PD -Chapter 151 Clinical Trials

Looking at the electroshock therapy machine, along with the various injection devices scattered across the floor and the shattered glass medicine bottles, I couldn’t help but feel a chill run down my spine.

There’s a saying that’s absolutely true: ghosts aren’t really that frightening… people are.

Sometimes human beings can be terrifying in ways that make your blood run cold.

Human ignorance, arrogance, and prejudice toward one another have driven us to commit countless horrifying acts.

This psychiatric hospital had been built during the Republican era. One could easily imagine how people at the time viewed mental illness—a highly unusual and poorly understood condition.

This kind of inhumane electroshock treatment to the head often did more harm than good. If the electrical current wasn’t controlled properly, it could cause loss of consciousness and full-body convulsions.

Yet despite that, it had once been widely used. After all, electric shocks could indeed suppress psychiatric symptoms, but they only treated the symptoms rather than the root cause.

Of course, given the circumstances of that era, electroshock therapy was probably one of the least torturous methods available to doctors.

I shook my head and closed the door before continuing forward.

Along the way, we passed several similar treatment rooms. The equipment inside varied—brain puncture devices, intracranial injection machines, and other instruments that made your scalp tingle just from looking at them.

Further ahead, the rooms began to look very different.

The doors here had been replaced by heavy iron ones. Each door had only a small hatch, seemingly used to pass items inside.

They reminded me of prison cells.

Using my spiritual energy, I pushed open the hatch of one iron door.

Inside was complete darkness.

There weren’t even any windows.

Cold walls surrounded the room on all four sides.

These were solitary confinement cells.

Back then, patients with violent tendencies or those unwilling to cooperate with treatment were probably locked inside these rooms.

Passing through the confinement area, we arrived at the second floor of the South Wing.

This floor appeared to have been an office area. Most of it was dilapidated and packed with miscellaneous junk, making it difficult to even find a place to step.

I bent over and entered one office that was relatively less cluttered.

On the desk sat a nameplate.

Wiping away the dust, I saw a name engraved on it:

Yang Yingzhe.

Meanwhile, Li Zi was rummaging through a collapsed filing cabinet nearby, pulling out stacks of documents.

I moved closer to take a look.

Inside were not only patient records but also handwritten notes documenting clinical treatments and experimental therapies.

Once again, I found the name Yang Yingzhe in one of the records.

The moment I opened the clinical trial logbook, goosebumps erupted all over my body.

The book documented countless horrific treatment experiments performed on patients admitted to the hospital.

Many of these methods had clearly never been used in actual clinical practice at the time.

Some of them seemed to have no scientific basis whatsoever, even by modern standards.

For example:

Piercing a patient’s eyelid with a needle and injecting mind-altering drugs directly into the cornea in an attempt to control hallucinations.

Combining electroshock therapy with temple puncture treatment—running electrical current through needles while simultaneously stimulating acupuncture points on the patient’s head.

“This… this isn’t a hospital at all,” I muttered, shaking my head and tossing the record book aside. “It’s a living hell.”

I had only recently visited the Underworld itself.

Compared to the tortures I saw there, these grotesque experiments weren’t much better.

After a moment of silence, I turned to Li Zi.

“Your information didn’t mention this Yang Yingzhe at all, did it?”

Li Zi froze briefly before shaking his head.

“No, it didn’t. But looking at these experiments, they obviously weren’t conducted openly. So it’s not surprising nothing turned up.”

I nodded.

He had a point.

These experiments were very likely carried out in secret within the South Wing of the hospital.

With that thought, I glanced deeper into the South Wing and decided not to continue exploring for the time being.

Besides, I had already used my spiritual sense to investigate the area.

Although the Yin energy here was extremely dense…

The ghosts seemed to be deliberately avoiding us and had shown no intention of causing trouble.

That convinced me we should leave first, gather more information, make proper preparations, and return later.

“Let’s call it a day and head out,” I said as I turned toward the exit.

“Huh?” Li Zi replied in confusion behind me.

“We’re just leaving after coming all this way tonight?”

“How can you call this a wasted trip?” I answered while walking.

“I think Yang Yingzhe is a crucial lead, along with those bizarre human experiments he conducted.”

“Only by uncovering the truth behind all this can we find the real reason this place is haunted. So let’s leave for now and come back tomorrow.”

As we talked, we exited the hospital building, climbed through the fence, and returned to the car parked nearby.

Just then, a pair of patrolling security guards happened to pass by.

They clearly knew Li Zi and greeted him warmly as “Boss Li.”

We chatted with them for a few minutes.

Since both guards were locals, I figured they might know something about the psychiatric hospital and its doctors.

Sure enough, our questions quickly produced results.

“Boss Li, that Yang Yingzhe you mentioned actually has some connection to my family,” said one of the guards, whom Li Zi called Xiao Yang. Accepting a cigarette from me, he smiled and continued, “We’re from the same village. We both have the surname Yang. Back in my grandfather’s generation, our families were on pretty good terms.”

“I’ve heard my grandfather talk about him before. Yang Yingzhe was a genuine prodigy—the pride and hope of the entire village.”

“Think about it. Before Liberation, educational opportunities were extremely limited, yet Yang Yingzhe managed to earn admission to university and later even went abroad to study medicine.”

“But for some reason, instead of pursuing a bright future elsewhere, he came back to this tiny place and convinced the local government to build this psychiatric hospital.”

“I thought about it later,” Xiao Yang said after taking a drag from his cigarette. “Yang Yingzhe studied in Japan. When he returned, the War of Resistance had just broken out. Maybe he came to a small town like this to avoid getting caught up in it.”

I listened quietly.

Yet I knew in my heart that avoiding the war probably wasn’t Yang Yingzhe’s real reason for coming here.

Nor was persuading the government to build a psychiatric hospital.

Perhaps everything had been planned from the start.

Perhaps the true purpose was those secret and horrifying human experiments.

“So what happened to Yang Yingzhe afterward? And why was this psychiatric hospital abandoned?” I asked.

Xiao Yang thought for a moment.

“I heard he died later on. He wasn’t very old when it happened.”

“The older folks in the village always said it was a pity, but I don’t know exactly what happened.”

That was all Xiao Yang knew.

He couldn’t provide any further details.

However, before we left, he did give us one very important clue:

Yang Yingzhe had a grandson.

And that grandson was still living here.

Even more interestingly…

He had followed in Yang Yingzhe’s footsteps and entered the very same profession.