This story comes from a netizen's submission. He mentioned that his colleague and he are from the same hometown, and both families lived in the northeastern region when they were children. His home was in a semi-town, semi-village area that had once been prosperous but later suffered severe population loss. The town had almost no young people, only many elderly and children. There were many wastelands, few people farming, and most families relied on working outside to make a living. Some families raised chickens, dogs, and other small animals, but there were no large livestock. The town had a small school and a very dilapidated supermarket. Overall, the town seemed somewhat backward.

The incident happened when his colleague was about 9 or 10 years old. A new family suddenly moved into the town. They were considered very wealthy at the time. The male head of the family, surnamed Liu, was almost 50 years old and came with his father, brother, wife, and children. It was said that his wife was probably remarried and looked about 35 years old. Among his children, the eldest and the second had already started their own families, and only the youngest son was about six or seven years old. Liu's brother was much younger than Liu, at most 37 years old, but he was a madman. No one knew how he went mad; they only knew that he was usually very quiet and did not respond when spoken to, but sometimes he would suddenly get excited, start chasing women, and even once hugged his sister-in-law. He would chase motorcycles and trucks, behaving very wildly. His family often helped him clean up, shave, and change clothes, but he still looked very sloppy. As he aged, he even looked older than his brother.

After living in the town for a while, the Liu family started hiring people to build a house, constructing a large courtyard with cement walls. There was a big black dog at the door, which was very large but not fierce. It wouldn't bark at people unless they got close to the Liu family's door. His colleague was very afraid of dogs as a child and was very averse to that black dog. Other children in the town often teased the dog.

The elders in the Liu family were Buddhists. Initially, they practiced their faith in their own yard, but later they built a room to place religious tools and Buddha statues. For some reason, they later decided to place the Buddha statue in the yard and temporarily set up the madman's room outside the yard, symbolically putting up a wooden door with a lock. The room only had a stool and a bed.

After building the house, the Liu family started hiring people to clear a large piece of wasteland behind the town, along with the old village's dilapidated houses and wild temples, and began operating a factory. The scale was barely medium, but after more than a month of operation, many worker families moved in from other places. At that time, the town had not been so lively for a long time. Some workers brought their children, who were about the same age as his colleague, but their personalities were very different. Some didn't go to school at all and worked with their parents on the construction site, so they hardly had any chance to play together.

However, shortly after the construction site started moving bricks, a person came to the town. To this day, his colleague has a deep impression of this person because he was so strange. The strangest thing was that no one could tell if this person was a man or a woman. This person was of medium build, slightly thin, with narrow shoulders, and a body shape below the waist that looked like a woman's, but without a chest and with a prominent Adam's apple. The voice was of an indeterminate gender, very soft, and you couldn't hear what they were saying unless you got very close. The skin was slightly dark but very smooth. Although the person looked quite delicate, their eyes were particularly long and out of proportion, with a very strange color, like ballpoint pen ink, blue and purple, very cloudy, and without any reflection when light hit them, looking like they had leukoderma. It was very scary to look at closely. This strange person had no job or relatives and usually wandered outside, disappearing at night. Many people initially thought this person was mad or foolish, but some approached and talked to them, only to find that the person's responses were very logical and even more refined than most people in the town.

Although they didn't look like a local, their accent was local, but no one in the town knew them, which was very strange. Later, some suspected they might be a human trafficker because this person was particularly attractive to children, and the town's children all liked them, including his colleague at the time. Probably because this person spoke very gently, with a low and delicate tone, even more gentle than most people's mothers, sometimes even helping children with their homework. They often gave children wrapped candies, with wrappers sometimes in English orange-green and sometimes in Chinese, but with very obscure characters. The candies inside were orange and light red. His colleague was very cautious as a child and never ate things given by strangers, but later couldn't resist secretly eating a few pieces of candy brought by a classmate at a classmate's house and found the orange ones particularly delicious. He didn't know the taste of the candy at the time, but looking back, it should have been lychee or pineapple flavor, but eating too much would have a strong earthy and spicy taste. This person also had a particularly strange habit of eating paper, sometimes asking others for writing paper. Initially, they ate it secretly, but later openly tore it into strips and ate it. Ordinary people find it hard to swallow paper, but they ate it like eating pancakes, effortlessly.

Every time he was on the street, a bunch of kids would gather around to watch him. At that time, there were widespread rumors of child trafficking across the country, causing a lot of panic. Most families were very vigilant about preventing child abductions and firmly refused to let their children approach that strange man, fearing they might be kidnapped one day. Later on, for some reason, perhaps because fewer children were looking for him, that strange man started hanging out with the madman from the Liu family. The two of them didn't talk, but whenever the madman squatted outside, the strange man would stand next to him. Sometimes, they would stay like that for a whole day. People tried to persuade the strange man to leave, but he never did.

Later on, at some point, the madman from the Liu family suddenly became fluent in speaking. Out of the blue, he would say something to you, and he could even have a short conversation with people. As the time he could converse grew longer, he stopped being mad, stopped hitting people, and stopped talking nonsense. He stood and sat properly, his complexion improved, and he seemed to have become much younger, almost like a normal person. Some speculated that the strange man might be a miraculous doctor, while others said he was a foreign spy conducting experiments on the mentally ill. However, only the Liu family was very happy about the strange man's changes, feeling that their madman had finally become normal. The madman's brother even invited the strange man to dinner, but he refused to go to their house, firmly staying away from their doorstep.

The madman's brother was a tall and sturdy man who tried to drag the madman away, but to no avail. Strangely, the usually gentle dog of the Liu family barked incessantly at the strange man, with a loud voice and even showed signs of wanting to bite. Later, the strange man disappeared for a few days and only returned after a while. By then, the madman was completely sane, having tidied up his hair and beard neatly. However, the madman decided to take the strange man to apologize to each of the families he had previously hit or hugged. Later, he even hosted a banquet. Around eight or nine o'clock, many people came to the avenue at the entrance of the construction site. The children sat separately, and so did the men and women. His colleagues were also there, sitting not far from his youngest son.

But for some reason, the food was already served, but the madman hadn't arrived yet. His brother went to look for him, and several tables of people waited for about ten minutes, with the food almost getting cold. The wife who stayed at the table was about to start eating. Then, suddenly, the madman came running from outside, chasing his brother. According to his colleagues, the madman's brother had half of his head covered in blood, with a piece of scalp hanging off, sticking to his skull. His eyes were covered in blood, and his hair and torn flesh were smeared on his forehead. He was running slowly. The madman was chasing behind him, holding a stick from who knows where, his eyes wide open and almost popping out, with a stiff and terrifying expression. He didn't have many injuries, but he was stumbling as he ran, not very fast.

At that moment, everyone realized that the madman had gone mad again, but no one dared to stop him, and no one knew why he had gone mad again. Suddenly, the madman struck his brother with great force, knocking him to the ground with a loud 'bang.' His brother lay motionless on the ground, as if dead, with blood slowly starting to flow from the back of his head. Seeing that he was about to kill someone, people rushed to stop him, but they couldn't restrain the madman. When he went mad, his strength was astonishing, and he quickly knocked over several people before breaking through the crowd and attacking his sister-in-law. She tried to escape, and several people stepped in to stop the madman again. The madman paused for a moment, then suddenly turned around and ran quickly to the table where the children were sitting. He violently overturned the table and then grabbed his nephew, starting to beat him, slamming the child's body forcefully onto the ground, causing chaos.

The children sitting by the table were knocked down, and the chair his colleague was sitting on was also overturned. His head was spinning, and right next to him was the Liu family's youngest son, whose body was hitting the ground repeatedly. His colleague said that the feeling was unforgettable for a lifetime. Later, someone in the town quickly called the police. The Liu family's youngest son wasn't seriously injured, but the madman's brother was barely alive. Before the police arrived, the villagers had already chased the madman to his house and restrained him. The madman's black dog was also nearly beaten to death, with its body in a terrible state, its insides smeared on the ground, creating a very disgusting scene. The yard was in shambles, with the family's furniture, cash, Buddha statues, and other items all smashed or torn apart, scattered everywhere. At that moment, his colleague was not far from the Liu family's doorstep.

He wasn't injured. His mother, who was a nurse, was helping to treat the madman's brother's wounds. He was still young at the time and was waiting nearby for his parents to finish up and take him home. Suddenly, he saw the iron door of the Liu family open a small crack, and the strange man was peeking through it, smiling with his cloudy eyes. The strange man glanced at his colleague but then fixed his gaze on the madman's brother lying on the ground, silently laughing continuously. His colleague said it was very dark at the time, and he wasn't sure if he had seen it correctly, but from that day on, the strange man never appeared in their town again, even to this day.

Later, he wasn't sure about the exact condition of the madman's brother, only knowing that it was very serious and he was likely paralyzed. The family didn't press charges against the madman, and he wasn't sentenced due to his mental illness. However, he was locked in his room from then on, with the Liu family's wife responsible for bringing him meals. After that night, the madman didn't go mad again. Sometimes, he would knock on the door, asking to be let out, sounding quite normal, but no one dared to release him. After that night, their construction site was completely abandoned, and the business taken over by the Liu family's wife and relatives deteriorated. Later, the madman's brother, after being paralyzed for four years, fell from his bed and, without timely medical attention, eventually died. His family fell into complete ruin, and the newly built house was left unfinished. A few years ago, when his colleague went back to visit, the place was overgrown with weeds. As for the madman, it was said that he died less than a year after being confined, whether from cold, hunger, or confinement, no one knew. His body started to smell, and his sister-in-law only discovered he was dead then. When they were sorting through his belongings, his body was found stuck to the bedding and blankets, which had to be lifted off the bed together. When they lifted the blanket, they found it was covered with the orange and green candy wrappers that the strange man had given him.