Asylum Livestream: The Day of Rust

When Lin Yu stands once more before the rusted iron gate of Qingshan Psychiatric Hospital, a camera hidden in his collar button is livestreaming the peeling blood-written characters to tens of millions of viewers. No one knows he is reborn as experimental subject X-07, and no one knows the truth behind this “Doomsday Survival Livestream”: on March 28, 2025, the X Consortium's restarted human experiments will sow new “gods” amid the ruins. The bone-handled scalpel in his pocket still has the dried blood of his former companion, X-01, congealed inside its hilt.

Scraps of newspapers from 1998 in the rust-eaten corridors report the blood-written messages of missing test subjects. From the ventilation ducts comes the sound of fingernails scratching from inside the walls, and the eight-eyed baby in a glass jar licks the bloodstain of the “god in the ceiling” with its tongue. Each time Lin Yu swings his blade to cut through the seams between metal and flesh, he relives the memory of his skull being split open in his previous life. The silver ring engraved with the X Consortium's logo is both the memento of the surgeon who operated on him and the genetic key locked in the ring-shaped scar on his ring finger.