Chapter 1204: 1204

The arrival of the child turned the hospital director’s world contradictory. His life goal was the exploration of questions related to death but he rarely spent his life on the pondering of life. No matter where a person went, he would be heading towards death, therefore, before this the hospital director had always believed that by studying the length of death, he would eventually get to the bottom of the truth about life. His unique childhood experience turned him into a monster, curse had already inhabited every inch of his body, binding around his nerves and swimming in his blood vessels. But when a man like that was faced with his own child, the heart that was ugly and filled with scars started to beat rapidly.

Whenever he saw his own child, there would be two voices inside his head. One of them would be telling him the child was a present given to him by death but the other voice would be saying, the child was the extension of his life. The hospital director could not convince himself and the sound of argument in his head grew louder and louder, so loud in fact that it had seriously impacted his disguise. After tasting the sweetness that came from his own disguise, the hospital director refused to be treated as a monster anymore. He tried his best to hide his own symptoms but that only made him turn even more conflicted and divided within himself.

He could not mediate it within himself, it had expanded beyond the question related to his own child. No matter what he was thinking, there started to be opposing thoughts in his mind. Take for example on the issue of how to treat himself, one voice was telling him that he should take the treatment by admitting that he was sick, he was the monster that people had been saying that he was. The other voice though goaded him to murder his own child, to solve the problem from its core.

The hospital director’s action became stranger and stranger. In the morning, he wore the doctor’s coat helping the patients with their pain and despair but at night, after he returned home, he would put on the patient’s garb and locked himself up in his room to consult his own reflection in the mirror. Slow but surely his wife noticed the anomalies around him and it was then that the most contradictory moment showed itself before the hospital director.

The voice that represented humanity in his mind told him that the best solution to this problem was to admit his problem to this family, admit that he was sick and cooperated fully with the doctors but doing that would mean sacrificing the current family that he had. He knew his wife very well, he knew his wife loved the version of himself who was the handsome, professional doctor who had a bright future and who was famous within the industry. Once he gave the admission that he was sick, then he might lose both his career and his family.

The other voice in the hospital director’s head kept tempting him, telling him to ignore the opinion of those monsters. After all this was a sickened world, he only needed to continue to put on the disguise like he used it. If humanity made him feel confusion and pain, then the only solution was to squash the last trace of humanity within him. If he wanted to be a human, then he might lose everything that he had in his possession so far. But if he continued to be a monster, he would continue to enjoy his current bliss and happiness.

The hospital director did not come to any quick decision. His soul was a battlefield of contradiction, until one day, the seed of the curse rooted and grew, it bloomed into a black-colored flower in his heart. That night, he had a dream. In the dream, he was wearing a patient’s garb lying in bed and there was a version of himself wearing a doctor’s coat standing before the mirror inside the bedroom. They had the same face but one was the patient and the other the doctor.

The hospital director who wore the patient’s garb represented the last remaining humanity and rationality in the man, while the hospital director in front of the mirror had already been fully consumed by curse and negative emotions. Kindness and sin had nothing to do with strength and weakness. In the dream, the patient that represented humanity was being treated by the doctor who was filled with curse and malice. The most tragic thing was as the humanity was slowly being ‘treated’, the malice slowly took over the rest of the hospital director’s body. The hospital director kept repeating the same recurring dream. His schizophrenic symptoms became more serious, slowly his soul was also torn into two.

The hospital director started to have trouble differentiating between dream and reality. He had no idea whether he was lying in bed next to his wife or whether he was lying down in his dream. In any case, no matter the situation, he would always see the other version of himself in the doctor’s coat, wreathed in malice. Gradually he started to suspect, whether another version of himself had also started to appear in real life?

From his consciousness to his soul and body, the hospital director realized that he seemed to have split into two persons. Both of these persons were him, but they were the complete opposite of each other. One was evil and the other was kindness; one had committed many unforgivable sins, the other kept punishing himself due to the guilt from the actions that he had done; one was filled with despair, convinced that he was the God of this sickened world, while the other just wanted to be a simple human, desperate for the simple bliss.

The hospital director in the doctor’s coat who represented the curse trapped the hospital director in the patient’s garb inside the nightmare. He did not demolish his own humanity but instead chose to completely isolate it from the rest of the world. The hospital director who only had negative emotions and evil intention left in his heart turned fully into a monster with the skin of a human being. The evil spirt in his body stopped behind held back by shackles of morality, the cursed flowers blossomed in his heart and gave off the mist of black fog. The hospital director in the doctor’s coat had no idea what the black fog represented, it was the first time he had encountered the black fog that was so filled with despair and death in real life. Without the bondage of humanity, the action of the hospital director in the daylight became completely flawless, he was a demon who was in the perfect human disguise.

He was made up from evil and curse but he shrouded himself in a disguise of humanity and rationality. The patients who did not realize the truth thought he was a kind doctor, his colleagues saw him as the perfect superior, and his wife believed he was the perfect husband. The hospital director in the doctor’s coat would only shed his disguise before his new-born child. The arrival of the new life was the base reason that caused the split in the hospital director, so the hospital director who was constructed from curse was filled with curiosity with regards to this child as well. He started to conduct ‘treatment’ and ‘experiment’ on his own child, his own flesh and blood became his first actual patient in the true sense of the word.

In his endless trials, the hospital director discovered the existence of the black fog. This black fog was born deep inside the nightmare and it spread using the medium of human heart. Its basic essence was the memories that human being most reluctant to face, it was made up from forgotten pain and despair. The discovery of the black fog made the hospital director over the moob, he felt for the first time he had come into contact with the actual world. He originally thought that this was the unique power given to him by the cursed seed, only he could see the black fog and he was supposed to bridge the black fog into the real world. But in his later experiment, when he placed his own child in the black fog, the life that was as pure as a sheet of white paper started to crumple and pollute under the invasion of the black fog. The cursed seed was also sewn in the heart of the newborn and it started to spread the black fog on its own.

It was then that the hospital director slowly realized everyone had some amount of black fog in their own heart. As long as the method was correct, everyone could become the bridge to spread the black fog into the world. The hospital director in the doctor’s coat started to collect the black fog in the dark. He enjoyed the process of spreading the tragedy and despair while at the same time, enjoy the admiration from being hailed as the people’s saviour. It was the man who incited the pain, it was also the man who provided the salvation, and it was also the same man who ultimately sent his patients down the road of no return. This kind of lifestyle proceeded for a very long time, until his child slowly grew up and turned into a deformed monster. The child who did not know the necessity of disguise almost exposed the hospital director’s secret. To ensure his own survivability in the darkness, the hospital director personally ended the life of his own child but before killing his own child, he sent his child’s consciousness deep inside the black fog in his heart.

There was a problem that had been of interest to the hospital director, what was the source of the black fog?

Using the monsters that he personally cultivated, the hospital director saw a sea of black fog at the deepest part of his nightmare. All the despair in the world was collected here. They were forgotten by human beings but they would never disappear. The sea of fog was filled with monsters that would only appear in one’s nightmare. Other than that, there were plenty of lost souls. The hospital director’s interest in this world continued to grow, he believed this was his place of birth, after all he was the physical manifestation of despair.

He was no longer satisfied with using his child’s consciousness to enter the sea of fog and so he started to use different patients and enter the sea of fog through the bridge in the bottom of their hearts. After about a year, he ran into a patient from Jiujiang.

The young man named Chen Xiao was in a deep coma because he tried to save someone from a car accident. The man who was saved by Chen Xiao had the surname Luo, he came from a family of merchants. To save Chen Xiao, he spent a lot of money to hire the best doctors in the country and among the group of doctors, there was the hospital director. The hospital director in the doctor’s coat attempted to enter the black fog through Chen Xiao’s heart but after he succeeded, he was shocked to realize that the patient was standing at the edge of the world of the black fog. One of his side was covered in black fog heavy in despair while the other side was a city built from blood and flesh.

If the black fog was the amalgamation of pure despair and pain, then the red city was the only hope that should not be called as hope that existed in the world of the black fog. When a piece of despairing memory was forgotten, the despair and pain among it would morph into black fog while the last remaining shred of desire and struggle would slip into the red city. The black fog was filled with ghastly and scary monsters while the red city was populated by wounded individuals.

The hospital director saw the uniqueness of this patient, he believed he must be hiding some kind of secret. He searched out Chen Xia. After conducting multiple experiments, he realized only his own consciousness could leave the world successfully, he could not bring Chen Xiao with him. After giving it much contemplation, the hospital director in the doctor’s coat believed perhaps the reason of this was due to the existence of the hospital director in the patient’s garb. He was the first person who had the contradictory consciousness in his mind. The hospital director in the doctor’s coat walked around the edge of the red city but the other hospital director was trapped somewhere else, there was still an unbreakable bond between them.

The hospital director in the doctor’s coat shared his own treatment method with Chen Xiao. To split out the opposing spirit, Chen Xiao went through a torment that was beyond the imagination of the human consciousness in the red city and black fog. Ultimately the consciousness of the young man was split apart, the side who still had the humanity remained was called Chen Xiao, the other side who was bound by the red city and filled with negative emotion was named as Chen Xiang.

The moment the personalities were split, the hospital director in the doctor’s coat dragged Chen Xiao out of the red city, while the savage and brutal Chen Xiang who could never be controlled was left behind in the red city. When they returned to the real world, the hospital director started to gain an enormous interest in Chen Xiao, he wanted to know why Chen Xiao’s heart would be connected to the edge of the red city. He observed the man in the dark and recorded everything. No one knew that he was a demon in the disguise of a human.

Several years later, the child of Chen Xiao was born. The child possessed a pair of blood red eyes. It appeared as if he could see right through into people’s heart and he could see many things that a normal adult could not. Other children would be crying but this boy would always be smiling, as if there was nothing in the world who would be able to make him sad. Chen Xiao knew why his child was so different from the others. To escape from the red city, he had paid too hefty of a price and it included having the negative emotions shatter his body again and again and experiencing the despair that the human world could never imagine.

Looking at the newborn in his embrace, studying the pure and innocent smile on his face, Chen Xiao gave his own boy a name that carried with it a very unique meaning—Chen Ge [Song]. The world kissed me with pain but I shall repay it with a song.

As he grew up, more and more anomalies appeared around Chen Ge. He would enter the world of the black fog in his sleep but he would promptly return to the real world when he awakened. He met different kind of people and seen many different types of ghost. Perhaps it was his bloodline or perhaps it was because of his father, even if Chen Ge’s consciousness was not split, he could walk through the red city, black fog and the real world freely and this was all captured within the hospital director’s eyes.

The hospital director in the doctor’s coat had a special patient’s list, he had listed Chen Ge as Patient Number 2, Chen Xiang trapped in the red city as Patient Number 2 and Chen Xiao in real life as Patient Number 3. He had been in disguise for decades but he still had not been exposed. This fed into the hospital director’s ambition, he wanted to cure this sickened world from its core. He started to interact with Chen Ge behind his parent’s knowledge. He wanted to use Chen Ge’s power to bring the despair and pain people had forgotten back into the human world. As the cursed seed, he had complete faith that the world of the black fog was the true world and the real world was merely a sick disguise.

The hospital director approached Chen Ge carefully. He used the experience that he had garnered through the decades to help Chen Ge open a blood door in the red city. The door connected the red city and real life. Even though it only lasted for a short period of time but it had already given the hospital director enough hospital. He kept having encounter with Chen Ge in the red city and the black fog, in the end, he triggered the alarm from Chen Xiao. But to complete his own plan, the hospital director did not mind such detail. In fact a crazy thought had appeared in his mind, he wanted to split Chen Ge’s consciousness into kindness and evil. He would leave kindness with Chen Xiao but he would take the evil away with him.

To create this contradictory consciousness, he started to madly torment Chen Ge in the world of black fog but he still could not succeed. All he had to show for it was the pursuit from both Chen Xiao and Chen Xiang. Seeing as his plan was being exposed, he decided to bring all the monsters that he had created to Jiujiang and kidnapped Chen Ge.

The hospital director would stop at nothing to bring out Chen Ge’s consciousness. He murdered Chen Ge again and again but even so he still failed. No matter what he did to Chen Ge’s consciousness, he could not tear apart or even kill Chen Ge’s consciousness. Whenever the dawn came, Chen Ge’s consciousness would eventually return. Chen Ge’s consciousness could not be split so the hospital director had to come at this from a different angle. He was originally an expert at toying with people’s heart, combined with his decades of exploration in the black fog, he knew that place better than anyone else.

With a careful planning, the hospital director instigated the black fog and it churned and boiled into a scary tsunami. To save the wounded and forgotten memories in the red city, Chen Ge chose to combine himself with the red city and try to influence it. The tsunami swept through the city, the forgotten memories were not washed away but Chen Ge’s consciousness could no longer leave the red city anymore. The hospital director stole away with parts of Chen Ge’s flesh and organ while the remaining parts were taken away by Chen Xiang…

Inside the cursed hospital, the memories that filled the sky were shattered in that moment, the hospital director’s past started to fade away. Holding the red key, the man in red fixed his death stare at the hospital director in the black fog. He plunged the key as hard as he could into the altar. Black blood that reeked kept leaking out from inside the altar.