Chapter 504: Deadly Knowledge

The moment his fingers touched the blood, the black, white, and gray world of the dead descended in an instant. All sounds faded away in the blink of an eye, and every perception from the real world became hollow and distant.

The towering "Director," along with Erin and Little Red Riding Hood beside him, became frozen phantoms in the air. Yu Sheng looked up toward the headless corpse and saw a middle-aged man in a shirt and trousers sitting dully at a desk, seemingly still engrossed in some calculation.

Yu Sheng stepped over and patted his shoulder. "Hey, I have some questions..."

"Give me a little more time, just a little more," the middle-aged man said without raising his head. "I know, I know I'm already dead. 'Him' gave me the power to see through calamities, but I'm still a little short... I'm about to figure out just what this thing is..."

Yu Sheng was immediately stunned.

This wasn't his first time communicating with the dead, but this situation was clearly different from before!

The deceased, named Sun Chen, was still hunched over the desk, writing furiously, seemingly indifferent to his own fate of death—he didn't even wonder why Yu Sheng had suddenly appeared in this afterlife world. This was completely different from the dazed "dead" Yu Sheng had seen before!

The next moment, Yu Sheng forcefully restrained his curiosity. He didn't interrupt the figure busy at the desk, but carefully peered over from the side to see what this "Sun Chen" was writing that he wouldn't stop even after death.

He saw numbers and calculation symbols that left him dizzy and disoriented—just like the ones on the surrounding walls.

It was a thick notebook. Sun Chen was rapidly sketching line after line on a new page. They looked like formulas, but the symbols and operations were beyond Yu Sheng's understanding. Among the numerous equations were a series of complex and chaotic geometric figures—they seemed not only part of the formulas but also example structures used to describe spatial relationships. Between those geometric lines, there were numerous annotations—Sun Chen wrote and erased, erased and wrote on several of them, repeating the process over and over.

"Still no good, still no good... I still can't understand this structure. Maybe I got a condition wrong from the start..."

Sun Chen suddenly began muttering to himself, as if he had hit a dead end in his calculations, but then he seemed to realize something and continued to calculate and record in the notebook.

However, his figure was gradually becoming thin and faint. Clearly, the remaining time was insufficient.

"Knowledge," the thinning figure suddenly spoke. He still didn't stop writing, but the target of his conversation was clearly Yu Sheng beside him. "What killed me was 'knowledge'—knowledge from another world."

Yu Sheng was taken aback, but as he was about to speak, he saw the deceased wave his hand without looking up.

"Don't ask. Let me talk. I know what to say," the faint figure said rapidly. "I know you're here to investigate. Did the Special Operations Bureau send you? Or did that 'Director' discover the anomaly here? Or something else... It doesn't matter. I knew I would die, but I couldn't stop. When the calculation began, the first thing I calculated was my own death sign, but I had to keep calculating.

"This is the thing in my nightmare. From the moment I first saw 'Him,' it has been lurking in my mind. I don't know what happened, but at some moment, I suddenly became aware of its existence and understood its first layer of interpretation, and then the whole process spiraled out of control... I only remember hearing some melody, or a whistle? That seemed to be a starting signal...

"I'm not sure what I'm calculating. This... 'knowledge' runs automatically in my mind like a living thing. There's a cognitive barrier between me and it. It reorganizes itself and tries to find its own solution. I only have a vague impression that it's an ultimate answer about the 'convergence' of the world. Now I'm almost done calculating. Its solution should..."

Sun Chen's figure was unsteady, and the thin shadow floated like a drop of dew about to evaporate in the black-and-white-gray world of the dead. He finished another line of writing, but suddenly his movements froze, and his words stopped mid-sentence.

Yu Sheng saw him slowly raise his head. The deceased's hollow face seemed trapped in immense shock and confusion.

The black, white, and gray world around them began to collapse. Colors and sounds from the real dimension quickly flooded the surroundings. But in the last second of the collapse, Yu Sheng still heard the other's voice reach his ears—

"Not enough mass..."

The world of the dead collapsed thunderously, and all colors and sounds instantly returned.

Yu Sheng snapped his head up and saw a pair of crimson eyes staring intently at him from close range—the little doll was clinging to his head, while Little Red Riding Hood beside him and the "Director" not far away were still standing in their original positions.

To the real world, the conversation with the dead had happened in an instant; no one had moved.

"Did you get anything out of it?" Erin, most familiar with the "process," saw the flash in Yu Sheng's eyes and knew he had "returned to his soul." She immediately asked, "How did he die?"

At that moment, Yu Sheng had just returned from the state of communicating with the dead and had a lot of things ready to explain what had happened to Sun Chen. But as he was about to speak, he met Erin's clear, bright eyes—they were, he had to admit, a bit too clear, so clear that he instantly swallowed back more than eighty percent of his explanation. He opened his mouth two or three times before finally organizing his words: "It's, uh, 'knowledge.' The victim came into contact with knowledge beyond human understanding and was compelled to calculate uncontrollably..."

As Erin listened, her eyes slowly widened. Then, without knowing how she processed and understood it, she turned to look at the headless corpse by the desk, her expression filled with sorrow and sympathy: "...Ah, he died because he couldn't solve a problem. Math is really terrifying."

Yu Sheng: "..."

His emotions were somewhat disjointed, but he didn't know how to explain this to the little doll—especially since he could tell that Erin was genuinely sympathetic toward the victim.

Although in her understanding, the other party had died from being unable to solve a math problem.

"Let's... clean up this place first," Yu Sheng coughed twice and turned to the "Director." "And also search the scene carefully to see if there's any other information."

"Good, I'll arrange for the cleanup team to enter," the "Director" beside him said in a deep voice.

A cleanup team wearing special protective suits with the Special Operations Bureau insignia quickly entered the area. After sealing off the corridor leading to the deep area, these professionals began cleaning the gruesome scene in the ward with high efficiency.

Considering the very obvious mental contamination factors in this incident, the victim's remains were carefully transferred into a precisely structured metal container. The tissue fragments collected from the scene were also properly placed into containment devices. The large amount of blood in the room was obviously more troublesome to clean—it was a meticulous and time-consuming project. Moreover, compared to simply cleaning the blood, the symbols and geometric figures covering the walls and floor were clearly more challenging.

The "Director" instructed the cleanup team to record all the symbols left by the victim and then hand them over to the Special Operations Bureau's experts for study. Additionally, when cleaning the blood, they should try to keep those markings as intact as possible.

Yu Sheng stood outside the ward in a spot that wouldn't get in the way, watching the cleanup team busily working inside. He frowned slightly. "...They look very professional. Does this kind of thing happen often here?"

"Not really," the goldfish swam slowly in the spherical fish tank, and a somewhat low, hoarse female voice came from the tall humanoid shell. "Extreme incidents of patient death are very rare. Most patients who enter the sanatorium remain stable—but correspondingly, the probability of 'minor incidents' here is not low. Most are things like nightmare materialization, soul loss disorder, multiple personality fights, etc. Ordinary psychiatrists or security forces can handle them.

"The cleanup team's main task is to deal with the aftermath after the incident, eliminating the residual 'hazard factors' on site. Some patients' 'nightmares' leave a lot of contamination in the real world, and dealing with those things is very troublesome. Sometimes the situation is even worse than this—over time, they've naturally developed expertise."

Yu Sheng nodded gently, while his mind couldn't help recalling the things he had seen during the "conversation with the dead."

While he was lost in thought, Little Red Riding Hood beside him asked curiously, "Was that Sun Chen always normal before? Was there really no sign before the incident? Had he ever suddenly started calculating or writing a bunch of things like this before?"

"No," a string of bubbles drifted in the fish tank. "I pay attention to every patient here—Sun Chen was not a scholar, and in the months since his admission, he never showed any interest or talent in this area. His daily life was resting in his room, watching movies in the recreation room, taking walks in the courtyard, and occasionally chatting with the medical staff on duty. Overall, it was very regular and monotonous."

"Has he been in contact with anyone recently? I mean 'extra' people, or something else," Yu Sheng suddenly spoke up. "The 'knowledge' that killed him had been lurking in his mind for a long time without issue, but now it suddenly erupted. I feel there must be a trigger—the victim mentioned a 'melody,' or a whistle. He said it was that thing that suddenly made him understand the first layer of the knowledge and start calculating."

"Melody?"

"Yes, a melody, but the victim could only provide limited information. He didn't specify what it was."

The "Director" seemed lost in thought—Yu Sheng couldn't read any expression from a goldfish circling in a fish tank, he could only guess from its silence that it was thinking. Then, after a long moment, the hoarse female voice broke the silence: "This clue is too vague, but I'll check the surveillance records for this area in the past few days, as well as any audio materials the victim has encountered recently. But to be honest, don't get your hopes up too high."

Yu Sheng wasn't surprised by this answer. He just sighed. "Sigh, do your best."

(End of chapter)