Chapter 1: X Psychiatric Hospital

His name is Gavin Clark. Just by the sound of it, you can tell he’s not a good guy. In several novels, he’s always a supervillain, and even a notorious silver thief.

However, he was always the model child, a top student envied by all his classmates from elementary school through university.

At just twenty-four, he had already earned his PhD from Princeton University. By twenty-eight, he was the head of a department at a renowned hospital. At thirty-one, he became the hospital’s vice president. No matter where he went, he was a prominent figure.

But a year ago, everything changed. He received a secret phone call.

After that, he became the director of a certain hospital—essentially forced into the position.

This hospital had over a hundred doctors, more than two hundred nurses and orderlies, but only twenty-nine patients. On average, ten medical staff cared for each patient.

The hospital’s name consisted of just one letter: X.

This was an extremely special psychiatric hospital, located deep in the mountains, completely isolated from the world. Its existence couldn’t be found on any map or the internet, and no one even knew which country it belonged to—though it definitely wasn’t in China.

Within a hundred-mile radius of X Psychiatric Hospital, at least a regiment of troops was stationed, all mercenaries, with more than half being white soldiers. There were all kinds of radars, precision devices, and even large radio telescopes. It didn’t look like a psychiatric hospital at all, but rather a secret base.

But it truly was a psychiatric hospital, with twenty-nine genuine patients.

However, these twenty-nine psychiatric patients had another identity: top-level geniuses.

There’s a saying: there’s a fine line between genius and madness. These twenty-nine patients were the most bizarre lunatics, but also the most terrifying geniuses.

Having always been a top student, Gavin Clark felt like a frog at the bottom of a well after becoming the director of this psychiatric hospital—utterly inadequate by comparison.

Because in front of these twenty-nine patients, in some respects, Gavin Clark felt like an idiot.

Patient No. 19, nicknamed π. Ever since he entered the hospital, he’s been calculating pi—not reciting, but actually calculating it in his head. He mutters the digits of pi all day long, never repeating himself.

π has been in the hospital for fifteen years. He calculates two digits per second, so by now he’s reached the 940 millionth decimal place of pi, all done in his head without any tools—practically a supercomputer.

He recites while eating, while sleeping, even while using the bathroom—two digits per second, 7,200 digits per hour, 172,800 digits per day.

The scariest part is, while his mind is constantly calculating pi, he can multitask—calculating other math problems at the same time.

Even scarier, he’s barely studied linear algebra or advanced mathematics, but no matter how difficult the math problem, he can glance at it and instantly know the answer—not even needing a second.

In these fifteen years, who knows how many world-class math problems he’s solved. Unfortunately, none can be published; otherwise, the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize of mathematics) would probably have to go to a psychiatric patient.

……

Patient No. 23, nicknamed Leonardo da Vinci, is probably the most talented artist in the world.

How skilled is he? If someone provides the right paper and ink, the counterfeit bills he draws can be spent as real money.

The classic masterpieces he copies, once artificially aged, are mistaken for originals, while the real ones are considered fakes.

From modern to ancient, East to West, he can easily reproduce any masterpiece by any famous artist—sometimes even better than the original.

From Wu Daozi to Monet, from Zhang Daqian to Van Gogh, he surpasses them all.

And that was just his early achievement. He’s called Leonardo da Vinci not just because of his incredible painting skills, but even more so because he can dissect corpses and then draw them with perfect accuracy.

He was once arrested for grave robbing, but after his special talent was discovered, he was transferred to this psychiatric hospital.

In his seventeen years here, he’s dissected hundreds of corpses of all kinds, producing over ten thousand anatomical drawings.

Now that we have high-resolution computers, is there still a need to draw by hand?

Absolutely. Even though modern biology and medicine are highly advanced, there’s still much we don’t know about the human body’s internal organs. For example, the mysterious pineal gland, or even the vestibular system of the ear, still hold many unsolved mysteries.

And this Patient No. 23 can magnify the pineal gland or the vestibular system a thousand times in his mind and then draw them out in perfect detail, with not a single error in structure.