Chapter 163.2 Frank Hospital
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader gritted his teeth and managed to stand up too. Both of them were weakened, panting, and standing in front of separate filing cabinets.
Patient File Classification 01.
Wen Shi opened the glass door of cabinet number one. Strangely, the documents inside weren’t organized by floor level at all.
One filing cabinet contained records from three floors.
Wen Shi took out the first paper bag from the first row, and when he emptied it, there was only a single, lightweight sheet of paper. The patient record was concise:
【Name: Patient #351
Age: ?
Ancestry: Underworld
Assigned Area: Fourth Floor, Fantasy Zone
Symptoms: Hallucinatory Disorder; lacks accurate awareness of the surrounding environment, leading to vivid hallucinations.】
Compared to Delusional Disorder, Hallucinatory Disorder seemed to match Ji Yuanzhi’s【Hallucination】skill more closely. Wen Shi looked at this information with a feeling that he needed to grasp some connecting point but was still missing something crucial.
He continued to read further. On the first floor, several dozen patients had the same symptoms, but only the first record mentioned underworld ancestry.
On the second floor, the numbering started over.
【Name: Patient #151
Age: ?
Ancestry: Underworld
Assigned Area: Third Floor, Sadistic Zone
Symptoms: Hematomania; this patient exhibited severe violent tendencies and enjoyed eviscerating prey.】
The third floor had Jerusalem Syndrome.
A faint glimmer flickered deep within Wen Shi’s pale irises.
The host had mentioned that the underworld was originally called “flower in the mirror, moon on the water,” a realm of illusions where ghosts and monsters could revel. Later, his foster father managed to influence some creatures and forcefully opened a passage, escaping into the old-timey world to establish Frank Hospital.
Wen Shi had never figured out why some players’ skills could completely evade the abilities of the patients, while Ji Yuanzhi, who had decent luck, ended up running right into them.
He now had a theory but needed confirmation.
Wen Shi glanced at Seventh Commandment Guild Leader. When the guild leader saw the symptoms, he seemed to gain some insight, finding a connection to the strange death events.
“Charm, death traps, and these types of skills, did they only start appearing in the past decade?” Earlier in the morning, Yu Xingzhou had introduced the abilities of two deceased players. Wen Shi now brought up the question to Seventh Commandment Guild Leader.
“Yes,” Seventh Commandment Guild Leader answered, trying to glean information from this question.
Even if he didn’t say anything, others could still extract answers from different sources.
Wen Shi’s slightly trembling eyelashes cast a small shadow. After monsters escaped from the underworld, a passage opened in the Ghost Gate, and new skills flooded into various major instances, inherited by players entering these instances.
In this, there was an inevitable cause-and-effect relationship.
He moved to Cabinet 02, only looking at the paper bag placed at the front each time, quickly summarizing the skills he should avoid using: Fungal Strains and Feigned Corpse.
His skills came from his family, but both of these abilities had areas of overlap with the patients’ abilities, so he must avoid using them when possible.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader also made a point to note the patients’ relevant symptoms and assigned zones. Wen Shi went a step further, jotting down the numbers of the runaway patients from the underworld, thinking they might come in handy later.
They quickly finished reviewing the files, but the immediate problem of escaping remained.
It hadn’t been five minutes since they woke up, and their bodies had not fully recovered. Right now, they couldn’t even take a few quick steps, let alone run. The fact that the nurse had tied them up and left them here was already strange enough. Nobody dared to recklessly search for an exit switch.
When the situation was unclear, they needed a trailblazer. Wen Shi and Seventh Commandment Guild Leader were both sizing each other up with ill intentions. Just as they were actively plotting against each other, a quest prompt shattered the eerie standoff.
【Side Quest: Escape from the Archive Room
Quest Content: You’ve accidentally discovered the existence of the archive room and want to escape from here in two ways.
One: Look for clues on the thin nurse.
Two: Eliminate the monster hidden in the archive room.
Please choose your method of escape within ten seconds.】
【10s, 9s…】
Ghost?
Their breaths tightened simultaneously, and the light from the lantern illuminated the confined dark room. Other than the file cabinets and their shadows, there was nothing.
But after the system made that prompt sound, the light couldn’t completely penetrate the cracks, as if something was peering and expanding within them.
【5s, 4s…】
Now was not the time to consider the implicit competition between the two. Seventh Commandment Guild Leader asked, “Which one are you choosing?”
“One.” Wen Shi replied without hesitation, making his choice directly on the quest panel.
This choice made Seventh Commandment Guild Leader give him a scrutinizing look and increased his vigilance. The second method was clearly easier. Both sides could cooperate to solve a monster with violence. Dealing with the nurse would be much more challenging.
Special NPCs were difficult to kill. It required not only bravery but also a battle of wits.
However, this nurse likely came from the deep zone, and there was a chance to obtain information about the higher floors from her. Pei Wenwei insisted on choosing the first option, perhaps for the sake of the missing Ji Yuanzhi, or maybe he was already preparing to venture into the deep zones with ambitions of inheriting the hospital.
【1s】
Before the final second of the countdown ended, Seventh Commandment Guild Leader also chose the first option.
One, it had to be one.
Otherwise, if Pei Wenwei successfully obtained information, he’d be one step behind. This mf was just too competitive!
“Actually, I was thinking of trying the third method…” Wen Shi suddenly spoke, “But now, I’ve changed.”
Before he could retrieve the missing Jian Qingrong and Golden Daddy, he aspired to become a mature player like Li Nan.
Whether it was true or not, when he heard Wen Shi say he was giving up on the third method, Seventh Commandment Guild Leader inexplicably breathed a sigh of relief.
Harsh light poured in, and the hidden door suddenly opened again.
With no warning, the thin nurse stood at the doorway. She held an exaggerated syringe in one hand and an electric baton in the other. Her brief departure was clearly to fetch these two items.
Wen Shi took a step forward and asked, “As a doctor, isn’t it normal to come and check patient records? Why did you lock me in here?”
Beside him, Seventh Commandment Guild Leader’s mouth twitched. The early bird gets shot, and he was sure that the nurse’s weapons would be aimed at Wen Shi in a moment.
His judgment was correct.
The heavy electric baton was raised high and came crashing down on Wen Shi the next moment. The intense pain almost made him kneel, but he managed to grab onto the edge of the wall in time.
【You are receiving punishment】
【During the punishment period, defense and attack skills and items are rendered ineffective.】
The thin nurse didn’t say a word and just started attacking. After confirming something, Wen Shi prepared to do the second thing: extract information.
Among the disabled skills,【Extrasensory Perception】was not included. He could touch an item belonging to the nurse to obtain some of her private information.
He flexed his sore wrist a bit and braced for the second blow from the electric baton.
He didn’t know how many times he would be hit, but once the punishment began, it was bound to continue until it was over.
While he had sustained some physical injuries, two bottles of 20-point potions could restore his health, and he could extract clues to exit the archives room and access the deep zone from the thin nurse simultaneously.
He was handling this situation quite steadily!
【Do you want to spend 300 points to activate Extrasensory Perception?】
Without hesitation, he blurted out a single word.
Clang! A loud noise made Wen Shi turn around.
The filing cabinet behind him suddenly began to shake, and a few files fell to the ground. The nurse’s electric baton trembled in her hand as well.
Wen Shi instinctively pressed himself against the nearby wall to maintain balance.
An alarm blared loudly, seemingly coming from somewhere in the building. The nurse, who had maintained her stern demeanor, finally showed a different expression. She abruptly abandoned the punishment and hurriedly left.
Wen Shi quickly reached out to touch the nurse’s clothing, but his body swayed, and the nurse was just too fast. In the end, he could only watch as the hidden door closed again.
“What’s going on?”
“How should I know?”
……
Fourth Floor, Fantasy Zone.
Let’s go back to last night.
When Ji Yuanzhi was taken away, he realized that his skill might match the symptoms of the patients. He left a hasty clue and followed the plump nurse up to the third floor. The third floor wasn’t the final stop. At the staircase landing stood a thin nurse who led him further upstairs.
Just before heading up, Ji Yuanzhi glanced back. The entrance area on the third floor was almost distorted, without any lighting. In that pitch-black darkness where one couldn’t see their hand in front of thier face, even his glasses couldn’t make out anything.
The thin nurse walked ahead without looking sideways, behaving as if she were mute, as if she weren’t concerned about Ji Yuanzhi escaping.
At a corner, the thin nurse keenly caught a faint, tangy scent. This forced her to finally stop and turn around. Behind her, the bespectacled man smiled gently. “Why stop walking?”
The nurse’s alert gaze landed on his hand.
The scent of blood was wafting from his palm, but there wasn’t a single injury on the patient’s palm.
Both of them proceeded to the fourth floor, one behind the other.
The door directly opposite the stairwell was tightly closed. It was different from what Ji Yuanzhi had imagined. When the door opened, it revealed a bright and warm fairytale-like scene. The air had a comfortable temperature and humidity, fresh flowers bloomed on the windowsill, and the patients in their beds had kindly smiling faces that seemed to say, “Welcome.”
In the adjacent ward, people were singing together, using cheerful songs to express their love for life.
Everything appeared wonderful, except that it was nighttime. The glass window kept emitting bright light, and there was a group of people singing karaoke.
The thin nurse didn’t want to linger in the deep zones at midnight. She left Ji Yuanzhi just outside the ward door, turned around, and disappeared into the dark stairwell door as if she had vanished into thin air.
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