Chapter 26: Visiting the Sick

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An inverted room.
A man wearing a black triangular hat.
One of his eyes had a white pupil; the other was blue.
He wore a pitch-black overcoat, as dark as the night, absorbing all light without reflection. Through that dark fabric, only the silhouette of his figure could be discerned.
He sat beside an antique wooden dining table, wearing white gloves. On the table lay a pocket watch.
Before him stood a gigantic, red, liquid-like creature with elongated limbs, motionless like a specimen.
A multicolored flame burned continuously on its body, emitting a sizzling sound as moisture evaporated, yet the terrifying monster remained utterly silent, as if dead.
Liu Guangyao knew what this creature was—it was the Blood God... something he had seen more than once in his dreams.
In the pitch-black background, a blonde maid with closed eyes stepped out gracefully, holding a long knife.
She approached the Blood God, scorched by the colorful flames, and began slicing off pieces of its “flesh.”
Liu Guangyao was uncertain whether to call it flesh, for it was clearly liquid, yet under the maid’s manipulation, it exhibited the elastic texture only fresh meat could possess.
The maid placed the steaming meat onto a silver platter, then scraped some wax powder from a red wax block on the table, sprinkling it over the meat before presenting the dish to the man.
“Thank you, ■■■.”
“Please enjoy, Lord ■■.”
Liu Guangyao felt a sharp pain in his head!
Those strange syllables pierced into his mind like a dull blade, incessantly scraping his scalp, clawing along his skull. It was as if a drill had burrowed into his temple, whirring and churning his brain matter. He felt as if his head was about to explode!
He was going to die!
At this rate, he was going to die!
“Ahhhhh! Ahhh!!”
Liu Guangyao let out an inhuman scream and convulsed as he sat up in his hospital bed. His heart pounded violently in his chest, each beat sending a tremor through his throat. Apart from the pounding heartbeat, only a buzzing filled his ears.
Cold sweat drenched him as if he had just been pulled out of water. The bedsheet beneath him was nearly soaked through.

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His trembling right hand reached up to touch the top of his head, brushing aside his sparse hair.
What kind of dream was that?
It seemed like someone had devoured the Blood God.
“Click!”
The hospital room door suddenly swung open, startling Liu Guangyao into a sharp jolt accompanied by a strange cry.
A middle-aged man in a white coat entered the room. Seeing Liu Guangyao’s pale face, he frowned and asked, “Mr. Liu, did you have another nightmare?”
“Yes.” Liu Guangyao nodded blankly.
“The same dream as last time?”
“No, it’s different—but even stranger.”
Dr. Xia Shou frowned slowly as he looked at the half-bald patient before him.
Since entering the room, he had caught a faint but unmistakable scent of decay in the air, like the occasional whiff of a dead rat—elusive, impossible to trace, almost forgotten until it suddenly resurfaced.
Before coming in, Dr. Xia had already reviewed the patient’s file. At just twenty-five years old, Liu Guangyao was an accountant. The photo on his work ID showed a handsome, vigorous young man, but now he looked gaunt and withered, as though he were a man in his forties.
His thinning hair did little to cover a scalp dotted with scabs. Dark circles and bloodshot eyes made it seem as if he had been awake for three straight days and nights, teetering on the brink of sudden death. His neck jutted forward turtle-like, the cervical spine curved into an unhealthy arc.
“Mr. Liu, this is Dr. Xia, a dual PhD in psychology and biology,” Dr. Wang introduced, bestowing an impressive title upon Xia.
Dr. Xia nodded and asked, “May I see your arm?”
Liu Guangyao sighed wearily, unwrapping the bandages around his arm layer by layer to reveal skin darkened to a bruised black. A nauseating stench emanated from beneath the wrappings—the foul odor of severe decay only found on corpses!
“No sensation?” Dr. Xia inquired.
“Just a little. If you touch it, I can feel something faint,” Liu replied.
Standing beside Dr. Xia, Dr. Wang spoke quietly, “We took samples. The nerves are dead; the cells have ceased metabolism. But blood from the rest of the body still circulates through the right hand.”
In other words, the arm attached to this man was completely necrotic and rotting, yet still physically connected and part of his systemic blood circulation. Healthy blood flowed through the decayed vessels, circled back, and returned to his living body.
Can this really be safe?

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“How did you discover this?” Dr. Xia asked.
Dr. Wang shook his head. “When he first came for treatment, his hand had lost all medical viability, no nerve reflexes remained. Amputation was the only option.
“But strangely, his fingers could still move slightly, which is why he sought your expertise.
“He also suffers from severe insomnia and recurrent nightmares featuring the same scenes. He drew this based on the dream.”
Dr. Xia took the stack of papers—drawings depicting an inverted room with a lanky alien creature occupying its center. The creature’s head was covered in hair-like tendrils that spread like ivy over half the ceiling and floor.
Seeing the drawing, Dr. Xia suddenly understood why the Control Bureau had sent him. The creature in the picture was the Blood Demon, making it likely that the patient’s arm abnormalities were related.
But hadn’t the Blood Demon been killed and devoured? Why had the anomalies not ceased?
“Can you tell me about your dream?” Dr. Xia sat beside the hospital bed.
Liu Guangyao stared down at the white sheet, speaking blankly: “I dreamt I was being hunted at home, but the furniture was all upside down—the ceiling beneath my feet and the floor overhead. I was alone.
“Someone I didn’t know broke in to kill me. He wouldn’t kill me immediately but would first tie me to the bed, then cut off my right hand, and then... he would take my right hand away somewhere. After a while, he would come back and kill me.”
“Is your hand the same in the dream as it is now?”
“No, in the dream, my hand was fine.”
“Can you draw a portrait of the person who kills you?” Dr. Xia asked.
Dr. Wang explained softly, “He can’t remember the appearance of the person in the dream.”
“No, I think I can recall now,” Liu murmured, picking up the paper and pen from the bedside table and slowly beginning to draw.
While he sketched, Dr. Xia waited quietly nearby.
Midway through, Liu suddenly asked, “Doctor, have we met before? You seem very familiar.”
“I think this is our first meeting,” Dr. Xia replied.