Chapter 112: Imprisoning the Dark Side, The Inner Prison
After Ji Yan exited the room, the Little Girl dropped her pretense. Her face, once weighed down by feigned melancholy, now twisted into an unrestrained smirk.
"What another fool."
"My acting must be too convincing, fooling these stupid doctors left and right."
She hopped down and pressed her ear against the door, listening for movement outside.
Once enough time had passed, she opened the door.
But the prison corridor outside was empty—no sign of Ji Yan. None of the cells holding the sinful prisoners had been opened either.
Just as the Little Girl was baffled by his disappearance, Ji Yan's voice sounded beside her:
"Weren’t you afraid of hearing those voices? Why did you come out?"
The Little Girl countered, "Brother, didn’t I ask you to free these repentant people?"
Ji Yan, hands in his pockets, smiled faintly. "No rush."
"I suddenly remembered that, as a doctor, I still need to conduct a basic consultation with the patient."
"If I don’t fill out the report, your father will blame me."
Suppressing her impatience and irritation, the Little Girl lowered her eyelids and continued her act. "What does Brother want to ask?"
Ji Yan crouched down, adopting the gentle demeanor of a kind neighbor. "I just want to ask one thing."
"Don’t you really want revenge on those who hurt you?"
The Little Girl hesitated, then shook her head.
"I hated them, but I never thought of revenge."
Ji Yan’s smile grew even softer, tinged with admiration.
"You really are a little angel. You shouldn’t have been hurt by the filth of this world. It breaks my heart."
"But you mustn’t lie to me, okay?"
"Lies bring punishment. Only honesty earns candy."
The Little Girl’s sorrowful expression was pitiable. "I’m telling the truth. Don’t you believe me?"
"Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?"
Ji Yan tenderly adjusted the collar of her dress and wiped the tears from her delicate cheeks.
On the surface, the Little Girl seemed touched, but malice festered in her heart.
Then, his next words froze her expression.
"If I believed your nonsense, wouldn’t I be a complete idiot?"
The moment the words left his mouth, his once-gentle hands erupted with Specter Power, shoving the Little Girl violently.
Caught off guard, she was flung back into the room.
Before she could react, the room warped grotesquely—transforming into a frigid prison cell!
Bars separated them now.
The Little Girl grabbed the bars but recoiled as if electrocuted.
"What did you do?!" she demanded, stunned.
Ji Yan straightened up, resting his hands on his knees. "Like I said, lying children get punished."
"Your punishment is ten minutes of reflection in there."
The pitiful act vanished from the Little Girl’s face, replaced by venomous fury. "You—you tricked me?!"
"Just returning the favor."
"Your acting is terrible, yet you’re so smug. Quite the narcissist, aren’t you?"
Ji Yan clapped his hands together, smiling. "Actually, you’re not the patient the doctors are looking for—'Chu Mo.'"
"To be precise, you’re the Dark Side of the patient."
"And this entire prison? It’s not a ward. It’s Chu Mo’s Inner World."
"Chu Mo once suffered severe psychological trauma, leading to depression that locked her within her Inner World, while you, as the Dark Side, grew stronger bit by bit."
"Every doctor who took on her treatment had their consciousness pulled into Chu Mo's Inner World the moment they stepped into the ward."
"To 'survive,' you hid her Kind Side in a corner, disguising yourself as the Kind Side to deceive and mislead the doctors."
Ji Yan spoke while glancing at the prisoners in the cages.
They were no longer weeping in remorse.
Instead, they glared at Ji Yan with savage hostility, their twisted expressions practically screaming their desire to devour him whole.
"These prisoners aren’t people who harmed the Kind Side and repented—they’re fragments of your Dark Side."
"The cages are the Kind Side’s last instinctive mechanism to protect herself."
"If a doctor with Privilege opens these cages, it strengthens the Dark Side, effectively worsening the patient’s depressive symptoms."
"Deteriorating the condition immediately Punishes the treating doctor, who is then imprisoned in this very jail!"
Ji Yan smirked at the Dark Side. "Right?"
Dark Side Chu Mo was utterly stunned.
She could only blurt out, "How... how do you know all this?!"
"Pure guesswork."
"And I just happen to guess really well!"
Hearing this blatantly mocking answer, the Dark Side instantly had her Defense Broken, thrashing madly against the cage.
But the bars burned like electrified metal upon contact, searing her with intense pain.
Dark Side Chu Mo was baffled.
This was supposed to be her Inner World.
Everything here was shaped by her and the Kind Side—so how could Ji Yan conjure a cage to imprison her?
She had no way of knowing that the Lies Parchment could manipulate and mobilize any Privilege.
The moment the Dark Side spoke her first sentence during their interaction, Ji Yan confirmed she was lying.
So he found an excuse to touch her, triggering Omniscient Understanding to extract useful information.
When pretending to open a cage upon leaving the room, he was actually buying time to write his predictions on the Lies Parchment, luring the Dark Side into lying and activating the Privilege.
The Privilege he obtained was imprisoning Dark Side Chu Mo for ten minutes.
Those ten minutes were crucial!
Seeing Ji Yan walk away, Dark Side Chu Mo immediately realized something.
She roared inside the cage, "Damn bastard! When I get out, I’ll tear you to shreds!"
Ignoring the furious screams behind him, Ji Yan followed a hidden passage deeper inside, his mind focused on one thought: "Where would the Kind Side be hiding?"
The prisoners in the cages along the way morphed into twisted, vicious versions of Chu Mo’s face.
They howled, threatened, and Cursed at Ji Yan.
He let it all go in one ear and out the other.
Soon, he stopped.
In this filthy, shadow-filled prison, a sliver of daylight caught his eye.
It was tucked deep in a corner, nearly swallowed by the darkness—like a white lotus drowning in black mud.
Ji Yan hurried forward. As the glow faded, he saw Chu Mo’s Kind Side, bathed in a soft light, sitting in the corner.
She cradled a worn teddy bear, lost in her own world.
"Chu Mo?" Ji Yan called softly. There was no mistake—this was Chu Mo's Kind Side.
"Who are you?"
The Kind Side didn't look up, her eyes hollow as she spoke.
Ji Yan briefly introduced himself and explained why he was there. The Kind Side shook her head. "Doctor, there's no way out of here."
"So don’t waste your effort."
"I don’t need any of you. I’m fine here."
Severely hurt in the past, she seemed to reject and fear all outsiders. After several failed attempts to engage her, Ji Yan simply picked her up and ran outside.
He wasn’t like other protagonists who relied on speeches, grand ideals of love, or warm words about humanity to sway others.
As long as he took the Kind Side away from this dark prison, the treatment would be effective!
"You’re so tense, so desperate to take me away… It’s just because you’re afraid of dying here, afraid of failing your mission. No one actually cares about me…"
Carried in his arms, the Kind Side didn’t struggle, murmuring emptily.
Ji Yan didn’t bother with fake denials. "Obviously! Who isn’t acting for themselves? Who isn’t afraid of death? That’s not some ugly side of humanity—it’s just instinct!"
The Kind Side’s expression shifted slightly, caught off guard by his words.
She looked up at him and asked, "Then… those who hurt me—was that instinct too? Not some ugly part of human nature?"
Ji Yan didn’t hesitate. "Them?"
"They weren’t human. Just pure beasts."