Chapter 23: Thicket Village (End) Part 3

He tried to listen closer, but after that shout, the voice went silent again.

Unable to move, Yun Xueqing could only observe with his eyes.

Limited by his view, he saw a sticker on the bedrail with his info.

Name: Yun Xueqing

Number: 13

Age: 18

Condition: Intellectual disability, requires surgery. Scheduled for 2:30 PM.

The script was a simplified ancient Hanzi that Yun Xueqing could mostly read. Staring at the last two lines, he fell into deep thought.

The rumble of a cart interrupted him. A woman in a nurse’s uniform entered, holding a chart. In a mechanical drone, she called, “Number 23, Yun Xueqing?”

Yun Xueqing responded.

The nurse eyed him, as if double-checking. “Yun Xueqing, Skull Perforation Surgery this afternoon.”

Her tone was icy—not Wu Xue’s aloof coldness, but a lifeless chill, inhuman.

As she entered, the already air-conditioned room dropped another ten degrees.

Ye Xuechun sighed. “Feels nice and cool.”

The nurse’s wooden eyes swiveled. In a cold voice, “Number 24, Ye Xuechun, Skull Perforation Surgery at 4 PM.”

Like an executioner reading the roster, she intoned, “Number 25, Shen Qing, Skull Perforation Surgery at 7 PM.”

With that, she pushed the cart and left.

Yun Xueqing mused, “Skull Perforation Surgery?”

Did that mean drilling a hole in the head?

Ye Xuechun sighed too. “What’s this Skull Perforation thing? Sounds bad. We need to escape ASAP.”

The one called Shen Qing suddenly spoke. “In ancient Europe, some religious believers thought perforating the skull could reduce intracranial pressure, allowing more blood to flow into the brain for extra nutrients. To achieve secondary brain development.”[2]

Yun Xueqing didn’t fully get it; neither did Ye Xuechun. So he asked, “What does that mean?”

Shen Qing hadn’t expected such dimwits, but figuring he might need their help to escape, he patiently explained:

“When a fetus is in the womb, the skull hasn’t fused—to avoid difficult births. Infants’ brains develop rapidly in the first one or two years, and the skull gradually closes. After closure, intracranial pressure forms, slowing or halting brain development. Blood no longer floods the cranial cavity like before.”[3]

He suddenly laughed. “Then some scholars proposed that if a hole was drilled into the skull to release intracranial pressure and accelerate blood circulation, the brain would become unprecedentedly relaxed and active. Correspondingly, both thinking ability and memory would see significant improvements.”

His laughter was somewhat abrupt, especially after they learned all three of them were scheduled for Skull Perforation Surgery. It made him seem even more eerie.

Yun Xueqing fell silent for a moment.

He still didn’t quite understand. There were too many modern terms, which posed a challenge for someone from ancient times.

Fortunately, Ye Xuechun caught the key point at the end and realized with sudden understanding, “So, it means this surgery will improve intelligence, right?”

He inwardly sighed. He had actually met someone who talked even more than he did. Something that could be explained in one sentence had been dragged out into a long spiel, leaving his head spinning.

Shen Qing fumed in frustration. “Illiterate! An utterly ignorant illiterate!”

Ye Xuechun was somewhat surprised that the other had directly cursed him. Moments later, he realized with dawning comprehension: he had accidentally voiced all his inner thoughts aloud.

The large ward filled with a cheerful atmosphere, but Yun Xueqing frowned. He asked, “Does your medical condition description mention anything related to intelligence?”

Ye Xuechun was still out of the loop. “Medical condition description? What medical condition description?”

Yun Xueqing used his still-mobile fingertip to point at the sticker on the other’s bed rail.

The other looked over with sudden realization and exclaimed in surprise, “This hospital falsifies ages! I’m 22, but they recorded me as 18!”

Yun Xueqing silently noted this information and patiently asked, “What about the medical condition description section?”

Ye Xuechun: “Intellectual disability.”

Yun Xueqing noted it down one by one, then asked Shen Qing.

The other scoffed disdainfully. “Why should I share clues with you?”

He had just barely sat up and seen the other’s face. Only then did he notice that this guy was the one standing next to Dong Jun!

A friend of Dong Jun’s was his enemy!

Forget cooperating—he wished he could send him straight to hell!

Having failed to get the clue and instead earning some hatred for nothing, Yun Xueqing didn’t press the issue.

He was the first one scheduled for surgery. He lowered his gaze to the iron ring restraining his wrist and tried to mobilize his body’s Spiritual Power there.

The remnants of his Spiritual Power flowed through his Dantian, causing a faint ache in his lower abdomen. He endured the urge to frown and mobilized his Spiritual Power to shatter the iron ring.

Ye Xuechun heard the noise and jumped in fright. Seeing Yun Xueqing already off the bed, he said in surprise, “Boss, you even have lockpicking skills?”

Yun Xueqing shook his head. “Not anymore for now.”

His Spiritual Power was depleted; he couldn’t accumulate a second wave of energy temporarily.

He figured that everyone who had entered this Weird Domain this time should be Oracles. “Can’t you use your Oracle powers to pick the lock?”

Ye Xuechun didn’t mind sharing. “My talent is poor. I can’t learn other people’s Oracles; I only mastered one kind.”

Poor talent, unable to learn Oracles, reduced to the lowest level of Oracle—it sounded pretty tragic.

Yun Xueqing didn’t ask further. Instead, he said, “I’ll go out and take a look first.”

First, find Fu Wuxuan and rendezvous, then investigate what was going on with this hospital.

He didn’t know which ward Fu Wuxuan was in.

He tried to calculate it when he heard Ye Xuechun suddenly shout, “Watch out behind you!”

Yun Xueqing hadn’t even turned back when a stab of pain came from the back of his neck.

A nurse wearing a mask had jabbed his neck with a syringe. In an icy tone, she reported, “Patient No. 23 attempted to escape. Sedative administered and under control.”

After an unknown liquid was injected into his body, Yun Xueqing felt his limbs grow weak and limp. The scene before his eyes shook like it had been through an earthquake, slowly inverting and cracking apart. The next moment, he lost consciousness.

Yun Xueqing didn’t know what had happened. The scene before his eyes began to change.

He was in a pitch-black room, lying on a hard iron bed. His arms were restrained by iron rings, but this time, even his head was fixed in place by something; he couldn’t turn it.

The small room had a window, and pale moonlight fell on his face, adding a touch of softness.

The room wasn’t pure black but a hazy gray-blue. The tiny space was extremely quiet, with only rustling sounds coming from beside his ear.

Yun Xueqing couldn’t move his neck or see what was happening nearby; he could only passively listen to the rustling sounds continue nonstop.

He thought the noise would quiet down after a while, but contrary to his expectations, it grew louder and louder.

The unknown was the most terrifying.

Yun Xueqing found it somewhat unbearable. He slanted his eyeball toward the head of the bed.

There, a person crouched beside his bed.

The person seemed to notice Yun Xueqing’s gaze and said somewhat bitterly, “My head hurts so much, my head hurts, hurts so much.”

Borrowing the moonlight, Yun Xueqing finally saw clearly: a fist-sized hole gaped in the right side of the other’s skull.

The person truly seemed tormented by the headache. He stuck his fingers into his head and kept digging, pulling out bits of brain matter and pulp, which emitted a faint fishy smell.

After digging for a while, he apparently didn’t want to limit himself. He directly shoved his fist into his brain and pounded forcefully, smashing the contents inside before digging it all out with his fingers.

He muttered, “My head hurts, my head hurts so much.”

He dug for quite a while. The diggable contents grew fewer and fewer, with brain matter and pulp flowing all over the floor. Some even splattered, staining the sheets.

Yun Xueqing could only watch sidelong, watching him as he kept digging into his brain.

He kept digging, muttering “my head hurts,” until finally, there was nothing left to dig out. His gaze suddenly fell on Yun Xueqing.

Yun Xueqing looked at this monster wearing his own face. It smiled eerily at him and said, “Does your head hurt?”

*

Yun Xueqing abruptly opened his eyes. The glaring white fluorescent light made his eyes water involuntarily, but he had no way to wipe the tears from the corner of his eye.

His hands were once again restrained by iron rings.

Beside him, Ye Xuechun said worriedly, “Boss, you’re finally awake. You’ve been asleep for several hours.”

Yun Xueqing said calmly, “What time is it now?”

Ye Xuechun hesitated for a moment before honestly replying, “2:25 p.m. Only five minutes left.”

Five minutes remaining, and Yun Xueqing would be wheeled away by that nurse to the operating room for Skull Perforation Surgery.

He had to escape!

Yun Xueqing had no doubt that if the surgery really happened, that nightmare would become reality.

He began mobilizing his Spiritual Power, frantically squeezing out the last bits of vitality from his body.

But his body was already on the verge of collapse. He failed to mobilize any Spiritual Power and instead coughed up a mouthful of blood first.

The blood trickled down his snow-white face onto the sheets, like red plums fallen on white snow—beautiful in an eerie way.

Ye Xuechun said in shock, “Boss, what’s wrong with you? Don’t scare me!”

Yun Xueqing wanted to say he was fine, but as soon as he opened his mouth, his throat itched. Unable to hold back, he coughed up another mouthful of blood.

Misfortunes never came singly. As Yun Xueqing’s internal injuries flared up, the sound of a small cart slowly approached the ward.

The nurse was back, holding a syringe. She jabbed three needles into Yun Xueqing.

With three doses of anesthetic, he truly couldn’t move a muscle now.

Just as helpless and powerless as in the dream.

The anesthetic was potent; even his flesh and bones felt numb. Yun Xueqing stared at the ceiling overhead.

Two nurses lifted him onto a mobile bed. He lay there like a stiff corpse, at the mercy of their handling.

The overhead view kept changing.

From the ward, to the elevator, then to the operating room—he drew closer and closer to death.

The nurses properly positioned him on the operating table and then withdrew.

For some reason, there was a clock hanging in the operating room. With no one else inside, Yun Xueqing could only hear his own heartbeat and the ticking of the clock hands.

When the clock reached 2:30, it let out an abrupt “haha,” like the weird laughter of a mischievous child with a pinched throat.

The eerie laugh was filled with malice, as if celebrating Yun Xueqing’s impending death in advance.

The more critical the moment, the calmer the mind became. Time seemed to freeze.

Yun Xueqing’s expression grew grave as his mind raced, searching for an escape.

But in this situation, it seemed like no matter what, it was a dead end.

He was like fish on the chopping block, unable to control his own fate.

Moments later, sounds came from outside the operating room door. Footsteps gradually approached.

The lead surgeon had arrived.