“Yeah, that’s exactly right.”
Fu Changxun shot back every accusation without flinching. “I won’t forgive you. What are you gonna do about it?”
Lu Qi: “……”
Their pointless bickering finally came to an end, and the group turned their attention back to the instance.
The writing above the bed was creepy as hell, but covering it with a sheet at least helped stave off sanity loss.
Fu Changxun wasn’t scared of those words, or of the other players, or the human-shaped NPCs. What he feared were the unknowns—the floating, drifting ghost-type NPCs.
After checking out the third-floor patient rooms, the group headed up to the fourth to get a better look. Turns out, the layouts were nearly identical. Same furniture, same words scrawled above each bed.
Dong Zi walked a circuit around the room, running a hand along the wall. “Same floor plan, same dimensions. Must be part of the base design for the hospital in this instance.”
“What about our last roommate?” Lulu asked as soon as she stepped through the door. “It’s supposed to be a triple room, right? Me, Xiaoxiao… there should be an NPC in here with us.”
Speak of the devil—right on cue, a middle-aged female NPC walked in from the hallway.
She froze for a moment when she saw the men, then noticed Lulu and Xiaoxiao. Her expression shifted dramatically, stricken with sorrow and outrage. “How could anyone bear to send a child this young to a place like this? Sweetheart, did your family put you here?”
She crouched down slightly, clearly addressing Xiaoxiao.
Xiaoxiao blinked in confusion and turned instinctively to Fu-ge and Dong-ge, eyes wide with a silent plea for help.
“I’m her family,” Fu Changxun stepped forward. “Her older brother. We came here together.”
The woman looked him up and down, surprise flickering in her gaze. “Oh, I see. My apologies.”
She gave an embarrassed smile. “I misunderstood. I thought you were also…”
But she didn’t finish the sentence.
Fu Changxun’s senses went on high alert. He shot Lulu a subtle look.
Probe her.
Lulu nodded slightly.
The woman glanced at the window. “Sun’s about to set. The nurse should be bringing the medication soon.”
Her voice darkened at the mention of the nurse—just a flicker of disgust in her eyes before she covered it up. Then she added, “You have to take your meds. If you don’t, they’ll come for you.”
“Come for you?” Dong Zi repeated, frowning.
The woman ignored him.
But Xiaoxiao had an idea. She threw herself in front of the woman and asked in her sweetest, most innocent voice, “Auntie, what do you mean come for us? That sounds so scary…”
She even gave herself a quick pinch to force tears to well up in her eyes, looking up at the woman with trembling lips.
Sure enough, the woman’s guard dropped. She stroked Xiaoxiao’s hair and whispered, “Being taken… means being brought up to the fifth floor. Terrible things happen there. I’ve seen people come back from the fifth floor—they were barely human afterward. Sweetie, whatever you do, don’t resist them…”
She trailed off mid-sentence as a loud ringing filled the room. A harsh, clanging bell: Ding-a-ling-ling!
“It’s time.”
The woman glanced at the clock on the wall, gently released Xiaoxiao, and drifted to her bed like a ghost, sitting down in silence.
Xiaoxiao opened her mouth to ask more, but Dong Zi quickly pulled her back.
His expression had gone grim. “Her mental state’s not stable anymore. Not sure if she was always like this, or if…”
If this hospital did that to her. Or if it was the meds.
A voice suddenly rang out—calm, mechanical, and chillingly clear in every ear:
“Patients, please return to your rooms and take your medication. All new patients and nurses, please report to your assigned rooms for medication…”
No idea where the announcement came from, but it was unmistakably real.
Looks like splitting up was inevitable.
The three men had to return to their room on the third floor—otherwise, they wouldn’t technically be in their assigned beds.
Before leaving, Fu Changxun gave quick instructions. “Don’t separate, no matter what. I’ll try to come by tonight. If I don’t make it, meet me at 9 a.m. tomorrow on the first floor.”
With that, the three of them left in a hurry.
Almost the instant they were gone, the door creaked open. The nurse stepped in, holding a bottle of pills.
***
“I’ve been wondering about this from the start—this instance never gave us a clear objective or win condition. We’re just supposed to figure it out on our own.”
Fu Changxun spoke as they headed downstairs. “None of the previous instances were like this. In any case, stay alert.”
Dong Zi hesitated. “So you really plan to sneak up to the fourth floor tonight? To check on Xiaoxiao and the others?”
“He said we can’t leave our rooms. But just because he said it—” Fu Changxun grinned mischievously, “—doesn’t mean we’ll listen.”
Dong Zi chuckled softly. “Fair point.”
Lu Qi looked at the two of them, a strange feeling creeping into his chest.
Hold on… they just met. Why are they already so in sync?
***
Elsewhere.
The Doctor had led several “nurses” into the examination area and was assigning them duties.
“A nurse’s responsibilities are simple.”
The smile on his face was nothing like the one he wore around patients—it was sharper, colder. “Just record each patient’s consultation info, then deliver their medication. That’s all.”
Li-ge nodded rapidly. “Got it, got it. Doctor, could you maybe tell us a little more about this hospital?”
Sometimes, NPCs could be coaxed into revealing critical info. In fact, he’d sped through his last instance using exactly that trick.
But the moment he spoke, the Doctor’s eyes went dark—sharp and threatening.
Li-ge flinched.
But when he looked closer, those eyes were warm and kind again. As if nothing had happened.
“Why do you ask? There’s nothing much to say. Just a perfectly ordinary little hospital. Let’s focus on doing our jobs.”
“O-oh. Right. Thanks.”
Li-ge assumed he must’ve imagined the threat. Just his nerves acting up.
“But remember,” the Doctor added, “the fifth floor and basement level one are strictly off-limits. Nurses are absolutely forbidden from going there. No exceptions.”
Mr. Zeng and Ms. Hu, still new to the survival game and unsure how to behave inside an instance, saw Li-ge asking questions and decided to follow his lead.
“Why’s that?” they asked.
To their surprise, this time the Doctor didn’t even respond to their question. Instead, he handed them a more complicated task.
“You two—go deliver the medication to the patients. Don’t worry, most of them are obedient. If any resist, just press the call bell. We’ll help you… feed it to them.”
The way he said “feed” felt off. Disturbingly off. But none of the players present seemed to catch the implication.
Ms. Hu hesitated, but Li-ge and Zhang-ge—who’d been given the simpler task of logging patient info—had already cheerfully taken their sheets and set off in search of patients.
Left with no other choice, she and her husband retrieved the medicine and began delivering it door-to-door.
However, every NPC patient they encountered stared at her with open disgust.
The kind of gaze that made her skin crawl.
Thankfully, despite their hostility, the NPCs still took the medicine, and the couple breathed a small sigh of relief.
Before long, they reached the third floor. By now, the medicine jar was already more than half empty.
“Time for your meds…” Ms. Hu called as she pushed open the door—only to freeze when she saw who was inside.
Three players.
She stopped in her tracks and instinctively looked back at Mr. Zeng. “Honey, isn’t this…”
Mr. Zeng was equally stunned. They hadn’t expected that even the players would be required to take this medication.
But none of them were actually sick.
Their brains went into overdrive: If we’re registered as patients, we’re required to take medicine. But we’re not sick. So the medicine must be problematic.
They blurted out, “You all have to take this stuff too? There’s no way to skip it?”
Lu Qi, already irritated, answered without thinking, “Yeah, the broadcast said we have to. But how the hell would it know if we didn’t? It’s not like it can run blood tests or anything.”
That line struck both Dong Zi and Fu Changxun at the same time. They turned to him in unison.
Lu Qi’s face paled. “No way… you’re not saying it can, right?”
Fu Changxun shook his head. “I’m not sure. Either way, someone has to take it.”
They needed a test subject—someone to figure out what the drug actually did.
Everyone turned to him, and he was just about to volunteer when Dong Zi beat him to it.
Ms. Hu, by now, had completely forgotten about the whole player-versus-nurse dynamic. She looked visibly distressed. “Should we try to help cover for you? Pretend you took it?”
“I doubt that’ll work,” Dong Zi said, serious and composed. “This isn’t a one-time thing. We have to take it daily. There’s no hiding it for long. We need to understand what this stuff actually does. Out of all of us, I probably have the highest Stamina stat. That should give me the best resistance.”
Lu Qi wasn’t buying it. “How much do you have?”
Dong Zi turned to him. “Ninety-two. It was ninety, but I gained two points across two cleared instances.”
Lu Qi glanced down at his own “56” and went silent. “……”
Yeah, Dong Zi was clearly the most suitable candidate. Still, Fu Changxun couldn’t help feeling a pang of discomfort. It sat in his chest like a weight—unreasonable, but impossible to ignore.
Too late to stop him. Dong Zi had already swallowed a pill and opened his game panel.
Fu Changxun, Lu Qi, and the couple from the nurse faction all crowded around to look.
All of Dong Zi’s other stats remained unchanged—except for one.
His SAN value had dropped from 100 to 99.
A note appeared beside it: “Consumed once—Sanity decreases based on individual physical constitution.”
“It really has a debuff!”
Everyone gasped.
“And it scales with your personal stats…” Mr. Zeng muttered. “If my wife or I took it, we could lose three or four points at once.”
Good thing Dong Zi was the one who did it. Everyone thought that—everyone except Fu Changxun.
Mr. Zeng and Ms. Hu left to continue their rounds, and time ticked forward.
Nightfall.
Before ten o’clock, all three players were lying neatly in their beds.
Fu Changxun still hadn’t dropped his in-game persona. He insisted on squeezing in next to Dong Zi, pulling a face of exaggerated distaste as he ordered, “Go shower. Once you’re done, come sleep with me.”
Dong Zi obediently washed up. But the moment he climbed into bed, Fu Changxun pounced—lights off.
“No moving!”
And Dong Zi actually didn’t push him off.
Still irritated, Fu Changxun lowered his voice. The live feed had long since ended, and Lu Qi couldn’t hear them. “Ah Zi, don’t take that medicine again.”
Dong Zi exhaled slowly, then replied in a tone that was firm but gentle. “I’m the only one among us who can. Your Stamina is too low. Plus your SAN’s unstable—you could lose ten points or more in one go. I won’t let that happen.”
“But that’s still—”
Suddenly, Dong Zi went still. He raised a hand and pressed it over Fu Changxun’s mouth. “Shh—”
Fu Changxun froze immediately, holding his breath. On the adjacent bed, Lu Qi didn’t even dare open his eyes.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Hard soles—leather or maybe heels—tapping steadily down the hallway.
In the silence of night, each step rang out like a gunshot.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
They drew closer.
And then they stopped—right outside their door.
Fu Changxun held his breath, chest rising and falling shallowly.
