Chapter 181.2 Frank Hospital
Hiss.
A brief friction sound rang out.
A spark appeared inside the room just as the man was lighting a cigarette, but he quickly extinguished it. “Almost forgot there’s a cat.”
“I’m going outside for a smoke,” he prepared to get up from the couch and looked at the black cat. “Don’t wander around.”
Unexpectedly, the black cat’s fur trembled, and it leaped onto the couch, directly restraining the man’s hand.
“What’s this?” Seeing the concern in the big eyes, the man ambiguously smiled. “Does this mute cat want to say that smoking is harmful to health?”
He had a rare illness. The concept of good health had long been lost to him.
…It wasn’t a time rewind.
When he habitually tried to prevent the man from smoking, Wen Shi suddenly realized something: in the virtual world, there was alcohol but no tobacco.
The first time he heard about it, he was a bit surprised. However, he later discovered that many players were under significant stress and developed a heavy smoking habit. If they were allowed to smoke while online, the game would have to introduce an additional air purification system.
“Illusion.” He suddenly realized a possibility.
In the fifth floor, that strange straw demon with peculiar abilities might never have existed from the beginning.
This could explain why the straw demon was so hasty in placing the teleportation point in the virtual world’s plaza, not caring whether he encountered his foster father at the beginning.
A one-to-one time flow ratio between inside and outside was also beyond the straw demon’s capabilities.
The only time when Wen Shi experienced a nearly time-difference-free rewind was in the inspection area of the Big Factory. It was initiated by the game, but even so, there were still some time deviations. It couldn’t achieve perfect synchronization.
He immediately tried to activate the【Sage’s Indifference】skill. According to the skill description, except for special maps, this state could dispel all illusions.
【Hint: Detected a special map. Skill usage failed.】
“……”
As long as you want it, your chances of survival are nearly one hundred percent.
The words of Patient 51 flashed in his mind.
So, the way to break the illusion was to destroy the source?
Wen Shi subconsciously looked at the man.
Time seemed to freeze. The man maintained the same expression and posture as before, sitting still.
The hand held by the cat’s paw appeared to have red veins, like a spider’s web. It wasn’t just his hand. The man’s entire body was covered in similar red lines. These lines gradually extended from his skin, creating a complex network that shot in all directions.
The entire visible world was bathed in a faint red light. From the ceiling to the sky outside, everything was covered by a layer of flesh-like membrane with cocoon-like clusters on it.
This scene felt familiar, much like what he had seen in the underground of the cosmeric surgery hospital with the brain monster.
The difference was that all the veins in the brain monster were connected to a mirror as the source. Here, the red lines all converged towards his foster father.
Wen Shi’s face darkened.
They had stolen his foster father’s brain, the very thing A’Ao was urgently trying to find.
The system’s cold notification sound suddenly echoed, repeating one of Wen Shi’s main quests:
【On the fifth day, you start searching for an important item in the hospital.】
【Congratulations, you have found it.】
【Destroy it, and you will immediately exit the illusion.】
The transformation’s time limit had passed, and Wen Shi did not renew it.
He lowered his head slightly, his hair falling forward to conceal the faint chill in his eyes.
The monsters respected the wishes of the deceased but were also seeking revenge.
His foster father believed that everyone had the right to choose life or death. He chose to follow the natural principles of birth, aging, sickness, and death. And Wen Shi, as the sole hope of his foster father’s survival, had been handed the butcher’s knife.
Destroying the brain would obliterate the last trace of consciousness they had painstakingly preserved, allowing his foster father to rest in peace.
These monsters seemed determined to put him in their shoes, to make him experience that overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
Wen Shi laughed, “Are you playing with me?”
Accepting the fact that a loved one had passed away was one thing, but personally disconnecting an oxygen tube was an entirely different matter. Moreover, if he did it, the doctor-patient relationship would likely forever be tainted with hostility and conflict.
The wall clock had already reached eleven fifty-five. In another five minutes, even if he did nothing, as long as Patient 51 didn’t destroy the item storing his soul, the game would consider it his victory.
“Wen Shi,” he looked up at the man entangled in red lines, “My name is Wen Shi, the name you gave me. You said we’d spend our whole lives racing to the brink of death. And you wished for me to be favored by time.”
Listening to the swing of the clock’s pendulum, Wen Shi smiled and said, “This time, I can win the race.”
……
Hospital.
Jian Qingrong had run out of options.
Patient 51 stood opposite him, his smile icy. “You’re a tough one.”
He was one of the toughest opponents he had encountered.
Until yesterday, Patient 51 had been mostly dormant. After coming out, he spent time gathering clues and investigating each player one by one.
The game ensured a degree of fairness, and the final doctor-patient relationship game had been planned long ago. After the underworld patients’ case, they had fallen into a deep slumber, waiting for this day to come.
However, they briefly woke up twice during the process: once when Wen Shi entered the game, and the other when he reached Sealed Coffin Village. Through the images provided by the true spirit, they had gained some understanding of this child.
For Patient 51, tracing the soul-bearing item wasn’t difficult.
As long as he used his split soul to suppress the target for one minute, he could detect whether the target carried the aura of someone else’s soul.
All underworld patients had various means of investigation and could initiate this quest.
Picking Patient 51 was both the best and worst choice for Wen Shi. Patient 51 might be relatively soft-hearted, but his soul investigation ability was the most formidable among the underworld patients.
“You’re just way too easy to deceive,” Jian Qingrong said casually.
In the past twenty-four hours, Jian Qingrong had first controlled another patient on the same Split Zone to delay Patient 51. Then, during the chase, he used the mini octopus as a decoy to make Patient 51 believe that the real soul-bearing item was the mini octopus. Finally, with the help of the host, Yu Xingzhou and the others, he once again slowed down Patient 51’s progress. Along the way, A’Ao had been turned into a contaminant bomb and exploded.
While Patient 51 was formidable, he was still constrained by the rules. At least in this game, he couldn’t mobilize the surrounding forces as effectively as Jian Qingrong did.
The soul’s phantom shadow was now pressing down on Jian Qingrong.
At this point, no one could help him.
Not far away, Yu Xingzhou and Li Nan were immobilized by Patient 51’s main body. The high-risk patients were restricted just as much as A’Ao. At least on the fifth day, he couldn’t directly kill players like the patients on the first and second floors could.
But trapping the players wasn’t a problem.
Jian Qingrong’s body turned into a black mist, forcibly resisting the approaching soul entity.
Patient 51 suddenly furrowed his brow, sensing that something was amiss.
Now, with only three minutes left until midnight and a vast power gap between them, this resistance was entirely futile.
His soul entity could sense emotions during the suppression. Patient 51 was sure he didn’t perceive any fear or nervousness from Jian Qingrong.
Currently, the two of them were standing just outside Wen Shi’s office. From Patient 51’s perspective, he could see the hole blown open in the secret room.
“It’s the darkest under the light.”
Patient 51 suddenly grasped the crux of the matter. The opponent could control patients from the fourth floor. Although he had checked those patients and confirmed they weren’t holding Wen Shi’s soul, there was still a possibility that one of those patients had secretly hidden the soul-bearing item in their own room.
Patient 51 immediately decided to leave.
Jian Qingrong tried to stop him, even if it was just to delay him for a few seconds. Yu Xingzhou and Li Nan also tried to intercept him, blocking his path one after the other.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t simultaneously delay both Patient 51’s body and soul. In the moment of the main body’s delay, the soul entity swiftly returned to the Split Zone like a gust of wind.
Upon arrival at the ward, the soul entity didn’t bother to sense the atmosphere. Its gaze fixated on the bedside table.
The books placed there were slightly askew. Patient 51, with an OCD, couldn’t tolerate any deviation in the placement of books.
“Cunning brat, you will pay the price.”
The soul entity walked over, opened a book, and found that there was an extra photograph tucked inside. When it saw the image on it, its icy smile froze.
This was a photo taken by the photographer at Wen Shi’s request. In the photo, Wen Shi sat in the middle, with Song Yan on one side and the host on the other. Also sitting in the center was the Wandering Corpse.
The order of the front row was exactly the same as the “family photo” he cherished.
Patient 51 felt the same aura in Song Yan’s soul as the Mirror God.
The true spirit had mentioned in passing that he might send his incarnation to make contact with the child first. He said, who knew, maybe he wouldn’t even have to wait until the kid came to the hospital. He’d have played him to death by then.
By extrapolation, it wasn’t difficult to guess who else was in the photo with Wen Shi.
Two photos side by side, similar yet different.
The director and the two true spirits, the child raised by the director and the incarnations of the two true spirits — it felt like the cycle of life.
Surprisingly, the soul entity couldn’t bring itself to tear the photograph apart.
Inside the ward, only half of the window was covered by curtains. Jian Qingrong’s brain had turned into a shadow, hiding nearby to prevent any interference.
The shadow now watched this scene with indifference.
Wen Shi had chosen Patient 51 for the task because Patient 233 had claimed he was the nicest one.
The level of compassion among monsters was negligible, so even Patient 233, who answered the question for him, found Wen Shi’s inquiry laughable.
In reality, it wasn’t absurd at all.
One just had to strike that one thing that could soften a person’s heart.
While the soul entity was momentarily distracted, the shadow was simultaneously focused on capturing every sound in the air.
One second, two seconds, three seconds… it seemed like he finally heard it—
In the dark corridor, the clock hanging above the nurse’s station emitted a crisp “tick,” its hands converging at the twelve o’clock mark, officially marking the end of the day.
***
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