Strange game designer.

Chapter 836 The Entrance to the Human World
After closing the bedroom door, Dr. Gao and his uncle looked at the blood-stained empty wine bottle. They didn't dare touch it directly with their hands. Instead, they used paper to take it to the kitchen, rinsed it clean, and threw it into the trash can only after leaving no trace.

"It seems your dad really drank too much; he even cut his hand." The uncle lied through his teeth, and Dr. Gao didn't refute him. The two of them tacitly refrained from disturbing the father any further: "Go check the other rooms. If nothing is missing, there's no need to call the police."

"My uncle is right." Dr. Gao had been busy until after four o'clock. He finally managed to lie down on the bed to rest, but before he could close his eyes for long, he heard a "smack" from outside.

The empty wine bottle smashed against the wall, shards of glass littering the floor. Before the sun had even risen, Grandpa's screams rang out.

Pushing open the bedroom door, Dr. Gao, carrying a blanket, ran to his grandfather's bedside with his younger brother.

The elderly man, in his seventies, clutched his head, rolled off the bed, and writhed on the floor in pain.

"Head! Head! Head!"

"Nephew, please take a look at him!" The uncle couldn't hold the old man down, and Dr. Gao was also at a loss. There were no marks on the old man's body, but the pain on his face was real.

"Grandpa, where do you feel unwell? Is it your head?"

"My head has been chopped off! Last night while I was sleeping, someone chopped off all my heads!" Grandpa said he had eight heads, but now he only had one left. When he said this, Dr. Gao and his uncle were both stunned.

“You ran out of the house in the middle of the night. We couldn’t find you in the neighborhood. When we came back, you were already in bed and have been sleeping ever since.” The uncle hugged his grandfather and tried to put him on the bed, but his grandfather was very strong and broke free from his uncle’s arms several times.

Dr. Gao poured out a handful of medicine and gave it to the old man. After a few minutes, the medicine took effect and the grandfather gradually calmed down.

"Luckily you were home, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to control him on my own." The uncle helped his grandfather to the bedside: "Dad, what happened last night?"

The old man slowly lowered his wrinkled hand, his fingernails filled with bits of flesh, and his neck was covered in bloody scratches from his own claws: "Someone chopped off my head, chopped it all off! Even the new head that grew back was chopped off..."

"That head that looks a lot like the gardener's?" Dr. Gao squatted down in front of Grandpa. "Who did it?"

Grandpa's eyes were a little dazed. He first pointed to himself, then to his head: "The new head that grew out has its own consciousness. It keeps biting my other heads! I threatened it that I would cut it off, but it wouldn't listen. Instead, it bit even harder, gnawing my seventh head beyond recognition, and it even tried to eat my brain. It was so painful, so last night I ran to the butcher's place, knocked on his door, and took his knife, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Eventually, I fainted from the pain."

Don't you remember what happened next?

Grandpa shook his head and thought for a long time. He vaguely recalled some things. He glanced at Dr. Gao's father's bedroom: "After I fainted, I vaguely saw someone approaching. The figure looked a bit like your dad. No, it shouldn't be him. That drunkard would never go out unless he ran out of alcohol."

The father's fingers were covered in blood, which meant he must have done something last night.

"I just wanted to cut off the new head that grew back, but someone cut off my whole head! It hurts so much! It hurts so much!" Grandpa covered his head, as if there were huge, bloody wounds all around him, and his thin body was trembling.

After placing the bottle of medicine from his pocket on his grandfather's bed, Dr. Gao silently walked to the door.

My grandfather's head grew mostly after being subjected to intense stimulation and certain events. The seven newly grown heads correspond to seven heinous incidents that occurred in Xinhu, and also to seven crises that the family encountered. The night the first head grew was the day the Xinhu Human Rights Committee was established. To ensure that ordinary people's lives were not disturbed, severely mentally ill patients needed to be taken away for compulsory treatment. That was also the day my grandmother, Dr. Gao, was sent to the hospital.

The second head grew very quickly. It was around the time when the new Shanghai residents first discovered the forest, and it was also the time when Dr. Gao's mother went missing for the first time. Her family searched everywhere and finally found her at the edge of the forest.

The third head corresponds to the Shanghai police's investigation of a mentally unstable patient. During a search of the neighborhood where the patient was strangled, they mistakenly arrested the uncle. It is said that the person who interrogated the uncle was Officer Xue Se.

And so on, each head that appeared was related to a certain event. Grandpa's heads also looked different. For example, the first head that grew out had no specific shape, as if it were nothingness; the second head that grew out was a stunningly beautiful woman, young and beautiful; the third head was somewhat similar to Officer Xue Se; and finally, the eighth head looked very much like the gardener.

"Why does this happen? As those people gradually recover and return to normal life, Grandpa grows a head that is not quite normal, as if all their abnormalities have converged on Grandpa."

"That's not right either. If we consider things from the gardener's perspective, then the gardener is the only normal person in the world. Wouldn't that mean that everyone is going crazy, and the rationality of seven people has been gathered into Grandpa's head and become his head?"

“My grandfather kept certain things with different heads, but last night someone chopped them all off.”

"Who did it?"

Dr. Gao glanced furtively into the room where her father was. If it really was her father who did it, then it could only mean one thing: this family was no longer safe.

Back in the bedroom, Dr. Gao packed all the medicines up and handed them to his uncle and grandfather: "I've taught you how to use them, so keep them safe."

"Are you going on a long trip?" My uncle asked, quite surprised.

"I've been busy with the gardener case lately and haven't been back to the hospital for several days. I'm worried something might have happened there." After waking up Old Ma, who was still practicing sleeping while standing, Dr. Gao picked up his backpack and headed out.

"Have breakfast before you go." The uncle grabbed a bag of medicine and looked at Dr. Gao's backpack: "It's still the same as when you were a kid. You've been using that backpack for who knows how many years. You never get a new one."

Stepping out of the building, Dr. Gao rode his old horse at breakneck speed along the autopsy avenue, where the crowd of people standing motionless on the roadside seemed to have increased.

My gaze pierced through the gaps in the crowd to look into the alley. After the sun rose, the forest vanished as if it had never existed.

"The forest at night seems to have turned into a crowd of people in the daytime." Dr. Gao suddenly felt terrified, a chill running down his spine.

We think we're lost in the forest, but actually the forest has taken up residence within us.

He dared not meet the eyes of those who stood there dumbfounded, and urged Lao Ma to hurry to the hospital located at the northernmost end of Autopsy Avenue.

This hospital has a very special name: the entrance to the human world.

(End of this chapter)