Chapter 1649: The Game in the Hospital
“What parents? I don’t have parents.” That player seemed provoked, blurting out, “I ate my parents long ago!”
Xu Huo showed a hint of regret at just the right moment. “Are you dreaming again? Still that dream where the whole world is full of cannibalistic freaks?”
“Bullshit! I told you I’m not dreaming, I’m not dreaming!” The other person grew irritable, immediately ready to flip the table and grab a stool. But only then did he realize he was actually strapped to the chair, soft leather belts wrapped around his hands and feet three times each. Forget about smashing the place up—he couldn’t even move much!
“Can you tell me about your dream?” Xu Huo acted as if he hadn’t seen the man’s rage, continuing at his own pace. “Sharing helps calm the mood. If you keep getting this agitated, I’ll have to have the nurse give you an injection.”
The latter half had a decent effect. The player visibly suppressed his anger, staring at Xu Huo with a sinister look. “A dream… fine. I dreamed about you last night.”
“Is that so?”
“I dreamed I cut you open, gutted you. Some parts I boiled into soup, some I braised. Even your skin made a fine dish!”
Xu Huo’s expression barely changed. “So your dream has shifted. You’ve gone from being the victim to the perpetrator.”
The other let out a low laugh. “Doctor, come here. I have something I want to tell you.”
Xu Huo deliberately glanced at him before flipping through his notebook. “Last time you said Nurse Liu secretly ate the patient in Room 502. The time before that, you said the security guard kidnapped a patient at night and you saw them cooking hotpot in the security office. Your state of mind has changed a lot recently… Have you thought about your parents?”
“I told you, I don’t have parents! You think you can fool me with that kind of talk?” The player looked at Xu Huo with contempt.
Xu Huo sighed, closed his notebook, and called for a nurse to take the person away. Once the door was shut, he said to another nurse, “His condition has worsened. In addition to his daily medication, add medicine to his meals. Also, notify his parents—no visitation for the next three months, and his treatment period needs to be extended.”
The nurse said with some regret, “Wasn’t Zeng Ming doing much better after the last treatment? I thought he might be discharged this time.”
“Did anything happen on the fifth floor last night?” Xu Huo asked.
“A patient had an episode. He kept screaming and injured two people. It took two sedatives to calm him down,” the nurse said. “Could that have scared him? When Nurse Liu came out, she was covered in blood.”
“That might be a factor, but his condition has deteriorated. He might attack others. Move him to the sixth floor,” Xu Huo arranged.
The nurse nodded.
Zeng Ming, who hadn’t gone far, heard every word of this conversation clearly. He spat on the ground, turned around, and was about to go downstairs. But at that moment, a female nurse came up from below. Seeing his action, her face darkened, and she scolded, “Who said you could spit on the floor? Clean it up immediately!”
Zeng Ming saw her name tag and recognized her as the nurse from last night. He let out a cold laugh. “Killing you once isn’t enough. I’ll have to do it a second time!”
Nurse Liu frowned, waved for two security guards to pin him down, and swiftly gave him a sedative. “Lock him in an isolation room to cool off. Doctor Xu said his aggression is increasing and he might hurt people. Tie his hands and feet.”
The player who had just wanted to fight was now limp and was kicked upstairs.
This put the other players waiting nearby in a difficult position. They hadn’t managed to eavesdrop on the treatment session. They had planned to ask Zeng Ming, but he was taken down as soon as he came out. He was already asleep and wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon.
“When you’re in psychological treatment, play it cool. Go along with what the doctor says, or you’ll just make trouble for yourself,” one player warned his companions.
Soon, two more players who had undergone treatment came out. One was also sent to the sixth floor, but the other managed to secure a visitation opportunity.
“Visitation? Who’s visiting? Your family died out long ago!” a C-rank player said rudely.
That E-rank player’s expression flickered. He opened his mouth but said nothing.
This pace was still very slow. Especially with several C-rank players around, Xu Huo couldn’t just sweep them all up at once. He had to focus on his own tasks first.
However, there was good news: Cong Yu had pulled himself together. After a night of ups and downs, he had started killing people in earnest.
Liao Jie was locked up tight. Cong Yu couldn’t find him for now and wasn’t confident enough to try. But after overhearing from a nurse that several players had been sedated and locked on the sixth floor, he found a way to sneak up there.
However, the medical staff that other players imagined as cannibalistic monsters were just as much a threat to him. He had to crouch and wait for half an hour before finding an opportunity to kill one person. And he didn’t dare make it too obvious—he just snapped the victim’s neck.
Xu Huo had to help him from upstairs, calling away the nurse who was active nearby, which gave Cong Yu another chance to kill someone.
According to procedure, patients who died in the hospital would first be autopsied by the hospital, then their families would be notified to take the body away. But the deceased on the hospital’s list were all people with unknown families or families who didn’t care. Coupled with the medical staff’s special menu, their bodies had their own destinations.
The players who had undergone psychological treatment were disappearing for no reason, which heightened the remaining players’ sense of crisis. Now, in their eyes, the entire hospital seemed to be full of man-eating monsters. The killed Nurse Liu and the security guard could walk out again in just a few minutes, making everything they did feel dreamlike and unreal, impossible to distinguish truth from fiction.
During this time, more players kept entering. Chi Xian and his companion cooperated well with the Brown Skin City players. Only two C-rank players had slipped through; the rest were all inside the instance. One-third of the D-rank players had also entered. Adding Liao Jie to the mix, there weren’t many Hope City players left outside.
Of course, some Brown Skin City players had also entered. But since the instance was mostly filled with Hope City players of considerable strength, only three of the eight Brown Skin City players who entered survived, including Cong Yu.
The gene potion Cong Yu carried could remove the parasitic fungi on their bodies. Originally, no one knew what they looked like. As long as they shed their brown skin and were careful, Hope City players might pass them by without a second thought, mistaking them for ordinary patients in the hospital.
Under Cong Yu’s leadership, the Brown Skin City players began to explore using the instance to deal with the Hope City people. On the Hope City side, after losing five companions in a row, they started to catch on. They tried every means to search the hospital, not only to find the hidden Brown Skin City people but also to contact Liao Jie.
In reality, their game panels were still usable. It was just that Liao Jie’s side had gone offline. That was because Xu Huo, at Liao Jie’s request, had arranged a separate psychological treatment session for him.
(Chapter End)