Awake in an unfinished story
He murmured to himself unconsciously, and opened the door a little wider, but it was pushed open.
"Take it!"
The knife was nailed to the "O" on the door. Du Pianjian gripped the handle in reverse and slashed it fiercely to the final "8". The cold light was deeply embedded in the solid wood door panel. The groaning sound of metal forcibly tearing through the fibers was teeth-grinding. Wood chips rolled off like peeled flesh and stuck to the metal knife that had been pulled out.
The scratches before him were like mocking mouths, ridiculing the futile venting; the gruesome wounds were splitting open, clamoring for another strike. So he raised his arm high, the tip of the blade aimed at the round frame, gathering destructive power, and collided with it as if falling. The blade stopped abruptly in mid-air, still trembling from the resistance. Du Pianjian tilted his head in confusion; Yu Zou had gripped his wrist. His brows were pressed down by an invisible force, forming a pleading arc with his drooping eyes, and his tightly pursed lips revealed the weight he was bearing to stop him. Everything seemed to say: Stop.
Du Pianjian's shoulders slumped, and her grip on the knife loosened slightly, allowing Yu Zou to breathe. Yu Zou exhaled, relieved: "You scared me to death. It's all fake. You don't need to be afraid."
"Fake?" Du Pianjian slung the knife behind his back, trying to cover up his mistake by gathering the hair at his temples. He wanted to ask why he could still make scratches, but given that his behavior just now completely overturned the personality he usually showed to Yu Zou, he held back and didn't ask.
“I developed it.” Yu Zou smiled wryly, pointing to a small square on the door frame. “Remember the aerial climate garden? It uses dense blocks to preset scenes and project images, and processes and changes them according to the actual situation. Try to destroy it.”
The thrown knife struck the cube, and half of the door immediately returned to its original position. The connection between the yacht and Ji Huisheng only appeared at this moment. He asked, "Ji Huisheng managed to set up the entire yacht."
Yu Zou laboriously pulled the knife off his plate and handed it to Du Pianjian: "If he's not Yu Long's traitor, then he must be Teacher Ji."
"What's the meaning?"
"Shao Yuan took some of the core documents of this technology and probably sold them to his competitor, the Luo family."
Asking for the reason now is pointless; neither scenario would benefit the current situation. However, if it's Ji Huisheng, the situation is even worse. Shao Yuan is dead, while Ji Huisheng might still be alive and working for the St. Hele Sanatorium. A chilling disgust welled up in Du Pianjian's heart. Could there really be such people in the world? After someone close to them is killed, they willingly work for them, turning from victim into perpetrator. All of Yu Zou's efforts were wasted; Yu Zou's trust was betrayed.
Yu Zou walked to the room opposite and looked at the number, saying, "Pianjian, this is actually the layout of the St. Herle Sanatorium, right? I remember this string of numbers, A11101. Madam Lili said that this person burned down the sanatorium and saved everyone."
Du Pianjian remained silent. Yu Zou turned to look at him, thinking he was lost in unpleasant memories of the past, and called his name a few more times until he looked up and could see him: "Lately, it seems like my life is in a cycle, constantly reliving things from the past. I remember the last time we were on the yacht was playing a battle royale game. And what happened?"
"We are the winners."
"You won, and I benefited from your victory. So..."
"This time too." Du Pianjian said in a flat tone, stating a given fact.
Yu Zou affirmed him with a powerful look in his eyes, mimicking the action of holding a gun with his hands without any actual object, and said, "I will follow the leader's orders."
Du Pianjian laughed out loud, twirling the knife between her fingers: "Aren't you afraid I'm mentally ill?"
"What nonsense!" Yu Zou looked embarrassed.
"Just now?" Du Pianjian walked to the opposite room and looked at Yu Zou, who naturally made way for him. The door opened silently, and Yu Zou put away the light screen. In the few seconds it took to speak, he used the rules of his room's key card to decipher the lock. He said in a defiant tone, "What can I do? We're married. If it's a teacher, this is revenge against me."
Yu Zou went inside, but unfortunately, everything in the room was normal, with no other decorations.
Looking at Du Pianjian, who stood outside the door looking confused, Yu Zou slowly walked out of the dark doorway: "But I don't intend to surrender. I want to make it clear to her face that the death of Master Lili has nothing to do with you."
They searched each room one by one, and every single one was normal, perfectly normal. Yu Zou suggested going to room O31124, which Li Li had mentioned was her room number. If Ji Huisheng was involved in all of this, then either this room didn't exist on the entire yacht, or its furnishings were definitely unusual. Conversely, if everything in this room was normal, then Ji Huisheng could be ruled out.
Things didn't go as smoothly as they'd hoped. Room O31124 was hidden; they searched all the guest rooms, but none of them were there. Furthermore, many of the original passengers had vanished, and it seemed only the two of them remained on the yacht.
Where the paintings used to hang in the lobby are now an old-fashioned CRT display screen. The scrolling patient information is stuck on a date from twelve years ago. Because it is so old, some parts of it do not light up and are just black blocks.
Yu Zou complained, "These are products from so many years ago. It's a wonder they were able to find them."
"Of course I can't bear to throw away a vessel that can instantly awaken painful memories." Du Pianjian had seen enough of this kind of trick. It was thanks to them that he was able to have opportunities to fight back through years of stimulation. His first successful fight made him realize that what he thought was an indestructible force was just a bluff.
"Who?" Yu Zou pressed.
"Kong Jiaogeng, the attending physician at St. Herle Sanatorium." Du Pianjian calmly uttered this name, a demon who, under the guise of treatment, created more patients, using the blood squeezed from real flesh and pain as ink to write research reports. In countless days and nights, patients, pushed by the knife in unexpected ways, once again chose the wrong path, their lives taken without bloodshed, their incriminating evidence destroyed.
Du Pianjian's lips trembled slightly. His memories, inherited from another's neurons, throbbed with empathy, twisting beauty into ugliness. He didn't want Yu Zou to see him like this, and naturally assumed Yu Zou wouldn't want to see him like this either. But if there was a moment when he absolutely had to see it, he would rather reveal it himself. His eyes, staring at Yu Zou, were a lifeless blackness as he coldly laughed, saying, "Congratulations, the person who did all this isn't your beloved teacher, but my attending physician. It's not aimed at you, but at me..."
"So that's why you don't want to see He Honghan?" Yu Zou's brows furrowed slightly with a sense of powerlessness, and his heart was pierced by the words. Why had he always preferred to make excuses rather than tell him the truth? "I'm not happy at all. Because it's not the teacher, it's not me, it's you."
Du Pianjian looked at herself in Yu Zou's eyes, enveloped in a layer of amber-colored light, like a gentle barrier, and exhaled softly: "He can't hurt me in the slightest. He couldn't do it before, and it's even more impossible now."
Yu Zou was taken aback for a moment, then breathed a sigh of relief and laughed: "I'm superfluous."
Crossing the hall to the other side of the yacht, whether there was anyone else was no longer important. The priority was controlling the ship's systems; if its destination was international waters, without a signal, they could starve to death.
Pushing open the control room door, a whiff of old paper and a faint musty smell hit me. The walls, half green and half white, featured a remarkably realistic charcoal drawing of a window in the center, showing blue skies and white clouds outside, with an iron hospital bed beneath. Medical equipment that should have been in a solitary confinement room stood silently nearby, its robotic arm engraved with the Yulong logo.
Yu Zou went inside and touched the brand on the robotic arm. The touch felt real, but it was ultimately fake. A medical record was pasted on the headboard, the words blurred by old dust, and Yu Zou could only try harder to make them out.
Du Pianjian discovered the square on the ceiling, swiftly wielding his knife. A second later, the room transformed into a normal control room. The medical record before Yu Zou's eyes became a control panel screen, flashing the number: O31124.
"boom----"
A muffled thud came from afar, the numbers vanished, the screen went blank with static, and red and green lights flashed incessantly. The navigation system had been tampered with, propelling the ship towards international waters. Yu Zou steadied himself by holding onto the control panel with one hand, and with the other, pulled the data card from his wristband and inserted it into the central controller. Using Yi Song's remote processor, he attempted to control the ship's system and change the navigation direction. When the screen returned to normal, his heart sank again after checking the control panel. The wiring was in the lower deck; the circuitry had been compromised. He had to simultaneously disconnect the safety bolts at both the bow and stern.
The first step the person behind the scenes took was to separate the two of them.
Du Pianjian leaned against the wall, staring at the peeling paint on the opposite wall. Through the swirling dust, the window painting was broken, revealing a flattened piece of paper behind the wall. He turned to Yu Zou, seeing his troubled expression, and asked, "Can't it be fixed?"
Yu Zou briefly explained the situation, and Du Pianjian readily agreed. Taking advantage of the stability of the boat, he pulled out the paper and confirmed the plan with Yu Zou.
"Contact me every five minutes, anything you like," Yu Zou instructed.
Du Pianjian nodded, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and ran towards the stern of the boat.
The hall was filled with projections of people, dressed in hospital gowns, partying, their bodies covered in countless needle marks, emitting a nauseating pheromone.
Du Pianjian took out another knife hidden in his sleeve, inserted it into the gap of the control box, and pried it open. Suddenly, his body tilted uncontrollably, a loud bang was right next to his ear, the floor tilted, and there was another explosion.
The control circuit was maliciously short-circuited. Du Pianjian tore off an ornament from his clothes, shaved a thin wire to make a temporary jumper, and manually reset the fire pump pressure valve. Finally, after the red light above his head flashed once, the fire protection system was working normally again.
Du Pianjian retraced his steps, and as he passed the hall, an inexplicable chill slowed his approach. In the distance, white smoke, like a crouching beast, rapidly spread, then defiantly dissipated before him. Inside the hall, shattered glass littered the floor, and an ice-sculpted crystal chandelier lay on its side, burning fiercely.
The alternating sounds of the tuning forks seemed like an invisible hand parting the smoke. The patient information on the screen was rapidly changing, and after a burst of static, several people in white coats were projected onto the screen. The man in the very center was the shortest and oldest, bald and thin, with a serious expression but a professional smile on his lips. Ji Huisheng stood sideways at the edge, not looking at the camera, fidgeting with his fingers thoughtfully.
Have you found love, O11108?
Kong Jiaoheng! Du Pianjian's fist clenched silently at his side, his knuckles turning white from the force, like a row of white bones breaking through the ground. He would never forget that deep, clear voice, a voice that was inhumanly cold beneath a veneer of feigned concern.
"He's only willing to talk to a lunatic like you because you're pretty and he wants to have his way with you," Kong Jiaogeng said on the screen with pity, as if Du Pianjian were an innocent child.
"You can't survive in the normal world, so you have to come here."
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