The layout of the town was undeniably bizarre.
Everywhere they looked, facilities that should never have coexisted had been forcibly crammed together, as though some supernatural force had distorted the original city plan. The entire place felt less like a town and more like a malformed collage assembled from conflicting pieces.
By the time the three of them returned to the central plaza, more than an hour had passed since they had split up.
Yet there was still no sign of Coffee or Fushi.
"You don't think they're dead already, do you?" Song Minghui's expression gradually grew serious as he looked toward the psychiatric hospital across the square. "Should we go check?"
"Yeah."
Jiang Mo's answer was calm and immediate.
They had already completed a rough survey of the town. The next step was obvious.
Investigate the buildings one by one.
Song Minghui vaulted over the hospital's perimeter railing first. Jiang Mo followed immediately afterward, landing lightly on the other side.
Lin Shuang approached the fence and stared up at it.
The guardrail was badly rusted. Along the top ran a row of inverted triangular spikes that still looked alarmingly sharp despite years of neglect.
Earlier, watching Jiang Mo and Song Minghui clear it had seemed effortless. They had crossed in a single smooth motion, making it look almost trivial.
Only after trying it herself did Lin Shuang realize how ridiculous that assumption had been.
Fantasy and reality were two entirely different things.
By the time she awkwardly climbed over and landed safely with Jiang Mo standing nearby to catch her if she slipped, she finally understood what sort of ridiculous movement technique the protagonist had been relying on all this time.
This wasn't ordinary athleticism.
This was practically max-level lightness kung fu.
As expected of Brother Jiang.
A soft meow suddenly echoed through the courtyard.
The black cat appeared once again.
It landed gracefully from the branch of a withered tree, crossed the courtyard in a blur, and disappeared through the hospital's open entrance.
Lin Shuang immediately straightened.
There it was again.
The special clue marker.
The moment that cat appeared, it practically screamed, "There's something important here."
The psychiatric hospital itself was not particularly large. The building only had three floors and occupied relatively little space. Its structure formed an L-shape around a small courtyard that contained two weathered benches and a dead tree.
The entrance stood wide open.
Combined with the overcast sky outside, the interior looked oppressively dark.
Song Minghui found a light switch beside the doorway and flicked it several times.
Nothing happened.
"No power."
"They went upstairs," Jiang Mo said.
Following his gaze, Lin noticed the muddy footprints scattered across the floor. The trail led directly toward the staircase.
She didn't immediately stick herself to Jiang Mo's side this time.
Although many details of the original plot had become blurry, she still remembered several key points. Acting on instinct, she tugged Jiang Mo toward a security office beside the lobby.
"I feel like there should be clues in here. Visitors had to register before seeing patients, right? There has to be some kind of record."
The visitor logbook sitting on the desk had clearly already been examined.
Several pages were folded.
Coffee and Fushi had most likely been here first.
"Do you think they went upstairs because of something in the registration records?" Lin asked.
The logbook contained an overwhelming amount of information.
Names.
Visit dates.
Room numbers.
Entire pages of entries.
Patients throughout the hospital had received visitors, making it impossible to tell which record actually mattered.
Lin stared at the densely packed pages until her eyes began to hurt.
There were countless entries involving second-floor rooms.
Which one was the clue?
She vaguely remembered that the important room was located on the second floor, but there were simply too many possibilities.
"This one."
Jiang Mo suddenly pointed to a single line.
"The handwriting is different."
Lin blinked.
"Different?" She looked down at the page again. "Honestly, all of it looks different to me."
"Most of the entries were written by different people," Jiang explained. "But every few pages, the handwriting patterns repeat. This one only appears once. More importantly, after this entry, every record below it becomes noticeably more hurried and disorganized."
Lin leaned closer.
Now that he pointed it out, she could see it.
The handwriting didn't merely become messy.
It became frantic.
The neat strokes gradually devolved into crooked scribbles, as though the writers had become increasingly anxious.
It reminded her of students copying punishment essays.
The first page was legible.
The final page looked like chicken scratch.
Meanwhile, Song Minghui returned from searching the first-floor wards.
In his hand was a laminated sheet.
"Duty roster."
He tossed it onto the desk.
The roster was no larger than an A4 page.
Including the hospital director, there were only ten staff members responsible for thirty rooms spread across three floors.
After examining it for a moment, Song Minghui added, "Room 206 is strange. According to the schedule, nurses only delivered meals there three times a day. They never entered the room for any other reason."
"Let's go."
Jiang Mo closed the logbook.
Presumably, Coffee and Fushi had discovered the same anomaly and headed upstairs.
With Jiang Mo leading and Song Minghui bringing up the rear, the three quickly arrived on the second floor.
Room 206 sat at the end of the hallway.
Like every other room, its door was painted a pale green.
Jiang Mo pushed.
The door didn't move.
Frowning slightly, he reached toward the handle—
Then paused.
There was no handle.
The place where it should have been was perfectly smooth.
No holes.
No damage.
No signs that anything had been removed.
It was as though the door had never possessed a handle to begin with.
Lin Shuang stared.
"Can it only be opened from the inside?"
"Then how were meals delivered?"
Song Minghui folded his arms.
"The patient probably opened it from inside whenever nurses knocked."
He paused.
Then his expression changed.
"If we knock now, that doesn't mean it'll actually open for us, right?"
"No need."
Jiang Mo stepped forward.
Then he reached back and covered Lin Shuang's ears with both hands.
"Stand farther away."
His tone was calm.
"Don't get scared."
Lin Shuang obediently retreated several steps and pressed her own hands over her ears as well.
The next second—
Boom!
Jiang Mo's foot crashed into the door.
The entire ward shook.
The pale-green door flew inward.
The room beyond was finally revealed.
It was a standard double-occupancy ward.
Two hospital beds.
Two bedside cabinets.
Nothing unusual.
Except for the people lying on the beds.
Coffee occupied one bed.
Fushi occupied the other.
Song Minghui immediately rushed forward.
Fushi's eyes were wide open.
Blood streamed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
After checking for a pulse, Song Minghui slowly withdrew his hand.
"Dead."
The atmosphere instantly turned heavy.
Compared to Fushi's grotesque appearance, Coffee looked almost peaceful.
She appeared to be sleeping.
Her breathing remained steady.
A pulse still beat beneath her skin.
Lin Shuang approached carefully and patted her cheek.
"Coffee?"
No response.
"Coffee?"
Still nothing.
"Harder."
Jiang Mo watched from nearby.
"You're trying to save her life, not wake a child from a nap."
Lin Shuang immediately felt guilty.
This was the first time in her life she had slapped someone.
"I'm sorry."
Smack.
"I'm really sorry."
Smack.
Fortunately, the effort paid off.
Coffee's eyelids suddenly flew open.
She shot upright in bed like someone surfacing from a nightmare.
Gasping desperately for air, she clawed at her own throat as though invisible fingers had been strangling her moments before.
The burning pain on her cheek gradually pulled her back to reality.
Her gaze landed on Jiang Mo.
Then Lin Shuang.
Then the bed beneath her.
The next second, she practically threw herself off the mattress.
"Did you see her?"
Her voice trembled.
"The woman. Did you see her just now?"
"We only saw you and Fushi."
Lin Shuang pointed toward the neighboring bed.
"And him."
Coffee followed her gesture.
The moment she saw Fushi's corpse, her knees buckled.
She collapsed onto the floor.
For several long seconds, she simply sat there breathing heavily.
Eventually, however, she forced herself to calm down.
After all, she was an experienced player capable of clearing Elite Instances. She had survived at least five games already. Panic alone would not keep her alive.
Taking a deep breath, she slowly regained the composure she had shown when they first met.
"After Fushi and I split from you," she began, "we entered the psychiatric hospital and searched the first floor."
Her voice remained slightly hoarse.
"We found something strange in the duty roster."
Coffee looked toward the open doorway of Room 206.
"That's how we ended up here."
Summary:
The trio enters the eerie psychiatric hospital, locating a guest register that provides subtle clues about Room 206. Upon reaching the room, they discover two teammates, one dead and one in a trance. After the conscious teammate awakens, she hints at a supernatural presence linked to the room.
Trivia:
The hospital layout is L-shaped and has three floors.
The security office contains a visitor log that hints at irregular activity.
The door to Room 206 lacks a handle, implying it is opened from the inside.
The staff roster indicates Room 206 was isolated from regular nurse check-ins.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ A classic wuxia trope (qinggong) representing supernatural agility and speed.
Notes:
• Coffee - A character who joins the group and suggests splitting up at the town square. A female player and member of a pre-made duo, participating in the elite decryption game instance.
• Fushi - A character who joins the group and initially expresses hesitation about splitting up. A male player found dead in Room 206.
• Minghui - A given name belonging to Song.
• Song - A male player who investigates the psychiatric hospital and discovers the duty roster. A man who joins the protagonist on the game instance and provides initial supplies like a key. A veteran player in the Main God's Game, known for his caustic tongue, chaotic temperament, and sharp, snide remarks.
• Jiang Mo - A cold, calculated strategist in the Infinite Stream, he masks a predatory nature with a gentle persona. As a former boxer living a solitary, tidy life, he balances lethal survival skills with a guarded temperament. He acts as a devoted protector to Lin Shuang, navigating the game's dangers with detached pragmatism and a methodical, controlled approach to both combat and his personal life.
• Jiang - Jiang Mo is a 6'3" elite survivalist and formidable leader in the Main God Space. A weary yet fit former athlete, he uses a stoic, cynical exterior to mask his trauma and intense, repressed devotion to his fiancée, Lin Shuang. Driven to uncover his parents' fatal accident, this pragmatic protector balances managing high-stakes combat and logistics with his deeply attentive, budding romance.
• Mo - Jiang Mo, or Great God Mo Jiang, is a towering 6’3” martial artist and archer in the Main God’s Game. Formerly a righteous police student, this hyper-vigilant yet calm protector serves as a devoted mentor to Lin Shuang. Their disciplined bond has evolved from rigorous training into a committed, mutual promise of marriage, blending his natural aloofness with deep, unwavering care for her.
• Lin Shuang - Lin Shuang is a college student transmigrated as a cannon fodder in an infinite game. To survive its horrors, she adopts a detached persona, clinging to the male lead for security while finding solace in small rewards like cake. Navigating the original owner's complex social ties with anxiety, she hides her true self, focusing solely on comfort and survival within the deadly, surreal game world.
• Shuang - Lin Shuang is a delicate-featured college student who transmigrated into a web novel as a doomed side character. Anxious to survive the infinite game, she masks her desperation by playing the opportunist. She clings to the male protagonist, Jiang Mo, monitoring game forums and leveraging their closeness to stay safe, even renting an apartment specifically to remain near him.
• Lin - A resilient university student and transmigrated "salt-fish" player, she navigates a deadly survival game as the POV character. Outwardly, she shifts between a delicate, bang-styled student and a combat-ready survivor in a high ponytail. While feigning helplessness to gain intimacy, she uses her plot knowledge and tactical skills alongside her partner, Jiang Mo, to forge vital alliances.
• He - A fierce, aggressive man who storms into a private training range to confront Jiang Mo over an alleged emotional deception involving his sister. A woman who speaks with strict, anxious bureaucratic formality over the phone. She is the sister of a man who caused an incident at an archery range.