It was the evening of the seventh day.
"It's time for dinner." The caregiver knocked on the door twice before shoving the tray into the room.
Feng Bujue walked to the door quietly and took a look at the food for the day. Then, he picked up the tray and walked to the squatting toilet.
He was not in a hurry to take action. Instead, he made sure that the caregiver outside the door had gone far away. Then, he picked up the toilet paper that he had prepared beforehand, wrapped up all the rice, and threw it into the sewer.
Then, he went back to the door and started eating.
It did not take long for him to finish everything on the tray and put the empty tray and utensils behind the door.
That was it …
Everything was going according to his plan ….
Half an hour later, someone retrieved the utensils from the tray.
After another hour or so, the door of the ward finally opened with the sound of "beep beep beep beep beep beep".
At that moment, Feng Bujue was pretending to be asleep.
He chose to lie on the floor with his eyes closed and his face buried as much as possible. This way, he could prevent others from seeing through his trick through the slight trembling of his eyelids.
Of course, under normal circumstances, people would not pay attention to such details unless there was something more obvious that made them suspicious.
"Do you want me to turn him over?" A few seconds later, a familiar voice rang out.
Brother Jue could tell that there were two people who had walked into the room. The one who spoke was the caregiver who often dealt with Brother Jue.
"No, it's fine." Brother Jue could also tell that the other person was Doctor Yuan.
The two of them exchanged a few words before Doctor Yuan came to Brother Jue's side and sat on the floor.
A few seconds later, Feng Bujue felt that Doctor Yuan lifted his arm and wrapped something around it.
"This is to measure my blood pressure, right?" Brother Jue came up with the correct speculation at the first moment.
Indeed, that was what Doctor Yuan was doing. As he busied himself with the task at hand, he chatted with the caregiver. "By the way, has Room 3232 been acting strangely recently? Have you made any new violent moves? "
"Uh... there's no violence," the nurse replied thoughtfully. "But there's something strange about it..."
"Oh?" Doctor Yuan raised his head and looked at the nurse. He signaled the nurse to continue speaking with his eyes.
"Over the past few days, when I was patrolling his room, he often looked tired and out of breath. It was as if I had interrupted him while he was doing something very strenuous …" The nurse showed a slightly pained expression and replied, "And … recently, he has been using up his toilet paper very quickly." When he said this, he seemed to be afraid that the doctor would not understand what he meant, so he raised his right hand and made a "back and forth" gesture in the air.
"Oh …" Doctor Yuan sneered. "So that's it …" He shook his head. "Fine … It's better to entertain yourself than to create trouble for us."
"Hehe … That's right." The nurse laughed as well. "I just don't know … This kid doesn't even have a magazine. How does he play until late at night?"
"He has a rich imagination …" Doctor Yuan said as he finished taking Brother Jue's blood pressure. He picked up the hearing aid and listened to Brother Jue's breathing and heartbeat directly from his back. "… It's not something that mortals like me can reach."
In this atmosphere of joking and chatting, the two of them completed the routine checkup absent-mindedly.
Then, the two of them closed the door and left the ward.
Feng Bujue was a little worried that his heartbeat and breathing would expose the fact that he was pretending to be asleep, so he deliberately controlled them to a certain extent. But looking at the actual situation … he was worrying too much.
For the doctors who worked here, this kind of routine checkup only required them to check the patient's blood pressure and make sure that the patient's breathing and heartbeat had not stopped. No one would seriously make a diagnosis.
In fact, if they could, they would just fabricate a high or low blood pressure value and fill it up on the form. Then, they would fill in the word "normal" in the "heart rate" and "breathing" section. That way, they could even skip the checkup.
"So … the sleeping pills are mainly used to make the checkup more convenient …" Although the doctor and the nurse had left the room, Feng Bujue still maintained his posture of pretending to be asleep. He thought to himself, "In this case, taking the sleeping pills doesn't seem to be a big deal …"
After a few days of testing, Feng Bujue had confirmed that the "ingredients" for lunch and dinner were mixed in the rice. After that, he planned tonight's "observation" to find out the specific situation after dinner.
"Hmm … But, this is only one of the tests. It's not enough to make a complete judgment." Feng Bujue was still cautious. "Let's observe for a month before coming to a conclusion …"
…
Morning of the twenty-third day.
"Phew … Okay, it's almost clear." When Feng Bujue recovered from the 'fragment', he gave a long sigh and said with a relieved expression, "Thank you for your help, Brother Ye."
Since Brother Jue said such a sentence, it meant that he was at least ninety percent sure that he had grasped the information that he needed to investigate.
So, what was the "information"?
The answer could be divided into two parts. First, the complete breakfast recipe.
The "complete breakfast recipe" did not refer to the total number of breakfasts on a particular day, but the total number of breakfasts on a particular day.
For the past three weeks, Feng Bujue would try to record the types of breakfasts that he ate every morning. Even if there were some breakfasts that he could not squeeze between his teeth, he would try to find a way to leave a trace.
For example, he pretended to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and took the opportunity to smear the food residue on his sleeve. Then, he rolled up the sleeve of his hospital gown so that he could keep the residue in his sleeve. Similarly, he could do the same with his trousers. Once, he even hid a small piece of leftover rice in his ear.
In conclusion, to get to the bottom of the 'memory loss', Brother Jue would stop at nothing. If he was pushed too far … he would stuff food into the back of his body, and that was not something he would not do.
Thankfully … the supervision during breakfast time was not that strict. The workers merely left him there and told him to finish his breakfast as soon as possible. They were not interested in watching Brother Jue the whole time … to see whether he was stuffing the food into his mouth or his nose. Therefore, Feng Bujue did not need to use his last resort.
Then, there was the second question: which type of food was the amnesia drug put in.
Obviously, it was harder to find this information under the premise of "missing part of his memory" compared to looking up a recipe.
As mentioned earlier, Feng Bujue ate the same food as the nurses. The only difference was that there was a drug in his breakfast.
Putting drugs in breakfast was different from putting drugs in lunch and dinner. The latter two were all put in rice. This was because no matter how picky the patient was, they would still take a few bites of plain rice. If there were extreme cases where the patient did not eat rice, the hospital would naturally give them special treatment.
However, breakfast … was different.
Take the steamed buns and soy milk that Feng Bujue had on the third day as an example. It was not difficult to find out whether the food was steamed buns or soy milk. If there was something that they could not figure out, they just had to dig their throats and spit it out. Then, they could smell it and figure out what it was.
However, it was not easy to find out whether the drug was put in the steamed buns or soy milk.
Generally speaking, Feng Bujue used three methods to solve this problem.
The first method was "time inference." This was an idea that he came up with on the third day. He would "think about the order of the food in the morning and use the time before the memory lapse to determine which type of food was drugged." This was a more reliable method, and the effect would be better after knowing the "complete recipe".
The second method was "leaving a message". This method was simpler and more effective than the previous one. "If you have already determined which food is drugged through taste, smell, or sight when you are eating, then you can use the method of 'leaving a nail print' to indicate which food you ate was drugged." Similar to the first method, after knowing the complete recipe, he could use this method to accurately find the target.
Finally, there was the third method — 'logical deduction'. There was not much to say about that. On the third day, Feng Bujue had done the same thing. Based on the food that he had eaten that day, he had used pure speculation to determine which food was the most logical place for the drug to be placed. This method could not be used as a complete basis for judgment, but it could be used as a supplementary basis to combine with the first two methods.
In summary, Feng Bujue used these three methods to test out the "drugged food" in the breakfast combination, including "steamed rice balls with tofu pudding," "fried dough sticks with sweet soy milk," "jianbing fruits with pickles," and so on.
To be honest, for a person who had never experienced memory loss, it was not easy to solve this problem. However, Brother Jue only took three cycles (the breakfast menu was repeated every eight days) to find out the truth from the "memory that was erased every day." And he himself thought that this progress was already considered slow.
"Then … the next step is to find an opportunity to find out 'what happened after breakfast'." After going through the recipe in his mind, Feng Bujue decided on a suitable day and started to plan for that day.
…
On the twenty-fifth day, the day of the operation came.
In the morning, Feng Bujue followed the two nurses out of the room at the usual time. He finished washing up at his usual speed (in order to find out more about the food and drugs, Feng Bujue controlled the time to wash up very precisely every day).
After that, he was brought to a room that was about sixty square meters in size.
The room was well-lit, and there were many windows on the left side of the door. Even though the windows were all covered with metal bars, the morning sun still managed to pour in.
In the middle of the room, there were eight sets of specially made tables and chairs that were connected to the floor. Feng Bujue was brought to one of the tables by the two nurses. Then, the nurses fastened his waist to a metal hoop that came with the back of the chair.
The design of this thing was very clever. It was like an unremovable seatbelt that was tied around the waist. Once the person was fastened by this metal band, the person sitting on the chair would not be able to stand up, and the upper body would only be able to move a little.
Not long after Brother Jue sat down, another four nurses brought in two people who were wearing the same hospital gown as Brother Jue.
The one who came in first looked like he was in his forties. He had a buzz cut. Although he looked skinny, his eyes … seemed to be saying, "I'm going to chop you into pieces" or something along the lines of "I'm going to chop you into pieces".
The one who came in later looked like a skeleton. He walked with a wobbly gait. His eyes were hollow, and he kept mumbling.
Feng Bujue listened carefully. The man seemed to be mumbling, "Square fingernails … Round fingernails … Flat fingernails … Sharp fingernails …" and other words related to fingernails. Feng Bujue couldn't understand what he was saying.
"This place should be specially provided for patients who are detained alone …" Feng Bujue thought as he sat there and waited. "Look at these two … They don't seem to be good people …" Then, he thought, "Heh … Come to think of it, when I sit here every day, I'm probably thinking about the same thing as now … It's just that I don't remember it after that."
After the three patients had arrived, the six nurses gathered together and started chatting.
About five minutes later, another nurse who was wearing an apron pushed a trolley into the room. "Alright, brothers, come and serve the food to the three old men."
After the nurse joked around, the nurses walked over and placed the three sets of breakfast on the tables in front of the three patients. Then, they gathered at the side to chat.
Feng Bujue looked down. Today's breakfast was the same as the information he received — a bowl of hot dry noodles and a small bowl of clear soup.
Why did they choose to carry out the plan today? The reason was that today's medicine … was to be added to the hot dry noodles.
Because the clear soup had a light color and taste, and there wasn't a lot of it, if the medicine was added to the soup, the taste would undoubtedly be more obvious. So … the medicine could only be added to the hot dry noodles.
So, what did the hot dry noodles look like? To put it simply, it was a bowl of clean noodles, covered with sauce, and sprinkled with spicy diced radish, crushed peanuts, shallots, pickled beans, and other toppings.
He believed that after seeing this, everyone understood that … the medicine powder was mixed into the thick sauce.
Normally, hot dry noodles should be mixed before eating … This was common knowledge. Even people who had never eaten hot dry noodles would understand this when they saw this bowl of noodles. It was unlikely that anyone would purposely remove the sauce and toppings to eat the noodles underneath.
However, Brother Jue … was going to do that today.
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