"Hmm!"

A tingling sensation came from my fingers, pulling my thoughts back abruptly—

It turned out that I was too immersed in the memories, and I suddenly didn't know that the cigarette between my fingertips burned out, and although I subconsciously shook off the cigarette on my fingertips, the cigarette butt still burned one of my fingers.

I didn't have time to check my injured finger when I heard a rush of sirens!

The alarm sounded from the Aoyama Psychiatric Sanatorium across the road, and I was suddenly startled, thinking that something could not have happened to Ji Lan who was locked inside, right?

Three months ago, in the interrogation room of the Chengnan Police Bureau, Ji Lan confessed a lot of details about those strange serial suicide cases (later known as the 912 serious cases), and with Ji Lan's confession and a large amount of new evidence obtained from the investigation, Cheng Cheng finally saw the hope of closing the 912 serious case.

But at the time of the trial, a major change occurred.

Ji Lan's defense lawyer raised the issue of his client's mental health and requested a psychiatric evaluation of Ji Lan, and the court upheld this request.

Originally, "psychiatric evaluation" was a common trick used by the defense to delay time, and the prosecution did not care about it, but the results of the psychiatric evaluation were very unexpected: Ji Lan suffered from severe schizophrenia, and the specific symptoms were delusions and command hallucinations.

In other words, this psychiatric evaluation believes that Ji Lan's instigation of crime and assisted suicide, including the "Eternal Life Game" whose existence has not yet been confirmed, are all due to Ji Lan's paranoia, and the instructions given by K to Ji Lan are manifestations of Ji Lan's commanding hallucinations.

There is actually an important omission in the prosecution's evidence chain - that is, the hard disk - because most of the criminal facts that Ji Lan confessed to happened on the dark web, and the police department almost did not search for useful evidence, if the data in the hard disk could be deciphered, everything would be completely different.

However, the data in that hard disk was completely destroyed by the instantaneous strong magnetic field formed by the high-voltage current, so this missing chain of evidence must be supported by Ji Lan's confession to be established.

On the contrary, Ji Lan's psychiatric evaluation is equivalent to reversing her confession, and the police's evidence chain is no longer complete, and naturally it is impossible to convict.

Of course, the prosecution will not accept such a result, but the institution that issued this psychiatric evaluation is a very authoritative psychiatric disease research institution, and Ji Lan has also been repeatedly evaluated twice, and the other two institutions have also agreed to the earliest psychiatric evaluation.

As a result, as a suspect and important witness in the 912 serious case, Ji Lan escaped the punishment of the law and was imprisoned in the largest psychiatric hospital in Jinguan City, Qingshan Psychiatric Sanatorium.

Although Cheng Cheng was not angry about this result, he could only accept it helplessly, after all, as the chief of the criminal investigation section of the Chengnan Police Bureau, he had more other cases to deal with.

The most dissatisfied person is Shen Tangzhi, after Ji Lan was imprisoned in the Qingshan Psychiatric Sanatorium, she was only willing to pay me half of the consultation fee that had been negotiated before, and she righteously refused to pay the other half - unless I could find more evidence to find out who was behind the scenes.

In addition to expressing strong protest and condemnation of Shen Tangzhi's outrageous acts, I have nothing to do.

However, there are indeed too many doubts and unsolved mysteries in this case, such as whether the "Eternal Game" exists? What's the deal with that weird way of dying with those people's brain tissue being cooked? Who the hell is K? Wait a minute.

For this alone, I am not very reconciled, and compared to my curiosity, money seems unimportant.

That's why I've been working on this case for three months, in my free time at work – I've been to this psychiatric hospital no less than twenty times alone!

At this moment, when the alarm sounded in the hospital, the first reaction in my heart was to worry that something would happen to Ji Lan - she was the only clue I had, if I lost her, I would completely lose the direction of the investigation, and maybe I could only choose to give up!

I immediately got out of the car and rushed to the front of the hospital.

"What's going on inside?"

"It's not clear."

"If it's a normal event, why is the alarm sounding?"

“……”

"Quick, I'm going to go in now! I've been here so many times, you know I'm a private investigator, right? ”

"I'm sorry, we have a rule that we can't let you in without permission."

As we spoke, various voices came from the intercom on the administrator's shoulder from time to time, most of them shouting for support, and I heard a little information, as if something had happened on the third floor of the inpatient department, which was the floor where Ji Lan's ward was located.

I was more anxious, but the administrator kept a straight face, just guarding the entrance and exit of the hospital, no matter what I said, he refused to let me in, although he understood that he was responsible, I was anxious, and I still scolded my mother in my heart.

Through the thick iron gate, I saw that on the large lawn in front of the inpatient building, most of the patients were lined up, led by the nurses of the hospital to be evacuated to other buildings, while some of the nurses shouted loudly and chased some patients who were frightened by the sound of the sirens and ran around, and a column of people who looked like security guards ran through the fountain square and hurried into the inpatient building.

I figured out something big must have happened inside!

While the administrator's eyes were drawn to the chaotic scene in front of the inpatient building, I took a few steps back, then lunged forward, leaped to my feet, and clinged to the iron door.

"Y-what are you doing? You can't ......."

In the stunned eyes of the administrator, I climbed over two iron gates in quick succession.

"What are you doing? Call the police! ”

I left the overwhelmed administrator behind and rushed straight into the inpatient building.

In the building, patients were scurrying around with doctors and nurses, and I grabbed a doctor and asked him what was going on, but he was vague, and I only got two messages: "There was an accident on the third floor" and "Someone died".

In the confusion, I returned to where I had been about half an hour ago.

Parting the crowd, I stood outside Ji Lan's hospital room.

There was a corpse lying on the floor of the hallway, with an outward-turned tear in the throat of the corpse, and a large area of deep red foaming blood on the ground—the person who had died was one of the two nurses who had been in Ji Lan's ward when I left.

I looked into the room and saw that Ji Lan had already sat up on the hospital bed, and there was a laptop in front of her.

Another nurse looked at me warily, holding a lit kerosene lighter in his hand, "Don't come in, or I'll light the fire!" He yelled at me.

Only then did I realize that the floor in the ward was wet, and a strong smell of gasoline came to my face.