Chapter 231: Flying Over the Asylum (7)

The faint creak of steel cables pulling the elevator car came from above.

Li Cheng was pinned in the elevator corner by an invisible force, his whole body slightly suspended, legs and arms pressed together, body stiff and leaning back at a seventy-five-degree angle to the floor.

What's this supposed to mean — the asylum boy is standing at attention?

Li Cheng's mind raced — this pose looked a lot like he was still wearing that straitjacket, in custody.

He strained to turn his head, using his right eye, fitted with a green contact lens, to look at the elevator wall, and sure enough, in the reflection on the metal surface, he caught a blurry, indistinct image.

In the wall's reflection, he was wearing that white straitjacket, a hood over his head, his whole body strapped tight to a wheeled, tiltable gurney by belts.

On either side of the gurney stood two tall, faceless orderlies.

The elevator rose slowly, passing the second floor, continuing up toward the third.

"If I'm not mistaken, these two orderlies are here to escort William. This scene mirrors the real world — maybe it happened in the past, maybe right now."

Li Cheng had a strong premonition: under no circumstances could he let the elevator reach the fourth floor, or something terrible would happen.

And to break free, he happened to have a razor blade on him.

He flipped his palm, tucked the blade between his fingers, and with a twist of his wrist, sliced through the invisible straitjacket and the gurney straps, freeing his right arm.

Then, before the orderly on the right could react, he jabbed two fingers straight at the carotid sinus on his neck.

The carotid sinus sits at the origin of the internal carotid artery; its outer membrane is packed with nerve endings. When stimulated externally, it reflexively triggers a strong vagal response, slowing the heart rate and dropping blood pressure — sustained pressure for over ten seconds is enough to knock someone out.

One of the body's vital points, in other words.

The William Li Cheng was playing might be physically weak, but at least he was a normally developed teenager — he had some strength in his hands.

Under the heavy jab, the towering orderly on the right collapsed without a sound.

Sleeping very soundly.

"Now for you—"

Just as Li Cheng was about to repeat the trick and take out the second orderly on the left cleanly—

The man actually leaned forward slightly, tensed his burly arms, clenched his fists, and struck a classic bodybuilding pose — the Crab.

Riiip!

The orderly's white uniform top was burst open by his exaggerated muscles, scattering on the floor, revealing strands and strands of bronze-toned muscle definition.

Standing one-ninety tall, weighing a hundred kilograms, an inverted-triangle build, muscles knotted like twisted rope — like the Greek god of strength Heracles from an ancient sculpture.

"Holy shit!"

Li Cheng's eyes went wide, nearly spitting out a mouthful of water. "Damn — is that Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronnie Coleman?!

With a build like that, why aren't you out winning the Mr. Olympia, instead of holed up in a mental hospital as some lowly orderly?"

The word "lowly" probably deserves quotation marks — the muscle-bound orderly's frame could match two Williams, his neck thicker than William's thigh; jabbing the carotid sinus was completely useless.

Luckily, the muscle-bound orderly didn't charge in right away, but stayed in place and struck a few more bodybuilding poses.

Front double biceps, front lat spread, side chest, rear double biceps — the works.

He even turned to face the wall and admired himself.

Looking like someone who'd overdosed on trenbolone, trenbolone acetate, methenolone, stanozolol, and thiomesterone — not the sharpest tool in the shed.

That gave Li Cheng plenty of time to cut through the invisible straitjacket and hop off the invisible gurney.

Uh. Well, alright, now it actually makes sense why this muscle-bound orderly was in a mental hospital — with that IQ, he wouldn't fit in anywhere else.

Li Cheng pulled a strange face, punched the elevator's emergency stop button, and as the elevator braked hard, reached up and plucked the green lens from his right eye.

The moment the contact came out, the reflections of the straitjacket, the gurney, and the orderly all vanished at once from the wall, confirming a suspicion Li Cheng had harbored.

"The exploration process itself is a trap — after getting the contact lens from the children's clinic, you have to go back to the first-floor records room to get the blade from the Rat Man.

The Rat Man triggers a new dialogue; if you put the contact lens in at that point and check the file, it draws the orderlies and gets you locked in the elevator."

Li Cheng slid the blade into the door seam, pried it open a crack, then hauled the doors apart with both hands.

At that moment, the elevator car was stuck right between the second and third floors.

In some horror films, and in real-world cases, people climbing out of a stuck elevator can have it start moving again and get sliced in half.

To avoid that, Li Cheng stepped back two paces, kicked off the wall, sprinted forward into a roll, and slipped through the gap onto the third floor.

The hospital's third floor had no lights on; only the lighting from the first and second floors, plus the green emergency-exit sign, barely illuminated the corridor.

Li Cheng didn't rush to leave, but stood in place, put the contact lens back in, turned to look at the elevator, and double-checked that the orderly's reflection hadn't reappeared.

By normal logic, once a player confirms that wearing the contact lets them see ghosts, they'd hurry to take it out to avoid danger.

But danger and opportunity go hand in hand — keeping one eye covered should, maybe, possibly reveal new clues.

Li Cheng went back down the stairs to the first-floor records room and tried to talk to Skaven, but the latter only repeated the line "Don't bother me, I'm looking for files"; the three NPCs on the second floor had no more information either.

In that case, there was nothing for it but to explore the third floor.

The third-floor layout wasn't much different from the lower two — nearly every door was locked, nothing to explore.

"The bright moon sheds its light, the cold wind blows through the lane of willows, a female ghost seeks her lover — who would love a ghastly ghost bride~"

Bored Li Cheng hummed an ethereal horror-film BGM in halting, plastic Cantonese, occasionally moonwalking backward down the corridor.

Passing through the corridor, Li Cheng found the stairwell leading to the fourth floor piled high with cardboard boxes, blocking the way.

As he approached, the boxes swelled in size, completely sealing off the path ahead.

And when he stepped back a little, the boxes shrank back to normal.

"Bigger when close, smaller when far?"

Li Cheng squinted and rubbed his chin, and seemed to hear a voice — from beneath one of the boxes crawled a bespectacled, refined-looking middle-aged man in a hospital gown, holding a bottle of risperidone.

As if he knew William, he greeted him quite naturally: "Good evening, William."

"Good evening, Dalton."

Li Cheng read the name off the hospital gown, called him by it, and struck first: "What are you doing up here so late?"

Dalton replied matter-of-factly: "Got tired of the hospital bed — wanted to sleep in my own castle."

Treating a pile of cardboard boxes as a castle, and combining the boxes' near-large, far-small perspective with the risperidone bottle, Li Cheng raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you have spatial perception disorder?"

Spatial perception disorder is a comprehensive disorder of imbalance in perceiving the size and proportion of objects—for example, seeing large things as very small, seeing small things as very large, or seeing near things as far and far things as near. It is commonly seen in epilepsy and schizophrenia.

Risperidone is a drug used to treat schizophrenia.

"Yeah, didn't you already know that long ago?"

Dalton sounded a bit puzzled. "The meds we take are the same."

Heh, you're actually sick, but William might not necessarily have a problem.

Li Cheng gave a friendly wave of his hand. "Um, could you move these boxes aside? I might need to go up to the fourth floor in a bit."

Hearing this, Dalton seemed a little hesitant. "Uh, what are you going up to the fourth floor for? The hospital doesn't allow patients up there.

And I only just barely got this castle built, it'd be a real hassle to tear it down and rebuild—how about you find me a pack of crunchy noodles from wherever.

Bring me a pack of crunchy noodles and I'll let you pass."

This Dalton in front of him was clearly a plot NPC, just like Skaven and the others.

Li Cheng hadn't seen crunchy noodles in the second-floor cafeteria or the doctors' lounge, so he figured they must be hidden somewhere else, and agreed on the spot.

"I'll wait for you here."

Dalton cheerfully burrowed back into the cardboard boxes—if he weren't a middle-aged uncle, his movements would actually be kind of cute.

(End of chapter)