Chapter 3023: Scar on the Belly
The two players who had injected the medicine did indeed improve. The player who had been beaten by Jiang Ke earlier stepped forward, wanting to see what kind of medicine it was.
"What do you need to know for? This is a homemade medicine from Brother Zong, a trade secret." Jiang Ke sneered.
The man glanced at Zong Lanzhi but didn't ask any further questions.
In reality, the medicine Zong Lanzhi had given them wasn't anything special—just a simple energy supplement. The reason they recovered so quickly was entirely because they believed the medicine would work.
They hadn't been in the room long before the sound of security guards patrolling came from outside.
At night, many "patients" wandered around outside. Although they also tried to avoid the guards, one or two unlucky ones would inevitably get caught. Zong Lanzhi and the others thus learned the fate of those caught by the night patrol guards—they were taken to the laboratory building.
As Xiao Yue and the others had said earlier, the laboratory seemed more like a place for forced treatment. The tools there were described as therapeutic, but they looked more like instruments of torture. No one knew if the patients taken in would ever come out.
However, the night guards soon left the First Inpatient Building.
Over at the morgue, Xie Xiao'an and the others still hadn't come out. Zong Lanzhi and the group couldn't keep waiting forever, so they took turns resting.
But every time they were about to doze off, a scream would come from somewhere unknown, jolting them awake. Yet when they woke up and tried to locate the source of the scream, they couldn't pinpoint it at all, because everyone seemed to hear the scream coming from a different place. Some even thought it sounded like someone they knew.
"Don't overthink it," Zong Lanzhi warned everyone again. "We won't act tonight. Wait for news from the morgue."
The group endured the night, which wasn't too torturous.
The next morning, according to the schedule, nurses entered each floor one by one. They didn't hand out medicine but instead told the patients to go to the cafeteria for breakfast, warning them not to drink the soup there, as it was meant for patients whose conditions had been confirmed as severe.
"Do we get prescribed medicine only after seeing the doctor?" Zong Lanzhi asked the long-haired nurse.
The long-haired nurse brushed her hair, which was noticeably longer than yesterday, and said matter-of-factly, "Everyone's condition is different. The doctor needs to assess before knowing the situation."
She smiled as she spoke. "Don't worry. The doctors in our hospital are very professional. There won't be any mistakes."
Why emphasize mistakes?
Did mistakes happen often?
Behind her, Jiang Ke and the others all wore expressions of speechlessness.
After the long-haired nurse left, the first round of evaluations began quickly. Zong Lanzhi gave the other players some instructions and returned to her own room.
Xiao Yue and the others had stayed at the comprehensive building all night and only returned to the First Inpatient Building before the lights came on. However, they weren't much better off than the two players who had been "possessed by ghosts." Even though it had only been one night, they looked as haggard as if they had stayed up for several nights.
"I don't know why, but I feel especially tired," said at least half of Xiao Yue's team.
"If you ask me, you're all overthinking it," Meng Junyan said, stretching his limbs. "I slept pretty well last night. I'm going to take a walk outside."
With that, he ignored everyone else and left.
"Your people aren't very cooperative," Jiang Ke said, looking at Xiao Yue.
What could Xiao Yue say? Many in her team needed her care. The young masters and ladies had paid a hefty price, so this much face was expected.
"The ones who went for evaluation should be coming back soon," she said, changing the subject.
Many people had already gone, but so far, not a single one had returned.
The outpatient building was now off-limits to them, supposedly to prevent them from frightening the family members accompanying the patients. Similarly, they couldn't sense the treatment happening inside the building, nor did they even know what the doctors looked like. They only saw nurses and guards moving around.
"Could Mr. Xu be playing the role of a doctor?" Jiang Ke speculated.
"Probably not," said the player who had been beaten. "He's also a player who came in. Why would he be special?"
"But no one saw him come in," Zhuang He said, looking around. "So did he deliberately trick us into coming in?"
Logically, they didn't think Xu Huo was that kind of person. He had personally said "follow me in." If he didn't come in, how could it count as going together?
"He said he would come, but that doesn't mean he's with us," Jiang Ke said. "What if he waits two or three days?"
The instance was one thing, but Xu Huo was another. Compared to the instance, they were even more worried that Xu Huo might suddenly turn hostile—that would truly leave them with no way out.
"Try to find a way to clear the instance as best we can," Zong Lanzhi said. "No matter what his intentions are, as long as we clear it and get out, he can't do anything to us."
Xu Huo had the power to kill them effortlessly. If he didn't, it meant he didn't want to. Once they cleared the instance, this matter would be over.
"Someone's back," Jiang Ke suddenly said, looking downstairs.
It was a player from their team.
He returned to the First Inpatient Building normally and briefly recounted his experience. But when Zong Lanzhi and the others pressed him for details about the evaluation, the man seemed triggered by some signal and suddenly said, "I feel like I'm missing something."
Jiang Ke was so angry he laughed, immediately raising his hand. Zong Lanzhi stopped him and pressed further, "What are you missing?"
"Maybe benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. Or maybe a conscience," the player said, touching his stomach.
Zong Lanzhi narrowed her eyes, stepped forward, and lifted his protective suit. To everyone's shock, there was a palm-length stitched scar on his abdomen, as if he had just undergone surgery!
Everyone was startled and immediately crowded around to look. Someone even used an instrument to perform a full-body scan on him.
"Thank goodness, nothing's missing from his insides."
The player who had just said he was missing something suddenly snapped out of it. "What just happened?"
The group fell silent. First, a patient had said it, then a player said it, and now there was a surgical scar. Though the question was about benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness, if left unchecked, something would definitely end up missing from his insides.
"Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, trustworthiness, conscience—was that a coincidence?" Xiao Yue mused. "Could this be Mr. Xu's instance?"
"Rumors have been circulating for a while that he might be holding an instance."
It wasn't impossible. Otherwise, why hadn't he shown up yet?
"If the instance is his, then he's most likely the director," Zong Lanzhi said with a sarcastic tone. "He's teaching us a lesson."
The players present were both humiliated and angry. Humiliated because, after all their bloody struggles in the game, they were still being lectured by someone else. Angry because what he was lecturing them about was that garbage about benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. They were players, and so was Xu Huo. None of them had clean hands—how many lives had they taken? And now he was turning around to preach this to them?
Wasn't that laughable?