Chapter 2775

After pausing for a moment, all the corpse phantoms vanished, and the scene in the room began to change again, though this time it changed very slowly, as if reading this part of the memory would take some effort.

The living room turned into a small bedroom, roughly less than 10 square meters in size, containing a small single bed; to the side was a desk with some homework notebooks scattered on it, and a huge map of China hung at the head of the bed.

The bedsheets had a very common teddy bear pattern, washed until they were somewhat faded; the nightstand was a stool that had been repurposed, and on it sat a photograph containing a woman and three children, none of the three children were very old, and the little boy standing at the very front was none other than Shiler.

Shiler's gaze suddenly became focused; he remembered where this was and also realized that at this time his consciousness was still streaming with the Gao Ta, so the room must have read the memories inside the Gao Ta.

This was his bedroom when he lived at the nurse's home.

For a period of time, the Ninth Academy was undergoing renovations, which were originally planned to be done in sections, and Shiler had also changed rooms, but at that time his condition had just begun to improve, and between moving to an unfamiliar environment and the construction noise, his state became very poor.

The doctor and the nurse discovered this, so they discussed it with the dean and let the nurse who was in charge of him at the time take him to her home.

However, that was a classified facility, and the family housing was also within the academy grounds, so it wasn't far from the Ninth Academy; Shiler was taken by the nurse back and forth between the family housing and the doctor's office, which could be considered experiencing the feeling of going to school on a set schedule.

When he stayed at the nurse's home, because of his condition, his communication with the outside world wasn't very good, and he almost never spoke to the nurse's children, but his memory was extremely clear, and he remembered every single thing in that small, temporarily set-up bedroom vividly.

Shiler, sitting on the sofa, seemed as if he didn't realize at all that beneath his feet was a bottomless abyss; he was like a spectator sitting in a movie theater, looking at the room with a slight sense of nostalgia, his gaze even carrying a hint of anticipation.

Knock, knock, knock—the door was knocked on; Shiler was very familiar with this sound because although he couldn't communicate with the outside world, the nurse would still knock on the door every single time.

A familiar figure walked in.

It was a woman who was still quite young; at this time, the nurse was not yet 30 years old and was considered a newcomer within the research institute, so everyone took care of her, which is why she was assigned to look after the quietest patient.

That's right, in the Ninth Academy, Shiler was even considered the kind of patient who was easier to handle; at least before that time he had an episode, he was a very quiet child, and he could understand instructions and wouldn't attack others randomly, so the nurses and staff in the research institute all liked him very much.

At this time, the nurse should not have divorced her husband yet; although Shiler had never seen her husband, he remembered occasionally hearing the nurse make phone calls a few times, and her husband seemed to work at another distant research institute and didn't come back often.

The face of the woman who walked in was blurred.

This was only natural; after leaving the research institute, Shiler had deleted the memories of the specific faces of everyone he had seen in the institute, remembering only that such a person existed, but not remembering what they looked like.

"A-Zhi, don't sit in such a dangerous place." The nurse's voice came from inside the room, and she said very gently: "Come over quickly, dinner is almost ready."

Shiler suddenly laughed; he wasn't facing the nurse, but rather speaking to the room: "You seem unable to see deeper memories; do you know what the real nurse would say if she were here?"

Then he answered his own question: "She would tell me to get down here immediately, or she'd go complain to the doctor tomorrow morning."

The doctors and nurses who could work in this kind of research institute would not be ordinary people; even for nurses in ordinary hospitals, as long as it was a slightly busy department, it would be impossible to be this gentle.

Realizing that this room was actually quite difficult to restore those people from his memories, Shiler felt somewhat disappointed, yet the nurse still stood by the window, calling his nickname over and over.

After a while, the room changed again; this time it became brighter and wider, with bookshelves with glass doors on both sides of the window, and in the very center was a solid wood desk, with a tall figure sitting at the desk with their back to the window, writing something.

"A-Zhi... A-Zhi!! Come over quickly and see how I wrote this piece!" Another familiar voice came, the pronunciation of flat and retroflex sounds slightly unclear, but the tone was quite deep and powerful.

Shiler didn't need to look; Shiler knew it must be another piece of gibberish; Anatoli hadn't even learned hard-pen calligraphy well yet, but he wanted to imitate the dean in writing brush calligraphy, and the result, of course, went without saying—even mental patients would want to scream at the sight of it.

Doctor Anatoli turned his head, likewise lacking clear facial features, and it was even hard to distinguish his ethnicity; he shouted toward Shiler: "Don't sit there; you still have problems you haven't done today."

Shiler laughed again and said: "If it were the real Anatoli, he would have dragged me down directly; of course, that was the me when I was a child."

This phantom of Anatoli clearly, like the other phantoms, could not affect anything outside the room, so he could only stand by the window and watch Shiler.

After a long while, he also dissipated, and the room began to change again, still in the appearance of an office, only this time a large national emblem hung on the wall opposite the window, and a small red flag was stuck on the desk.

"A-Zhi, in the blink of an eye you're almost ready for college, and I'm almost ready to retire; you must take good care of yourself when you're away, come with me, I have something for you..."

Appearing behind the desk was a slightly hunched little old man, wearing old-fashioned round glasses, his facial features blurred, but those hands were covered in crisscrossing lines.

The deeper a part of the memory was, the more clearly it would be presented here; Shiler had a deep impression of the dean's hands because the dean always liked to pat his head, and he was the only person in the entire research institute who could ignore the doctor's warnings and reach out to pat his head.

He was a very kind and humorous little old man; Shiler went to college, and he retired, but when Shiler was young, he also had a period of glorious days.

At that time, it was he who debated with a crowd of scholars and overcame all opposition to invite the Soviet expert, Anatoli, to be responsible for Shiler's condition.

Shiler still remembered that when the dust settled, they walked out of the conference room, and the dean held his hand as they walked through the long corridor.

The walls of the corridor had green wainscoting, and the floor was brown quartz stone, as if compressed from various types of stone, with small fragments of different colors embedded inside.

At that time, the sunlight outside the window was just right, and the trees blown by the wind were as green as ocean waves; in the cement-gray courtyard, the lines of the basketball court had faded, there was still undried water along the edge of the lawn path, and a pleasant smell of books lingered in his nose; the large hand he held was rough and dry, and the corridor seemed like it would never end.

The dean's figure also disappeared, and then they all appeared again at the same time, all standing by the window calling Shiler's nickname; the originally warm scene now looked somewhat eerie.

But Shiler didn't mind at all; he was like a big star, nodding at them with great satisfaction.

These were just fragments of his own memory; every time he looked back, it was like a pilgrimage, because he wasn't driven out, nor did he escape, but rather he had perfectly completed a stage of life and chosen to leave on his own.

"I don't know how many people have lived in this room." Shiler said: "But the things they brought you make you think you understand what human regret really is."

"You think my regret must be hidden in my memories, that there must be a moment when I felt imperfect, but I can't go back, or that I miss it immensely, but the past is gone."

"You think if you keep looking like this, you'll definitely find the answer, or you think I'm a despicable cheater who hid the real answer in a place you can't find."

"But, there is no such answer." Shiler shook his head, and he let his gaze fall on the nurse.

The color of the nurse's clothing began to change, and the clothes from her neck to her chest and then to her abdomen were gradually dyed red; she let out an exclamation, and then let out a short, sharp scream, as if she had been attacked by something, and the smell of blood permeated the room once again.

"Yes, this is your trump card." Shiler said: "You think this must be my greatest regret, that I hurt someone who cared for and loved me, and I must be full of guilt for it."

"But that is not the case." Shiler shook his head and said: "This is the blood a mother will inevitably shed—do you know how a newborn comes into this world?"

Shiler looked at the constantly changing room and said: "This is a mother's womb; from the moment I arrived here, my only goal, the only goal of everyone, was to let me leave here; this is not a meeting and parting full of regret, but a great pregnancy."

Shiler lowered his head slightly and said: "Parting is always regrettable, but for me, this kind of regret is like a baby leaving the mother's body; how many people would feel regret for leaving their mother's belly in the first place?"

"Staying in the mother's amniotic fluid is warm and comfortable, but the process of being born truly brought me into the world."

"Only those who have lived very painfully would feel regret for their own birth; do you think I lived very painfully after leaving here?"

The hallucinations in the room began to gradually dissipate, and one red fish after another appeared, seemingly answering Shiler's question in silence.

"No, I didn't kill because of pain." Shiler shook his head again and said: "And I don't only gain happiness through killing; I was never forced into a corner, I always had a choice."

"And I don't want to become God, or act on His behalf to judge sinners; I clearly know that God does not exist, and I am not a controller or a corrector; the types of serial killers defined by the secular world cannot define me."

The illusions in the room were gradually disappearing, and eventually, it turned back into a messy living room with nothing in it; the clock stopped at 11:59, and the other party still refused to leave.

Glass shards flew up; the room seemed to want to block Shiler from entering, so that he wouldn't make it to the midnight test either.

"If I must seek a reason..." Shiler said slowly, as if talking to himself, "I always feel that I am out of place with that world, never able to establish a connection with anyone; I once thought this was a symptom of autism spectrum disorder, but later I discovered that I only have one way to deepen my connection with this society and the ordinary people in it."

Shiler chanted softly, as if humming a ballad.

"The mother's amniotic fluid condenses into a river, connecting birth and death; the crowd walks on the other side of the river, never calling my name with joy and love as they do for other babies."

"I came before them, dismantled their bones and flesh, and wove them into a new umbilical cord, connecting to the crowd on the other side."

"When I walk to the end of the river, spirit and body decay together, and my grave will also connect to countless graves; this will be the most beautiful and stable connection in this world, just like mother and fetus, just like love and death."

With a crash, all the glass shards fell down.

The paranormal phenomena in the room all receded.