1 X Psychiatric Hospital

His name was Yun Zhonghe, and it didn't sound like a good guy's name. The name was used by villains in a few different novels, and they were all godd*mn sexual predators.

Nevertheless, he was a top student: the kind of child that parents always compared their children to. From primary school to university, he was the target of his classmates' jealousy and envy.

When he was 24 years old, he already had his doctoral degree from Princeton University. He became the head of a department in a well-known hospital when he was 28 years old, and the deputy director of that hospital by the time he was 31. He was an influential man no matter where he went.

However, everything changed a year ago when he received a mysterious phone call.

After that, he was appointed as the director of a hospital. Technically speaking, he was kidnapped and forced to take the job.

The hospital had about a hundred doctors and more than two hundred nurses and caretakers, but there were only twenty-nine patients. On average, ten medical staff took care of one patient.

The name of the hospital was composed of only one letter: X.

It was an extremely unusual psychiatric hospital. It was located deep in the mountains, completely separated from the outside world. It didn't exist on any map or any internet webpage, no one could tell which country it belonged to, but it was definitely not in China.

The area within a 50-kilometer radius of the hospital was guarded by armed troops. The soldiers were all mercenaries, and more than half of them were Caucasians. They were equipped with all sorts of radar devices and sophisticated technology. They even had a huge radio telescope in their possession. The facility seemed less like a psychiatric hospital and more like a top-secret base instead.

Yet it was very much a mental hospital. The twenty-nine patients in it were very real.

There was one other trait that all twenty-nine shared in addition to being patients at the hospital: they were all super-geniuses.

There was a saying that described them pretty well, "There is only a thin line between a genius and a mad man." The twenty-nine patients were all exceptionally bizarre lunatics, and also the most horrifying prodigies.

Yun Zhonghe had been a top student since he was young, but after he was appointed the director of the hospital, he was tormented by a particular pair of emotions: the sense of inferiority and the shame of being ignorant.

Yun Zhonghe thought that, in some respects, he was a fool compared to the twenty-nine patients.

Patient Nineteen, who was also known as "π." He had been calculating pi since his admittance into the psychiatric hospital. He was calculating, not reciting. He was mumbling the digits in pi constantly without repeating at all.

π had been living in the hospital for fifteen years. He mumbled two digits per second, which meant his calculation had already reached the 9.04 billion digits after the decimal point. It was the exact answer, and he did it all in his mind, entirely without any equipment. He was virtually comparable to a supercomputer.

He rambled on when he ate, when he slept, and when he went to the toilet. Two decimal places a second, meaning 7200 decimal places an hour, and 172800 decimal places a day.

The most terrifying part was that he could multitask and compute other mathematical problems at the same time that he was constantly calculating pi.

What was even more terrifying was that he had never learned linear algebra or any advanced mathematics, yet he could give the answer to even the hardest mathematical problems after casting a glance at them. He didn't even need a second.

He had figured out countless of the world's toughest math problems in the past fifteen years. It was a shame that his work couldn't be made public, or the Fields Medal (mathematicians' Nobel Prize) would be awarded to a mental health patient.

***

Patient Twenty-Three, a.k.a. Da Vinci. He was probably the most talented painter in the world.

How awesome was he? If someone could get him some suitable paper and ink, he could create fake banknotes that could be used to buy things immediately.

After the aging process, the masterpieces that he forged were identified as the real artworks, while the real ones were thought to be counterfeits.

He could easily reproduce the masterpieces of any famous artist, no matter if they were from modern or ancient times, no matter if they were from the east or the west. His products were even more remarkable than the real masterpieces.

From Wu Daozi to Monet, from Zhang Daqian to Van Gogh, he had learned from them and become better than them.

He made most of his artistic achievements when he was young. He was nicknamed Da Vinci not only because he was gifted in painting, but because he was even more exceptional at dissecting corpses and sketching them exactly as they were with only a pen.

He was arrested and jailed for stealing corpses. When his extraordinary talent was discovered, he was sent to this psychiatric hospital.

After being admitted seventeen years ago, he had dissected hundreds of dead bodies, all sorts of them, and drawn tens of thousands of anatomical sketches.

Now that there were high-resolution computers, why would hand-drawn anatomical drawings still be needed?

They were, in fact, of utmost significance. Although the modern medical and biological fields were very well developed, the medical community's understanding of human organs was still far from complete. For instance, the extremely enigmatic pineal gland and the vestibule of the ear were still surrounded by many unsolved mysteries.

On the other hand, Patient Twenty-Three could magnify the pineal gland and the vestibule of the ear up to a thousand times in his mind and sketch them out completely with their exact structures and forms.

Moreover, he claimed that humans being currently made minimal use of their pineal glands, and that the potential of the organs had barely been tapped. If the human race could fully exploit and utilize the pineal gland, they would be able to receive extraterrestrial signals directly from lightyears away.

Furthermore, if slight modifications could be made to the pineal gland, humans would be able to absorb the essence of the sun and the moon, undergo a metamorphosis, and become transcendent.

It was simply stunning to watch him magnify the pineal gland hundreds of times and sketch out its complete form.

***

Patient Nine, a.k.a. Quantum.

He claimed that his brain was like a quantum computer. He could use it to decipher the unknown past based on current events and predict what would happen in the future. He insisted that it was not fortune-telling, but calculation according to the causal chain.

When he was first admitted into the hospital, it seemed like a time of miracles. He successfully predicted countless events that would happen in the near future, and he was deemed a demigod.

However, the world was full of variables. When a variable surfaced, his prediction would become incorrect, and that would open up a parallel universe in his mind which was diverted from reality.

As the number of false predictions climbed, so did the number of parallel universes that were accumulating in his mind. There were continuous explosions of thoughts in his brain, and eventually, it became too much. His mind buckled.

Patient Nine was now like a zombie. He still went through basic daily routines like eating, drinking, and using the toilet, but he was completely unresponsive to the outside world. His brain was constantly deducing the potentials of countless parallel universes, and that took up all of his energy.

He had been in the hospital for seventeen years. The first year was full of wonders, but there had been fewer and fewer miracles ever since. He spent the last fifteen years as a living corpse. For the last ten years, he kept his eyes shut all the time. He ate, slept, and went to the toilet with his eyes closed. He had lost his marvelous ability.

***

Patient Seven, a.k.a. Chameleon.

This psycho claimed that he could transform into another person. It didn't sound too impressive, but it was actually very creepy. Everyone had an independent existence, one and only. What's more, the so-called world was just one's perception.

Eyesight, hearing, touch, emotions, memories, and the like constituted a person's perception of the world.

To a certain extent, when a person closed his eyes, he was his own world. Therefore, he could never become another person.

However, Patient Seven alleged that he could turn into another person.

He would choose a target, get to know all about their past, feel every emotion they felt, and think in their way of thinking.

At first, he would speak in the same tone and accent as his target. Then, he would move in the same manner. Next came the scarier part; Patient Seven's facial features would start to change and gradually became more similar to those of his target.

Eventually, he would become a dead ringer for his target. Every single characteristic, from facial features to body form, would be identical.

They would say the same words, behave in the same way, and even think about the same things, even though their true natures were very far from one another.

Creepy, isn't it?

This had already gone way beyond reality.

***

Patient Sixteen, a.k.a. Ghost.

He didn't get his nickname because he looked like a ghost, but because he could practically read minds.

As long as he looked at your eyes, felt your breath, and saw your microexpressions, he knew what was on your mind. People were virtually transparent before him, and it was frightening.