Opening the Door

Chapter 3: Opening the Door

The sudden palpitation came out of nowhere, so abruptly that Bai Yanliang didn't even have time to release the key in his hand.

Fortunately, after a few breaths, the strange sensation that had chilled him to the core quickly faded, as if it had never been there.

If someone else had experienced something so brief and strange, they might not have thought much of it. But Bai Yanliang did.

He knew himself better than anyone. Ten years ago, a psychological expert had diagnosed him with an abnormal personality—not an especially rare condition, but antisocial personality disorder.

That conclusion was wrong, but not entirely.

In fact, ever since Bai Yanliang's older brother, Bai Yanren, had been old enough to understand things, he had known something was wrong with his younger brother.

After observing him for a long time, Bai Yanren finally confirmed it: Bai Yanliang suffered from a severe cognitive disorder.

But Bai Yanliang's disorder was unlike ordinary cognitive disorders.

Cognitive disorders were generally understood to involve abnormalities in the brain's higher-level processes related to learning, memory, and judgment, resulting in serious learning and memory impairments, along with changes such as aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, or impaired motor function.

But that wasn't what Bai Yanliang's cognitive disorder was like.

His understanding of everything wasn't built from the first-person perspective of "I."

Rather than seeing the world from the perspective of "I," Bai Yanliang's viewpoint was more like that of someone dreaming. Bai Yanren had described it as "looking down from above."

From Bai Yanliang's "point of view," he wasn't the protagonist of his own life, and his thoughts weren't centered on "I."

He was more like... a spectator.

Even Bai Yanren, and Bai Yanliang himself, had sometimes wondered if he was simply another soul living inside Bai Yanliang's body.

Because his perspective on the world was so strange, his emotions barely fluctuated. Joy, anger, sorrow, gratitude, delight, fear, panic, longing, jealousy, shame... and so on. Every emotion was as faint as a drop of water falling into the ocean. It might create a tiny ripple, but it was almost impossible to notice.

He could perceive emotions, but he couldn't summon them. So... in one respect, he fit the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, also known as "emotionless" personality disorder.

Bai Yanliang didn't believe he was a born villain. His emotions were faint, but they weren't nonexistent. He knew right from wrong and good from evil, and he knew what he should and shouldn't do.

More than that, he knew Bai Yanren was a brother who had always treated him exceptionally well. He wouldn't let Yanren die a miserable, unexplained death.

And this key was clearly important.

Because somehow, it had made Bai Yanliang feel an unfamiliar, utterly primal emotion—fear.

"Oh, right. There's this, too," Yang Wanlong suddenly said.

He took out a bank card and handed it over.

"Your brother's savings. I don't know the PIN. Maybe it's your birthdays or something. You can figure it out."

Bai Yanliang took the card. He had a good idea what the PIN might be.

"I've cleared out a room for you. There are three rooms here. Originally, I had one, and each of my two girls had one, but Zhirong lives in the hospital dorm now and rarely comes home. She didn't have much stuff to begin with, and she took almost all of it to the hospital. There's just a pile of miscellaneous books left. You'll have to make do."

"I can sleep in the living room. It doesn't seem right for me to stay in a bedroom at the Polytechnic Affiliated Hospital..." Bai Yanliang had no idea what Yang Wanlong was thinking. How could he let a strange man stay in his daughter's room? Even if she didn't have much in there, in ancient times, that would've been called a young lady's boudoir.

"Oh, stop fussing. What's the big deal? The room's sitting empty. You want me to make you sleep in the living room when there's a spare room? What kind of person do you take your uncle for? Enough, it's settled. I'm going out to buy some groceries. You can get settled in." Yang Wanlong waved a hand, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he headed for the door.

He really trusted me.

Bai Yanliang watched Yang Wanlong leave, his gaze shifting slightly.

He was... being a little too good to me.

After all, letting someone who was still under suspicion for murder move into his home was already unbelievable enough.

Bai Yanliang thought about it and guessed at a few things, but he didn't dwell on them. He knew perfectly well that he had nothing to do with Bai Yanren's case.

He put the matter out of his mind, picked up the elegant antique key again, and gazed at it calmly.

But this time, something utterly inexplicable happened!

His left hand trembled slightly, then slowly lifted, rising high above his head!

Bai Yanliang was certain that his brain hadn't ordered his left hand to rise. On the contrary, the moment that hand strangely gripped the key and lifted it, he tried to control it.

It didn't work. He had completely lost control of his left hand.

Then something even more terrifying happened.

His body, sitting on the sofa, slowly stood up as well.

But... its posture was strange. It didn't look as if he were standing up by himself. It was more like... he was being pulled to his feet by the left hand holding the key high above his head!

This eerie, terrifying sensation might have made an ordinary person scream, but to Bai Yanliang, it wasn't all that horrifying.

Because from his perspective, his body and soul had always coexisted like this.

Even so, Bai Yanliang still felt a strange, chilling presence spreading through him.

Shock, curiosity, unease, and even the faintest hint of excitement flickered in his eyes.

It seemed this world held secrets that people knew nothing about.

While Bai Yanliang's mind raced to make sense of what was happening, his body began moving on its own again.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...

Step by step, like a walking corpse, it headed toward a bedroom with the door shut.

Bai Yanliang didn't know whose bedroom it was, what was inside, or what was driving him there—or why.

All he could do was keep his eyes wide open and, while most people would probably have collapsed in a panic, hold on to his reason and watch as his raised left hand slowly lowered.

Then... it put the key into the lock.

How was that possible?

The eerie presence continued to spread, and this time it was even harder for Bai Yanliang to believe.

The antique key was completely mismatched with the bedroom lock, both in shape and size. But... it slid in without the slightest resistance.

His body didn't stop moving. As Bai Yanliang watched, his left hand slowly turned the key, then pushed the bedroom door open bit by bit.

It didn't seem to be an easy movement, as if the flimsy bedroom door weighed a thousand pounds.

But after the door opened a crack, Bai Yanliang was already certain that there was no way the space beyond it was a bedroom!

Cold, eerie, grotesque, resentful, hateful... Wave after wave of intensely negative energy seeped through the crack. And yet Bai Yanliang's body kept moving.

After the door opened just a little, the movement seemed to become easier.

Creak—

An ordinary sound of a door opening rang out. Bai Yanliang took a step forward and went inside.