Chapter 3020: Practice
Whether it was Zong Lanzhi's group or Xiao Yue's group, most players agreed with this approach. What they lacked was time. No matter how difficult a mental-type instance was, it was still only C-rank—they could always find some pattern eventually.
The disappearance of Xiao Yue and her three companions made the remaining players cautious. Having already familiarized themselves with the hospital's layout, they stopped trying to probe various areas, afraid of falling into the same predicament as Xiao Yue's group.
However, the places they had previously visited could be confirmed as safe.
Not long after, Zong Lanzhi and her group returned to the First Inpatient Building.
As soon as they entered, everyone keenly sensed a subtle change in the atmosphere of the inpatient building. The nurses who had seemed gentle and warm before now wore cold expressions. They told the players to return to their rooms without any emotion, as meals would be served soon.
Normally, patients could eat in the dining hall, but since the newcomers were unfamiliar with the rules, their first meal would be eaten in their respective rooms to help them remember the dining regulations.
Along with the food, two sleeping pills were distributed—mandatory to take.
No way—players certainly wouldn't take them. Most of those who had followed were already C-rank or above, so hiding the pills with some tricks wasn't difficult.
What surprised them, however, was that the nurses responsible for delivering meals were quite lenient in their supervision. They roughly watched the players make swallowing motions, recorded it in their logs, and left.
Zong Lanzhi and the others didn't throw the pills away either. Instead, they gave them to the patients sharing their rooms. Whether the pills were real or fake, since they were said to be sleeping aids, they should at least have a sedative effect.
The pills did work well—at least the two patients in Zong Lanzhi's room had closed their eyes before nightfall.
The inpatient building gradually quieted down. Zong Lanzhi stood alone by the window, gazing toward the Third Inpatient Building, wondering what had happened to Xiao Yue and the others.
Xiao Yue's group had truly bad luck. They hadn't entered the morgue or encountered the invisible prison. Instead, they had been accidentally locked in a room by a few patients.
Originally, they planned to use props to forcefully escape, but when they reached for their items, they realized their personal panels were gone, and all their carried instruments and props had completely failed. Realizing they had fallen into the instance's illusion in such a short time, cold sweat poured down their faces. Without their personal panels, they would gradually become like ordinary people. Once their props and physical advantages were gone, clearing the instance would become extremely difficult!
"Calm down," Xiao Yue warned the others. "Don't panic. We lost access to our personal panels as soon as we entered the Third Inpatient Building. This means the building layout isn't random—the order of the buildings might represent a gradual deepening of mental interference."
"Let's find a way to notify the others first. We can't get out from inside, but they should be able to break through the building from outside."
Xiao Yue's guess was directionally correct, but she was wrong about one thing: the Third Inpatient Building wasn't significantly different from the other buildings in terms of mental interference.
The existence of the First, Second, and Third Inpatient Buildings was meant to give patients the impression of "worsening condition" during their transfer. This required time. The reason they were trapped so quickly was because Xu Huo had manipulated things.
Xu Huo was still in the office building and hadn't come out, but his mental power could cover any part of the instance. His covert operations weren't restricted by the instance, so he boldly gave it a try.
With the site enhancement, combined with having just broken through a layer of shackles, he easily affected these four people.
A mental defense line might be composed of a person's experiences and memories. Breaking through it didn't necessarily mean one could access those memories, but it could significantly shorten the time needed for mental interference or control. It was like one person being completely unguarded against another, making it easy to believe everything the other said or did.
Naturally, with mental interference and control becoming easier, killing someone also became simple. However, he still hadn't figured out how to extract others' memories. But understanding the mental defense line and learning to cast "anchors" into others' mental worlds was already a significant gain.
Still, he was still somewhat unaccustomed to the excessive information, though it was much better than yesterday.
His quick recovery was based on his already strengthened foundation. Whether it was mental evolution or brain evolution, he could keep up. As for Ms. Yao's illness, it was likely because her body couldn't withstand this prolonged information overload. She had enough talent, but her body couldn't bear it.
An "anchor" cast into someone else's mental world was generally beyond the caster's control. But Xu Huo believed that people like Dr. Zhang could tamper with the "anchor." It didn't require complex commands—just triggering the "anchor" under specific conditions would release enough mental power to destroy a person's brain.
Xu Huo experimented on Zhuang He. He cast a small "anchor" and added a command to it.
He wasn't insane enough to kill indiscriminately, so the command was simple: "Swat a mosquito."
Even if the "anchor" failed or went out of control, the small amount of mental power wouldn't be enough to severely damage his brain. A nosebleed and a couple of days of dizziness, and he'd be fine.
Not long after, the first attempt failed. Not only did Zhuang He not make the "swat a mosquito" motion, but he nearly fainted before the estimated time.
The "anchor" had gone out of control.
Casting an "anchor" into someone else's mental world required the ability to keep it stable for a long time. Xu Huo could already cast the "anchor," but once the mental power left his control, he couldn't manage it anymore. He had no idea what would happen next.
This was far from the ideal effect he had envisioned.
Before understanding the "mental defense line," casting an "anchor" was a good way to kill someone—even a clever shortcut. The whole process was like finding a gap to exploit, then using that gap to kill someone who would otherwise be impossible to kill.
But if one could break through someone's "mental defense line," simply killing someone made the "anchor" seem useless, unless the "anchor" could truly function according to the caster's intent.
If the "anchor" could serve as a timed bomb to threaten others, or even operate beyond the caster's control, executing specific commands from afar or long after being cast, that would be another leap in the use of mental power. It would be much harder to defend against and intervene with than immediate control or interference. Perhaps a small "anchor" wouldn't be easily detected by ordinary instruments.
Of course, this was all Xu Huo's speculation. Whether the "anchor" could really be used this way was unknown. But there were plenty of people in the instance, so he could try.
Soon, the two other players with Xiao Yue also began to experience dizziness and nosebleeds.