The four walked downstairs together. Jenkins talked about the female nurse again in the stairwell. Mr. Robinson and the boy Lak had similar attitudes. They both believed that it is not easy to test the people locked in the room in the hospital:
"There are some really horrible people living here, let's not get in trouble."
Middle-aged people are quite cautious.
It was 9 minutes and 19 seconds when I returned to the lobby on the first floor. The middle-aged female doctor was still sitting on the chair, talking to Miss Ross. She will stop at the appropriate time, as if listening to the other party's speech, and then express her own views.
Because time was urgent, Jenkins did not deal with her, but took a group of people to the door leading to the basement behind the stairs at the end of the corridor:
"Let me emphasize again that what we have to do, the hope of saving everyone is to understand what happened in the underground of this hospital. After the door is opened for a while, I will hold the two people inside, and the three of you will enter immediately. Look for suspicious things in the basement. You are all people who have already touched the mystery and the extraordinary, and you should have a deep sense of strangeness. The chance is less than three minutes, and I will enter the basement to meet you as soon as possible, and you must seize it Chance."
None of the people present knew what the basement was like. According to Mr. Robinson, there was more than one basement in the hospital, and different basements had different purposes.
This is somewhat similar to the many basements of the Church of the Sage.
The three of them listened carefully to Jenkins' opinions. After all, what they were about to face was a complete unknown. Jenkins, who quietly left a phantom on the roof, might be able to activate the ceremony at the last moment, but for the three who had been trapped for nearly ten thousand For young people, this may be their only chance.
Jenkins didn't intend to wait until ten minutes before entering the door. He took out the [Door Key] and prepared to open the door. Since the cause of everything is probably because the ritual in the basement went wrong, preventing what happened in the basement may be able to restore everything, and even directly let Jenkins see the divinity at work in the ritual.
He put the key on the door at 9 minutes and 41 seconds. When he turned his wrist vigorously, the key did not move at all, as if it was completely fixed.
"this… "
Even the space that was blocked by Papa and the evolved goblin at Papa’s antique store last time only made the key fly away, not unable to open it. Key] A door that cannot be opened.
"Maybe your thinking is wrong."
Miss Rose stood aside and reminded:
"Although I don't know what the key you are holding is, the function of the key-shaped numbered item can also be expected. The reason why the door cannot be opened may not be because it is locked, but because It is simply not allowed to be opened at this moment, in the rules here."
Of the four people here, only Ms. Ross is the extraordinary person in the system of this era, and besides Jenkins, she is also the person who understands the current situation best. Jenkins probably understood what she meant. What happened in the first ten minutes in the basement is the basis for the existence of the monster, so these ten minutes are "necessary" in the time loop and cannot be interfered, otherwise the time loop will not stand at all.
Trying to open the door in front of you is actually trying to eliminate the weird thing [Biggs Hospital] directly and fundamentally. This is not something that can be done with a gift key, otherwise the church would not be able to solve the time loop from the root after so many explorations.
"Then we can only wait for the tenth minute."
He took back the key and looked at his pocket watch, Alexia's one, there were only ten seconds left:
"You must be careful after entering the basement."
"Don't worry about that."
Middle-aged man said:
"I also thought about being able to go back out into the world and meet my wife and son."
He was the only one who didn't understand the time loop. The expression on his face when he said this made the three companions a little at a loss. In the end no one told him the truth because the time had come.
For ten minutes, Jenkins' chest, which seemed to have lost all its characteristics, suddenly trembled violently. Then, from behind the door in front of the four of them, there were horrified screams and swear words that Jenkins could not understand.
Jenkins looked at his companions. They looked extremely nervous. Even though the boy Lak was not on the second floor where he was supposed to be, he still had a frightened expression on his face.
"What do you see?"
Miss Rose asked hastily.
"I must escape. If I cannot escape here, I will never escape! I saw the clock! I saw the long river! I saw..."
The boy's eyes, nose, mouth and ears were bleeding, and before he could finish the sentence, Jenkins slapped him on the top of the head:
"Don't think about anything, just count quietly."
His calmness infected everyone, and the others stopped panicking. The boy Lak followed his instructions and whispered the numbers in his mouth, and Miss Ross helped translate. After the number 19 was said, the door was slapped violently from the inside, causing even the floating dust on the wall to float downward.
Jenkins was facing the door, standing there with his hands hanging naturally. When the boy recounted to 5, he raised both fists, and at the same time as 10 was said, the moment the iron door opened, his fists clenched and his elbows were drawn back.
"11."
The door was opened, and two men with terrified faces rushed out one after the other. The first thing they saw was a strange young man, and then two fists struck like cannonballs, causing the two of them to fly back to the stairs in the basement.
"Go!"
Jenkins greeted his companions and entered behind the door first. Dimly lighted candles hung on both sides of the dark stairs. The hair was straw-colored. The man in the white coat had passed away. Another tall man with protruding knuckles stood up with difficulty while leaning on the wall:
"Damn, who are you? Do you know what's going on now? Run away, we miscalculated the time."
"Sorry, it's too late."
Immediately, the surprised expression on the man's face was even worse than being knocked away after opening the door just now.
"You mean? Oh, God..."
His surprise immediately turned into panic, and he curled up into a ball, dying on the spot without Jenkins doing anything.
"Scared to death. Do you have abilities like fear aura?"
asked Miss Rose, passing behind Jenkins.
"Yes, but I didn't do anything. Forget it, I wanted to catch a job. I asked about the situation. Now..."
Jenkins shook his head, and entered the basement with his companions.
The area here is not large. Presumably it is not the basement used by the hospital to store sundries, but a private workshop. The area is not even as large as the basement of Jenkins' home.
Going down the narrow stairs, some candles of different heights are placed on the flat ground of the basement, arranged regularly like a ladder. Various strange things such as lizard tails, tiger skins and even human bones were scattered on the ground, but there was no trace of the ceremony.
"here!"
The boy Lak pointed upwards, and the four of them raised their heads, and clearly saw the huge and complicated circular ceremony matrix outlined in coherent chalk lines on the low ceiling of the basement. Jenkins glanced at it, and knew that the person who arranged the ceremony did not use the ritual system of his own era. He only obtained fragments of knowledge similar to the ceremony from the whisper at the end of the month, but that was not enough for Jenkins to deconstruct the entire ceremony.
In addition to the marks of chalk, small holes were artificially cut out in the ceiling, and ritual materials were embedded in those holes. This includes human eyeballs, some flower petals that Jenkins doesn't recognize, brass-colored gears that spin on their own, and more. It stands to reason that the brilliance of divinity should far exceed the strange aura of [Biggs Hospital], but Jenkins' eyes still cannot see the golden light.
The middle-aged man reached out on his toes and tried to knock down the inlaid things in the ceiling, but was immediately stopped by Miss Rose and Jenkins:
"The ceremony is already underway. We don't understand the principle and function of this ceremony at all. Now any deviation from the ceremony may lead to the further loss of control of the ceremony."
What Jenkins is worried about is that after destroying the ceremony, he will directly enter the next time loop. Now it is very close to the record of the longest cycle recorded by the church, and the movement of the dead doll has become more and more intense since Jenkins entered the basement. Every second that passes now makes Jenkins extremely worried. He even thought about whether what he experienced at this time was really his first experience.
"Which one item on the ceiling do you have the most special feeling about?"
His voice appeared in the hearts of the three people at the same time. In fact, Jenkins also considered that the divinity was in an area other than the ceremony on the ceiling, but this possibility was not great. After all, without the participation of divinity, he didn't think it would be possible to form a time-like monster of such a scale.
"Maybe it's the pocket watch in the center of the pentagram pattern in the upper left corner, which is related to time."
The boy Lak immediately said that the blood from him hadn't been wiped clean, and he was cowering, not as lively and enthusiastic as he was when he came downstairs.
"The skeleton directly above us, it doesn't look like human remains, is it a dog?"
The middle-aged man continued to speak.
Miss Ross hesitated for a few seconds before giving her answer. She was the most nervous because she knew the most about the current situation:
"Maybe it's the human eyeball, it seems to be staring at me all the time. Sorry, fate didn't guide me, I can only guess by myself."
"No apology, fate doesn't always guide people, but this time I think it will guide me. For me, the future is not unknown."