Zong Jiu expressed a very sincere attitude. Not only was he sincere, but he also took the initiative to tell the veterans the clue for that S-rank prop.
Although he said that Zhuge An had already taken the S-rank prop, it was still a clue, wasn’t it? At this, everyone’s attitudes towards Zong Jiu changed, and they implicitly accepted him as part of their group.
After the situation with Zong Jiu was resolved, Messiah, heading the command floor, quickly laid out a plan to go down to explore basement 2 instead of returning to their wards tonight, disregarding the room checks.
Before the plan was set in stone, all other voices were silenced.
But how safe was this plan, exactly? Most of the clues were conjectures He Jianlan and Messiah formed based on the attitudes of the nursing staff.
Despite He Jianlan and the others suppressing any opposition earlier, there were still newcomers furtively whispering to each other in the dining room after the plan was finalised.
Under the oppression of the veteran trainees, the newcomers who were quicker on their toes divided into several camps. There were those determined to follow the veterans blindly, licking their boots however much they could; there were also those who were intent on maximising their profits, taking advantage wherever they could.
Now, the camp of newcomers speaking were those who were more keen on profiteering. They weren’t willing to follow Messiah into neck-deep danger, thus began to calculate their little schemes.
“It’s already 10.30pm. If we go down to basement 2 now, isn’t it a little too late…”
As everyone knew, in horror instances, nighttime was a perpetual theme that couldn’t be circumvented.
The probability of an event occurring in the night in a horror instance was generally far greater than the probability of it occurring in the day. Terrifyingly, intimidatingly, overwhelmingly so.
“There’s so many of us, can His Holiness really protect all of us? Besides, didn’t you say that basement 2 wasn’t a good place to venture into? So why must we take the initiative to tackle it?”
“Yeah… Further, in the present situation, the ward should be the safest place to be. There are newcomers here who have eaten the pill too; they’ll be indisposed in a while.”
Messiah frowned. “Naturally, I will not force anyone who doesn’t wish to go.”
“But from our experience as veteran contenders, it’s true that the chances of something happening tonight are very high. The third day is bound to be the watershed moment for this instance; I won’t advise anyone to act alone.”
That newcomer camp dragged their feet around, hemming and hawing, not taking a stand.
“How about this.”
The golden-haired Holy Son smoothened out the crease between his eyebrows and didn’t insist on it. “For those who are willing to come with me down to basement 2, we’ll convene at the stairwell leading down there in ten minutes. As for those unwilling to join me, I will still place a blessing enchantment on everyone that stays behind.”
The newcomers nodded with alacrity, their faces radiant with joy.
Even the veterans knew that a blessing enchantment from the Holy Son was equivalent to a single-use special prop; its value need not be said.
Others who had agreed to go downstairs at first were also swayed, among which were several low-ranking veterans.
“Why don’t we stay in the wards too?”
A veteran frowned slightly. “It’s only the second day, anyway. And it isn’t as if Messiah won’t come back up, so why do we have to stick ourselves in danger? We can just stay in the wards and reap the fruits of their labour.”
“Exactly. The difficulty of this instance is close to S-rank after all… it’ll be pretty good if we can even survive this, who will have the mind to care about challenging danger zones?”
At first, those middling contenders had only signed up for Thriller Trainee due to the generous rewards and were confident coming up to the first instance. In the end, all of them were scared out of their wits.
The newcomers weren’t aware of what an S-rank instance signified; but the veterans couldn’t be more so. And now, the temptation of backing out had reared its ugly head.
Zong Jiu stood at one side, watching on coldly.
The sudden acceleration in the timeline had exposed all the holes in the tightly-knit temporary team centred around Messiah.
“Jiu-ge, you’re so incredible; you washed off the suspicion on us with barely a lift of your finger.”
Sheng Yu chattered from beside him. “What should we do now? Do we follow the Holy Son down to basement 2?”
“Otherwise?”
Zong Jiu asked him, “Are you afraid?”
“A little,” the high school student scratched his head. “But if Jiu-ge isn’t afraid, then I’m not.”
Of course you aren’t afraid, or else you wouldn’t have been so skilled at the whole charade of killing and dumping a body.
Zong Jiu said perfunctorily, “Then we’ll just follow along. We’re going to die anyway. With this many people, if we really die, since everyone’s buried together, at least we won’t get lonely.”
Everyone else, “…”
[ROFL I’m dying of laughter. I realised that this white-haired kid is really interesting; when he doesn’t speak, he looks as beautiful as a painting, and when he does, his expression is so prim and proper. But why is it so funny!]
[I wanted to say that too, he really likes to choke people speechless. He even asked Master Zhuge who Zhuge Liang was just now, at that time I even thought that he made up a name to jest that guy’s No. 3 status!]
[Oh man, but they’re right about to go to basement 2. Who knows if this E-rank can last till the end.]
What no one knew was that after Zhuge An left, Zong Jiu’s personal live broadcast had rocketed up to second place, just below the S-ranked Messiah. For a newcomer without any foundation, this was a preposterous achievement.
After this was settled, everyone no longer dallied around. Those who went to the stairwell, went to the stairwell; those who went back to the wards to rest, went back to their wards.
Zong Jiu used the past ten minutes to watch Messiah take out the high priest’s staff and apply the blessing to each person whilst mulling over the clues he had received from Zhuge An.
He wasn’t bothered about telling that clue to others.
After all, without sufficient information, other trainees would be just as confused. Even Zong Jiu, after combining what he knew of the plot with his own guesses, had to grope around in the dark before perfecting the full puzzle with Zhuge An’s hint.
The clues he got from this free-meal ticket were quite comprehensive.
Iteuf Cc rjlv atja atf lcafufg yfakffc atgff jcv obeg kjr cb wbgf atjc j wfajqtbg jcv jc jiafgcjalnf cjwf. Par agef rbiealbc gfqgfrfcafv atf xfs ab agjnfi ogffis yfakffc atf jiafgcjalnf vlwfcrlbcji rqjmf jcv atf gfueijg rqjmf.
Cr atf kbgvr lwqilfv, atlr xfs kjrc’a rbwfatlcu atja mbeiv yf fzqijlcfv qegfis ogbw j wjatfwjalmji qfgrqfmalnf.
The x and y-axes formed a world with a two-dimensional plane.
The x, y, z-axes formed a world with a three-dimensional plane.
The four-dimensional plane was a spatial concept that existed in human physics.
Zhuge An learned from the library of this mental asylum that a four dimensional space wasn’t just a four dimensional space in the broad sense, but a space-time theory proposed by Minkowski in 1907 leveraging non-Euclidean space. In this theory, there was a space-time line in addition to the xyz-axes, which then constituted a restricted four-dimensional concept.
Humans on Earth lived in a three-dimensional world.
People in a three-dimensional world looked down on a two-dimensional world; people in a four-dimensional world looked down on a three-dimensional world.
The gods of human imagination, for example, were very likely higher-dimensional beings.
In reality, dimensions cannot transcend beyond dimensions, and it was impossible for such transcendence to happen.
But in a horror instance, anything was possible.
This instance gave them a gateway between a three-dimensional space and a four-dimensional space, and as long as they had the key between three and four, they could traverse between the different times in these dimensional spaces.
Zhuge An told him, the alternate dimensional space actually existed in this mental asylum thirty years ago.
Once, the military base in this instance was dedicated to researching time travel during the war, only to have an accident happen in the middle of their research. The dimensional rift caused the base to be torn from time thirty years ago, and all the researchers in the base had become prisoners of time, roaming in a strange dimension without any way out.
Years later, a mental asylum was established in the same location, and there still existed that broken road to the alternate dimension.
The system did give them enough hints.
The main task was to ‘survive in this instance for three days’.
In actuality, according to Zhuge An’s deduction, as soon as the clock struck midnight on the third day, all the patients in the asylum would be instantly dragged into the alternate dimensional space like tossing meat into a lion’s den.
Possessing the key gave the power to traverse time. As long as they got the key and traversed to any random node in time after the three days, they could achieve a perfect clearance. If they were to delay until the third day as dictated by the main task, the only road greeting the trainees would be the road to death.
The first night as everyone slept, Zhuge An used the Taiji Eight Trigrams to go on a nighttime excursion.
The second night when Messiah and the rest were struggling to find a clue, Zhuge An had already figured out the kernel of the instance.
Zong Jiu knew the ciphertext ‘pnpso’, knew that it was encrypted by Vigenère cipher, and with Zhuge An’s hint, had the key right on the tip of his tongue.
Like an exam, while others were still scratching their heads for an answer, Zong Jiu had already copied the correct answer from the study god.
Zong Jiu wholeheartedly felt that he should give Zhuge An a round of applause, so he deftly tossed the dirty laundry to him as a gift.
If he wanted to, he could now also recite the key and become the second person to pass with the effort it took to blow away a speck of dust. There wasn’t any need for him to follow Messiah and the others to adventure down basement 2.
But he guessed that Zhuge An likely hadn’t taken the S-rank prop in this instance. At that time, the other had obviously left in a hurry, and there was a high probability that the reason for his urgency was related to the ‘prophecy’ he had mentioned.
Zong Jiu wasn’t concerned about what type of prophecy that was. In any case, he didn’t really believe in it either.
What he cared about was how to challenge more danger zones, accumulate more survival points, and see if he could snatch that S-rank prop on the sly; there wasn’t any harm in trying for such a prop.
Before he had gotten the key, Zong Jiu was already so bold; was he going to stop now that he had the key?!
That would be too fake!
Yeah! So what if they were mortal enemies decreed by fate, did Zong Jiu ever care?
You’d die if you don’t die trying! Could men who didn’t seek thrills be called men? What kind of magician would he be if he didn’t even dare to challenge the danger zones!
Dig out the moles and earn survival points like a good ol’ salary man, let’s go!
A line of people stood at the landing of the basement 1 stairwell.
The bottom was as dark as before. It was impossible to see the way, and even the steps were barely an outline in the dim light.
“Your Holiness, I’ve gotten the lamp!”
Just as everyone was waiting, He Jianlan hastily walked over from the corridor, carrying a wobbly oil lamp in his hand.
Zong Jiu took a closer look and realised that it was the same lamp the nurse had carried in her hand when doing room checks. On the first day, Zong Jiu had even seen her carrying it down to basement 2. He Jianlan had most likely stolen it by unknown means to obtain it in the present.
“That’s good.”
The golden-haired Holy Son released a long exhale in relief. Then, he lifted the wooden staff from the newcomer’s shoulder. The latter felt a warm stream of heat flowing through his body, and an additional golden mark appearing at the back of his hand.
“This blessing enchantment is a single-use shield capable of resisting damage once.”
Messiah rubbed his temples wearily. “We don’t have much time. Let’s hurry.”
After inexplicably spiriting past ten hours, the flow of time had become noticeably abnormal.
They had made up their minds not to return the ward for the room-checks, so it would be considered a nighttime excursion. At night, the nursing staff would step up their patrols, so if they were caught, they would have a one-way ticket to death.
Everyone looked down the dark stairwell to basement 2, and breathed in deeply.
“I’ll take the lead,” Qin Ye said.
As he held his palm upwards with his fingers in a loose grip, everyone noticed with a start that the tips of his nails started to tint a sharp, deep black, and the hair on this arm turned into concrete grey fur, completing the partial transformation from human to fierce beast.
The blessing of a werewolf allowed the blessed to achieve partial transformation into a werewolf. This was Qin Ye’s trump card.
The others also quickly found their places.
As the healer, Messiah was securely shielded in the centre, with the psychic Meng Tianlu on his left, and He Jianlan with his knotted lasso on his right.
Zong Jiu and Sheng Yu were at the fringe of the group, but their positions were a little towards the back of the group.
The other trainees who intended to stay behind on basement 1 were also watching them, intending to see them off at the stairwell before heading back to their wards.
Just then, the hour hand, which had not yet reached eleven o’clock advanced by one step again, squarely landing on twelve.
Cold fear shot up their spines.
It was no longer the second day, but the third!
The third day, which unleashed a hellwave of ultimate horror!
[Holy shit! I almost died of shock!!]
[Oh my lord, this nurse’s face is as white as a ghost, my soul almost flew away when she appeared.]
[Fuck, time sped up again. It’s already the third day, they’re so screwed, they haven’t even found any clues yet. I’m panicking. At this rate, I feel like it’s going to be a mass wipeout.]
Under such a situation, no one cared about the formation, solely fleeing in shock.
A few of them were so scared that they ran back towards the wards on basement 1, only to hear the sound of the door locking behind them after they rushed in.
The mental asylum locked its doors at night. Once the nurses locked the doors after the room checks, it was impossible to leave the ward for the night.
Jiang Yuan angrily hammered the door. “Let me out!”
But the nurse outside only replied with an eerie smile. She put the key in her mouth, and swallowed it.
Like teasing prey, she only bared her mouth a fraction, looking as if she were about to pounce past the window the next second.
It wasn’t a human mouth in any sense, but a bloody mouth full of fangs covered in scarlet, viscous blood.
Jiang Yuan took a few steps backwards in fright. As quickly as he could, he took out his special prop from his system backpack and stuck a cinnabar sealing talisman onto the glass window on the iron door.
“Sizzle—”
The split second that the talisman was attached, fire ignited from the corners and it spontaneously began to combust.
The spontaneous combustion of the talisman meant that the thing outside wasn’t a benign person, but a being with extremely heavy yin energy.
This talisman was a consumable prop. Jiang Yuan didn’t have many of them on hand, so he had used them sparingly.
But he didn’t feel any reluctance over using it; nothing was more important than his life.
As Jiang Yuan watched the face outside the glass window burn to the point of peeling and disappear into the smoke with a howl, his heart swelled with pleasure.
“Damn that ghost bitch!”
His back was drenched in cold sweat. When he finally snapped back to his senses, he found that his legs were too weak to even stand up.
After recovering for half a minute, Jiang Yuan then climbed up from the ground.
The lights on basement 1 were dim, and his visibility of the corridor outside was limited. He couldn’t see anything at all. It was as silent as a tomb.
That nurse had locked the door earlier; this meant that Jiang Yuan could only stay alone in the ward for the rest of the night.
He cautiously looked away from the door and looked over his shoulder again.
The ward was as dark and dreary as before.
Jiang Yuan plastered his back to the wall, keeping an eye out for any motion around him.
As a rule, after burning a talisman earlier, no being with heavy yin energy would want to proactively approach this ward in the near future.
But Jiang Yuan still kept in mind that this was an instance with a close to S-rank difficulty level.
The higher the difficulty level, the shorter this respite would be. Although he was only a C-rank, he was a veteran contender, and wouldn’t miss such a glaring pitfall.
So, Jiang Yuan continued to stay vigilant for any movement in his surroundings. As his left hand took out his last talisman from his backpack, his right hand fumbled for the light switch on the wall.
And in the dark, he felt an icy hand on the light switch.
—
Many had turned tail as Jiang Yuan had.
But more people had followed the larger part of the group, charging down to basement 2 without looking back.
“Thud, thud, thud—”
The iron plates rattled as they rushed down the steps, echoing through the dark stairwell. Everyone lost all sense of direction.
Under the dim light of the oil lamp, the darkness of basement 2 shakily retreated.
Rusted iron panels, peeling walls that were damp and mouldy and dripping with water. The gaps were completely filled with green moss.
The corridor was lined with an endless line of wards. Apart from the doors looking much more decrepit, it wouldn’t look much different from basement 1 at first glance. The only difference would be the mass of bodies lying on the floor, torn to shreds in a pool of dried blood.
In the panic, that wobbly oil lamp was carelessly knocked off by someone and fell to the ground, crashing apart.
Straightaway, the scene was plunged into a terrifying darkness.
Messiah instantly made a decision. “Split up and run, don’t get caught!”
In the darkness, no one knew who was who. People bumped and jostled against each other, stumbling about in their haste to find a hiding place.
In order not to be caught, everyone scattered and made a mad dash for it.
Compared to the others, Zong Jiu who had the key to clear the instance was rather relaxed. Not only did he have the spare energy to deliberately lose Sheng Yu, but he also entered a ward at random and crouched behind the door to survey the situation outside.
A few seconds later, the sound of footsteps subsided.
In its place was the eerie dragging sound that Zong Jiu and Zhuge An had heard in the washroom that day.
They had been transferred to the alternate dimensional space, a space fixed in time, perpetually exiled at a node thirty years ago.
Darkness flooded in like a tidal wave, and the dragging sound scraped across the uneven concrete floor, resounding through the crumbling corridor outside.
Most of the trainees had hidden, and a hush gripped the corridor once again.
Occasionally, the footfalls would stop, and in the second immediately after, a different sound would break the silence.
Each distinctive sound was proof of another person found.
A decapitated head rolling to the ground; a short, painful scream; fresh blood spraying.
From the noise outside, there seemed to be a group of veterans trying to group together and break through back upstairs.
Only Zong Jiu remained unperturbed as he crouched by the door, happy to watch the show.
He thought that he should know who the remaining mole was.
In the past two days in the mental asylum, only people who moved about alone would be dragged into the alternate dimensional space and find out the source of the instance. Under such a circumstance, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for everyone to flank together and search basement 2 together to resolve things.
Unfortunately, under the leadership of that man, everyone persevered to the last day and missed out on the largest piece of information. And they had held it off for the last day, which was most obviously the most dangerous time to be exploring downstairs.
What was more, they had missed several key clues, whether it was on purpose or not.
From the very beginning, he pointed everyone on a clear path down the ‘wrong’ direction, misleading and obscuring information, using his prestige and credibility to play everyone in the palm of his hand.
That man was so clever that he hadn’t even used a frontal approach. He played a good man with just a couple of sentences, easily making everyone wag their tails at him in gratefulness.
What was more interesting was that he was, in reality, the person secretly manipulating and fooling everyone.
The person who seemed most unlikely, the person who no one suspected—that would be the most suspicious person.
If Zong Jiu were Messiah, he would be roaring with laughter on the inside now.
Check it out. What foolish, laughably pathetic people.
“Thump. Thump. Thump.”
The footfalls in the corridor drew nearer, seemingly a few steps away from the quarters that Zong Jiu was in now. Every sound thrummed with a frequency like a drumbeat on the heart.
The white-haired young man, crouched on the ground, stretched out very leisurely.
The chance task was complete, and he had also entered the danger zone of basement 2; it was about time for him to exit the stage.
And as he yawned, thinking about reciting the key—
Stretching out, he suddenly bumped into a cold, hard watch.
Zong Jiu jerked his head up and, behind gold-rimmed glasses, met a pair of eyes glimmering with interest.
“Oh? Look at what I caught.”
The man’s voice was low, rich and sultry, like steamed milk melting into strong Darjeeling tea.
“Hm? A disobedient little kitten out breaking the rules?”
A sharp, numbing pain spread from his neck, and the choking smell of disinfectant enveloped Zong Jiu.
Never had he expected that the doctor in the white coat had been standing there long before he had entered the cramped room, waiting for prey to enter the snare.
The white-haired young man struggled to keep his eyes open, but all he could see was an increasingly blurred vision. Before passing out, his last thought was—
Goddamnit. The ship has capsized.
Zong Jiu expressed a very sincere attitude. Not only was he sincere, but he also took the initiative to tell the veterans the clue for that S-rank prop.
Although he said that Zhuge An had already taken the S-rank prop, it was still a clue, wasn’t it? At this, everyone’s attitudes towards Zong Jiu changed, and they implicitly accepted him as part of their group.
After the situation with Zong Jiu was resolved, Messiah, heading the command floor, quickly laid out a plan to go down to explore basement 2 instead of returning to their wards tonight, disregarding the room checks.
Before the plan was set in stone, all other voices were silenced.
But how safe was this plan, exactly? Most of the clues were conjectures He Jianlan and Messiah formed based on the attitudes of the nursing staff.
Despite He Jianlan and the others suppressing any opposition earlier, there were still newcomers furtively whispering to each other in the dining room after the plan was finalised.
Under the oppression of the veteran trainees, the newcomers who were quicker on their toes divided into several camps. There were those determined to follow the veterans blindly, licking their boots however much they could; there were also those who were intent on maximising their profits, taking advantage wherever they could.
Now, the camp of newcomers speaking were those who were more keen on profiteering. They weren’t willing to follow Messiah into neck-deep danger, thus began to calculate their little schemes.
“It’s already 10.30pm. If we go down to basement 2 now, isn’t it a little too late…”
As everyone knew, in horror instances, nighttime was a perpetual theme that couldn’t be circumvented.
The probability of an event occurring in the night in a horror instance was generally far greater than the probability of it occurring in the day. Terrifyingly, intimidatingly, overwhelmingly so.
“There’s so many of us, can His Holiness really protect all of us? Besides, didn’t you say that basement 2 wasn’t a good place to venture into? So why must we take the initiative to tackle it?”
“Yeah… Further, in the present situation, the ward should be the safest place to be. There are newcomers here who have eaten the pill too; they’ll be indisposed in a while.”
Messiah frowned. “Naturally, I will not force anyone who doesn’t wish to go.”
“But from our experience as veteran contenders, it’s true that the chances of something happening tonight are very high. The third day is bound to be the watershed moment for this instance; I won’t advise anyone to act alone.”
That newcomer camp dragged their feet around, hemming and hawing, not taking a stand.
“How about this.”
The golden-haired Holy Son smoothened out the crease between his eyebrows and didn’t insist on it. “For those who are willing to come with me down to basement 2, we’ll convene at the stairwell leading down there in ten minutes. As for those unwilling to join me, I will still place a blessing enchantment on everyone that stays behind.”
The newcomers nodded with alacrity, their faces radiant with joy.
Even the veterans knew that a blessing enchantment from the Holy Son was equivalent to a single-use special prop; its value need not be said.
Others who had agreed to go downstairs at first were also swayed, among which were several low-ranking veterans.
“Why don’t we stay in the wards too?”
A veteran frowned slightly. “It’s only the second day, anyway. And it isn’t as if Messiah won’t come back up, so why do we have to stick ourselves in danger? We can just stay in the wards and reap the fruits of their labour.”
“Exactly. The difficulty of this instance is close to S-rank after all… it’ll be pretty good if we can even survive this, who will have the mind to care about challenging danger zones?”
At first, those middling contenders had only signed up for Thriller Trainee due to the generous rewards and were confident coming up to the first instance. In the end, all of them were scared out of their wits.
The newcomers weren’t aware of what an S-rank instance signified; but the veterans couldn’t be more so. And now, the temptation of backing out had reared its ugly head.
Zong Jiu stood at one side, watching on coldly.
The sudden acceleration in the timeline had exposed all the holes in the tightly-knit temporary team centred around Messiah.
“Jiu-ge, you’re so incredible; you washed off the suspicion on us with barely a lift of your finger.”
Sheng Yu chattered from beside him. “What should we do now? Do we follow the Holy Son down to basement 2?”
“Otherwise?”
Zong Jiu asked him, “Are you afraid?”
“A little,” the high school student scratched his head. “But if Jiu-ge isn’t afraid, then I’m not.”
Of course you aren’t afraid, or else you wouldn’t have been so skilled at the whole charade of killing and dumping a body.
Zong Jiu said perfunctorily, “Then we’ll just follow along. We’re going to die anyway. With this many people, if we really die, since everyone’s buried together, at least we won’t get lonely.”
Everyone else, “…”
[ROFL I’m dying of laughter. I realised that this white-haired kid is really interesting; when he doesn’t speak, he looks as beautiful as a painting, and when he does, his expression is so prim and proper. But why is it so funny!]
[I wanted to say that too, he really likes to choke people speechless. He even asked Master Zhuge who Zhuge Liang was just now, at that time I even thought that he made up a name to jest that guy’s No. 3 status!]
[Oh man, but they’re right about to go to basement 2. Who knows if this E-rank can last till the end.]
What no one knew was that after Zhuge An left, Zong Jiu’s personal live broadcast had rocketed up to second place, just below the S-ranked Messiah. For a newcomer without any foundation, this was a preposterous achievement.
After this was settled, everyone no longer dallied around. Those who went to the stairwell, went to the stairwell; those who went back to the wards to rest, went back to their wards.
Zong Jiu used the past ten minutes to watch Messiah take out the high priest’s staff and apply the blessing to each person whilst mulling over the clues he had received from Zhuge An.
He wasn’t bothered about telling that clue to others.
After all, without sufficient information, other trainees would be just as confused. Even Zong Jiu, after combining what he knew of the plot with his own guesses, had to grope around in the dark before perfecting the full puzzle with Zhuge An’s hint.
The clues he got from this free-meal ticket were quite comprehensive.
Iteuf Cc rjlv atja atf lcafufg yfakffc atgff jcv obeg kjr cb wbgf atjc j wfajqtbg jcv jc jiafgcjalnf cjwf. Par agef rbiealbc gfqgfrfcafv atf xfs ab agjnfi ogffis yfakffc atf jiafgcjalnf vlwfcrlbcji rqjmf jcv atf gfueijg rqjmf.
Cr atf kbgvr lwqilfv, atlr xfs kjrc’a rbwfatlcu atja mbeiv yf fzqijlcfv qegfis ogbw j wjatfwjalmji qfgrqfmalnf.
The x and y-axes formed a world with a two-dimensional plane.
The x, y, z-axes formed a world with a three-dimensional plane.
The four-dimensional plane was a spatial concept that existed in human physics.
Zhuge An learned from the library of this mental asylum that a four dimensional space wasn’t just a four dimensional space in the broad sense, but a space-time theory proposed by Minkowski in 1907 leveraging non-Euclidean space. In this theory, there was a space-time line in addition to the xyz-axes, which then constituted a restricted four-dimensional concept.
Humans on Earth lived in a three-dimensional world.
People in a three-dimensional world looked down on a two-dimensional world; people in a four-dimensional world looked down on a three-dimensional world.
The gods of human imagination, for example, were very likely higher-dimensional beings.
In reality, dimensions cannot transcend beyond dimensions, and it was impossible for such transcendence to happen.
But in a horror instance, anything was possible.
This instance gave them a gateway between a three-dimensional space and a four-dimensional space, and as long as they had the key between three and four, they could traverse between the different times in these dimensional spaces.
Zhuge An told him, the alternate dimensional space actually existed in this mental asylum thirty years ago.
Once, the military base in this instance was dedicated to researching time travel during the war, only to have an accident happen in the middle of their research. The dimensional rift caused the base to be torn from time thirty years ago, and all the researchers in the base had become prisoners of time, roaming in a strange dimension without any way out.
Years later, a mental asylum was established in the same location, and there still existed that broken road to the alternate dimension.
The system did give them enough hints.
The main task was to ‘survive in this instance for three days’.
In actuality, according to Zhuge An’s deduction, as soon as the clock struck midnight on the third day, all the patients in the asylum would be instantly dragged into the alternate dimensional space like tossing meat into a lion’s den.
Possessing the key gave the power to traverse time. As long as they got the key and traversed to any random node in time after the three days, they could achieve a perfect clearance. If they were to delay until the third day as dictated by the main task, the only road greeting the trainees would be the road to death.
The first night as everyone slept, Zhuge An used the Taiji Eight Trigrams to go on a nighttime excursion.
The second night when Messiah and the rest were struggling to find a clue, Zhuge An had already figured out the kernel of the instance.
Zong Jiu knew the ciphertext ‘pnpso’, knew that it was encrypted by Vigenère cipher, and with Zhuge An’s hint, had the key right on the tip of his tongue.
Like an exam, while others were still scratching their heads for an answer, Zong Jiu had already copied the correct answer from the study god.
Zong Jiu wholeheartedly felt that he should give Zhuge An a round of applause, so he deftly tossed the dirty laundry to him as a gift.
If he wanted to, he could now also recite the key and become the second person to pass with the effort it took to blow away a speck of dust. There wasn’t any need for him to follow Messiah and the others to adventure down basement 2.
But he guessed that Zhuge An likely hadn’t taken the S-rank prop in this instance. At that time, the other had obviously left in a hurry, and there was a high probability that the reason for his urgency was related to the ‘prophecy’ he had mentioned.
Zong Jiu wasn’t concerned about what type of prophecy that was. In any case, he didn’t really believe in it either.
What he cared about was how to challenge more danger zones, accumulate more survival points, and see if he could snatch that S-rank prop on the sly; there wasn’t any harm in trying for such a prop.
Before he had gotten the key, Zong Jiu was already so bold; was he going to stop now that he had the key?!
That would be too fake!
Yeah! So what if they were mortal enemies decreed by fate, did Zong Jiu ever care?
You’d die if you don’t die trying! Could men who didn’t seek thrills be called men? What kind of magician would he be if he didn’t even dare to challenge the danger zones!
Dig out the moles and earn survival points like a good ol’ salary man, let’s go!
A line of people stood at the landing of the basement 1 stairwell.
The bottom was as dark as before. It was impossible to see the way, and even the steps were barely an outline in the dim light.
“Your Holiness, I’ve gotten the lamp!”
Just as everyone was waiting, He Jianlan hastily walked over from the corridor, carrying a wobbly oil lamp in his hand.
Zong Jiu took a closer look and realised that it was the same lamp the nurse had carried in her hand when doing room checks. On the first day, Zong Jiu had even seen her carrying it down to basement 2. He Jianlan had most likely stolen it by unknown means to obtain it in the present.
“That’s good.”
The golden-haired Holy Son released a long exhale in relief. Then, he lifted the wooden staff from the newcomer’s shoulder. The latter felt a warm stream of heat flowing through his body, and an additional golden mark appearing at the back of his hand.
“This blessing enchantment is a single-use shield capable of resisting damage once.”
Messiah rubbed his temples wearily. “We don’t have much time. Let’s hurry.”
After inexplicably spiriting past ten hours, the flow of time had become noticeably abnormal.
They had made up their minds not to return the ward for the room-checks, so it would be considered a nighttime excursion. At night, the nursing staff would step up their patrols, so if they were caught, they would have a one-way ticket to death.
Everyone looked down the dark stairwell to basement 2, and breathed in deeply.
“I’ll take the lead,” Qin Ye said.
As he held his palm upwards with his fingers in a loose grip, everyone noticed with a start that the tips of his nails started to tint a sharp, deep black, and the hair on this arm turned into concrete grey fur, completing the partial transformation from human to fierce beast.
The blessing of a werewolf allowed the blessed to achieve partial transformation into a werewolf. This was Qin Ye’s trump card.
The others also quickly found their places.
As the healer, Messiah was securely shielded in the centre, with the psychic Meng Tianlu on his left, and He Jianlan with his knotted lasso on his right.
Zong Jiu and Sheng Yu were at the fringe of the group, but their positions were a little towards the back of the group.
The other trainees who intended to stay behind on basement 1 were also watching them, intending to see them off at the stairwell before heading back to their wards.
Just then, the hour hand, which had not yet reached eleven o’clock advanced by one step again, squarely landing on twelve.
Cold fear shot up their spines.
It was no longer the second day, but the third!
The third day, which unleashed a hellwave of ultimate horror!
[Holy shit! I almost died of shock!!]
[Oh my lord, this nurse’s face is as white as a ghost, my soul almost flew away when she appeared.]
[Fuck, time sped up again. It’s already the third day, they’re so screwed, they haven’t even found any clues yet. I’m panicking. At this rate, I feel like it’s going to be a mass wipeout.]
Under such a situation, no one cared about the formation, solely fleeing in shock.
A few of them were so scared that they ran back towards the wards on basement 1, only to hear the sound of the door locking behind them after they rushed in.
The mental asylum locked its doors at night. Once the nurses locked the doors after the room checks, it was impossible to leave the ward for the night.
Jiang Yuan angrily hammered the door. “Let me out!”
But the nurse outside only replied with an eerie smile. She put the key in her mouth, and swallowed it.
Like teasing prey, she only bared her mouth a fraction, looking as if she were about to pounce past the window the next second.
It wasn’t a human mouth in any sense, but a bloody mouth full of fangs covered in scarlet, viscous blood.
Jiang Yuan took a few steps backwards in fright. As quickly as he could, he took out his special prop from his system backpack and stuck a cinnabar sealing talisman onto the glass window on the iron door.
“Sizzle—”
The split second that the talisman was attached, fire ignited from the corners and it spontaneously began to combust.
The spontaneous combustion of the talisman meant that the thing outside wasn’t a benign person, but a being with extremely heavy yin energy.
This talisman was a consumable prop. Jiang Yuan didn’t have many of them on hand, so he had used them sparingly.
But he didn’t feel any reluctance over using it; nothing was more important than his life.
As Jiang Yuan watched the face outside the glass window burn to the point of peeling and disappear into the smoke with a howl, his heart swelled with pleasure.
“Damn that ghost bitch!”
His back was drenched in cold sweat. When he finally snapped back to his senses, he found that his legs were too weak to even stand up.
After recovering for half a minute, Jiang Yuan then climbed up from the ground.
The lights on basement 1 were dim, and his visibility of the corridor outside was limited. He couldn’t see anything at all. It was as silent as a tomb.
That nurse had locked the door earlier; this meant that Jiang Yuan could only stay alone in the ward for the rest of the night.
He cautiously looked away from the door and looked over his shoulder again.
The ward was as dark and dreary as before.
Jiang Yuan plastered his back to the wall, keeping an eye out for any motion around him.
As a rule, after burning a talisman earlier, no being with heavy yin energy would want to proactively approach this ward in the near future.
But Jiang Yuan still kept in mind that this was an instance with a close to S-rank difficulty level.
The higher the difficulty level, the shorter this respite would be. Although he was only a C-rank, he was a veteran contender, and wouldn’t miss such a glaring pitfall.
So, Jiang Yuan continued to stay vigilant for any movement in his surroundings. As his left hand took out his last talisman from his backpack, his right hand fumbled for the light switch on the wall.
And in the dark, he felt an icy hand on the light switch.
—
Many had turned tail as Jiang Yuan had.
But more people had followed the larger part of the group, charging down to basement 2 without looking back.
“Thud, thud, thud—”
The iron plates rattled as they rushed down the steps, echoing through the dark stairwell. Everyone lost all sense of direction.
Under the dim light of the oil lamp, the darkness of basement 2 shakily retreated.
Rusted iron panels, peeling walls that were damp and mouldy and dripping with water. The gaps were completely filled with green moss.
The corridor was lined with an endless line of wards. Apart from the doors looking much more decrepit, it wouldn’t look much different from basement 1 at first glance. The only difference would be the mass of bodies lying on the floor, torn to shreds in a pool of dried blood.
In the panic, that wobbly oil lamp was carelessly knocked off by someone and fell to the ground, crashing apart.
Straightaway, the scene was plunged into a terrifying darkness.
Messiah instantly made a decision. “Split up and run, don’t get caught!”
In the darkness, no one knew who was who. People bumped and jostled against each other, stumbling about in their haste to find a hiding place.
In order not to be caught, everyone scattered and made a mad dash for it.
Compared to the others, Zong Jiu who had the key to clear the instance was rather relaxed. Not only did he have the spare energy to deliberately lose Sheng Yu, but he also entered a ward at random and crouched behind the door to survey the situation outside.
A few seconds later, the sound of footsteps subsided.
In its place was the eerie dragging sound that Zong Jiu and Zhuge An had heard in the washroom that day.
They had been transferred to the alternate dimensional space, a space fixed in time, perpetually exiled at a node thirty years ago.
Darkness flooded in like a tidal wave, and the dragging sound scraped across the uneven concrete floor, resounding through the crumbling corridor outside.
Most of the trainees had hidden, and a hush gripped the corridor once again.
Occasionally, the footfalls would stop, and in the second immediately after, a different sound would break the silence.
Each distinctive sound was proof of another person found.
A decapitated head rolling to the ground; a short, painful scream; fresh blood spraying.
From the noise outside, there seemed to be a group of veterans trying to group together and break through back upstairs.
Only Zong Jiu remained unperturbed as he crouched by the door, happy to watch the show.
He thought that he should know who the remaining mole was.
In the past two days in the mental asylum, only people who moved about alone would be dragged into the alternate dimensional space and find out the source of the instance. Under such a circumstance, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for everyone to flank together and search basement 2 together to resolve things.
Unfortunately, under the leadership of that man, everyone persevered to the last day and missed out on the largest piece of information. And they had held it off for the last day, which was most obviously the most dangerous time to be exploring downstairs.
What was more, they had missed several key clues, whether it was on purpose or not.
From the very beginning, he pointed everyone on a clear path down the ‘wrong’ direction, misleading and obscuring information, using his prestige and credibility to play everyone in the palm of his hand.
That man was so clever that he hadn’t even used a frontal approach. He played a good man with just a couple of sentences, easily making everyone wag their tails at him in gratefulness.
What was more interesting was that he was, in reality, the person secretly manipulating and fooling everyone.
The person who seemed most unlikely, the person who no one suspected—that would be the most suspicious person.
If Zong Jiu were Messiah, he would be roaring with laughter on the inside now.
Check it out. What foolish, laughably pathetic people.
“Thump. Thump. Thump.”
The footfalls in the corridor drew nearer, seemingly a few steps away from the quarters that Zong Jiu was in now. Every sound thrummed with a frequency like a drumbeat on the heart.
The white-haired young man, crouched on the ground, stretched out very leisurely.
The chance task was complete, and he had also entered the danger zone of basement 2; it was about time for him to exit the stage.
And as he yawned, thinking about reciting the key—
Stretching out, he suddenly bumped into a cold, hard watch.
Zong Jiu jerked his head up and, behind gold-rimmed glasses, met a pair of eyes glimmering with interest.
“Oh? Look at what I caught.”
The man’s voice was low, rich and sultry, like steamed milk melting into strong Darjeeling tea.
“Hm? A disobedient little kitten out breaking the rules?”
A sharp, numbing pain spread from his neck, and the choking smell of disinfectant enveloped Zong Jiu.
Never had he expected that the doctor in the white coat had been standing there long before he had entered the cramped room, waiting for prey to enter the snare.
The white-haired young man struggled to keep his eyes open, but all he could see was an increasingly blurred vision. Before passing out, his last thought was—
Goddamnit. The ship has capsized.
