"All of this—the whole unholy narrative—comes straight from the mouth of Ah-Ling. She's a piece of human wreckage who claims to be the only soul left breathing after the slaughterhouse operation at Happy Farmstead" Officer Zhao Feng said to Officer Li Guoming, his voice as flat as a washed blackboard. He snapped the dead-letter file shut, the sound like a liquid whipcrack in the quiet of the car.
"It's a lot of spoiled meat to swallow, Xiao Feng," Officer Li exhaled, a heavy blanket of a sigh escaping him.
Zhao Feng didn't offer an immediate answer. He just stared out the window at the jagged mountain passes and the "tangle of second growth" lining the G56 Hangrui Expressway (G56 杭瑞高速公路). It was the main concrete ribbon tying Kunming to Dali, a monolith of asphalt slicing through the wilderness., He checked his watch; they'd been caught in the gears of the machine for over four hours now since leaving Ankang Hospital in Kunming. It was a long, drifting nightmare of a drive, even though Zhao's driver was red-lining the engine at a steady 120 clicks ever since they'd cleared the Guana Toll Gate (广大收费站) in Guangtong (广通镇).
"I know it tastes like a chemical curse, Ming-zai. I get it," Zhao Feng said, his voice dropping into a dry, shivering rattle. "But the math doesn't lie. This thing—this void of logic—is performing an agonizing rhythm across the map. It's identical, and the timing is close enough to make your pulse start to red-line. We saw it in Thailand, we saw it at the Cambodian border, and now we see it in Eryuan..." Zhao emphasized, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness as he looked at his old friend. "And the real kicker? The ghost in the machine linking all three charnel houses is that grey-market magnate, Deng. Even if the story is spooks and shadows, it's a trail of breadcrumbs we have to follow."
"I hear you, Xiao Feng. It's not that I don't believe in the dark galleries of the world," Li Guoming said, offering a slow, grim nod. "But the situation is a rat-warren of insanity. We're dealing with the testimony of two spent shells—two lunatics. Evidence like that is jagged glass in a courtroom."
His face then settled into a mask of cold knowledge. "But no matter how the wind blows, I'm with you to the end of the line. We're keepers of the peace, and if there are bad actors out there creating a world of pain—even if they're goddamn spooks or primordial demons—we're going to strip their gears."
"Good!" Officer Zhao Feng clapped his old friend's shoulder with a grin that felt like a jagged scrawl across his face. It wasn't long before the black Hongqi sedan—that heavy, silent monolith of steel—rolled into the lot of the "Dali Anning Recovery Center (大理安宁疗养中心 : DàlǐĀnníng Liáoyǎng Zhōngxīn)."
The name was a glossy dream, a thin skin of a lie; in reality, it was a state-run psychiatric ward, a cinderblock sarcophagus perched on the hills west of Dali, some ten clicks away from the cold, flat mirror of Erhai Lake (洱海 : Ěrhǎi). The facility was entombed within high, pale walls that had faded into the color of a washed blackboard. The perimeter looked clean enough, but it radiated a sense of strict isolation, a total door-slam to the world outside.
The entrance was an arched hybrid of Chinese style, wrought iron as black as a nightmare, hammered into grotesque effigies of clouds and dragons. A thick slab of blue plastic hung there, looking like the spent shell of an idea. The gold characters—"大理安宁疗养中心" (Dali Anning Recovery Center)—had surrendered to the years, the paint now a cracked and dirty patchwork of faded yellow. One corner of the sign sagged like a broken wing, the letters caked in a roadmap of dust from a long, slow accumulation of time.
Along the outer walls, tall cypress trees stood in sentinel rows, providing shade but turning the atmosphere into a choking emptiness, a lonely landscape where the air felt stagnant and thick as meat.
Once they'd moved through the gears of the check-in process and handed the documents to the head nurse, a burly male nurse in blue—a massive wall of meat—was assigned to lead the way. He ushered Officer Li and Officer Zhao down a winding path between buildings that looked as if it had been lost in some private, faraway static for decades. It was a path that saw few travelers.
The floor beneath them was dull white terrazzo, reflecting the sickly, sallow glow of neon tubes that were blinking on and off like a bad heart. The walls were the standard institutional two-tone: a necrotic green on the bottom and white on top, the colors now hollowed and faded, marked by Rorschachs of stains where the years had simply decided to rot through the paint.
A few steps later, they found a red arrow—a jagged scrawl of direction—hanging beneath a tarnished silver sign that announced the "Special Care Zone" (特护区 : Tèhù Qū). The male nurse, that massive wall of meat in blue, simply offered a noncommittal nod., He gestured toward the path ahead, an invitation into the innermost gears of the machine, then vanished into the shadows without a single word, leaving a choking emptiness behind him.
Officer Li Guoming and Officer Zhao Feng shared a look—a mask of cold knowledge passing between old friends. They followed the arrow until they hit the checkpoint: double iron doors painted a necrotic gray-green. Three blue plastic slabs—the spent shells of authority—were bolted to the metal. The first, dead center, commanded "SURVEILLANCE AREA – MAINTAIN SILENCE" (监控区域 - 请保持安 : Jiānkòng qūyù - Qǐng bǎochí ānjìng). Above it, the others warned "NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION" (禁止擅自进入 : Jìnzhǐ shànzì jìnrù) and the real kicker: "YOU HAVE ENTERED A FULL-TIME REAL-TIME RECORDING ZONE" (您已进入全行程实时监控区 : Nín yǐ jìnrù quán xíngchéng shíshí jiānkòng qū). It was the kind of bureaucratic boilerplate that made your pulse start to red-line.
They breached the heavy iron lid of the sarcophagus, entering a corridor lined with doors. Each one had its own neon tube, but they were all dark except for the first on the left. That one emitted a sickly, sallow glow, casting long shadows across the floor like moving fingers. A brass plate—etched with the hard scrawl of finality—read "SURVEILLANCE LEVEL: MAXIMUM" (等级:特级 : Guānchá děngjí: Tèjí). A secondary card, a piece of human wreckage in paper form, gave the details:
Patient Code: YL-0904 (患者编号: Huànzhě biānhào YL-0904)
Surveillance Level: Maximum 01 (监控等級:特級 - Jiānkòng děngjí: Tèjí 01)
"Ah-Ling is in there. Patient YL-0904. This is the nest," Zhao Feng said, his voice as flat as a washed blackboard as he checked his slip of paper. Li Guoming offered a grim nod, his eyes drifting up to catch the glass eye that never blinks—the CCTV camera's small red light, steady as a bad heart.
They stepped through the side door and found themselves in the void of logic that was the observation room. A massive one-way mirror occupied the wall, a silver barrier between worlds. From their side, the lighting was bright and clinical, a riot of urgent necessities allowing them to eyeball the merchandise inside with focused, urgent haste. From the other side, however, the mirror was just a blank silver wall—a washed blackboard of absolute, suffocating isolation.
Inside, the floor and walls were skinned in a sallow, white faux-leather padding—the kind of soft-walled sarcophagus meant to keep the crazy ones from processing their own heads against the concrete if the world inside got too loud. In the center of the room, a single iron bed was anchored to the floor like a monolith of duty. A figure sat there in blue hospital pajamas, her hair a wild, tangled bird's nest of dark static, her back turned toward the one-way mirror like a door slammed shut on the world.
While the two officers were considering how to cut through the private, faraway static of the patient, the door behind them wheezed open.
"Good day, gentlemen. I am Dr. He Linmo (和林默), the physician designated to oversee this particular case," the newcomer said, his voice as flat and clinical as a washed blackboard.
He was a man somewhere between forty-five and fifty, his short-cropped hair starting to show the first gray-white tracks of time. He had an egg-shaped face and a mustache trimmed with the kind of mechanical precision that suggested he liked everything in its proper place. He wore a white lab coat—not new, but it was clean and crisp, showing no sign of the human wreckage he dealt with daily. A row of pens was tucked into his breast pocket like a miniature arsenal of bureaucracy, and beneath the coat, a dark blue shirt and black trousers met a pair of black running shoes—clean, but showing the roadmap of miles he'd put in on the job.
"Are you gentlemen from Department 9?" the doctor asked, the question hanging in the air like a high-voltage wire.
Li Guoming's pulse started to red-line, ready to offer a denial, but Zhao Feng was faster. He offered a quick, sharp nod of acknowledgement.
"We are," Zhao said, his face a mask of cold knowledge. "We're here to eyeball the merchandise. Is it possible to get a few more words out of her?"
Dr. He shoved his hands into his pockets and gave a slow, measured nod. "It's possible, certainly. But this woman—after she vomited out that last shivering rattle of a confession—has turned into a spent shell. She spends her days sitting just like that, unmoving, lost in her own dark gallery. The high-voltage shrieks and the manic terror are gone, at least for now. She moves like a well-programmed machine when the nurses come to feed her or deliver the chemical curse of her meds; she's cooperative enough".
Dr. He Linmo paused for a beat before his eyes moved back to the glass. "Come. I'll lead you into the mouth of the machine so you can see for yourselves."
"Excellent," Officer Zhao Feng said, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence. "We appreciate the assist, Doctor He".
The doctor fished a heavy set of brass keys from his lab coat pocket, sliding them into the slot with a practiced, mechanical grace. Li Guoming watched, his pulse starting to red-line as he realized it took three separate turns—three distinct, metallic clacks—to retract the bolts from the heavy iron lid of the room. Before stepping inside, Dr. He leaned into the intercom grill, spat a single code-word into the private, faraway static, and gestured for the two officers to follow him into the mouth of the machine.
"Ms. Li Feiling, we're here for a visit," Dr. He said, his voice painted with a nursery-rhyme sweetness. But his feet told a different story; he operated on an instructional manual of caution, keeping a wide berth between himself and the bed. The woman offered no reaction. She remained a spent shell, sitting as still as a stone effigy with her eyes fixed on the padded wall. Only her lips were moving, performing a silent, rhythmic twitching as if she were reciting a chemical curse to the shadows.
"Ms. Li, I'm Zhao Feng. I'm with the authorities," Officer Zhao said, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence intended to soothe a shivering rattle of a soul. "I need to know about the beast. The goat. It was blind, wasn't it? But it had that massive, lidless eye in the center of its spine?"
The woman gave a jagged jolt of surprise, though she didn't turn to look at him. She remained rooted for a long beat before her voice emerged—a dry, shivering rattle that seemed to come from a deep, cold gallery within her. "Blind... but it sees from the meat of its back. It had four ears to hear the screaming. It had nine tails like scorpions. Its name was Bo... the unmaker of men."
Officer Zhao offered a noncommittal hmmm before pushing the gears of the inquiry further. "And the small-fry? The twins? Did they really transform into a single sheet of cloth?"
The question hit a void of logic in the woman's mind. Her frame began to perform fantastic rubber acrobatics, swaying back and forth with a desperate, mindless energy. "Gone! The gears stripped and they flew!" she shrieked, her voice rising toward a high-voltage shriek. "The children turned into a bleeding red shroud and took to the sky! They fled the slaughterhouse!"
Dr. He raised a hand, a silent command for the officers to stop before the patient's mind completely unhinged. But Ah-Ling wasn't finished. She shook her head wildly, her eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness in her memory.
"The twins... they sang! They invited the others into the unholy choir! Singing and performing that grotesque, boneless dance!" her voice broke into a full-throated shout, the sound echoing through the padded sarcophagus like a soul in a centrifuge.
"Easy now, Ms. Li. They're gone. All gone. No more monsters, no more danger," Dr. He said, his voice painted with a nursery-rhyme sweetness. He snapped his fingers—pop!—right next to her ear, a sound like a liquid whipcrack in the sallow quiet. At the sound, the woman seemed to collapse back into herself, becoming a spent shell once more. She sat there, head bowed, her silence a heavy blanket that seemed to swallow the room.
"That's as much as we're going to get," the doctor said, turning back to the officers. "Her mind is a roadmap of trauma, a world of pain that's going to take years to navigate. You gentlemen better step outside now."
But before any of them could move a muscle, the woman whirled around. She offered them a fixed, radiant smile—the kind of look that belonged in a childhood daydream rather than this padded sarcophagus. But when her lids fluttered open, the gears of the world stripped for the three men. The officers and the doctor recoiled a step, their pulses starting to red-line at the void of logic staring back at them.
The eyes of Ah-Ling—that former kindergarten teacher—had dissolved into twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness. There wasn't a single speck of white left, just two holes into a dark gallery of nothingness.
And she wasn't finished. Her body began to perform fantastic rubber acrobatics, twisting and bulging as she jacked herself up onto the bed. She began to sway in a grotesque, boneless dance, her mouth unhinging to vomit out that same chemical curse of a poem:
"The sky bleeds red, the Star of Disaster flickers bright.Men sow their own unmaking; there is no hiding from the light.Greed is the fire, leaving the world a spent shell in the night.Heaven settles the score, and the demons rise to bite.The old dream wakes, for the world of pain is in sight.Who stays breathing? All shall be white bones, stripped of their might!!"
Ah-Ling spun and spun, a feathered engine of nightmare in a blue hospital gown, chanting the verses in an endless, discordant melody. The room dissolved into a riot of focused, urgent haste. Dr. He shoved the two officers out of the mouth of the machine, lunging for the intercom to bark out a series of codes—a jagged scrawl of authority. He whirled back to them, his face a mask of cold knowledge, and explained that he had ordered a heavy-duty chemical cocktail to process the woman back into a silent, drugged sleep.
"Watch your back, Doc. We're out of here," Officer Zhao Feng said, his voice flat as a washed blackboard. "Have the merchandise prepped in a couple of days—we're processing her transfer to Ankang Hospital in Kunming." Zhao gave a sharp, clinical nod, then ushered Li Guoming out of the padded sarcophagus with focused, urgent haste.
"What the hell really happened back there?" Li Guoming rasped as they marched down the sallow, neon-lit corridor. "Why did her eyes go black—like twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness?"
"Possession," Zhao Feng said, the word falling like a stone into a dark lake. "In the Department 9 instructional manual, we call it a state of being overmastered. It's a—" He cut himself off, seeing the jagged jolt of terror on his old friend's face. "Never mind. Call it a relapse. The doc here can handle the chemical curse of her meds. I only came to verify the trinity: the beast, the small-fry, and that unholy choir of a poem."
"The poem?" Li asked, his mind a void of logic. "You mean that nursery-rhyme static she was chanting? It's the same one from the witness report?"
"Identical," Zhao said, his face becoming a mask of cold knowledge. "I've confirmed the math. The thing those thieves invited into their nest is a Bo Yi (猼訑). The ancient bones of the Shanhaijing record it clearly: 'On Mount Jishan (基山), there is jade on the south and monster-trees on the north. A beast lives there, shaped like a goat but with nine tails and four ears, and a massive, lidless eye that winks from the meat of its spine. Wear its hide, and you'll never know the shivering rattle of fear again.' That blind beast trailing the twins? That's the unmaker of men."
"And the small-fry… the ones with the fixed, radiant smiles?" Zhao's voice dropped into a dry, shivering rattle. "Those thieves stripped the wrong gears. They didn't just snatch a king's ransom; they kidnapped the Martian Twins (荧惑童子 : Yinghuo Tongzi)."
"Martian Twins?!" Li Guoming stammered, his pulse starting to red-line.
"Buckle up, Ming-zai. I'll lay out the theory for you on the road," Zhao barked as he yanked open the door of the black Hongqi—that heavy, silent monolith of steel waiting at the curb. "We need to move. Next stop: Eryuan County, before the world goes entirely sideways."
.........….