Mental Asylum
pnpso
“Have you heard?! Something happened to an F-rank last night!”
At seven o’clock in the morning, after the nurses had unlocked the doors to each ward, all the trainees rushed to get out of bed. After a hasty shower, they gathered in the dining room, buzzing over the events of last night.
After Zong Jiu returned Sheng Yu to the ward, he went to the reading room and told Messiah about the missing guy in glasses.
The veterans exchanged glances with each other, unanimously dropped the intelligence-gathering at hand, and searched the entirety of the ground floor and basement 1.
The first death usually brought a lot of information. If the corpse could be found, even the source of the horrific happenings could be deduced.
Contenders couldn’t survive in the infinite loop without at least a little basic knowledge of forensic science.
Strangely enough, despite searching the two floors upside down from ten o’clock to when the nurses conducted room checks at eleven o’clock, it was completely fruitless.
But they ended up finally finding the corpse of the guy in glasses in the dirty sink of the washroom on the basement floor.
The word ‘corpse’ wasn’t quite appropriate.
Because what they had found in the sink was a human head mop, made from a wooden stick pounded into the marrow of the brain.
The guy in glasses was male with a crew cut; it was natural then that his hair wasn’t very long, if at all. But the end of the mop had thick strips of cloth around it, not only perfectly concealing the head, but also properly holding it in place and making it a usable mop.
If it weren’t for one of the trainees who inadvertently glancing through the gaps in the cloth strips and seeing a pair of dead, white eyes, no one would have thought that in this short span of time, the guy in glasses not only had his head severed from his body, but would also be hanging where they had searched countless times over, this blatantly in plain sight.
Let alone the people who were on the scene itself, even the bullet chat was shivering in trepidation.
“This is just something I heard, but that F-rank purportedly died in a very gruesome manner, and they haven’t been able to recover the rest of the body even till now. Those experienced veterans are saying that such a brutal death was truly very rare.”
“What… if even the veterans are saying this, then what are we newcomers supposed to do? Aren’t we just waiting for death like this?”
When Zong Jiu walked in, the dining room was already steeped in a thick atmosphere of sadness and gloom.
He greeted Sheng Yu. As he scooped himself a bowl of congee, he saw Messiah approaching with a two-person portion of buns and fried dough sticks.
“Together?”
Zong Jiu nodded and followed behind the golden-haired Holy Son, sitting at the middlemost table.
Apart from him, there were quite a few others sitting at this table. Closer inspection would show that their entire table was comprised of those veteran trainees who hadn’t swallowed the pill last night, all of whom were at least B-rank.
Like a host of small stars clustered around a bright moon, others covetly observed this middlemost table.
“Geez, this white-haired guy sure is something. They actually let him mix in with them.”
“What a stroke of luck. Who knows how much of a role that face played in it.”
People whispered, “Not to mention the Holy Son, even Qin Ye and the rest; those sitting there are all bigshots. He’s only an E-rank, isn’t he afraid of falling to his death!”
Although these words dripped with venom, everyone had to concede defeat to that face of Zong Jiu’s. At the same time, they knew deep down in their guts:
The core command hierarchy of this instance had been established.
This was also the way in the past when large groups entered instances. The leaders would command, and the others would be fine as long as they obeyed them. If they obtained any props, the people on the command floor would have the priority of distribution, and could also get a lion’s share of survival points when the instance was settled.
Not to mention how chummy that E-rank and the Holy Son looked. If he was able to fall in No. 7’s good graces, he could live out the rest of his life without fear, and without worry about his status.
However, the atmosphere at the middlemost table was rather strange.
Zong Jiu was being alienated.
Aside from the kind-hearted Messiah, who knew that he had a handicap and had helped him take his breakfast, everyone else at the table was ignoring him, be it with or without conscious design.
They were all grown adults, but they were still engaging in such elementary school tactics.
Zong Jiu was between laughter and tears.
No one paid attention to him. Nevertheless, he was more than happy to accept this, and he slowly ate as he listened in to the others exchanging information.
After the guy in glasses died, Zong Jiu’s prescience of the plot ceased to exist. Under such circumstances, intelligence became all the more important.
But the good thing was that compared to the other people who were groping about in the dark, Zong Jiu already had a complete advantage. Not only had he almost locked down on the potential candidates for the hidden moles, he was also getting closer and closer to uncovering the source of this instance.
He had to challenge the danger zones, and he couldn’t let go of the chance task. He had to tightly seize any opportunity with both hands; wherever there was a way to earn survival points, there was bound to be Zong Jiu’s figure, hard at work, oh yeah!
Messiah lightly knocked the table. “Did you find anything new yesterday when you stayed behind in the library and reading room?”
Curiously enough, even though the asylum looked run down and unbelievably filthy, the library was a spacious place.
Wasn’t it possible that a mental patient would still like to read?
“Nothing,” the trainee in charge of checking the library shook his head. “The books in the library are all highly specialised books. There are no records about this place.”
“How about the reading room?” The golden-haired Holy Son turned his gaze onto He Jianlan.
“Aside from the report we found last night, the other reports are extremely sketchy. The only clue that can be established was that it was a base years ago and that something terrifying happened.”
He Jianlan said cautiously, “We didn’t have enough time to investigate last night. If we strictly follow the allotted time for search today, we should be able to find more clues.”
Upon the mention of last night’s events, everyone fell silent.
It wasn’t that they feared the way the guy in glasses had died. After all, they had all been in the infinite loop for so long and had climbed to this rank; what manner of gruesome deaths had they not seen?
What actually concerned them was that there weren’t any traces of how it happened.
Last night, Sheng Yu had slept deeply due to the influence of the medicine he ingested, and the rest was relayed by Zong Jiu on his behalf.
“We’ll ask the F-rank who was at the scene of the incident later to see if there was anything that he missed.”
Everyone agreed in unison.
“Then the objective for the morning is clear.”
The golden-haired Holy Son interlocked his fingers. “One team to the reading room, one team to the library, one team to search basement 1, one team to find a way to extract information from the NPC nurses, and one team to go back and investigate the crime scene. We can definitely find clues by following threads in tangent.”
Out of the blue, Qin Ye spoke, “There’s still a person who hasn’t returned.”
“Who?”
His reply was concise. “Vincent.”
The people around the table exchanged a shocked look.
Vincent was an A-rank, as well as second-in-command of the Night Clan and No. 2’s right hand man. Naturally, his strength should be of a certain standard as well. Even if he wasn’t as powerful as the top S-ranks, he was one of the long-established contenders in the infinite loop and couldn’t be underestimated.
And as everyone was well aware, the people of the Night Clan had a gift. They had once accepted a vampire’s bite.
There were all sorts of horror instances in the infinite loop, among which there were more than a few with themes that revolved around vampires. One particularly famous A-rank instance called ‘The Dark Castle’ had a way to turn humans into half-vampires.
However, since vampire blood was highly venomous and humans could die at any time during the transformation process, few contenders had the courage to choose such a path, for the pain of transformation amounted to suicide.
But the risk was always proportional to the return. If the conversion to a half-vampire was successful, they could not only receive a great enhancement to their physique, they would also get the natural ability of vampires and would no longer need to look for special props.
Van Zhuo, now ranked No. 2, once received the blood from a vampiric prince in an S-rank instance called ‘Dark Abyss’. His strength grew exponentially, reaching what was practically the peak of the ‘human’ race defined by the main system, thus becoming second to only one, above tens of thousands.
Qin Ye’s reason for caution towards Vincent was very simple; he had once received the blessing of a werewolf in a horror instance.
Werewolves and vampires were natural enemies. If Vincent had appeared in this instance, Qin Ye would most certainly be the first to know about it. Having received the blessing of a werewolf, his sense of smell was exceptionally sharp.
Qin Ye went on to say, “When we first entered the instance yesterday, Lao He and I had teamed up together. As we made our way upstairs, we saw him walking out of the ward next door. Yet he hadn’t come to the dining room. I guess that he might have wanted to get the lead on gathering clues, and had gone straight to exploring on his own.”
Since Qin Ye said so, of course everyone would want to believe him. But this information was too outlandish.
“Missing for a whole night… It couldn’t be, right?”
Vampires, by nature, were a terrifying race favoured by the night, and so were half-vampires.
Besides the fact that this mental asylum didn’t seem to have a single window, the days were as dark as the nights, not a shred of sunlight able to come in. According to reason, vampires would take to this environment like fish to water, and could even get a boost to their abilities.
Furthermore, Vincent himself was a very seasoned contender with a wealth of experience. No one would believe it if anyone said he was the first death right at the opening of an instance.
“But we searched the entirety of the ground floor and basement 1 yesterday, including the empty wards. And we never saw any traces of Vincent’s existence.”
“No.”
Messiah murmured, “There are still two places that we haven’t been to.”
Silence descended on the table.
Indeed, there were two places that they haven’t been to. Firstly, the locked iron door on the southern end of the ground floor. Secondly, basement 2.
The lock on the iron door in the southern end was incredibly sturdy, and the door was immovable by force. There wasn’t any way for them to explore further beyond.
As for basement 2, there wasn’t any light at all. It was a blanket of darkness when looking down from basement 1’s stairwell, and the steps were in a terrible state of disrepair, as if they hadn’t been maintained even once in decades.
They had planned to go downstairs to look for the guy in glasses yesterday, but they had just reached the top of the stairs when a B-rank psychic in the team suddenly turned pale and straightaway dropped into a dead faint.
Psychics were a very rare constitution, and similarly could only be triggered in special instances. Although they didn’t have high combat power, their perception was a first-class gift which could effectively deal with things out of the ordinary. Generally, most large organisations would take in one or two.
There was only one psychic in this venue. After it was confirmed that this instance was a supernatural instance, everyone treated him like a panda (read: national treasure).
Upon waking up, the psychic’s face showed undisguised fear. The first words out his mouth were—
“Don’t… don’t go down. You’ll die.”
For this reason, they had temporarily avoided basement 2.
But from the looks of it, if they finished searching all other places without finding any clues, the result would be quite obvious.
They only had three days. Today was counted as the first day.
Following the law of horror instances, the more they delayed, the more uncontrollable the situation would become.
If they didn’t manage to gather more clues by noon, then they could only attack it headlong.
“Basement 2 is unimaginably dangerous; don’t take any liberties.”
Messiah’s expression was stony. “We’ll wait until all parties have compiled the clues and intelligence by noon today, then we’ll take a vote to decide.”
“Let’s have breakfast first.”
After they finished their discussion, Zong Jiu also just happened to finish eating.
Zong Jiu had nothing to do after finishing his breakfast. His head rested against an arm, and he let his long silver ponytail flow down his back as he continued to mull over what he had seen on the wall yesterday.
Last night, Zong Jiu had slept in Messiah’s ward with a few other veterans. He had voluntarily moved his bedding over to sleep in the corner, but never expected that he would find a strange string of letters on the wall.
pnpso.
This clearly didn’t constitute any word, yet it caught Zong Jiu’s attention.
In order to make sure that this string of letters wasn’t a coincidence, Zong Jiu deliberately turned a corner after washing up this morning, and went to the room that belonged to him, ward 12.
Sure enough, amidst the mathematical formulas densely covering the wall of ward 12, the string of letters pnpso also appeared, only that it was less obvious and slightly harder to recognise.
Zong Jiu randomly went into a few other wards, and found that they were all without exception.
It was no coincidence that it appeared so many times, it was apparent that someone had deliberately scrawled this.
But what was the meaning behind these letters?
Zong Jiu had a hunch that he had found a major clue. He was just missing certain bits of key information that blocked him from cracking it open.
As for the others?
With the system clearly telling them that there was a mole among them, how could Zong Jiu do as foolish a thing as lifting a stone only to slam it on his own foot?
The young white-haired man narrowed his eyes, completely uncaring about the others’ indifference to him. Instead, he took pleasure in it.
Whether or not they could discover this major clue was naturally a matter of their own ability. By relying on others for hints, wouldn’t the fun of solving a mystery be taken away?
As a magician who specialised in bringing wonder and joy to people, Zong Jiu certainly wouldn’t spoil everyone’s fun.
The trainees were just midway through their breakfast when the familiar, crisp sound of high heels once again rang out from the depths of the building.
The head nurse appeared in the doorway with a white sheet of paper in her hand, and began calling out their numbers.
“Number 1 and 7, number 3 and 12, number 5 and 9, number 2 and 16…”
The trainees whose serial numbers were read out looked at each other, wondering what was going on.
Soon, everyone’s numbers were mentioned one by one. The head nurse announced with a frosty look, “These are the sleeping arrangements for tonight.”
Her face was grim. “You were clever last night. But I advise you best not to turn to trickery again. If there are any more cases of multiple people sleeping together in one ward like last night, the asylum will deal with it as a violation of the rules straightaway.”
Horror filled the eyes of the newcomers.
“Then what should we do tonight… Two people to a dorm, that’s too dangerous, isn’t it?”
Thanks to the Holy Son’s plan, everyone was able to get through the night safe and sound. But now the medical staff were clearly greatly discontented with their evasive maneuvers, and had directly come up with a corresponding countermeasure to cut off this loophole.
On the contrary, none of the trainees at the middlemost table showed much reaction, continuing to eat with their heads down.
The veterans knew clearly. Perhaps this gambit might have won them a brief respite at the outset, but it could never be a long-term solution. This was the way all horror instances were.
The one solution that had completely gotten past a loophole in the rules was, thankfully, able to carry them through a night. But they would never pin all their hopes on it.
After this announcement, the head nurse gestured to the nurse behind her to report the schedule for the day.
“At eight o’clock, all patients will gather in front of the iron gate on the southern end of the ground floor.”
“Dr. Chu is in a good mood today, so he intends to allow you to personally observe the treatment process for mental patients in this asylum.”
Another commotion burst out from the crowd.
[Shock! There’s even a doctor!]
[That’s true, how can a mental asylum only have nursing staff and no doctors? I was curious about it before, and by jolly, I suppose you were just waiting for the right time.]
[The treatment doesn’t sound like it can be anything good at all… I can’t do it, I have to spam the bullet chat to block the screen with my comments, and save my heart.]
The young white-haired man rubbed his stiff fingers without saying a word.
Compared to personally observing the treatment, Zong Jiu was more concerned about the ward arrangement the head nurse had mentioned earlier.
He was number 12. And for the better or the worse, number 3 was none other than Zhuge An.
Thriller Trainee – Mental Asylum
Translated by luckykoi Edited by snoflakesun
Please don’t repost or re-translate.
Mental Asylum
pnpso
“Have you heard?! Something happened to an F-rank last night!”
At seven o’clock in the morning, after the nurses had unlocked the doors to each ward, all the trainees rushed to get out of bed. After a hasty shower, they gathered in the dining room, buzzing over the events of last night.
After Zong Jiu returned Sheng Yu to the ward, he went to the reading room and told Messiah about the missing guy in glasses.
The veterans exchanged glances with each other, unanimously dropped the intelligence-gathering at hand, and searched the entirety of the ground floor and basement 1.
The first death usually brought a lot of information. If the corpse could be found, even the source of the horrific happenings could be deduced.
Contenders couldn’t survive in the infinite loop without at least a little basic knowledge of forensic science.
Strangely enough, despite searching the two floors upside down from ten o’clock to when the nurses conducted room checks at eleven o’clock, it was completely fruitless.
But they ended up finally finding the corpse of the guy in glasses in the dirty sink of the washroom on the basement floor.
The word ‘corpse’ wasn’t quite appropriate.
Because what they had found in the sink was a human head mop, made from a wooden stick pounded into the marrow of the brain.
The guy in glasses was male with a crew cut; it was natural then that his hair wasn’t very long, if at all. But the end of the mop had thick strips of cloth around it, not only perfectly concealing the head, but also properly holding it in place and making it a usable mop.
If it weren’t for one of the trainees who inadvertently glancing through the gaps in the cloth strips and seeing a pair of dead, white eyes, no one would have thought that in this short span of time, the guy in glasses not only had his head severed from his body, but would also be hanging where they had searched countless times over, this blatantly in plain sight.
Let alone the people who were on the scene itself, even the bullet chat was shivering in trepidation.
“This is just something I heard, but that F-rank purportedly died in a very gruesome manner, and they haven’t been able to recover the rest of the body even till now. Those experienced veterans are saying that such a brutal death was truly very rare.”
“What… if even the veterans are saying this, then what are we newcomers supposed to do? Aren’t we just waiting for death like this?”
When Zong Jiu walked in, the dining room was already steeped in a thick atmosphere of sadness and gloom.
He greeted Sheng Yu. As he scooped himself a bowl of congee, he saw Messiah approaching with a two-person portion of buns and fried dough sticks.
“Together?”
Zong Jiu nodded and followed behind the golden-haired Holy Son, sitting at the middlemost table.
Apart from him, there were quite a few others sitting at this table. Closer inspection would show that their entire table was comprised of those veteran trainees who hadn’t swallowed the pill last night, all of whom were at least B-rank.
Like a host of small stars clustered around a bright moon, others covetly observed this middlemost table.
“Geez, this white-haired guy sure is something. They actually let him mix in with them.”
“What a stroke of luck. Who knows how much of a role that face played in it.”
People whispered, “Not to mention the Holy Son, even Qin Ye and the rest; those sitting there are all bigshots. He’s only an E-rank, isn’t he afraid of falling to his death!”
Although these words dripped with venom, everyone had to concede defeat to that face of Zong Jiu’s. At the same time, they knew deep down in their guts:
The core command hierarchy of this instance had been established.
This was also the way in the past when large groups entered instances. The leaders would command, and the others would be fine as long as they obeyed them. If they obtained any props, the people on the command floor would have the priority of distribution, and could also get a lion’s share of survival points when the instance was settled.
Not to mention how chummy that E-rank and the Holy Son looked. If he was able to fall in No. 7’s good graces, he could live out the rest of his life without fear, and without worry about his status.
However, the atmosphere at the middlemost table was rather strange.
Zong Jiu was being alienated.
Aside from the kind-hearted Messiah, who knew that he had a handicap and had helped him take his breakfast, everyone else at the table was ignoring him, be it with or without conscious design.
They were all grown adults, but they were still engaging in such elementary school tactics.
Zong Jiu was between laughter and tears.
No one paid attention to him. Nevertheless, he was more than happy to accept this, and he slowly ate as he listened in to the others exchanging information.
After the guy in glasses died, Zong Jiu’s prescience of the plot ceased to exist. Under such circumstances, intelligence became all the more important.
But the good thing was that compared to the other people who were groping about in the dark, Zong Jiu already had a complete advantage. Not only had he almost locked down on the potential candidates for the hidden moles, he was also getting closer and closer to uncovering the source of this instance.
He had to challenge the danger zones, and he couldn’t let go of the chance task. He had to tightly seize any opportunity with both hands; wherever there was a way to earn survival points, there was bound to be Zong Jiu’s figure, hard at work, oh yeah!
Messiah lightly knocked the table. “Did you find anything new yesterday when you stayed behind in the library and reading room?”
Curiously enough, even though the asylum looked run down and unbelievably filthy, the library was a spacious place.
Wasn’t it possible that a mental patient would still like to read?
“Nothing,” the trainee in charge of checking the library shook his head. “The books in the library are all highly specialised books. There are no records about this place.”
“How about the reading room?” The golden-haired Holy Son turned his gaze onto He Jianlan.
“Aside from the report we found last night, the other reports are extremely sketchy. The only clue that can be established was that it was a base years ago and that something terrifying happened.”
He Jianlan said cautiously, “We didn’t have enough time to investigate last night. If we strictly follow the allotted time for search today, we should be able to find more clues.”
Upon the mention of last night’s events, everyone fell silent.
It wasn’t that they feared the way the guy in glasses had died. After all, they had all been in the infinite loop for so long and had climbed to this rank; what manner of gruesome deaths had they not seen?
What actually concerned them was that there weren’t any traces of how it happened.
Last night, Sheng Yu had slept deeply due to the influence of the medicine he ingested, and the rest was relayed by Zong Jiu on his behalf.
“We’ll ask the F-rank who was at the scene of the incident later to see if there was anything that he missed.”
Everyone agreed in unison.
“Then the objective for the morning is clear.”
The golden-haired Holy Son interlocked his fingers. “One team to the reading room, one team to the library, one team to search basement 1, one team to find a way to extract information from the NPC nurses, and one team to go back and investigate the crime scene. We can definitely find clues by following threads in tangent.”
Out of the blue, Qin Ye spoke, “There’s still a person who hasn’t returned.”
“Who?”
His reply was concise. “Vincent.”
The people around the table exchanged a shocked look.
Vincent was an A-rank, as well as second-in-command of the Night Clan and No. 2’s right hand man. Naturally, his strength should be of a certain standard as well. Even if he wasn’t as powerful as the top S-ranks, he was one of the long-established contenders in the infinite loop and couldn’t be underestimated.
And as everyone was well aware, the people of the Night Clan had a gift. They had once accepted a vampire’s bite.
There were all sorts of horror instances in the infinite loop, among which there were more than a few with themes that revolved around vampires. One particularly famous A-rank instance called ‘The Dark Castle’ had a way to turn humans into half-vampires.
However, since vampire blood was highly venomous and humans could die at any time during the transformation process, few contenders had the courage to choose such a path, for the pain of transformation amounted to suicide.
But the risk was always proportional to the return. If the conversion to a half-vampire was successful, they could not only receive a great enhancement to their physique, they would also get the natural ability of vampires and would no longer need to look for special props.
Van Zhuo, now ranked No. 2, once received the blood from a vampiric prince in an S-rank instance called ‘Dark Abyss’. His strength grew exponentially, reaching what was practically the peak of the ‘human’ race defined by the main system, thus becoming second to only one, above tens of thousands.
Qin Ye’s reason for caution towards Vincent was very simple; he had once received the blessing of a werewolf in a horror instance.
Werewolves and vampires were natural enemies. If Vincent had appeared in this instance, Qin Ye would most certainly be the first to know about it. Having received the blessing of a werewolf, his sense of smell was exceptionally sharp.
Qin Ye went on to say, “When we first entered the instance yesterday, Lao He and I had teamed up together. As we made our way upstairs, we saw him walking out of the ward next door. Yet he hadn’t come to the dining room. I guess that he might have wanted to get the lead on gathering clues, and had gone straight to exploring on his own.”
Since Qin Ye said so, of course everyone would want to believe him. But this information was too outlandish.
“Missing for a whole night… It couldn’t be, right?”
Vampires, by nature, were a terrifying race favoured by the night, and so were half-vampires.
Besides the fact that this mental asylum didn’t seem to have a single window, the days were as dark as the nights, not a shred of sunlight able to come in. According to reason, vampires would take to this environment like fish to water, and could even get a boost to their abilities.
Furthermore, Vincent himself was a very seasoned contender with a wealth of experience. No one would believe it if anyone said he was the first death right at the opening of an instance.
“But we searched the entirety of the ground floor and basement 1 yesterday, including the empty wards. And we never saw any traces of Vincent’s existence.”
“No.”
Messiah murmured, “There are still two places that we haven’t been to.”
Silence descended on the table.
Indeed, there were two places that they haven’t been to. Firstly, the locked iron door on the southern end of the ground floor. Secondly, basement 2.
The lock on the iron door in the southern end was incredibly sturdy, and the door was immovable by force. There wasn’t any way for them to explore further beyond.
As for basement 2, there wasn’t any light at all. It was a blanket of darkness when looking down from basement 1’s stairwell, and the steps were in a terrible state of disrepair, as if they hadn’t been maintained even once in decades.
They had planned to go downstairs to look for the guy in glasses yesterday, but they had just reached the top of the stairs when a B-rank psychic in the team suddenly turned pale and straightaway dropped into a dead faint.
Psychics were a very rare constitution, and similarly could only be triggered in special instances. Although they didn’t have high combat power, their perception was a first-class gift which could effectively deal with things out of the ordinary. Generally, most large organisations would take in one or two.
There was only one psychic in this venue. After it was confirmed that this instance was a supernatural instance, everyone treated him like a panda (read: national treasure).
Upon waking up, the psychic’s face showed undisguised fear. The first words out his mouth were—
“Don’t… don’t go down. You’ll die.”
For this reason, they had temporarily avoided basement 2.
But from the looks of it, if they finished searching all other places without finding any clues, the result would be quite obvious.
They only had three days. Today was counted as the first day.
Following the law of horror instances, the more they delayed, the more uncontrollable the situation would become.
If they didn’t manage to gather more clues by noon, then they could only attack it headlong.
“Basement 2 is unimaginably dangerous; don’t take any liberties.”
Messiah’s expression was stony. “We’ll wait until all parties have compiled the clues and intelligence by noon today, then we’ll take a vote to decide.”
“Let’s have breakfast first.”
After they finished their discussion, Zong Jiu also just happened to finish eating.
Zong Jiu had nothing to do after finishing his breakfast. His head rested against an arm, and he let his long silver ponytail flow down his back as he continued to mull over what he had seen on the wall yesterday.
Last night, Zong Jiu had slept in Messiah’s ward with a few other veterans. He had voluntarily moved his bedding over to sleep in the corner, but never expected that he would find a strange string of letters on the wall.
pnpso.
This clearly didn’t constitute any word, yet it caught Zong Jiu’s attention.
In order to make sure that this string of letters wasn’t a coincidence, Zong Jiu deliberately turned a corner after washing up this morning, and went to the room that belonged to him, ward 12.
Sure enough, amidst the mathematical formulas densely covering the wall of ward 12, the string of letters pnpso also appeared, only that it was less obvious and slightly harder to recognise.
Zong Jiu randomly went into a few other wards, and found that they were all without exception.
It was no coincidence that it appeared so many times, it was apparent that someone had deliberately scrawled this.
But what was the meaning behind these letters?
Zong Jiu had a hunch that he had found a major clue. He was just missing certain bits of key information that blocked him from cracking it open.
As for the others?
With the system clearly telling them that there was a mole among them, how could Zong Jiu do as foolish a thing as lifting a stone only to slam it on his own foot?
The young white-haired man narrowed his eyes, completely uncaring about the others’ indifference to him. Instead, he took pleasure in it.
Whether or not they could discover this major clue was naturally a matter of their own ability. By relying on others for hints, wouldn’t the fun of solving a mystery be taken away?
As a magician who specialised in bringing wonder and joy to people, Zong Jiu certainly wouldn’t spoil everyone’s fun.
The trainees were just midway through their breakfast when the familiar, crisp sound of high heels once again rang out from the depths of the building.
The head nurse appeared in the doorway with a white sheet of paper in her hand, and began calling out their numbers.
“Number 1 and 7, number 3 and 12, number 5 and 9, number 2 and 16…”
The trainees whose serial numbers were read out looked at each other, wondering what was going on.
Soon, everyone’s numbers were mentioned one by one. The head nurse announced with a frosty look, “These are the sleeping arrangements for tonight.”
Her face was grim. “You were clever last night. But I advise you best not to turn to trickery again. If there are any more cases of multiple people sleeping together in one ward like last night, the asylum will deal with it as a violation of the rules straightaway.”
Horror filled the eyes of the newcomers.
“Then what should we do tonight… Two people to a dorm, that’s too dangerous, isn’t it?”
Thanks to the Holy Son’s plan, everyone was able to get through the night safe and sound. But now the medical staff were clearly greatly discontented with their evasive maneuvers, and had directly come up with a corresponding countermeasure to cut off this loophole.
On the contrary, none of the trainees at the middlemost table showed much reaction, continuing to eat with their heads down.
The veterans knew clearly. Perhaps this gambit might have won them a brief respite at the outset, but it could never be a long-term solution. This was the way all horror instances were.
The one solution that had completely gotten past a loophole in the rules was, thankfully, able to carry them through a night. But they would never pin all their hopes on it.
After this announcement, the head nurse gestured to the nurse behind her to report the schedule for the day.
“At eight o’clock, all patients will gather in front of the iron gate on the southern end of the ground floor.”
“Dr. Chu is in a good mood today, so he intends to allow you to personally observe the treatment process for mental patients in this asylum.”
Another commotion burst out from the crowd.
[Shock! There’s even a doctor!]
[That’s true, how can a mental asylum only have nursing staff and no doctors? I was curious about it before, and by jolly, I suppose you were just waiting for the right time.]
[The treatment doesn’t sound like it can be anything good at all… I can’t do it, I have to spam the bullet chat to block the screen with my comments, and save my heart.]
The young white-haired man rubbed his stiff fingers without saying a word.
Compared to personally observing the treatment, Zong Jiu was more concerned about the ward arrangement the head nurse had mentioned earlier.
He was number 12. And for the better or the worse, number 3 was none other than Zhuge An.
Thriller Trainee – Mental Asylum
Translated by luckykoi Edited by snoflakesun
Please don’t repost or re-translate.
