Investigation

Returning from the mental hospital in Jiangcheng City, Lu Ban felt much better.

He had truly interacted with people suffering from mental illnesses, and through communicating and chatting with them, he had obtained a great deal of firsthand material.

Previously, Lu Ban only had a superficial understanding of mental illness. Like many ordinary people, he felt that mental illness was very strange, difficult to understand, eccentric, and impossible to communicate with.

But through actual contact, Lu Ban felt that patients with these illnesses were actually just like ordinary people; it was just that their way of thinking had developed a slight deviation due to their illness.

For example, a typical case of paranoia might look like someone with erratic moods, always fearful of or hating things that fundamentally do not exist. But in reality, they are just frequently hallucinating and treating those hallucinations as reality. Think about it: if an ugly creature truly existed beside you in reality, you would also want to drive it away. A paranoid patient is simply making a normal and reasonable move based on their perception. In other words, aside from treating hallucinations as reality, they are no different from ordinary people.

Some paranoid patients even construct a worldview belonging to them and act according to the rules of that worldview. From this point of view, they are perfectly normal within their hallucinations—perhaps even more normal than many ordinary people who don't know what they are thinking every day.

Once this point is understood, the thinking of a person with mental illness can be grasped.

The reason Lu Ban wanted to study people with mental illness was to learn their irrational characteristics.

As everyone knows, in horror-themed works, the most terrifying part is a monster or a danger that cannot be understood.

When the protagonists don't know what is chasing, killing, or threatening them, and don't know when or where the opponent will appear, that is the most terrifying time.

If those ghosts and monsters can be understood, seen through, or even destroyed, the sense of terror completely vanishes.

In a horror game, if you only have a flashlight, anything that pops out can scare a player nearly to death. But if the player is given a gun filled with bullets, the player will only shout for more monsters to come.

Being unable to resist and only able to avoid danger triggers everyone's insecurity. People with mental illness fit this point perfectly.

In many works, the mere appearance of a person with mental illness is enough to amplify the terrifying atmosphere. If this patient is also filthy, haggard, holding a tattered baby doll, and singing a nursery rhyme or two, it will absolutely leave a deep impression on people.

Lu Ban returned home. The TV was still on, playing those industrially produced short videos used to relieve stress online; this time, it was about making mirrors.

He saw that the Lu Ban in the mirror seemed to really enjoy watching these things, staring intently at the screen.

The two clouds of mist on the sofa didn't care at all, seemingly already asleep.

Lu Ban went to the computer, opened a file, and began to record today's insights and experiences.

Three days later, the last day of April, the May 1st holiday was about to begin. On the afternoon of the 30th, everyone had lost the heart to work, only calculating how to spend the holiday.

But for cinema staff, this holiday would not be leisurely.

During the May 1st Golden Week, many movies were set to be released, marking the start of the summer season, including *The Madman's Mouth*.

*The Madman's Mouth* had already approached 50 million in pre-sales, which was an excellent result for a horror-themed work. One must know that many similar films only had that much in total box office. Naturally, horror films were mostly synonymous with small budgets and low box office.

After all, if there were a large-scale production with a big investment, who would still film a horror movie? Wouldn't it be better to film a superhero movie or a disaster movie?

The efficiency ratio of horror movies was very low.

May 1st, 0:00 AM.

*The Madman's Mouth* premiered.

Countless late-night viewers flooded into the cinemas just to see what Lu Ban's first work under this horror film worldview actually was.

Yannan University media student Bai Kaiquan and his girlfriend Pang Zhen were among them.

Bai Kaiquan had been studying horror movies recently. After being baptized by *The Wailing*, Bai Kaiquan began to develop an interest in horror films. He hadn't watched many before, but during this period, he was frantically catching up, not even letting B-movies slide. To him, horror movie tropes were already very familiar.

Simply put, something suddenly pops out to give you a jump scare, using disgusting things to make people feel repulsed, adding tomato sauce, severed limbs, chainsaws, and coordinating with scenes like hospitals, mental hospitals, or schools.

He was preparing his graduation thesis this year, and Bai Kaiquan was still considering whether to choose horror movies as his research topic.

Entering the cinema, Bai Kaiquan saw that many people were still wearing smiles.

This was also normal because after *The Wailing* became a huge hit, horror movies began to enter the public eye. More and more people started watching these horror films, and the pre-sales this time were precisely for this reason.

In other words, many viewers today were actually just joining in the excitement of the midnight premiere, having no intuitive understanding of Lu Ban's horror movies beforehand.

Bai Kaiquan felt a bit of schadenfreude, but thinking carefully, he was also sitting in the audience now; he didn't know who would look worse when the time came.

He didn't speak.

The movie began. He settled his mind and observed the film.

Over a hundred minutes later.

Accompanied by the production credits and the ending music, the large cinema was silent.

Bai Kaiquan looked at the screen, his mind blank.

This was not quite the same as being startled or feeling a sudden sense of fear.

If watching *The Wailing* and Lu Ban's other works brought him intuitive fear—a terror that felt like a venomous snake coiling around his body—then this movie gave him a feeling as if a huge pile of things had been forcibly stuffed into his head.

Some people have an experience as a child where they originally only stayed in their own home, moving between kindergarten and primary school, feeling that the world was very narrow and only that big. But at some point, they suddenly see something magnificent—like the ocean, the infinite starry sky, or those vast and busy cities. The feeling in that instant was what Bai Kaiquan was perceiving.

It was a sense of fear that he could not control, could not understand, and could not perceive. At the moment the credits ended and the cinema lights came on, Bai Kaiquan cried.

He felt that his life seemed to have no meaning at all; everything was a lie. Just like the protagonists in ordinary movies, just like that novelist, no matter what effort he made, he could not stop this world from charging headlong toward destruction.

This movie was like a switch; after being pressed, the whole person became nihilistic.

"Lu Ban, this person, is truly terrifying!"

During this moment of profound realization, Bai Kaiquan could not stop sighing with emotion.