Chapter 178.2 Frank Hospital
A’Ao could recognize Wen Shi even if he turned to ashes. He instinctively looked in the direction of the voice, which caused a slight delay in his reaction. When he tried to deal with the sudden torrent coming from behind in the next moment, he managed to block most of it, but a bullet accurately pierced through his shoulder.
There was another “bang.”
The faint scent of gunpowder filled the air. In less than a second, Li Nan had fired two shots.
The previous painful strike had made A’Ao instinctively allocate power to protect his lower body, giving Li Nan an opening.
When the second bullet pierced from the area near his scapula, A’Ao finally realized what was happening. His lower body was now completely empty. So, what had he been protecting?!
From the operating room to the secret room, his two instinctive reactions had both resulted in precise self-injury.
As the one who had been the first target of the attack, A’Ao finally didn’t hold back and emitted a strange, almost agonizing sound.
His brain felt like it was on the verge of exploding in an instant.
“Dammit.”
Wen Shi hugged his head tightly. In his dazed state, he felt like he had been transported back to the day when he had faced off against the Earl and A’Ao. He had been in a similarly wretched state, clutching his head and nearly disintegrating. In his blurry vision, he vaguely saw a pair of rain boots approaching him.
The next moment, the rain boots came to a halt not far away, and everything in the world seemed to hit the pause button.
In the stillness of those few seconds, Li Nan and Yu Xingzhou immediately launched a new round of attacks.
Their weapons successfully made a small hole in A’Ao’s chest. Unfortunately, during the time freeze, the damage they could inflict on the crucial NPC was limited. The radiant energy surging from the music seemed to offer A’Ao some protection. Even his fatal wounds were showing signs of healing.
As Ji Yuanzhi had initially predicted, destroying the sheet music and the piano was the key.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader’s eyes bled from A’Ao’s mental assault. He didn’t join the previous attack but instead sprinted to the piano at the fastest speed possible when Yu Xingzhou used his Time Freeze skill, preparing to take away the sheet music.
The moment his fingers touched the sheet, the wild joy in his eyes had not fully gathered when his fingers suddenly stopped.
The sheet music seemed to be glued in place, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t peel it off the stand.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader suddenly had a bad feeling. Could it be that once the performance started, the sheet could only be taken after completing it?
“Step aside.”
Ji Yuanzhi had approached unnoticed and glanced at him sideways, then unexpectedly accelerated to play the music.
With forced acceleration, Ji Yuanzhi’s skin on the back of his hand cracked, and a stream of blood flowed from the corner of Ji Yuanzhi’s mouth.
Even A’Ao was proceeding with the performance in an orderly manner. Ji Yuanzhi’s method of accelerating and taking shortcuts clearly came at a cost. In just three seconds, Ji Yuanzhi’s entire body was covered in lacerations.
“Let’s go,” Yu Xingzhou shouted and pressed the button to open the door of secret room. “To the Director’s office.”
Li Nan was also preparing to retreat and pulled Wen Shi, who was standing still, along. “Don’t worry about him. Yu Xingzhou must have given him a scapegoat item.”
Ji Yuanzhi was obviously still controlling the speed and hadn’t accelerated to the maximum. They needed to enter the director’s office during this time frame. It was a hidden map where, after partially damaging the amplifiers, the piano sound couldn’t penetrate the separate dimensional space.
Once time resumed, only Ji Yuanzhi could rely purely on his power for a while.
Wen Shi activated a speed-boosting item and glanced back one last time.
The blood flowing from Ji Yuanzhi was trickling down the piano. His hair was going wild, extending toward A’Ao like a tide. It was how merfolk typically captured their prey, encasing it in a cocoon and gradually consuming their flesh and blood.
Everyone sprinted upstairs as fast as possible. Wen Shi didn’t forget to use the communication item to inform Song Yan. The players who had been monitoring the nurses and patients on the first floor instinctively followed them upstairs.
While running, Wen Shi still had some concerns.
Yu Xingzhou whispered, “Once the performance is over, Ji Yuanzhi can take the sheet music, and by then, nothing in the office will be protected by the rules anymore.”
Ji Yuanzhi would definitely seize the last bit of time to violently destroy the piano. Once the Director’s soul was heavily damaged, he wouldn’t be a threat anymore.
As they ran past the second floor, Wen Shi noticed that some of the ward doors were open. However, there was no time to dwell on it. He sprinted from the third to the fourth floor. Wen Shi didn’t bother calling Jian Qingrong. The curse melody didn’t have a significant impact on patients and other non-human entities.
Following the method from the previous night, they traced the musical note patterns and tumbled into the hidden space.
The horrifying music was isolated in another dimension. In the darkness, all the players’ faces turned pale, with cold sweat trickling down their temples.
It took almost half a minute just to calm their violently pounding chests.
“I think it should be over,” Wen Shi said, steadying himself against the wall.
After Jian Guangsi disappeared, a new musical note button appeared in the Director’s office, similar to the study. It was easy to exit from there. Wen Shi was ready to finish the job. In his main quest, it was explicitly mentioned to kill the Director.
The person dealing the fatal blow to a monster would sometimes receive additional rewards, especially for this kind of boss.
The other players naturally didn’t want to miss this opportunity, so they all left one after the other.
Indeed, there was no more piano melody playing outside. However, almost as soon as they returned to the original map, the previously noisy sounds replaced the former melody.
On the third floor, patients roamed the corridors. It was the same on the fourth floor, though with fewer people.
After the Director’s severe injury, the already agitated patients these past few days lost whatever balance they had.
“The rules are loosening.” Wen Shi’s expression soured.
Patients couldn’t harm the director, but they could go after the nurses and interns. Previously, there were at least several rule restrictions, such as facing execution only if they failed their missions.
Now, judging from the nurse’s corpse lying in the stairwell, they could initiate attacks. Even the awakened underworld patients didn’t interfere, as long as the patients didn’t leave the hospital. They seemed to have accepted that they could hunt across zones now.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader urged quietly, “Let’s deal with the Director first.”
The nurse’s body represented the possibility of patients hiding near the staircase, but they couldn’t stay huddled here forever.
Still, Wen Shi remained cautious. He sensed a subtle impatience in Seventh Commandment Guild Leader’s voice.
As they neared the third floor, Seventh Commandment Guild Leader suddenly started to accelerate.
He used the【Focus Fire Doll】.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader had some of Wen Shi’s hairstrands with him, bought from hotel staff he’d instigated. Upon entering the instance, Seventh Commandment Guild Leader had observed carefully. Ji Yuanzhi hadn’t shown any clear hostility, and Pei Wenwei had actively sought cooperation. If they knew he had the hairstrands, they wouldn’t have behaved so indifferently.
With this【Focus Fire Doll】, Pei Wenwei would become the primary target for all patients to attack next.
Wen Shi was momentarily stunned. Seventh Commandment Guild Leader seemed confident he wouldn’t be attacked by monsters and charged down directly.
In the next moment, Wen Shi immediately realized a possibility, his gaze turning cold.
“Grand Sealing Art.”
He used a skill to seal his own presence.
“No need to be so nervous,” Yu Xingzhou suddenly said in a light tone at his side. “With the mantis unaware of the oriole behind while stalking the cicada, who is the mantis?”
Before Wen Shi could fully interpret this sentence, the patients hidden in the stairwell ignored the nearby players and all rushed after Seventh Commandment Guild Leader.
When Seventh Commandment Guild Leader turned to see this scene, his pupils trembled. Wen Shi also froze. What on earth was happening?
Yu Xingzhou used an anti-eavesdropping item and scoffed. “As long as you can engineer the death of the holders of special items like keys and World Shards, you can retrieve these items.”
This was also the reason why Wen Shi was targeted by the Six Commandment Guild Leader in the Merfolk Shore instance.
“Unfortunately, he was short-sighted, only focusing on you and guarding against a few of us.”
He had forgotten there was still the gatekeeper who played the role of a peaceful old-timer outside.
“Water puddle,” Wen Shi suddenly remembered the heavy rain that afternoon, when the carriage had skidded into a water puddle. Black Market Player had voluntarily reached out to help the others get out, but Ji Yuanzhi had refused the assistance at the time.
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader was the first to be pulled out then. After the team-building event, all players had various degrees of injuries, and Seventh Commandment Guild Leader also had exposed wounds.
Yu Xingzhou said calmly, “Ji Yuanzhi interpreted the skill of the black market player as theft early on.”
Seventh Commandment Guild Leader’s hair and blood were stolen at that moment.
While under the same cursed status, the【Focus Fire Doll】stained with human blood was the monsters’ primary target. Once Seventh Commandment Guild Leader died, all non-special items would automatically disappear, so Wen Shi didn’t need to worry about the focus fire effect of the previous doll anymore.
Knowing what this “gatekeeper” would do, neither Ji Yuanzhi nor Yu Xingzhou did anything extra to let Seventh Commandment Guild Leader further lower his guard.
Wen Shi’s heart sank. “Listening to the piano in the staff room risks wasting a scapegoat item, but can yield keys and World Shards, even with a curse outbreak.”
A major guild leader definitely had a key.
“Smart merchants make limited profits,” Yu Xingzhou raised an eyebrow, “Isn’t it quite profitable?”
Those going along with the flow the whole way remained quite safe, while those who take the instance seriously still ended up using a scapegoat item.
Wen Shi was still reflecting on how careless he had been, never questioning whether the other party was pretending to slack off throughout the entire process.
Yu Xingzhou noticed what was on his mind and said, “I’ve cleared two instances with him. He has an achievement called【As Serene as a Chrysanthemum】. It’s said to require slacking off in three S-ranked instances to activate and automatically give others the illusion that the record owner is slacking off.”
“!” So explosive. His DNA was activated. The kitty wanted it. The kitty wanted to be as serene as a chrysanthemum.
Once transformed, one could use the color of the night to confuse enemies, creating a deceptive appearance of slacking off.
Could the game make it happen?
After entering Frank Hospital, all players were kept under intense surveillance by the game. What had initially been a casual question filled with earnest expectation surprisingly received a cold system response:
“Are. You. Worthy?”
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