Chapter 7 Evening of the Seventh Day

"Dinner's ready." The caregiver outside knocked twice on the door, then slid the tray in.

Feng Bujue silently went to the door, glanced at today's meal, picked up the tray, and walked to the squat toilet.

He didn't rush into action. He first confirmed by sound that the caregiver outside had walked away, then took out the prepared toilet paper, wrapped up all the rice, and threw it into the sewer.

Next, he returned to the door and began to eat.

Before long, he finished the rest of the food on the tray and placed the empty tray and utensils back behind the door.

So far...

Everything was proceeding according to his plan...

Half an hour later, someone retrieved the utensils through the serving hatch.

Another hour passed, and finally... accompanied by four "beep beep beep beep" sounds of the combination lock being pressed, the ward door opened.

At this moment, Feng Bujue was pretending to be asleep.

He chose to lie face down, burying his face as much as possible, to prevent others from seeing through his trick by observing the subtle tremors of his eyelids.

Of course, under normal circumstances, people wouldn't pay attention to such details unless there were more obvious signs that aroused suspicion.

"Should we turn him over?" After a few seconds, a familiar voice sounded.

Jue-ge could tell that there were two people who had entered the room, and the one speaking was the caregiver who often interacted with him.

"No need, leave him like that." The voice that responded, Jue-ge also recognized, was Doctor Yuan.

After a brief exchange, Doctor Yuan came to Jue-ge's side and sat down on the floor.

Seconds later, Feng Bujue felt... the other party lift his arm and wrap something around it.

"He's going to take my blood pressure..." Jue-ge made the correct assumption immediately.

Indeed, Doctor Yuan was doing just that. While busy with what he was doing, he chatted with the caregiver, "By the way, has 3232 been acting any differently lately? Has he committed any new violent acts?"

"Uh... not in terms of violence." The caregiver replied thoughtfully, "But there have been some abnormalities..."

"Oh?" Doctor Yuan looked up at the caregiver, gesturing with his eyes for him to continue.

"These past few days, when I've been checking on his room, he often looks exhausted and out of breath, as if I interrupted him doing something very strenuous..." The caregiver wore a slightly pained expression as he replied, "And... he's been using toilet paper really fast lately." As he said this, he seemed afraid that the doctor wouldn't understand what he meant, so he raised his right hand and made a "back and forth stroking" motion in the air.

"Heh..." Doctor Yuan chuckled, "That's all?" He shook his head, "Oh well... entertaining himself is better than him causing trouble for us."

"Hehe... yeah." The caregiver also laughed, "I just don't know... how this kid manages to wank all day long without even a magazine."

"The guy's got a vivid imagination..." Doctor Yuan said, already finished taking the blood pressure, and picked up his hearing aid to listen to Jue-ge's breathing and heartbeat directly from his back, "...beyond the reach of us mortals."

The two of them completed this routine check-up in this joking, casual atmosphere.

Then, they closed the door and left the ward.

Feng Bujue was a little worried that his heartbeat and breathing would give away his "pretending to be asleep," and he had deliberately controlled them to some extent. But in reality... he had worried too much.

For the doctors working here, as long as they measure the patient's blood pressure and confirm that their breathing and heartbeat haven't stopped, that's enough. No one would seriously diagnose anything.

In fact, if they could, they would just make up a high or low blood pressure value and fill it in on the form, then fill in "normal" for the "heart rate" and "breathing" sections, thus skipping the check-up altogether.

"So... the sleeping pills are mainly put in to make these checks easier to carry out..." Although the doctor and caregiver had already left the room, Feng Bujue remained in his sleeping posture, thinking, "In that case, it seems like it doesn't really matter if I eat that medicine..."

Let me explain here—after the previous few days of portion-testing, Feng Bujue had confirmed that the "stuff" in both lunch and dinner was mixed into the rice. After that, he planned this "observation" tonight, wanting to find out the specific situation after dinner.

"Hmm... but this is just one time, not enough to serve as a complete basis for judgment." Feng Bujue was still cautious, "I'll observe for a month, then draw a conclusion..."

…………

Chapter 23 Morning

"Whew... alright, I've got a pretty good idea." When Feng Bujue regained consciousness from his "memory gap," he sighed and muttered with a relieved expression.

Since Jue-ge could say such a thing, it meant that... he was at least 90% certain that he had actually grasped the information he needed to investigate.

So, what exactly was this "information"?

The answer can be divided into two parts, the first: a complete breakfast menu.

This "complete menu" doesn't just refer to what was for breakfast on "a certain day," but rather what was for breakfast "every day."

Over the past three weeks, Feng Bujue had tried to record the types of food he ate each morning. Even if some foods couldn't be wedged between his teeth, he would find a way to leave a trace.

For example... pretending to wipe his mouth with his sleeve, and taking the opportunity to stick food residue to his sleeve, then rolling up the sleeve of his hospital gown so that the residue would be preserved inside the rolled-up sleeve; similarly... the trouser legs could also be used like this; and once, he even hid a small piece of *ci fan* (sticky rice roll) in his ear...

In short, in order to find out about the "missing memory" situation, Jue-ge can be said to have used every trick in the book. If you pushed him hard enough... he wouldn't be above doing things like stuffing food into his rear end.

Fortunately... the supervision during breakfast time wasn't too strict, the caregivers just left him there and told him to finish quickly. They weren't interested in watching him the whole time... to see if he was stuffing the food into his mouth or his nostrils. Therefore, Feng Bujue didn't have to resort to that ultimate measure.

Next, let's talk about the second part: which food the amnesia drug was specifically placed in.

Obviously, clarifying this information under the premise of "memory loss" was even more difficult than checking the menu...

As mentioned earlier... Feng Bujue and the caregivers ate the same meals, the only difference was that his portion had been spiked.

And drugging breakfast was different from drugging lunch and dinner... the latter two were done by uniformly putting the drug in the rice, because no matter how picky the patient was, they would still eat a few bites of white rice; if there were really a few extreme cases who didn't eat rice, the hospital would naturally take special measures.

However, breakfast... was different.

Take the steamed buns and soy milk that Feng Bujue ate on the third day as an example. It wasn't hard to test out that "what he ate was steamed buns and soy milk." If there were really some ingredients he couldn't figure out, he could forcibly gag himself and spit it out, then smell it... and he could probably tell what it was.

But clarifying "whether the drug was put in the steamed buns or the soy milk" wasn't something everyone could do.

Generally, Feng Bujue used three methods to deal with this problem...

The first method—"time reasoning," this was an idea he had already thought of on the third day, that is, "deciding on the order of eating in the morning of that day, and judging which food was drugged based on the time node before the memory loss." This trick was a relatively reliable method, and it was even more effective after knowing the "complete menu."

The second method—"self-preserved information," this trick was simpler and more effective than the previous one, that is, "if, while eating, he had already judged by taste, smell, or sight which food was drugged, then he would directly use the method of 'leaving fingernail marks' to mark on his leg below the number of types of food he ate, which was the 'nth' thing he ate that was drugged." Similar to the first trick, after knowing the complete menu, he could use this trick to find the target very accurately.

Finally, the third method—"logical reasoning," there wasn't much to say about this, he had also done this on the third day, that is, "judging which food the drug would be most reasonably put in, based purely on the food he ate that day, by means of speculation." This trick usually couldn't be used as a complete basis for judgment, but it could be used as a supplementary basis, and used in conjunction with the first two tricks.

In summary, Feng Bujue applied these three methods to test out the "drugged foods" in breakfast combinations including "*ci fan* rolls and tofu pudding," "flatbreads and fried dough sticks with sweet soy milk," "jianbing guozi (savory crepe) with pickled vegetables," and so on.

Honestly... it wouldn't be easy for someone who hadn't experienced memory loss to figure this out. But Jue-ge only spent three cycles (the breakfast menu rotated every eight days) to find the truth from this "segment of memory that was erased every day," and he himself thought this progress was already slow...

"So... the next step is to find an opportunity to clarify 'what happens during the period after breakfast'." After Feng Bujue went through the menu in his mind, he set a suitable date and began to formulate a plan for that day.

…………

Chapter 25 The Day of the Implementation Came

In the morning, Feng Bujue still left the room with the two caregivers at the usual time, completing his washing up at his usual speed (in order to better test the information about food and drugs, Feng Bujue was very precisely controlling the time of washing every day).

After that, he was taken to a room of more than sixty square meters.

The room had good lighting, with many windows on the left-hand wall after entering the room. Although those windows were also fitted with metal bars without exception, the morning sun still poured in abundantly.

In the middle of the room, there were eight sets of special tables and chairs connected to the ground. Feng Bujue was taken by the two caregivers to one of the tables to sit down, and then the caregivers fixed his waist in a circular metal hoop attached to the back of the chair.

The design of this thing was very clever, like a safety belt tied around the waist that couldn't be removed. Once fixed by this metal hoop, the person sitting on the chair couldn't stand up, and their upper body could only make limited movements.

Not long after Jue-ge sat down, four more caregivers brought in two people dressed in hospital gowns like Jue-ge.

The one who came in first looked over forty, with a crew cut. Although his figure looked quite thin, his eyes... seemed to be constantly saying lines like "I'm going to dismember you into eight pieces."

The one who came in later looked like a skeleton, walking with a trembling gait, his eyes empty, and his mouth constantly muttering to himself.

Feng Bujue also listened carefully. That person seemed to be repeatedly chanting "square nails... round nails... flat nails... pointed nails..." and other words related to fingernails, which was really meaningless.

"This place should be specially provided for patients in solitary confinement..." Feng Bujue thought while waiting there, "Looking at these two... they're obviously not good guys either..." Thinking of this, he thought again, "Heh... speaking of which, when I sit here every day, I'm probably thinking the same things as I am now... it's just that I don't remember it afterwards."

After all three patients arrived, the six caregivers gathered together and chatted.

About five minutes later, a staff member wearing an apron pushed a cart in from the door: "Okay, guys, come serve these three grandpas."

After that staff member's joke, the caregivers went over one after another, put three breakfasts on the tables in front of the three patients, and then... they gathered to the side and chatted again.

Feng Bujue looked down, and today's breakfast was consistent with what he knew—a bowl of *re gan mian* (hot dry noodles), plus a small bowl of clear soup.

Why choose to carry out the plan today? The reason is that today's drug... was put in the *re gan mian*.

Because the clear soup was light in color, light in taste, and not very much; if the drug was put in the soup, the taste would undoubtedly be more obvious, so... the drug could only be put in the *re gan mian*.

What did that *re gan mian* look like? Simply put, a bowl of plain noodles, topped with a dollop of sauce, and sprinkled with diced pickled radish, crushed peanuts, chopped scallions, pickled cowpeas, and other toppings.

I believe that everyone understands after seeing this... the powdered drug was mixed in the thick sauce.

Normally, *re gan mian* should be mixed before eating... this is common sense. Even someone who has never eaten it will immediately understand this when they see this bowl of noodles—it's unlikely that someone would deliberately separate the sauce and toppings and eat the plain noodles underneath.

However, today's Jue-ge... was going to do just that.