"Tianyang?"
A voice from his mother echoed in his ears.
Wei Tianyang slowly opened his eyes, the white light pouring down from above made his eyeballs throb with pain.
He drowsily sat up to find himself in a spacious and clean living room, with several large cardboard boxes laid out on the floor; at this moment, he was leaning against a brand-new sofa, with the protective film still unpeeled.
Looking back, the sun was shining outside the floor-to-ceiling window, and a light breeze slightly lifted the plain sheer curtains, allowing the bright daylight to seep into the living room from the gaps at the bottom of the curtains.
His mother was dressed in a white dress and sitting on one side of a white table, smiling at him.
The view before him left Wei Tianyang somewhat bewildered for a moment.
"Tianyang, are you tired?" his mother asked with a smile.
"This is?" he looked at the pile of boxes.
"Thanks to you, we've finally returned to Yin Country and bought a new house too," his mother said with a smile.
"I..." Wei Tianyang tried to recall, but his mind was a blank slate.
"These things brought over from Chicken Snake Country, you insisted on keeping them. After moving a few up here, you were so tired that you fell asleep on the sofa," his mother explained.
Wei Tianyang got up and walked over to the cardboard boxes; he wanted to open them to see what was inside, but the sealing tape seemed to have fused with the boxes, making it impossible to tear open.
"Mom? Do you have a knife?" Wei Tianyang looked back at his mother and asked.
His mother just shook her head with a smile and said, "You put the knife in one of those boxes as well."
He had no choice but to give up and walked to the door, trying to open it to look outside, but the door lock wouldn't budge.
"Is the door locked?" Wei Tianyang asked.
His mother nodded and said, "We just moved in; let's get the house in order first."
He had just let go of the doorknob when someone knocked on the door, the knocks were neither hurried nor slow and came with a blur of voices.
Wei Tianyang looked at his mother, but she simply shook her head gently. He pressed his ear against the door again, attempting to discern what was being said outside, only to hear a series of indistinct "yi ah li er" sounds.
"Is it really okay? Could it be a neighbor?" he asked.
His mother continued to shake her head and said, "Let's get the house in order first."
Wei Tianyang turned to examine the boxes again. He tried to peel off the tape starting from the edges, but after several attempts, he still couldn't succeed.
He looked around the living room for anything useful, but as his mother had said, they had just moved in, and there wasn't anything in the house.
As he wandered around the living room, he suddenly realized that the room had no bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom. At the same time, memories began to sprout like tender shoots breaking through seed shells, disturbing the tranquility of his mind.
"You're only twelve steps away from Yin Country."
A voice surfaced in his mind, sounding so familiar.
"Mom... did I..." Wei Tianyang supported his forehead, closed his eyes, and began to breathe heavily.
"You just had a nightmare while napping; none of it was real," his mother said.
Wei Tianyang walked over to the window. The sounds from outside were strangely complex, at times like the hustle and bustle of traffic, at other times like the stomping and shouting of thousands of people in unison.
He tried to draw the curtains, but the pulleys seemed to be welded to the track, immovable.
"Tianyang... are you too tired? Perhaps you should sleep a bit more," his mother suggested.
The knocking grew more insistent by the minute, and the person outside was shouting loudly; this time, he finally understood what was being said.
1202.
What did that mean?
Through the thin curtains, the shouting also came from outside the window.
"1202! 1202!"
Once again, the clamor of thousands stamping their feet and howling simultaneously echoed through his mind.
He turned, grabbed the stool, and was about to smash it against the window.
His mother clutched at his hand, her eyes brimming with tears, "Don't go out, once you do, you won't be able to return... What am I going to do without you..."
Wei Tianyang clenched his teeth. He understood that the person before him wasn't his mother.
Then, he ruthlessly tore away her hand and hurled the stool at the window.
The white curtain, like the tongue of a creature, wrapped around the stool and swallowed it, dragging itself out of the window as well.
But there was no sound of shattering glass, only a hole emitting a blinding white light remained.
Wei Tianyang stepped forward, the light so intense he couldn't open his eyes. Forcing a glimpse through his fingers, he could only make out the blurred figures of four people moving.
He turned his head to take one last look at his mother, but the room was now completely empty. Without a second thought, he grabbed the windowsill and leaped into the brilliance.
Like jumping off a cliff, or plunging into the depths of the sea, the rapid sensation of falling filled him with unimaginable fear.
But soon, his body and soul collided heavily, merging into one.
Wei Tianyang suddenly opened his eyes to a grey cement ceiling and exposed, rusted pipes.
He also heard a number of hushed whispers and quiet conversations around him.
"1202? You've finally woken up?" A familiar voice sounded beside his ear.
He turned his head to see a burly man he had met once in the abandoned park, now squatting beside his bed and smiling at him.
Wei Tianyang tried to speak, but only a hissing sound came from his throat. Trying to rise, he felt as though his body was disassembled into several pieces, and he had even forgotten how to control his legs and arms.
He laboriously lifted his left arm and under the faint white light saw an inverse triangle symbol cut into the inside of his wrist.
Looking at this small symbol, for some reason, he began to laugh.
Loser, defective product... This mark had finally appeared on him.
Glasses Beast now appeared in his view, looking at him gently with its remaining eye, then gently lifted Wei Tianyang's right arm.
When his right arm, black as oil and reduced to bare bone, came into his sight, Wei Tianyang shook uncontrollably with excitement, then he vomited onto the ground without restraint.
A black viscous fluid spewed from his mouth, and he felt a gust of wind blowing into his mouth from his lower jawbone, followed by a loss of balance, and he fell to the floor.
He lay there, feeling his chin with his left hand, touching only an open skeletal structure.
Through that terrifying cavity, he even felt a dried-up strip of flesh, which he guessed was his tongue.
How could this have happened...
A surge of intense sorrow welled up in him. As his left hand still retained the form of a human, he used it to support himself, trying to get up.
Bald Uncle and Bai came around from the other side of the bed, and as he tried to lift himself, they both helped him.
Stumbling, he leaned against the surgical bed, the sensation of his left foot touching the ground was odd. Glancing down, he discovered that his calf and foot had both suffered the same fate as his right arm, reduced to shiny, blackened bones.
Wei Tianyang tore open the surgical gown on his body to see a large hole rotted into his chest, and inside the hole was a large black tumor looking like a ball stuck in a sandpit.
He then surveyed the surroundings, making out the full extent of the wide room under the few white lights on the wall.
To call it a room was to misspeak; it was more like a repurposed abandoned auditorium turned into a morgue. He roughly estimated there to be a thousand beds.
Due to the room's vastness and the scarcity of lit white lights, the illumination was limited; the room wasn't very bright.
Apart from himself and the four Medicine People he had encountered in the park, there were many other men and women in green surgical gowns, with varying degrees of disfigurement, either standing or sitting beside rows of surgical beds engaging in hushed conversations or sitting in silent companionship. Many were stealthily eyeing Wei Tianyang.
Moreover, he discovered that the surgical beds were all covered with white cloths over numerous corpses.
Tiantai Pharmaceutical actually kept the living and the dead together...
At the head of the room was a set of double iron doors; without guessing, these were clearly the entrance and exit to the entire morgue.
Wei Tianyang's position was in the bottom right corner of the room, a long distance from the main door.
The burly man now sat on his bed, smiling, "1202, you almost died just then. If we hadn't woken you up, you'd be gone."