"As long as you doubt the world, doom will come?" Chen Ge shook his head gently: "The few memories left in my mind tell me that even if you just live, you will be tortured by doom and despair."

“It’s different.” Zuo Han touched the wound on his left eye. It seemed that new flesh was growing, so it was a little itchy. “Your previous memories may come from reality. Reality is always cruel, and everything you are experiencing now is more like a dream, a dream that you can’t wake up from.”

"I haven't had any dreams at night since I woke up in the hospital. From this perspective, your guess does make sense." Chen Ge poured a glass of water for Zuo Han, but Zuo Han didn't even touch it. He was very cautious.

"Your body recovered quickly, and your eyes became gentle. I know you actually understand a lot of things, but you are unwilling to admit it now. Because you have the beauty and tasted the happiness, you don't want to break it with your own hands." Zuo Han is not only smart, but also has a strong insight. He can see a lot of things from Chen Ge's expressions and tone of voice.

After hearing Zuo Han's words, Chen Ge did not answer. He kept asking himself the same question, but he never got an answer.

"If this is just a dream, doubt will bring about bad luck and tear apart all the good things. But even if we wake up from the dream, won't we still have to return to a more cruel reality?"

"The beauty here is false." Zuo Han stood up and looked at Chen Ge very seriously: "What have you been through in just over a month? You were not like this in the hospital ward. At that time, you gave me the feeling of a demon with a vengeful heart."

"I haven't experienced anything special. I just live a simple life. If I have to say something, it should be that I met Zhang Ya." Chen Ge sat on the chair, with extremely complicated emotions in his eyes: "She is different from others to me. I feel very safe when I am with her."

"I thought it would go smoothly, but I didn't expect that I might have made a wasted trip today." Zuo Han took off his gloves and took out a crumpled note from his pocket: "There will be a day when dreams will end. If you change your mind, you can come to this place to find me."

When Chen Ge went to take the note, he discovered that all the fingerprints on Zuo Han's fingers had been worn off.

"I'm a wanted criminal now. This is the last time I'll come to you." Zuo Han saw Chen Ge accept the note and was about to leave. "This city looks beautiful on the surface, but under its glorious skin there are festering wounds. When you are unwilling to leave, it will slowly swallow you into its stomach."

"I'll think about it."

"Well, I have one more thing to tell you. I once stole a white cell phone from the hospital. When I opened it, it was full of all kinds of curse words, and a lot of small games related to curses. At first I thought it was a special case. Later, after I peeked at the cell phones of other nurses and doctors in the hospital, I found that all the white cell phones in the hospital had many curse-related games and small programs installed. If you see someone using a white cell phone in the future, remember not to get too close to him." After Zuo Han finished speaking, he left through the window of the bathroom in the haunted house without stopping.

After closing the window, Chen Ge's face was gloomy. He leaned against the door of the toilet cubicle, his brain working rapidly.

"I originally had a lot of memory fragments in my mind. That was a completely different life. The doctor in the hospital told me that those memories were all delusional. But after seeing the seven glass jars in the dean's office, I can be sure that the experience really existed." Chen Ge was actually very clear that if those memory fragments were real, then the city he lived in now might very well be fake.

"The hospital agreed to discharge me only after it found that all the memory fragments in my mind had disappeared. But the key point is that Dr. Sun reminded me when I was discharged that the treatment had just begun."

"Erasing my past memories is only the first step in the treatment. Next, they should start to reshape my memory so that I will no longer doubt the hospital and the world and become a puppet living in this city."

"They paralyzed me with false happiness and beauty, gave me everything I desired, and made me reluctant to discard it, and even made me become the defender of the rules."

Chen Ge's eyes were cold. "They had a good idea, but there were too many unexpected things. The patient Zhang Wenyu escaped, Zuo Han doubted the world, Dr. Sun helped, and most importantly, Zhang Ya seemed to have changed a lot."

He remembered clearly that when he saw Zhang Ya in the hospital, blood beads formed by blood words drilled into Zhang Ya's body.

"In the beginning, the purpose of Zhang Ya's existence should be to make up for my regrets and fulfill my obsession, but under the influence of those bloody words, Zhang Ya began to have some very terrifying dreams every night."

"Those dreams may be reality. They keep reminding me and Zhang Ya that underneath this beautiful bubble are bloody faces."

"This is a beautiful world that I'm addicted to, but my life is definitely not just about me." Chen Ge's mind was filled with blurry figures: "The second personality who dug out his own heart in the brain maze, the patient who was still suffering in the hospital, the child who was cut up and put into a glass jar, the scarred Doctor Sun, and even Zhang Ya."

Recalling the day when he went shopping, when Chen Ge was making the doll, his hands instinctively created the image of Zhang Ya in his mind.

Chen Ge, who was proficient in puppet making, had already discovered the problem at that time. The puppet Zhang Ya he made was covered in blood and had negative emotions all over her body. It was not Zhang Ya with ghost makeup on, but an extremely terrifying evil spirit.

The Zhang Ya created by instinct is different from the people around her, or in other words, the Zhang Ya in the haunted house is only a part of the real Zhang Ya.

Thinking of this, Chen Ge lowered his head and looked at the note in his palm. There were four words written on the front of the note - Ping An Apartment, and the location of Ping An Apartment was roughly marked on the back.

"Doctor Sun helped me escape from the hospital, which means the way to wake up from the dream is not in the hospital, but in this city."

The writer and Zuo Han left the same message for Chen Ge. After thinking for a moment, he turned and went into the staff lounge, then walked out carrying a tattered backpack.

The white cat followed Chen Ge happily. When it was about to walk out of the haunted house, Chen Ge put it back into the house: "I'm going to a very dangerous place. You stay here and watch over the house."

The white cat looked at Chen Ge in confusion with its heterochromatic eyes. It even felt flattered. After a moment, it ran out again, as if it was worried that Chen Ge didn't want it.

"I'm not going there for fun this time. You take good care of the house. I'll be back before dawn."

Chen Ge finally did not take the white cat with him. Following the instructions on the note, he took a taxi to a specialty restaurant close to Ping An Apartment.

Taxi drivers in Xinhai rarely come to such remote places. When Chen Ge got off the car, the other party kept telling him to try not to go around the suburbs alone at night.

Chen Ge came to the restaurant with the intention of avoiding being followed, and then he planned to walk to the apartment.

But it happened that he hadn't eaten much all day and was hungry, so he went straight into the restaurant.

Ping An Apartment is located in the western suburbs of Xinhai. This place is very desolate. Before Chen Ge came here, he had never thought that there would be a specialty restaurant that is relatively famous in Xinhai.

The shop was famous for its "braised meat" and "game". Later, when the city banned the game business, the shop owner hurriedly clarified that all the meat in his shop was home-raised, but the taste was so delicious because of the unique seasoning formula.

The store is not big, there are no private rooms, and there are only five or six low wooden tables in the hall.

"Sorry, we've closed our shop." Standing at the cashier counter was a fat man wearing a dirty apron and with a very obvious scar on his face.

"I came here from the city specifically to eat. Whatever you have left, just give me one portion." Chen Ge smelled the aroma of meat in the store and felt even hungrier. He found a seat and sat down, casually flipping through the menu.

"There are still some vegetables, but the meat is gone. The meat sells out very quickly." The fat chef finished the work at hand and walked to Chen Ge with the menu: "There are still some dumplings in the refrigerator. How about I make you some dumplings stuffed with wild boar meat?"

"I don't really like game, so just make anything else." Chen Ge looked up at the chef, who was also looking down at him.

The two saw each other's faces for a split second, and then something strange happened.

The scar on the fat chef's face began to twist, his body seemed to be frozen, and cold sweat kept flowing down his forehead.

"Do you know me?" Chen Ge narrowed his eyes.

"I don't know him!" The chef answered decisively. He ran towards the kitchen as if he was running for his life, but Chen Ge grabbed his shoulder.

"You really don't know me? Then why are you leaving? What's your name?" Chen Ge looked at the chef, who didn't have much flesh on his body, but his hands were very strong. His five fingers clasped the chef's shoulders tightly like steel claws: "You are shaking, are you afraid of me?"

"I'm not afraid of you, I just made a mistake. You look so much like a policeman that I thought you were here to check for game." The chef didn't dare turn around and kept his voice low.

"You're lying." Chen Ge's arms tightened even more: "Tell me, what's your name?"

"My name is Chi Longtou, I'm just a cook. Please let me go." The chef begged.

"Chilongtou? A stewed pork restaurant?" Chen Ge felt vaguely familiar with it. He pressed the chef against the wall and reached out to touch the scar on the chef's face.

Judging from his body shape, the chef was much taller than Chen Ge, but in reality, the chef didn't even have the thought of resisting.

"The wound on your face hasn't scabbed over yet. It's not deep, as if it was scratched by something. Is this some kind of punishment?" Chen Ge's finger touched the edge of the wound, and the chef grimaced in pain. "The wound is also very irregular on the outside, as if it has to be scratched again every time it's about to scab over. It must be very painful, right?"

Hearing Chen Ge's words, the chef's legs went limp. He knelt on the ground, his face pale as death: "Chen Ge, let's just pretend we've never met, okay? I've never seen you, and you've never entered my restaurant."

"You still know my name?" Chen Ge's strength became stronger. He was sure that this was the first time he saw the Dragon Head Chi, but the other party knew him, which meant that there was some kind of intersection between the two of them, and that intersection was also a proof of past memories.

The chef wanted to slap himself in the face. He had a bitter face and didn't even dare to say a word.

"Just answer a few questions for me honestly. If I'm satisfied, I won't bother you anymore and we'll just pretend we've never met." Compared to the chef, Chen Ge was the more anxious one, but he didn't show it.

"Ask me, and I will tell you everything I know." The chef got up from the ground as if he had accepted his fate, and he trotted and closed the door of the restaurant.

"First question, where did you know me?" This was what Chen Ge was most curious about. He had been planning to ask Zhang Wenyu about his past tonight, but he didn't expect to meet this strange chef.

"It's in the Xinhai Luzhu Restaurant, not behind the door..." As the chef spoke, the world in front of his eyes was covered with a layer of blood, and he felt as if his brain was torn apart.

"Hey!" Chen Ge was also startled. He saw that the scar on the chef's face was torn apart inexplicably, and blood was all over the chef's face.

Covering his face, the chef rolled on the ground. He endured the pain but dared not make too much noise. He could only bite the rag on the table with his teeth.

The ground was covered with blood. Chen Ge looked at the slowly solidifying scarlet color without any disgust or aversion. It was as if he had already gotten used to the color of blood.

When Chen Ge touched the blood on the ground with his fingers, the sticky and warm feeling made him feel very familiar. A thought popped up from the depths of his mind: "This is real blood."

Ten minutes passed before the chef regained consciousness.

He stretched out his bloody hand and grabbed Chen Ge's shoes: "I can't tell you, or I'll die."

"In fact, in your current state, I feel that it is better to die than to live. Perhaps you are also worried about something." Chen Ge helped the chef up: "If one day I can end my suffering, I will find a way to help you. You don't have to force yourself. Just tell me what you want to say."

The cook's body was shaking with pain. He took a rag, dipped it in his own blood and wrote on the ground. He wiped off every word he wrote - this was the place behind the door used to punish patients.

"A place used to punish patients?"

With trembling fingers, the chef wrote another line of words - If you don't run away, you can't die even if you want to. Save me.

He wiped off all the blood on the floor, covered his face and returned to the kitchen.

Ever since Chen Ge saw the bloody words on the ground, he began to have a very bad premonition.

If you pursue the truth, doom will come, and now doom seems to have arrived.