Jia Yuanzhang also understood very well that this unimaginable focus came at the price of what was called rationality and normalcy.

Number 8 had never shown a state of being out of control, but not being out of control was precisely a form of being out of control.

People have seven emotions and six desires; anger and sadness are also emotional loss of control, yet no one ever says such loss of control is an abnormality, and not having emotional fluctuations, or having emotional fluctuations that are too slight, is actually the real abnormality.

Number 8's emotional expressions were all faked—his sadness was fake, his anger was fake, and his loneliness even more so. He used awkward performances to disguise himself as a normal person. His electrocardiogram was as steady as a machine with a regular beat; no matter what he did or what happened to him, the range of change was extremely small, yet on the surface, he could display intense emotions that differed from his internal fluctuations.

Precisely because of this, Jia Yuanzhang considered Number 8 to be overly terrifying.

The other party had a very clear understanding of himself; he knew he was a madman, and he also understood the public's perception of what was ordinary and normal, so he would constantly learn, disguise, and deceive... He used his naturally innocent and harmless appearance, combined with his near-normal disguise, to make people lower their guard against him, thereby creating opportunities where he could easily incite others to commit errors.

"He's a real headache, this kid." When Jia Yuanzhang said this, his tone was not one of helplessness, but of tension; he could no longer control this "madman" he had watched grow up.

In the past, Jia Yuanzhang could perform mental evaluations on Number 8 alone, but now, without four or five people by his side and a bulletproof glass partition for face-to-face interaction, he felt his life would be in danger.

Two days after Number 8's latest escape attempt, Jia Yuanzhang and a group of accompanying psychiatric experts and psychologists entered a room where one wall was entirely bulletproof glass, their hearts heavy with unease. The other side of the glass was dim and lightless; even though the room was lit, the light could not penetrate to the other side of the glass at all, simply because it was a one-way mirror.

The group sat in the room's seats, feeling restless and uneasy, their nervous hands sweating, the paper they touched becoming crumpled, their pens feeling slippery; they looked at the darkness before them, as if sensing something terrifying and unknown—it must be an evil, dark, and chaotic behemoth.

However, when the light in the other room suddenly illuminated the entire space, the group saw the young man, who had been resting with his eyes closed and his body bound like a mummy, sitting in the chair in the middle of the room.

Looking at him was like seeing the Holy Father on a crucifix sculpture hanging on a church wall, or like an ancient bronze Buddha in a Shrine, his whole body radiating an indescribable solemnity and gravity. It was completely different from the fearful images they had conjured up; his presence brought more of a sense of peaceful tranquility. It was precisely because they felt a certain powerful and natural great force that they did not feel afraid, and the worry and unease in their hearts were suppressed.

Some people couldn't help but feel a sense of guilt in their hearts, as if they had suddenly felt their errors from the bottom of their hearts, realizing they were deeply ashamed of their disrespectful thoughts toward the young man before them just moments ago.

It wasn't until the sound of Jia Yuanzhang clearing his throat echoed in the room that those people returned to their senses one by one, and then, belatedly, felt a chilling horror wash over them again.

Wait, why had they just felt such reverence for a mental patient waiting for their "judgment"?

At the same time, the young man who heard the throat-clearing sound also slowly woke up. He raised his head, his eyelids half-closed, no emotion visible in his pitch-black eyes, his face showing the fatigue of sleep deprivation.

"You're here." Number 8's gaze swept over the people present, as if he could truly see each of them through the one-way mirror; this eerie feeling made everyone's back turn cold again.

Immediately, Number 8's eyes looked straight ahead, at the position where Jia Yuanzhang was seated.

"Grandpa Dean, let's start quickly. According to our agreement, after the monthly evaluation, I get half a day to go out to the surface for activities, right? Let's not waste too much time." Number 8 smiled slightly. Judging by how he addressed the Dean, it seemed his attitude toward him was still relatively respectful.

Jia Yuanzhang felt a wave of pressure; dark clouds with lightning and thunder seemed to hang over his head, the drizzling rain of worry and the startling, painful thunder of fear dense and jumping. He braced himself and began this month's test.

The brief twenty minutes passed as slowly as twenty centuries. Seeing the young man in the next room leave with a beaming smile, the group felt the tension in their bodies release as if a burden had been lifted.

Only Jia Yuanzhang had a heavy expression, looking at the score calculated by the machine's integrated evaluation questions without saying a word.

Exactly 80 points, neither high nor low.

"Dean, are you alright? This score doesn't seem to have any problems, does it mean that Number 8's mental state and psychological issues are improving?" A new psychologist, seeing Jia Yuanzhang's grave expression, stepped forward to ask with concern, glanced at the score, and even felt a bit happy for the patient.

To this, Jia Yuanzhang only glanced at the other person, then pulled up Number 8's past evaluation score records without a word. After just one glance, the new doctor froze in place.

Across the board, they were all 80 points.

"I don't know how he did it; this is absolutely impossible to do, it's clearly absolutely impossible..." Jia Yuanzhang supported his forehead with one hand, the cold temperature of his hand piercing from his skin into the depths of his brain. "Even though I wrote the test questions myself, he was still able to maintain and control it at this score. He did it on purpose..."

In an instant, the person seemed to have aged countless times over.

The psychologist recalled the young man's smile from just now and suddenly felt that there was an unknown, deep meaning hidden within that smile, as if it were mockery and ridicule.

"Is there any point in him doing this?" The psychologist felt his throat go dry and swallowed his saliva.

Whether a mental patient can return to society requires very strict judgment criteria. It is not something that can be achieved by simply getting a passing score on a set of simple evaluation questions; it also requires stress tests through situational simulations, etc. After a series of review items, one might even have to repeat the entire set of procedures several times to qualify, and the final decision on whether to release the person actually still lies in the hands of the doctors.

But even so, if one wants to get out, this psychological test is still necessary.

If a patient wants to get out, this test must reach the passing score required by the doctors. Looking at the score alone, Number 8 had actually already done it, and had even passed.

But now, looking back at his past scores, the passing score had become an Abnormal score.

Does the other party actually want to get out, or does he not want to get out?