The 'surprises' Chen Ge had delivered to his viewers throughout the night were indeed far too massive, too frequent, and too visceral for most people to process calmly. Each new escalation—the ambush from the laundry pile, the brutal hammer strike that sent a grown man flying, the relentless ten-minute chase through pitch-black corridors—had piled one shockwave after another onto the audience. He glanced at the popularity ranking displayed prominently on the livestream platform's front page. Qin Guang still held the number-one spot, as expected, but Chen Ge's own position had rocketed upward in an almost unbelievable way. When he first went live earlier that evening, he had been languishing at rank 96. Now, against all odds, he sat at number 19.
That ranking position occupied the very center of the app's front-page spotlight, a highly coveted zone reserved almost exclusively for established super-hosts—people who commanded followings of 400,000 or more active fans, many of whom had spent years building their brands through consistent content, collaborations, and platform promotions. For a complete newcomer with fewer than 50,000 followers to suddenly appear in that elite top-twenty space felt almost surreal to anyone watching. The rocket-like ascent in fame drew immediate attention from curious viewers, confused regulars of other streams, and even a few rival hosts' fanbases. How could someone so unknown, so unpolished, force his way into the arena reserved for the platform's biggest names?
To be completely honest, Chen Ge himself had no real explanation for the phenomenon. He wasn't trying to game the system or manufacture viral moments. From the very beginning, he had simply been playing the role of an "innocent victim" caught in circumstances far beyond his control. Everything he had done—the hammer swings, the pursuit, the barricades—had been pure self-defense in the face of genuine, life-threatening danger. He had broken no laws; he had only reacted to preserve his own life against armed attackers inside an abandoned building.
"Looks like my viewers are actually pretty sharp people," Chen Ge thought with a faint, wry smile as he scanned the flood of comments. "Even under all the corruption and pay-to-win garbage that dominates most streams, a host like me—who insists on delivering truly authentic, unscripted content at personal risk—is still a rare species." The irony wasn't lost on him: the very thing that made his stream feel dangerous and unpredictable was also what had propelled him so far up the rankings in such a short time.
After quickly inspecting both the chest camera and the wrist camera to ensure they were still recording clearly and stably, Chen Ge slipped his phone back into his pocket. He turned and walked back to the row of iron cages where the three captives remained confined. When he had dragged the unconscious single-armed man into the laundry room moments earlier, the young woman in the center cage had immediately lost what little composure she had left. She had thrown herself against the bars over and over, slamming her shaved head into the iron with desperate, animalistic force in a frantic attempt to escape the room entirely. Chen Ge had worried she might seriously injure herself—perhaps even crack her skull—so he had quickly grabbed a thick, folded layer of old cloth from the nearest pile and wedged it gently but firmly between her head and the bars to cushion the impacts.
"Just what in the world has she witnessed to drive her to this level of terror?" Chen Ge wondered aloud, his voice low enough that only the microphone would pick it up. His eyes slowly scanned the three cages once more, taking in every detail of their reactions.
The elderly man had retreated as far as his tiny prison allowed, curling into a tight ball with both arms wrapped protectively around his head like an ostrich burying its face in the sand. He refused to look outward at all, as though merely seeing what was happening in the room might shatter whatever remained of his fragile sanity. Of the three captives, the old man had clearly been imprisoned the longest—he had witnessed the most horrors, endured the most abuse—and his instinctive response was total withdrawal.
The young woman in the middle cage displayed the most violent and uncontrolled reaction. Even now, with the cloth padding in place, she continued to jerk and thrash, her wide eyes pouring raw fear as though the single-armed man's mere presence reopened every wound in her mind. Her behavior was heartbreaking and entirely understandable given what she must have endured.
Chen Ge, however, remained exceptionally wary of the middle-aged man in the third cage. On the surface, he too showed signs of fear—his body trembled visibly, his hands were clenched so tightly together that his knuckles had turned white, and his expression appeared convincingly terrified. To almost anyone else, the performance would have been flawless and utterly believable. But not to Chen Ge. It wasn't that he possessed superhuman powers of observation; rather, he had studied Doctor Gao's files on the Third Sick Hall patients in exhaustive detail before ever setting foot in the hospital. The middle-aged man's symptoms, his sudden shift into paranoia earlier, and the way he fixated on "disguises" matched almost perfectly with Patient Number 5—Xu Tong, diagnosed with severe Fregoli Delusion Syndrome.
If the true culprits had originated from the Third Sick Hall, then why had this man ended up locked in a cage like a victim instead of roaming free as a perpetrator? Starting from that single contradiction, Chen Ge had slowly uncovered more and more anomalies surrounding the middle-aged prisoner. His clothes were noticeably cleaner than the others', his head had never been shaved like the old man's or the young woman's, and he had kept his hands carefully concealed beneath his sleeves throughout most of the encounter. It was only when Chen Ge dragged the unconscious single-armed man into the room that the middle-aged prisoner had finally let his guard slip for just a moment—long enough for Chen Ge to catch a clear glimpse.
There, on the middle-aged man's left hand, was a deep, angry wound in the unmistakable shape of a human bite mark. The injury was still fresh, still oozing blood that had soaked into the cuff of his sleeve.
"Your hand is injured?" Chen Ge asked quietly, stepping closer to the final iron cage while keeping Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer firmly in his grip. He remembered the scene back in the First Sick Hall's nurse's station: the thick smear of white paint on the bars of the empty cage, followed by the trail of blood and oil mixed together on the corridor wall outside. At the time, he had assumed the blood belonged to the victim who had been dragged away. But he had thoroughly checked the elderly man's body afterward and found no wounds—so the blood couldn't have come from the supposed victim.
Oil and blood together on the same spot strongly suggested a struggle: the old man had been desperately gripping the wall, refusing to be pulled away, while the culprit tried to pry his fingers loose. In the process, the old man must have bitten down hard on his captor's hand—explaining both the blood and the oil transferred from the man's own greasy fingers. When the twisted-face man and the single-armed man had burst into the laundry room earlier, Chen Ge had carefully observed both of them: neither showed any sign of a fresh bite wound on their arms or hands.
If no other residents were hiding inside the hospital, then the only logical conclusion was that the culprit who had originally dragged the old man away from the First Sick Hall's nurse's station was none other than this middle-aged man currently locked in the cage before him.
He was not just another victim—he was one of the primary culprits operating inside the mental hospital.
When the twisted-face man and the single-armed intruder realized there were outsiders—specifically Chen Ge—already inside the hospital grounds, they immediately understood the risk of the elderly man being discovered in the First Sick Hall's nurse's station. To prevent him from being found and potentially rescued, they hurriedly moved him under cover of darkness to the laundry room in the Second Sick Hall, a more secluded and rarely visited area where they believed he would remain hidden longer.
The iron hammer swayed slowly back and forth in Chen Ge's hand like a pendulum counting down to judgment. The middle-aged man—still locked inside his now-deformed cage—stared at the weapon with growing dread. The initial guarded wariness in his eyes gradually gave way to unmistakable fear as he watched the heavy skull-shaped head glint under the flashlight beam. Every slight movement of Chen Ge's wrist made the man flinch involuntarily.
"I will not hurt you," Chen Ge said in a calm, almost reasonable tone that contrasted sharply with the massive weapon he held. "I just want you to answer a few of my questions honestly—no games, no lies." He fixed his gaze directly on the middle-aged prisoner, who continued to feign confusion and mental deterioration, too terrified to respond coherently or perhaps hoping silence would make Chen Ge lose interest.
"Don't feel like talking?" Chen Ge asked quietly. Without waiting for an answer, he calmly removed both the chest camera and the wrist camera, placed them carefully on a nearby counter, and positioned a piece of heavy cloth to block their lenses completely, ensuring nothing that happened next would be recorded for the livestream audience. Then he turned back to face the cage. In one smooth, unhurried motion, he raised Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer and brought it down hard against the iron bars. A single powerful strike was enough to bend the metal visibly, distorting the perfect rectangular shape of the cage with a sharp metallic groan.
"Still not talking?" Chen Ge asked again, his voice level and patient. He delivered another measured blow, then another. Each strike twisted and deformed the bars further until the once-spacious cage had shrunk to barely three-quarters of its original interior volume. The iron rods now curved inward like the ribs of a dying animal.
"What… what do you want to know?" The middle-aged man finally cracked. His voice trembled as he watched the hammer come closer and closer with every swing. His earlier composure had completely evaporated; genuine terror filled his eyes. How could this intruder feel even crazier and more unpredictable than the patients he had once tormented?
"I'm not someone who enjoys forcing people to do things against their will," Chen Ge replied evenly, lowering the hammer for a moment and resting its head against the floor. He glanced at the now-twisted, misshapen cage with clinical detachment. "I just have some simple questions. Let's start with an easy one: What is your name?"
The middle-aged man paused for perhaps two full seconds—long enough for Chen Ge to notice the hesitation—before answering in a shaky voice. "Wang Haiming?"
"Wang Haiming?" The name hit Chen Ge like a physical blow. His heart skipped a violent beat, and for a moment a massive wave of shock and realization threatened to drown out every other thought. This man knew Wang Haiming? Or at least knew the name well enough to throw it out under pressure.
The prisoner had likely chosen the name at random, hoping to confuse or stall his interrogator. He clearly had not expected Chen Ge to recognize it instantly—or to react so strongly.
"You're lying," Chen Ge stated flatly, leaving no room for denial or explanation.
Without giving the man even a fraction of a second to backtrack or elaborate, Chen Ge swung the hammer again. The weapon sliced through the air with terrifying speed. The middle-aged man's body hair stood on end as he watched the skull-shaped head hurtle toward the cage inches from his face.
"My name is Xiong Qing!" he screamed in sudden panic. "My name is Xiong Qing!"
Chen Ge had no patience left for games or half-truths. He continued raining heavy, methodical blows down on the iron cage. Each strike further compressed the already shrunken space; the bars groaned and twisted until they threatened to snap entirely. The middle-aged man shrieked in desperation, "Didn't you say you wouldn't force people to do things they don't want to‽"
Chen Ge ignored the protest completely. For several more minutes he worked methodically, hammering the cage into an unrecognizable wreck. Even if someone produced the original key now, the lock mechanism was so badly deformed that the door could never open again without being completely destroyed. Time, however, was not on Chen Ge's side—he couldn't afford to spend hours smashing the cage to pieces. His pupils narrowed with cold focus as he reached through the bars and seized the middle-aged man's calf in an iron grip.
"I'm going to ask you one more time," Chen Ge said quietly. "What. Is. Your. Name?"
The prisoner hesitated again, clearly unsure what Chen Ge intended to do next. Trapped inside an abandoned mental hospital with multiple deadly threats still roaming the halls, Chen Ge could no longer afford kindness or patience. He positioned the man's calf directly in front of him and raised Doctor Skull-cracker's hammer high, aiming it with surgical precision.
A shrill, blood-curdling scream tore through the night as the hammer descended—but stopped just short of impact. Chen Ge had no sympathy for someone who willingly shoved living human beings into cages and subjected them to unimaginable torment. He lifted the hammer again, pulled the man's other calf forward, and repeated the threat.
As the weapon began its second descent, the middle-aged man broke completely. "Xu Tong! My name is Xu Tong!"
"See?" Chen Ge said calmly, halting the hammer mid-swing and lowering it once more. "Was that so hard? If you had been honest with me from the beginning, we could have skipped all of this unpleasantness."
He squatted down beside the deformed iron cage, resting one forearm casually on his knee while still holding the hammer in his other hand. "Just now, you mentioned Wang Haiming. What exactly is your relationship with him? Has he ever stayed in the Third Sick Hall before? Is that how you know his name?"