On the top floor of St. Mary's Mental Hospital, there was an operating room known as the "Confessional."
There were no statues here, only a cold, gleaming metal dissection table. The stark white light from the operating lights, like peeling skin, left the person lying on the bed with no privacy whatsoever.
Shen Qingqiu was tightly secured to the bed with restraints.
The heavy canvas restraints had been removed, replaced by a thin hospital gown. Her long hair was disheveled, like black seaweed spread across the silver metal surface, making her face appear even paler and more translucent, possessing a tragic beauty like that of a dying swan.
"Heart rate 120, pupils slightly dilated." Dr. Hannibal stood beside the bed, carefully wiping the long, thin, icicle-like lobotomy needle in his hand with a silk handkerchief.
He wasn't wearing a mask, and his eyes, hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses, gleamed with an almost morbid fanaticism.
"Number Seventeen," he called out.
"Here." Seventeen stood in the shadows. He was still wearing his white caregiver uniform, a mask covering half his face, revealing only a pair of deep, cold eyes. He carried a tray with various chilling craniotomy tools.
"Hold her head down," Dr. Hannibal commanded. "Don't let her move. This is delicate work; even a millimeter of deviation will damage her beautiful language center—a desecration of art." Seventeen's body stiffened for a moment.
His fingers gripped the edge of the tray, his knuckles turning white from the force, the metal tray making a slight creaking sound.
On the bed, Shen Qingqiu slightly opened her eyes.
Her gaze was unfocused, seemingly still immersed in the hallucinations of the drugs, but the instant Seventeen looked over, her fingers gently hooked his palm.
Hold on.
That was a signal.
Seventeen took a deep breath (the cooling fan silently accelerated). He put down the tray and walked to the bedside.
A white-gloved right hand (Xingtian's Grip) slowly extended and pressed against Shen Qingqiu's smooth forehead.
His movements were incredibly gentle.
That hand, capable of crushing a tank, was now carefully avoiding her hair, holding her head in a protective rather than restraining manner.
"Don't be afraid," he murmured, his voice so soft that only the two of them could hear.
"I'm here." Dr. Hannibal didn't notice this subtle interaction. He was lost in the impending "divine moment."
"Count Shen, don't be nervous." The doctor leaned down, the cold needle hovering above Shen Qingqiu's eye socket.
"This isn't harm, it's a blessing."
"I will sever the neural connections in your brain that govern pain, fear, and delusions."
"When you wake up, you won't think about your dead husband anymore, you'll become as pure as a baby, you'll hear... the whispers of God."
As he spoke, his other hand rested on a strange helmet-like device.
It was a **"Neural Link Amplifier"**. Through this device, Hannibal, a psychic, could directly infiltrate the subconscious of his patients, inducing their self-collapse and thus brainwashing them.
"Come, open your heart to me."
"Let me see what lies hidden in your mad mind…"
Hannibal pressed the switch.
Buzz— A crackling sound of electricity filled the air.
Countless extremely thin data cables connected from the helmet to Shen Qingqiu's temples.
Hannibal's pupils instantly swirled into eerie shapes. His mental tentacles, like greedy venomous snakes, burrowed deep into Shen Qingqiu's brain along the current.
…
[Mental World · Access Successful]
Hannibal expected to see a magnificent but crumbling castle, or a garden filled with aristocratic melancholy.
That was what most insane aristocratic women looked like in their subconscious.
But when he opened his "eyes," he froze.
There was no castle, no garden.
It was… the sea.
An endless, viscous, crimson sea of blood.
The sky was shattered, countless enormous, burning stars falling. Broken swords and halberds were embedded in the earth, each blade burying a corpse.
"What…what is this?" Hannibal looked around in horror. This wasn't just a madwoman's delusion; it was a scroll painting of hell.
Suddenly, the images began to shift rapidly.
He saw it.
He saw "Shen Qingqiu's" entire life.
No, not one life.
Ninety-nine lives.
In her first life, she was pierced through the heart by ten thousand swords, dying by her lover's blade.
In her tenth life, she was thrown into an alchemy furnace and burned to ashes.
In her thirty-third life, she was made into a human pig and sealed in a wine jar.
… Countless ways to die, countless kinds of despair.
Those memories were no longer just images; they had transformed into a tangible torrent of data.
Every second, hundreds of millions of bytes of painful information washed over Hannibal's mind.
That was an amount of information no ordinary person could bear.
It was the weight of a soul that had been reincarnated ninety-nine times, burdened with the destiny of slaying gods.
"Aaaaaahh ... [Warning: Unauthorized intrusion detected.]
[Firewall: Administrator privileges enabled.]
[Counterattack Mode: Mental Pierce.]
"You…you want to see the whispers of God?"
The woman in red spoke. Her voice, booming like a bell, shattered the entire mental space.
"I am the one who kills God."
"You, a mere watchdog, dare to look directly into the abyss?"
Boom—!!!
The giant golden eye glared at Hannibal.
A golden beam of light instantly pierced through his mental body.
"No—!!!"
…In the real world.
"Ah!!!" Dr. Hannibal, who had been confident and preparing to insert the needle, suddenly let out a horrific scream.
The needle in his hand clattered into the metal tray.
He convulsed violently and fell backward as if electrocuted. Blood gushed from his eyes, nose, and ears.
His brain overloaded.
He tried to brainwash Shen Qingqiu, but ended up being overwhelmed by her massive data stream and rendered an idiot.
On the operating table.
Shen Qingqiu, who had been "unconscious," slowly opened her eyes.
The golden light in her eyes hadn't faded, and in the stark white of the operating room, it was eerily unsettling.
"Is this what they call a follower of 'God'?"
Shen Qingqiu sat up, moving her wrists, which were numb from being restrained. She didn't even glance at Hannibal, who was foaming at the mouth and convulsing on the floor.
"Her mental strength is as weak as an ant's."
"Qingqiu." Seventeen immediately stepped forward and ripped off the wires connected to her head.
He removed his mask, revealing a face etched with worry.
"Does your head... hurt?" He had felt the terrifying energy fluctuations from that brief mental clash.
"A little dizzy." Shen Qingqiu rubbed her temples, her body going limp, and she fell into Seventeen's arms.
"But compared to those ninety-nine deaths, what is this mental shock?"
She looked up at Seventeen's prosthetic eyes, glowing red with tension, a weak yet cunning smile playing on her lips.
"Sebastian, help me put on my shoes."
She stretched out her bare foot and gently kicked his shin.
Seventeen was stunned.
In this chaotic operating room, with the convulsing, insane director, she was actually making him…put on his shoes?
But he didn't hesitate.
He knelt on one knee, his white nursing uniform stained with dust, but he didn't care.
He pulled out a pair of exquisite black high heels from under the bed.
His mechanical right hand, gloved in white and possessing terrifying power, gently grasped her cold ankle.
The warmth of his palm (which he had deliberately heightened) soothed her skin.
He carefully helped her put on the shoes, tying the straps, as if serving a true queen.
"Alright, Master." Seventeen stood up and lifted her off the operating table.
Shen Qingqiu stepped onto the floor and straightened her disheveled hospital gown.
"Hannibal's gone mad."
She pointed to the man still convulsing on the floor. "His brain is filled with countless screaming versions of myself. He'll probably be a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life."
"What about the others?" Seventeen looked towards the door.
A flurry of footsteps echoed down the corridor. Clearly, the commotion had alerted the guards.
"The others?" Shen Qingqiu walked to the operating table, picked up the lobotomy needle Hannibal had dropped, and twirled it gracefully in her hand.
She walked to the door and looked through the glass in the door at the rows of mechanical guards approaching.
"Seventeen."
"Here."
"Tell me, if we don't turn this asylum into a real asylum, wouldn't it be a disservice to their enthusiastic 'hospitality'?"
Shen Qingqiu turned around, her golden eyes gleaming with a stream of data called "tampering."
[Wide-Area Mental Broadcast: Activated.]
[Target: All chip implanted patients in the hospital.]
[Command: Cognitive Rewrite.]
[Content: The mechanical guards before you are the demons who turned you into monsters. Tear them apart.]
*Whoosh—* An invisible wave, centered on the top-floor operating room, swept across the entire white tower in an instant.
The next second.
The entire St. Mary's Mental Hospital erupted in chaos.
A deafening roar came from downstairs.
The "patients," who had been dazed, wiping floors, and sewing, suddenly stopped what they were doing. The red light in their eyes extinguished, replaced by a frenzied bestiality.
They grabbed mops, scissors, and even their mechanical prosthetics, lunging at the doctors and guards around them.
"Ah! Don't bite me! I'm a doctor!"
"They're insane! These batteries are insane!"
"Fire! Fire!"
Gunshots, screams, and the sound of machinery tearing apart instantly resounded through the sky.
Amidst this chaotic symphony,
the operating room door was kicked open.
Seventeen, one arm around Shen Qingqiu, his other hand—the Xing Tian Grip—fully extended, transformed into a dark red battle form.
He was like a heavy tank, smashing through the mechanical guards blocking his path.
"Those who block the way, die."
Seventeen coldly uttered three words.
A punch was thrown.
The alloy door at the end of the corridor flew off like paper.
Shen Qingqiu leaned against him, toying with the scalpel in her hand, looking at the splattered oil and blood on the walls on either side.
"This scene is truly like a postmodern oil painting."
She sighed softly, her tone as elegant as if she were browsing an art exhibition.
"Seventeen, slow down."
"I want to see just how much filth this so-called 'Holy Tower' can shed."
Seventeen slowed his pace.
He trudged over the scattered parts and corpses, amidst the flickering red alarm lights, carrying his queen, step by step toward the exit.
Behind him, the White Tower burned, collapsed, and screamed.
And in his arms, there was only her soft breathing and her gentle, comforting warmth.
That night.
On a deserted island outside the foggy city, a fire was lit.
It was not the sacred fire of redemption.
It was the karmic fire of vengeance, burning through the veil of this hypocritical divine authority.