He closed his eyes to rest for a moment, slowly coming to his senses, realizing he was in a hospital, but he couldn’t quite remember why he had ended up there. “Why am I here?” he spoke, his throat surprisingly dry, with a strange taste lingering.

“You were found in an alley on Changpu Street. Someone hit you on the head with a brick more than a dozen times. You suffered a moderate concussion and lost consciousness. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re still alive and lying here—you should be at the crematorium,” the nurse said. Only then did Eric Bennett see clearly that it was a middle-aged nurse. Years of night shifts had left her looking haggard. “The doctor said your skull is thick and your brain is small, so you got lucky,” the nurse added.

At first, Eric Bennett was still a bit dazed, but words like “brick” and “alley” gradually brought back memories of what had happened. It seemed he had been robbed. He didn’t know if anything else had been taken; if so, he really didn’t want to live anymore. He checked the rest of his body and, finding nothing unusual, finally breathed a sigh of relief. Thinking back to the way that guy looked, covered in blood, he was probably being hunted for revenge or had escaped from a gang fight and robbed him in passing.

This was some next-level bad luck—beyond anything he’d ever experienced.

“I just heard my parents arguing. Was I dreaming or hallucinating?” Eric Bennett touched his head and found an IV in his hand.

“No, I can hear your parents arguing right now,” the nurse replied. “A few days ago, they were shouting at each other in the hallway. We had to ask them to leave and not visit you at the same time. You probably don’t know—you’ve been in a coma for over ten days.”

“Over ten days? Nonsense!” Eric Bennett cursed inwardly, gritting his teeth as he sat up. The moment he moved, a sharp pain shot through his back, even worse than the pain in his head.

“My back is injured too?” Eric Bennett asked.

“Your back? Yes, it’s injured,” the nurse said. “Knife wounds. You’d better not scratch them.”

“Damn it, he even slashed me?” Eric Bennett grew angry, cursing, “All that just to rob me of 500 yuan? Was it really necessary to be so vicious? Hitting me with a brick wasn’t enough—he had to slash me too.” At this moment, he noticed the nurse’s expression was a bit odd.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“Who? Oh, you mean that guy covered in wounds,” the nurse suddenly smiled and said, “He didn’t end up much better than you. He’s already dead.”

“Dead?” Eric Bennett was shocked. “Did the police catch him and shoot him?”

“No, when they found you, he was already dead beside you, from excessive blood loss. He was pressed tightly against you, and you two were stuck together by blood.”

Eric Bennett was stunned. He thought for a moment before understanding what the nurse meant. Apparently, the unlucky guy died halfway through robbing him. That was truly dramatic. If he hadn’t been knocked out, maybe when the police arrived, they would have thought he was the one robbing the other guy. But seriously, with injuries like that, why would he still try to rob someone? Shouldn’t he have gone straight to the hospital? Did he not even have money for a cab? If only he’d asked me for a loan instead.

Suddenly, Eric Bennett felt a pang of guilt, but then he comforted himself: the main reason the guy died so miserably on the spot was because he knocked me out and couldn’t borrow any money.

The nurse smiled at him again and said, “Get some rest.” With that, she drew the curtains around his hospital bed.

Eric Bennett pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling as if he were in a dream. In his memory, just a few hours ago, he’d been thinking about which internet café to spend the night in, and now he’d almost been killed and was lying in a hospital.

Well, at least he wasn’t dead, and he could skip classes for over a month. In that sense, the pain of going to class was far worse than being slashed with a knife. Those teachers really ought to reflect on themselves.

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help but laugh. He imagined having done something bad, and the teachers would have to bring classmates, flowers, and fruit to visit him. This was what people called fate.

After lying still for over ten days, his body felt extremely uncomfortable. When he moved, a wave of pain swept from his back. It seemed the knife wound was quite serious.

He shrugged his shoulders, and the pain surged across his entire back. Suddenly, he realized something strange about the wound on his back—it felt like there was more than one.

He recalled the nurse’s expression and felt uneasy, reaching his hand behind him. Soon, he found the bandaged area on his back.

The wound should have stopped bleeding by now, with gauze covering it. He slipped his hand under the gauze and touched the wound. It had already scabbed over, feeling both painful and itchy. As he touched it, cold sweat began to break out.

There were many wounds, and the more he felt, the more unnerved he became. Why did the shape of these wounds feel so strange? Were these really knife wounds? Gritting his teeth, he turned over and almost collapsed to the floor, his legs so weak he nearly knelt down. But he managed to steady himself on a chair, pulled out the IV from his hand, and staggered into the bathroom. He tore off the gauze on his back and turned to look at himself in the mirror.

In an instant, he was stunned, thinking: What is this?

His entire back was carved with an extremely bizarre pattern, and it was all done with a knife—not just one or two cuts, but hundreds of incisions. All the wounds had scabbed over, forming terrifying scars.