# Chapter 3030: I Was Lying, Haha
The Painting Woman was quite tempted as she took out the map and circled the territory of Country X. "Can I have all of it?"
Zong Lanzhi felt she was playing dumb. "That's probably not possible."
The Painting Woman immediately lost interest and asked him, "What's your secret?"
Zong Lanzhi paused. "I don't have any secrets."
The Painting Woman smiled. "Everyone has secrets."
"Then do you know Mr. Xu's secret?" Zong Lanzhi asked casually.
"I do." The Painting Woman tilted her head to look at him. "If you tell me your secret, I'll tell you his."
Zong Lanzhi looked at her in surprise. "Can you actually say it?"
The Painting Woman gave him a "don't worry, I keep my word" expression.
Zong Lanzhi hesitated briefly before speaking. "A long time ago, I killed someone. A bad person. To this day, no one knows he died by my hand."
The Painting Woman stared at him. "That's it?"
What kind of secret was that?
Zong Lanzhi smiled instead. "Your turn."
The Painting Woman immediately jumped off the bed and ran out the door with a beaming smile, her communicator's voice drifting back from outside. "I was lying!"
Zong Lanzhi let out a soft laugh, turned on his side, and lay down. Before long, he easily slipped into a dream.
Scenes from the past appeared in his dream. Amidst pools of blood, he saw his father lying on the ground, his mother covered in blood, his second uncle running over... They held him and said it would be okay, that they would handle the aftermath, that he shouldn't be afraid.
In the chaotic and abstract field of vision, his gaze fixed on the corpse's wide-open, furious eyes. The person was dead, but the anger had not died.
In an instant, he felt as if he too was infected by that anger. With hatred, he grabbed the knife from the ground, rushed over, and stabbed it fiercely into those eyes. Pull out and stab again, pull out and stab again, until his vision was dyed red, his hands were dyed red, and those detestable eyes disappeared. He held the knife and turned around, seeing his helpless mother, his shocked second uncle, and at the door, his grandparents and cousins with unreadable expressions.
Then he stood up, chopped off a finger from the corpse in front of everyone, and swallowed it. "Dump his ashes into a cesspool, or I'll turn myself in."
Zong Lanzhi's eyes snapped open, and he unexpectedly found the Painting Woman leaning in close. He instinctively swung his hand, but she had already stepped back.
"Did you have a nightmare?" the communicator sounded.
Zong Lanzhi lowered his head slightly, calming his emotions before speaking. "Are you going to tell me Mr. Xu's secret now?"
The Painting Woman shook her head. "But I can tell you one of my secrets."
"What is it?" Zong Lanzhi asked with little interest.
"Xu Huo won't let me sleep in his bed, but I've secretly slept in it many times, and he never found out." The Painting Woman said quite proudly.
Zong Lanzhi had lost his patience and said with a flat expression, "He's probably just playing with you. With his strength, there's no way he wouldn't notice. You think you're friends, but he's also deceiving you, treating you like a fool."
The smile suddenly vanished from the Painting Woman's face. She frowned at Zong Lanzhi. "You're a boring person too."
With that, she turned and left.
This time, she was really gone.
Zong Lanzhi didn't care. He got up, straightened his clothes, and went out to find his companions.
At least half of the players who had come in together had swollen red faces. It seemed they had deliberately not healed themselves to avoid falling into hallucinations again.
"Where is Jiang Ke hiding?" Zong Lanzhi asked with a grim face.
"He's gone," Zeng Guangyao said. "Ten minutes ago, he avoided the patrolling security guards and was supposed to return to the First Inpatient Building, but he never showed up afterward. We can't contact him, and we can't find him."
Suddenly disappearing from the hospital could mean he encountered a man-eating monster, or he might have entered the "Invisible Prison."
Zong Lanzhi looked at another female player, Liao Na. "Have you recorded the locations of spatial fluctuations?"
Liao Na immediately opened her communicator and projected the records she had made. "Throughout the entire past day, spatial fluctuations within the hospital were very small. I also checked these locations. They shouldn't be traces left by spatial passages being created. It's more likely some friction between multiple spaces."
"The Invisible Prison is very likely another space existing within the hospital. Generally, in multi-space instances, even if the spaces are isolated from each other, there will be some spatial energy fluctuations. This is the data evidence for multi-space instances."
"Of course, considering the particularity of mental-type instances, it could also be my hallucination."
"But at night, the spatial fluctuations became very frequent. Sometimes in one place, sometimes in multiple places. The spatial power values would suddenly spike. It's possible that multiple spaces are interacting. Whether it's a passage or not is hard to say, because it only appears for an instant. By the time you realize it's happening, it might already be over."
"So we have to rely on luck?" Zeng Guangyao said.
"Not exactly," Liao Na said. "Looking at the distribution, spatial passages could appear in any building. We just need to spread out our manpower and wait. Catching one spatial fluctuation isn't a problem."
"The key is that we don't know whether this is caused by the man-eating monster or the prison. If it's the former, entering might mean we can't escape."
"Going in person to test it would be very unwise." She looked at Zong Lanzhi. "Brother Zong, you make the call."
Zong Lanzhi's gaze shifted downward. "In ten minutes, Guangyao, swap the outpatient building's duty schedule."
"Brother Zong, is that a good idea?" Zeng Guangyao hesitated. "If Mr. Xu finds out, things might get even worse."
Zong Lanzhi shook his head slightly. "Do as I say. Delay the night security patrol time on the new schedule by thirty minutes."
"The night security might not follow the fake schedule," the Knife-Wound Player said.
"That doesn't matter," Zong Lanzhi said. If they acted according to the fake schedule, they could inversely deduce the relationship between the night security and the man-eating monster.
If they didn't, then Xiao Yue and his group would serve as bait up front, and they could observe based on the original patrol times.
"Also, record whether the spatial fluctuation data overlaps with the man-eating monster's appearances."
Liao Na nodded. "I'll make a new timetable right away."
"What are Xiao Yue and his group doing now?" Zong Lanzhi asked again.
"That woman went over there," the Knife-Wound Player said. "She's drawing blood from that side."
Zong Lanzhi looked toward the Second Inpatient Building, his eyes unreadable. Then he suddenly changed the subject. "The hospital buildings are old and dilapidated. Be careful when moving around outside, so you don't get hit by falling windows or collapsing walls."
The people present paused, then immediately understood and acknowledged.
"What are you doing?" A sinister voice suddenly came from the stairwell at the end of the corridor. Immediately after, a disheveled nurse walked over quickly.
Her footsteps were loud, as if stepping on everyone's heartbeat. The players quickly returned to their rooms, but the nurse didn't leave. Instead, she entered the room of the nearest player.