By now it was dusk, the sky tinged with blood-red clouds. The corridor had few windows, and it had already fallen completely dark. Several dim light bulbs hung from the ceiling, casting a murky, gloomy glow. The strange fragrance still assaulted their noses, and the atmosphere grew increasingly oppressive.
“Brother Qi and I can only share one body, which means that whenever a task requires division of labor, we’re naturally short one person. the difficulty multiplies several times over. And the head nurse might patrol during the day too, so Brother Qi and I still need to shuttle back and forth between 101 and 103.”
Half of his face was bathed in light, the other half hidden in shadow.
“I think this is the real reason the exam difficulty was increased.”
…
After a brief spell of dizziness, Qi Dengzui opened his eyes, finally regaining control of the body. His expression was cold as he said, “Don’t overthink it. Instead of dwelling on that, let’s reconsider that letter first.”
Pei Su glanced at him and asked, “Qi Dengzui?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Qi Dengzui instinctively patted his pocket, only to find that his cigarettes hadn’t been brought into the exam.
He changed out of Guan Si’s women’s clothing and asked Pei Su, “Do you have glasses?”
Pei Su: “Glasses?”
“Yeah, I’m severely nearsighted. I can barely see during the day, and now that it’s dark, I can’t see at all.” Qi Dengzui rubbed his brow, looking somewhat weary. Though they hadn’t been in the exam for long, dealing with the head nurse while trying to crack the puzzle was mentally and physically exhausting.
“I do.” Pei Su said. “I think there’s a pair of glasses in my room, not sure if they’ll work for you.”
In no time, he retrieved the glasses and asked Qi Dengzui, “How is it? Do they work?”
Qi Dengzui adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose and said, “They work.”
Changing the subject, he said, “Now that we’ve confirmed I’m a patient from 103, this letter must be someone else’s cry for help. That person is likely still alive, somewhere inside the asylum.”
“This map can’t be this small. The second floor is where the head nurse operates, there’s definitely something up there. We need to go up and investigate while the head nurse is downstairs with her nurses.”
“I’ll make it up to the second floor and take a look around as fast as I can. Just in case, I want you two to help hold off the head nurse.”
“No problem, leave it to me.” Pei Su blinked, then shot He Zhu a mischievous grin. “Brother He, I’ve got a plan, and you’re going to have to help me out.”
He Zhu said in a deep voice, “Get lost.”
Pei Su shot him a glance. “You stiff, you really don’t know how to have fun.”
The asylum had no elevator only the oldest kind of narrow staircase. Both sides of the stairwell were stained with long-accumulated black grime, and a thick layer of dust had settled on the handrails.
The second-floor corridor housed many different types of rooms. As Qi Dengzui made his way down, he found a nurse station, an archive room, and a specially designated intensive care ward.
The ICU was inaccessible, and the head nurse was at the nurse station, so the only place he could go was the archive room.
The archive room was packed with files. Qi Dengzui flipped through a few at random and found that most were patient medical records and staff identification documents for doctors and nurses, filled with dense research notes.
Then, in a hidden corner, Qi Dengzui discovered a diary. It recorded the events that had happened to a girl named Xiaoyu after she arrived at the asylum.
[The nurse gave me medicine, but I didn’t want to take it. Why did Father send me here? I’m not sick. I’m really not sick. Am I not his child?]
At this point, Xiaoyu’s handwriting was still fairly neat, but as time went on, her handwriting began to change.
[Someone is knocking on the door outside. They’re going crazy, like zombies. Why did they become like this? I’m so scared. Someone save me. I want to go home. I want to go home.]
[The people outside are gone. I don’t dare go out. There’s a whistle on the second floor. They seem to have gone up there. I saw Xiaoyan. Why did she become like this too? Why am I the only one who’s fine? Someone help me.]
[Xiaoyan just came in. Her eyes are red. She actually tried to kill me. Why…]
[I think I accidentally broke the vase. The flowers inside suddenly withered, and then Xiaoyan was fine. What should I do? How can we get out? Why… neither Xiaoyan nor I are sick. Why are they doing this to us?]
The handwriting after that was extremely chaotic, scrawled in every direction. Large ink stains covered the diary page, making it clear that the writer was in a state of utter panic, and her mental state had already deteriorated.
[I get it now, I get it now.]
[I didn’t take the medicine. I didn’t take the medicine, so I’m fine. The medicine and the flowers work together to drive people mad. As long as we don’t take the medicine and smash the vases, will we be fine? Dad, I was wrong. Please come save me. Please don’t give up on me.]
【The head nurse noticed that Xiao Yan and I had disappeared, but we hid in the secret passage of 301. It seems to connect to the intensive care ward on the second floor. There are so many corpses there. They are insane, they’re experimenting on people! It’s so disgusting, so disgusting. How can I escape this place?】
【We don’t dare go out, so we can only hide in the secret passage. I’m so hungry, and Xiao Yan is about to give out. What do we do, what do we do, what do we do.】
【Why hasn’t a new patient come to 103? Please come save us. I don’t want to die, I really don’t want to die. I want to leave this place with Xiao Yan. There are so many things we haven’t done yet.】
【I want to live. I want to live with her.】
The diary ended there, with no new entries after that.
Meanwhile, on the supernatural academy viewing website, the other examinees had already exploded with chatter.
〈No way, just a few hours in and they’ve already breezed through to the secret passage plot? These two are seriously twisted, moving that fast.〉
〈Can nobody point out that this plot setup is way too simple? They just laid everything out plainly, what’s left to explore? Feels like all that earlier exploring was a total waste.〉
〈They’re just going for the process points. If it weren’t for Guan Si cranking up the difficulty, this exam could’ve been even easier. Once they clear this part of the plot, the rest is basically simple coordination and it’s done.〉
〈Isn’t that how freshman exams always are? You expect a freshman exam to have airtight logic and a self-consistent plot? Go take a nap. It’s totally normal to explore a ton and then find the plot just reveals itself.〉
〈None of these four are pushovers. You know why Pei Su and He Zhu could come to 103 in the middle of the night? Because they just straight-up crushed the flowers to death. And here’s the even more insane part, I thought they’d both taken the meds, and I was wondering how they were fine. Turns out He Zhu just said that when the head nurse gave him the pills, he crushed them into powder the instant they hit his mouth. He never actually swallowed them. Who the hell could’ve guessed that? And it actually worked.〉
〈Hahahaha, that’s seriously brutal.〉
〈Could this group break the record for fastest exam completion? I remember the fastest in this exam hall was that guy from the Weixue team twenty years ago, but his teammates were all pretty trash back then he carried them the whole way, and they held him back. Otherwise, he probably could’ve been even faster.〉
〈That guy was genuinely strong, soloing the whole dungeon, absolutely insane. But none of these four are stupid either, so they might actually break the record.〉
〈The problem is that Guan Si seems completely useless and is just taking up an examinee slot. Plus, anyone who’s been to this exam hall knows that four people is easy mode, but three people is hell difficulty. Not saying people die, but getting out unscathed is basically impossible. I can’t figure out how they’d pull it off.〉
Guan Si had no idea about any of this chatter. He read through the diary again and said to Qi Dengzui, “So the letter in 103 was actually a distress call left by Xiao Yu. It wasn’t addressed to any one person specifically, it was meant for anyone who came to 103.”
Qi Dengzui said, “No, that ‘3’ might not refer to an identity, it could refer to a location. What she probably meant was save me, I’m in room 3, which is 103.”
This girl named Xiao Yu, with her last bit of strength, had sent out a distress call,
【Save me, room 3.】
But no one ever saw that distress call. It fell into the gap between the bed and the wall in 301, gradually wearing thin and yellowing over time, ruthlessly suppressing Xiao Yu’s cries for help, drowning all her fear, pain, and resentment within this madhouse.
Until they arrived.
The archive room was silent, the atmosphere heavy as if dark clouds pressed down from above, every breath painfully clear.
Guan Si continued, “This also explains why the cracked vase still worked without leaking. Because those flowers were never going to last until the next day. That night, after all the patients arrived at this madhouse, they’d take the pills the nurse gave them. Then at night, the pills mixed with the incense would drive them mad, make them lose consciousness, and they’d follow the whistle sound up to the second floor, becoming test subjects for human experiments.”
“And once new patients arrived, the madhouse would replace the flowers with fresh ones. No watering needed, so whether the vase was cracked didn’t matter.”
“Yeah.” Qi Dengzui carefully hid the notebook again. “The priority now is finding that secret passage. It connects 103 and the intensive care ward. Let’s go back to 103 and check.”
Guan Si said, “Let’s find Pei Su and He Zhu first, have them come help look for the passage.”
Once they’d gathered everyone, they pushed open the door to 103 only to find a nurse inside.
The nurse’s eyes had turned completely red, her demeanor exactly matching the state Xiao Yu had described when Xiao Yan first entered 103 and tried to kill her.
“She’s probably ingested the pills by mistake. Stay back, I’ll fight her. Don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
Before the words had even faded, the nurse lunged at Qi Dengzui, sharp fangs already sprouting from her mouth, her fingernails growing long and turning a sickly green, like razor-sharp blades.
“Qi Dengzui, watch out!”
The nurse raised her mutated hands and clawed straight for Qi Dengzui’s eyes.
Qi Dengzui dodged to the side, coldly watching the nurse’s frenzied expression, a defiant edge in his voice.
“I won’t die. You all go first.”