# Chapter 296: Spirit Affects Reality
The other person was wearing a patient gown, holding something behind their back.
"I want to go in. Can you open the door?" Xu Huo asked him.
The other person's mouth stretched all the way to his back molars as he skillfully pressed the password while saying, "Once you come in, you can't go out. You have to stay here."
The moment Xu Huo stepped inside, the man immediately closed the door, leaning against the iron door while breathing heavily with excitement, his eyes staring straight at him. Then he suddenly let out a strange roar and swung whatever he was holding forward.
A knife made of toilet paper stuck together chopped down on Xu Huo's neck. The man laughed loudly, "I killed a cannibal player! I killed a cannibal player! I get a reward!"
After saying this, without caring whether the person he "killed" was actually dead, he hopped and ran deep into the stairwell, and soon even his footsteps disappeared into the darkness.
The fourth floor returned to silence.
The layout of the fourth floor was clearly different from the third floor. Both length and width were at least twice that of the floor below, and because the building was so deep and long, standing inside gave people a strong sense of oppression.
Xu Huo turned and entered the corridor. As he passed the first room, a figure suddenly lunged from the shadows onto the door, making a loud thud before pressing their face hard against the glass window. Their nose and mouth were smeared flat, leaving only a pair of eyeballs rolling up and down, exceptionally clear.
Xu Huo didn't stop. He glanced and withdrew his gaze. When he reached the second room, the door creaked open, and a withered hand reached out from the darkness, calling him inside.
Then came the third door, the fourth door, the fifth door. When he reached the sixth door, he turned the handle and walked in. Sima Xiao'er was tied to the bed, already awake, twisting and struggling to bite at the restraints on his body.
Xu Huo turned on the light in the room.
Sima Xiao'er was startled at first, but after seeing him, tears of excitement flowed out. "Brother Xu, it's really you!"
Xu Huo sat down by the bed, looking at him with a calm expression.
The surprise on Sima Xiao'er's face slowly turned to unease. "Brother Xu, say something."
"Do you know who my cousin is?" Xu Huo asked.
"Yu Qingqing." Sima Xiao'er quickly replied, "She's your cousin, but not by blood. She didn't finish college and became a star!"
"Did you see the person standing next to me upstairs today?" Xu Huo asked again. "It was a nurse."
Sima Xiao'er thought back. "I really didn't notice at the time."
"Didn't she look like Yu Qingqing?" Xu Huo continued.
Sima Xiao'er's expression went blank for a moment, then light slowly returned to his eyes. "It seems like it was Yu Qingqing. Did she enter the instance too?"
Xu Huo fell silent, beginning to scrutinize the person on the hospital bed.
Sima Xiao'er was a bit confused and struggled as he said, "Hurry up and untie me. We'll escape while it's dark. I don't want to stay in this damn place for another minute."
"How do we escape?" Xu Huo said. "Several doors downstairs are all locked."
"Only idiots take the stairs. Can't you see such big windows? We can make a rope out of the sheets and curtains and climb down." Sima Xiao'er said it as if it were the most natural thing.
"Where are the windows?" Xu Huo pointed ahead.
"What are you talking abou—" Sima Xiao'er turned his head with effort, but his retort came to an abrupt halt. His pupils contracted, and he jerked in shock. "How is that possible! The window is gone!"
Where Sima Xiao'er had climbed out the window to escape during the day, there was now a cement wall.
Not only that, everything in the room was slowly changing. Although the fourth floor's environment wasn't as good as the third floor's, the paint and fixtures had all used colors conducive to a cheerful mood. But now the walls, objects, and floor tiles were rapidly fading, shifting from a warm, bright style to a gloomy gray-black tone. The walls became plain cement, and the shelving unit in the corner had turned into an operating table cluttered with all kinds of dirty medical instruments.
Xu Huo looked around, then untied Sima Xiao'er's restraints and patted him on the head. "Don't just stand there. Weren't you going to jump out the window and escape?"
"Where's the window..." Sima Xiao'er reflexively followed his words and looked to the left, nearly biting off his own tongue. Where he had just seen a cement wall, it had turned back into the daytime scene. The window was wide open, and the curtains swayed gently in the night breeze.
"I knew it. How could a perfectly good window just disappear? I must have seen wrong. It must be those fake nurses' injections messing with me!"
Sima Xiao'er muttered to himself, his expression noticeably lighter.
The room's layout had returned to normal.
"Then let's hurry up and go!" He jumped up and started tearing at the sheets, but then he heard a whistle sound from downstairs. He quickly crouched by the window, frowning. "Someone got caught trying to escape. There are a lot of security guards downstairs. Looks like tonight's a no-go. Which bastards were so careless? Now that they've stirred things up, security will definitely be tightened. It'll be even harder to run."
"Do you think that if they run out, they can really leave this place?" Xu Huo suddenly said.
Sima Xiao'er turned his head in shock, but Xu Huo didn't seem inclined to say more. He patted the bed. "Get on. I'll tie you back up. Behave yourself for the next few days, and maybe they'll move you to the third floor."
Sima Xiao'er looked extremely reluctant, but he still cooperated and lay back down.
"By the way, more than a dozen people from the Special Defense Department also came in. Have you seen them? What about Captain Nie?"
"I haven't seen Nie Xuan. I don't know the others. Come down and identify them yourself tomorrow." After tying the person up, Xu Huo left the fourth floor.
On his way back to the third floor, he didn't run into anyone. The nurse in the third-floor duty room was still sleeping, and the commotion downstairs gradually died down.
Early the next morning, several vehicles drove into the Seventeenth Hospital one after another, bringing back the few people who had escaped the night before.
Among them, the severely ill, emaciated player was sent to the fourth floor, while the other three were locked back in their rooms.
Xu Huo overheard a bit while passing by the door during his walk. The one called Xiao Gao was clearly hit hard, repeating the same sentence over and over: "Aren't they dead? Aren't they dead? Aren't they dead..."
The doctor gave him a sedative injection.
Xu Huo went downstairs and sat on the lawn to bask in the sun. Before long, Sima Xiao'er came down.
He wandered over to Xu Huo's side and lowered his voice. "Those who escaped and got caught back are from the Special Defense Department. What's going on? Why do they keep saying there's no such place as Ting City?"
"Xiao Gao was actually sent back by his parents calling!"
Sima Xiao'er's face showed disbelief and shock. "Weren't his parents killed by evolvers? Could it be that this instance's range isn't just one hospital?"
He didn't care whether Xu Huo answered or not and continued, "It must be like that. The fog covered the East District back then. Maybe the instance territory is bigger than we think. Running won't work. Even if you do run out, you'll just get caught and brought back."
Xu Huo interrupted him. "What are you planning to do next?"