“Bang—!”
In the chaos of everyone fleeing, someone slammed directly into He Jianlan. His black-rimmed glasses flew from his face and vanished into the darkness, immediately crushed beneath the stampede of feet behind him.
At the same time, the oil lamp slipped from his hand and shattered across the floor.
“Lao Qin!”
He Jianlan cursed under his breath.
“My glasses broke!”
His vision was terrible.
Without his glasses, the world dissolved into smears of color and light; unless someone stood directly in front of him, he couldn’t even recognize their face.
Technically, the system could repair his eyesight instantly.
But in Thriller Trainee, the more trivial the problem, the more absurdly expensive the repair cost became.
Treating terminal cancer only required five hundred survival points.
Fixing nearsightedness?
Two thousand.
He Jianlan had never been willing to waste points on something like that.
“Fuck—of all times…”
Qin Ye grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Forget the glasses for now. Hide first.”
Even while speaking, Qin Ye kept glancing over his shoulder.
With the werewolf blessing enhancing his night vision, he could clearly see the grotesque transformation spreading throughout Basement 2.
Starting from the stairwell, the corridor looked as though reality itself had been smeared apart by a filthy paintbrush.
Rust drifted through the air.
Walls peeled away in massive sheets.
Blackened blood and shattered bones lined both sides of the hallway.
The stench of decay thickened into something suffocating.
The deeper they looked, the more the mental asylum resembled a rotting hellscape torn out of another world.
Though Messiah had shouted for everyone to scatter, the core veteran group instinctively stayed together.
None of them were idiots.
At a moment like this, splitting apart blindly would only throw away their advantage in numbers—not to mention abandoning the Holy Son, the group’s only reliable healer.
Besides He Jianlan and Qin Ye, Meng Tianlu also remained with them.
Guided by the psychic, the four quickly dashed into one of the decrepit wards lining the corridor.
Far away, beneath the faint light leaking from the stairwell, a distorted shadow stretched slowly across the floor.
And with every approaching footstep—
The shadow lengthened further.
Once hidden inside the room, all three men immediately turned toward Meng Tianlu.
“Well?”
“Did you sense anything?”
“Where’s the clue?”
Meng Tianlu looked terrible.
His eyes were squeezed shut, his entire body trembling violently.
Sweat poured down his face.
“N-No…”
“There’s nothing…”
“No clues…”
Earlier, merely probing lightly with his psychic ability had nearly drained him dry.
Now that he had fully stepped into this abyss-like dimensional space, he felt as though countless invisible hands were dragging him downward into freezing mud.
Sharp, hysterical laughter flooded his senses from every direction.
He could barely breathe.
How could there be no clues?
The others were horrified.
“How is that possible?” He Jianlan blurted.
“Didn’t that newcomer say Vincent was on Basement 2?”
But Meng Tianlu could barely speak anymore.
His lips had turned purple.
A milky haze clouded his pupils.
“Something’s wrong with him.”
Messiah immediately pressed the high priest staff against the psychic’s shoulder.
A warm golden light spread from the staff and enveloped Meng Tianlu’s body.
Gradually, his trembling eased slightly.
At that exact moment—
A deep, dragging sound echoed from the corridor outside.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Everyone froze.
A few seconds later, a shadow slowly appeared beyond the doorway.
The white-coated doctor walked calmly down the corridor carrying someone in his arms.
From their angle, all they could see was cascading white hair spilling downward like a waterfall and part of an unconscious face.
Zong Jiu.
The livestream comments instantly exploded.
[NOOO the white-haired beauty got caught!!]
[WAIT WHAT HAPPENED? I looked away for two seconds!]
[Dr. Chu was already inside the room waiting for him. One syringe and it was over. GG.]
[It’s so over. The boss personally captured him.]
“That thing is almost here.”
Qin Ye forced himself to focus.
“Do we risk breaking through?”
If the four of them combined forces, escaping this area shouldn’t have been impossible.
But—
That would also mean tonight’s expedition had completely failed.
Not only had they gained no clues, but the instance had already entered Day Three.
They were running out of time.
He Jianlan suddenly recalled another high-ranking instance:
Jingbai High School.
That instance had lasted seven days.
If contestants failed to gather enough clues within the first six days, every teacher and student transformed into monsters on the final day and slaughtered everyone indiscriminately.
This mental asylum instance felt eerily similar.
Even if they escaped Basement 2 tonight, there were still twenty-three hours remaining in Day Three.
And no special item could be used indefinitely.
Eventually, the ghosts would catch them.
He Jianlan stared blankly downward.
Without his glasses, everything was blurry.
Yet he kept feeling—
Something was wrong.
From the very beginning, before the S-rank clue appeared, none of the veterans had treated this instance seriously enough.
Everyone assumed that because so many newcomers had been thrown into the instance, the system wouldn’t make it excessively difficult.
Especially with Messiah leading the group.
Everything had seemed organized.
Orderly.
Safe.
The ground floor and Basement 1 had been searched thoroughly.
Nothing should’ve been overlooked.
Logically, Basement 2 should have contained the final clue necessary for clearing the instance.
But now—
There was nothing.
No clues.
No answers.
Only death.
How could that be?
Qin Ye’s sudden roar shattered He Jianlan’s thoughts.
“NOW!”
“BREAK THROUGH!”
Gray fur exploded across Qin Ye’s body as he transformed further into a half-werewolf.
His massive frame burst through the hospital gown.
Dropping to all fours, he lunged toward the doorway.
He Jianlan and Messiah immediately supported Meng Tianlu and followed close behind.
The enormous werewolf let out a savage howl and charged straight toward the shadow blocking the corridor.
“Wait…”
Meng Tianlu suddenly convulsed violently.
“Don’t go…”
“You’ll die—”
Too late.
The next second—
Qin Ye’s head vanished.
Cleanly.
As though plucked straight off his shoulders.
A bloody spine dangled grotesquely from the ruined neck as his body collapsed heavily onto the floor.
One of his eyes had been pierced completely through by an unknown claw.
“BANG—!”
The corpse crashed down.
Blood sprayed everywhere.
“LAO QIN!!!”
He Jianlan screamed hoarsely.
The livestream detonated.
[HOLY SHIT.]
[THAT WAS AN A-RANK.]
[AN A-RANK GOT INSTANTLY KILLED.]
Only then did everyone finally understand.
The monster in this instance was not something humans could fight.
It was an invincible supernatural entity.
[It’s over. Total massacre incoming.]
[This is at least A-rank difficulty.]
[One-shotting an A-rank through his trump card… what else could it be?]
“W-We have to run…”
He Jianlan’s voice shook violently.
Qin Ye’s severed head rolled across the floor, jaws still frozen open.
The distorted black shadow loomed behind the corpse.
He Jianlan couldn’t see clearly.
And he no longer dared to.
Suppressing tears, he grabbed Meng Tianlu and fled.
He and Qin Ye had been famous partners among veteran contenders for years.
Not merely teammates—
Brothers.
They had survived countless horror instances side by side.
He Jianlan still remembered Qin Ye enduring excruciating bodily corruption to obtain the werewolf blessing.
And how he himself shattered five fingers to acquire his lasso-type special item.
Everything could heal with enough survival points.
That had always been the rule.
So He Jianlan never imagined Qin Ye would die here.
In the very first instance of Thriller Trainee.
And crueler still—
There was no time to grieve.
If even Qin Ye couldn’t break through, then escape was impossible.
Despair swallowed He Jianlan whole.
Originally, he believed they could survive even with incomplete clues.
All they had to do was hide until the twenty-four hours ended.
But now—
Even that hope had been severed.
An icy realization crept slowly up his spine.
Too coincidental.
Everything had unfolded too perfectly.
As though some invisible hand had been guiding them toward this dead end from the start.
A hand that deliberately cut away every possible route to survival.
At last, the remaining three stumbled back onto the stairwell leading to Basement 1.
Faint light filtered down from above through the gaps between the stairs.
And in that moment—
Only one explanation remained.
They had been misled from the very beginning.
But by whom?
Zhuge An?
That white-haired E-rank?
Or—
“Your Holiness…”
He Jianlan turned instinctively toward Messiah.
Only to freeze.
The golden-haired Holy Son standing beside him moments ago—
Was gone.
Completely.
He Jianlan’s blurred vision showed nothing there at all.
“Your Holiness?”
Panic flooded him.
Did Messiah stay behind to heal Qin Ye?
Did he accidentally separate from them?
He slowly turned toward the stairwell.
Darkness swallowed everything below.
The asylum was deathly silent.
Then—
The weight leaning against his shoulder suddenly became heavier.
He Jianlan stiffened.
Standing several steps above him on the staircase—
Messiah looked down with a gentle smile.
Cold dread exploded through He Jianlan’s body.
Slowly—
Very slowly—
He lowered his gaze toward the figure hanging from his shoulder.
At some point…
Meng Tianlu had stopped breathing.
And attached to his arm—
A pale, unfamiliar ghost face stared directly at him.
Grinning ear to ear.