Wen Shi's cat costume was actually considered normal among the other staff members in the sanatorium.
Through the transparent masks of the surrounding employees, one can clearly see that many people's facial skin is covered with raised follicles, almost exactly like the outer periphery of the heart of the Pure Heart Beast, with white worms wriggling inside.
The Meiling Liquid that attracted so many people to fight for it in the big factories seemed to be nothing here. It was piled up casually on the side. An employee who brought him in took out two bottles and handed them to Wen Shi: "Doctor Aaron, this is the enhanced version of Meiling Liquid that only we can produce. It can be swallowed directly. Would you like to try it?"
After staring at the Meiling Liquid for a few seconds, Wen Shi found that the outer packaging was no different from the Meiling Liquid he had seen before. He took it but did not take it immediately. He changed the subject and looked at the residents on the fourth floor: "What's wrong with these people? They look quite normal to me."
"The medical examination report won't lie." The employee's eyes flickered: "Besides, we need to re-examine it."
Wen Shi: "With so many people, if the results are all problematic, who will complete the work in the factory?"
"Large factories never lack labor. They absorb many young people from poor families every year, which can not only increase the employment rate but also maintain normal operations within the factory."
Wen Shi did not rush to rescue people. At the moment, he needed to get to know the area as quickly as possible.
"Are there any management regulations?" Wen Shi pinched the corner of his work badge on his chest with his fingers: "I want to see your rules and regulations."
“No.” The employee smiled strangely: “Everyone is doing their job and working hard. There is no need for system constraints.”
Wen Shi's heart sank. Without a system, he would have to explore everything on his own.
There are unsolvable death rules in the sanatorium. He may die from drinking a sip of water, or from letting a 'patient' go... Any careless action may risk violating the rules.
To be on the safe side, I cannot rescue the residents on the fourth floor myself.
He needed to "borrow a knife" and use other people's hands to do whatever he wanted. This way, even if it was really a death rule, he would still have room to struggle.
The employee who was communicating with the escorting personnel ended the conversation, came over to greet the other three people, and went to take the employees on the fourth floor to have their blood tested.
The escort walked up to Wen Shi and forced an unnatural smile: "Welcome to the sanatorium. Let me show you around."
When the follicles on his face made expressions, the thin film on the surface was pulled to the limit, as if it would burst at any time. Wen Shi couldn't help but take a step back.
Shortly after the escort finished speaking, the system's cold reminder sounded—
[Congratulations on successfully unlocking the hidden map.]
[This is a dark sanatorium that combines great love, blood, and cruelty. It is a hotbed of monsters and the last hope of mankind on this land. Please actively explore the secrets of the sanatorium. When the exploration degree reaches 80%, you will have the opportunity to gain the recognition of Dean Jin and become an excellent new employee. ]
This almost makes it clear that Dean Jin is the judge.
Although he had anticipated this might happen, Wen Shi still couldn't help but sigh.
The game really doesn't allow people to find loopholes easily and dominate the judges' will by becoming a dormitory manager. Among all the senior executives related to the big factory, only Dean Jin is an important figure outside the dormitory building.
"Sorry for the trouble." Ignoring the prompt tone, Wen Shi maintained a decent smile and thanked the escort personnel.
The escort nodded and walked forward without looking around.
The walls were white on top and yellow on the bottom, both colors were not resistant to dirt. In addition to the black marks left by the daily handling of boxes, there were also some dark red bloodstains. A monster escaped from the sanatorium two days ago, and a large riot broke out, resulting in a shortage of staff in the sanatorium.
Wen Shi was paying attention to the location of each security door while preparing to take out his mobile phone to take a photo and send it to Ji Yuanzhi and the others.
When my fingers touched the cold metal edge of the phone, I pulled them back as if I had been electrocuted.
The sanatorium attaches great importance to confidentiality, and taking photos may violate taboos. Wen Shi hesitated for a moment and gave up the idea. During this period, he kept paying attention to the expressions of the escort personnel, and when he found that the other party had obvious disappointment in his eyes, he became more concerned.
Ten more seconds passed, and after confirming that Wen Shi had no intention of using his phone, the escort took a confidentiality agreement from the front desk: "Please sign it."
The regulations are very complex, and to sum it up, everything you see here should not be spread outside.
Wen Shi suppressed the coldness in his eyes and signed the word Aaron in a scribble.
There are no rules and regulations. There may be no rules and regulations for the hospital staff, but there are probably many for outsiders.
"The dean is very busy today and may not have time to meet." The escort introduced the layout of each floor in the hospital: "The first floor is mainly responsible for connecting with large factories and providing daily raw materials; the second floor area A is responsible for employee physical examinations, and area B is the breeding area for the Pure Heart Beasts..."
Wen Shi's expression remained unchanged, thinking that it was really difficult to evaluate these two areas since they were placed on the same floor.
"The third floor is where archives and precious research materials are kept. The fourth floor is the dean's personal office area. No one is allowed in."
There was an elevator in the hospital, and the escort took him directly to the third floor.
The moment the elevator door opened, a cold and damp wind blew in my face. The lights in the corridor flickered. Every time the lights came on, I could see a room about ten meters away.
The escort was still walking in front: "When the patients escaped, many facilities were damaged, and we haven't had time to find a repairman to fix them."
A rusty sign hung crookedly outside the room, indicating that this was the information room.
The escort stopped and opened the equally rusty iron door.
Wen Shi noticed that the door did not have a smart lock. Under normal circumstances, important research materials should not be treated so carelessly.
It's really pitch dark inside.
Taking advantage of the extremely poor lighting in the corridor, Wen Shi relied on his enhanced night vision to take in everything inside.
Unlike the archive room in Workshop 3, there were no neat rows of shelves in the room, and the layout was very simple. In the cabinet in front of me was an old TV, with the door half open. This place had not been cleaned for a long time, and there were broken spider webs on the ceiling. A spider as big as a fist was hanging in the corner of the TV screen, motionless.
The most bizarre thing about it is that it has a large window. It is pitch black outside the window, with no scenery to see. The underground does not need ventilation on a daily basis, and snakes, insects, rats and ants may come in. No matter how you look at it, this window is extremely useless.
"The data from recent years are all on the videotape." The weak light couldn't clearly illuminate the escort's expression, but the corners of his mouth were always raised. "You can enjoy it slowly first. After you finish watching, come find me in the breeding area on the second floor. I will take you to continue the tour."
The game prompt sounded at the right time:
[Side Quest: Videotape
Please watch the video tape in the data room. After completing the task, the exploration rate of the sanatorium will rise to 35%.]
Watching a video can increase the exploration completion rate by nearly half. Wen Shi has a feeling that the difficulty of the task is definitely not low.
The escort didn't say much, and left a little faster than when he came. Not long after, Wen Shi heard a 'ding' sound, indicating that the other party had taken the elevator downstairs.
He had no choice but to calm himself down and walk into the room alone.
The spiders in the sanatorium are more aggressive than those in other places. They have treated the data room as their own nest, and even when Wen Shi approaches, they are too lazy to move.
There was only one videotape in the cabinet. When he took it out, the wet and sticky surface made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't rush to complete the task. He carefully checked the videotape and found a line of small red words at the bottom right.
[Notes for watching the videotape: 1. Lock the doors and windows; 2. Watch for at least 30 minutes.]
Wen Shi first locked the door as required, and then checked the windows. The old windows were not windproof, and the wind coming in through the gaps brought with it a faint smell of blood. For a moment, Wen Shi had the urge to stick his head out to look up, but he suppressed the urge.
After making sure everything was correct, he plugged in the power and put the tape into the VCR.
This thing is really old. When it first started playing, there was a lot of noise and snow. Wen Shi hit it hard on the TV twice, and it actually worked. The screen flashed twice and then started playing normally.
The picture quality was extremely poor, and a few lines of words scrolled across the screen. Wen Shi had to almost get in front of the TV screen before he could make out the distorted and overlapping fonts.
"A Ling, female, 28 years old. She was chased by a monster while on night shift. She was so frightened that she fell out of the window and died on the spot. A Ling loved beauty very much. She was not wearing work clothes when she was on night shift that day. Her red dress was stained by the burst brain matter. It is said that the scene was very scary."
Wen Shi was reading halfway when he vaguely heard some noise.
boom.
It sounded like someone was knocking on the window.
When he looked back, there was nothing.
The video recorder then played the scene of A Ling's death. The picture was clear again. The floor tiles were covered with brain matter. The woman's eyes were wide open, and one of her eyeballs was shaken out. She died with her eyes open.
Before she died, she broke her neck and her head tilted towards Wen Shi. The two of them looked at each other across the TV screen.
boom.
Wen Shi had not yet recovered from the death scene on TV. He subconsciously turned his head and met the eyes of the female ghost who suddenly appeared outside the window.
"!"
She was wearing a red dress and had only a hole for one eye, exactly like the woman on TV. When she passed the archive room, she slowed down her fall for a few seconds, grinned and knocked on the window.
Not long after, there was another loud noise, but this time it was the sound of a woman falling to the ground, and it sounded like she was smashed into a pulp.
Wen Shi took a deep breath and turned to look at the spider that was blocking a corner of the TV: "Luckily you are here to accompany me."
The next second, the spider's fine legs danced at the fastest speed in its life, turning into a shadow and running away to an unknown place. The cockroaches and centipedes in the corners also crawled out through the cracks in the door to escape.
"… "
The video recorder played the second death.
"Li Minkun, male, 21 years old, new employee. He was attacked by a monster at night and tried to run to the fourth floor for help. The dormitory manager on the fourth floor closed the iron door and ignored his call for help. He was torn by the monster and bled to death."
Boom boom boom.
Just as Li Minkun's introduction finished playing on the screen, there was a knock on the door.
"Open the door, open the door quickly..." a hoarse male voice howled in pain, "Open the door and let me go in and hide."
Seeing that Wen Shi did not open the door, the screams of pain turned into anger, and the ghost outside knocked on the door heavily and hurriedly: "Why don't you open the door! Why!"
The female ghost outside the window jumped off the building again. Wen Shi calculated that the last time she stayed in front of the window was three seconds, and this time it became seven seconds. As the time she stayed increased, she would eventually break through the glass.
The videotape is forty-nine minutes long in total, and only a little over three minutes has been played. According to this situation, it is very likely that for every dead person that appears, there will be one more ghost.
The best way to deal with a group of ghosts is to brute force them.
Wen Shi immediately entered the property panel, but found that the option of [One Sword to Level the Battle] was gray, indicating that it was disabled in this scenario.
He took out the [Family Badge] again. The badge that used to shine brightly at night was now extremely dim.
"Reminder: The owner of the castle refuses to go to any place for treatment."
Wen Shi frowned and figured out the reason. The Earl was only willing to receive psychological treatment in the castle, which showed his resistance to the hospital. It was simply a fantasy to ask him to come to the sanatorium on his own initiative.
"There's really no way out for anyone."
Giving up on relying on external forces, Wen Shi began to search around the TV and finally found the remote control in an inconspicuous place. He quickly tried it and it worked, but he couldn't fast forward or rewind.
"What about a pause?"
Even if we could just pause and let him figure out how to deal with these ghosts one by one that would be fine.
The game always knows how to make players despair. Wen Shi pressed the button several times in a row, but there was no response at all.
The guard also began to panic. He could feel the negative energy growing heavier and heavier, with bad auras everywhere. He could only block one or two, but he had no way to deal with more than that.
"Run away!" the guard exclaimed.
Wen Shi stared at the screen intently. While he was fiddling with the remote control, the screen had already started playing the cause of death of the fourth person.
"no."
Wen Shi was sure that none of the tasks in the sanatorium were easy. Although Tu Bianxi's team had been dealt with, at least one person in their team had to get the quota for outstanding employees, otherwise all of them would be eliminated. He didn't want to pin his hopes on others. He had the advantage of being a doctor, so he got in smoothly. It was a problem for Ji Yuanzhi and others to just sneak in. The elevator shaft led directly to the sanatorium. If they showed up directly, they would be discovered and arrested immediately.
Judging from the retrospection in the quality inspection area, the Pure Heart Beast refers to the polluted people. Releasing these things can create chaos in the sanatorium.
This is an extremely dangerous method. The monster itself is a huge threat, but there is no better way out at the moment. Only if they and the staff of the sanatorium are both injured, Ji Yuanzhi and others will have a chance to come in.
The boy's order to the gatekeeper ghost was to protect Wen Shi.
The gatekeeper ghost hesitated.
"You can't help me here. You can only survive if you do what I say."
The gatekeeper ghost used his limited thinking ability and agreed with Wen Shi's opinion. He had no entity, and regarded all the gates and walls as nothing, so he left smoothly.
After the security guard ghost left, the house became much quieter. However, the silence did not last long as it was broken by regular knocking on the door and windows, and from time to time the sound of children playing with marbles could be heard from the ceiling above.
Wen Shi sat down cross-legged, the cat's tail tense with nervousness.
Some were hanged, some were drowned, some were eaten alive... In the next ten minutes, he saw all kinds of ways of dying.
The temperature was getting lower and lower, and a light layer of frost formed on the ceiling, walls, and even the ground. Wen Shi buttoned up his white coat meticulously, but it was still very cold. He couldn't help but shrink his body, his cat ears drooping, and the whole person curled up in the empty room, looking very pitiful.
Although his body was frozen stiff, Wen Shi's mind was working rapidly.
There must be a way out, unless he is unlucky enough to encounter an unsolvable death rule.
Another minute passed, and nothing was found except the ever-growing death list filling the screen.
"Is it really that unlucky?" Wen Shi frowned.
2B's luck value is invalid
He forced himself to calm down and continued reading.
The glass had been cracked, and the ghosts outside had gone from knocking on the door to banging on it... Wen Shi could feel that with the cracking of the door and the glass, these ghosts were one step closer to exploding.
"The videotape tells me to lock the doors and windows. If they break, I'll probably be done for."
As the number of soul-seeking ghosts increased, Wen Shi became more relaxed. It was useless to be nervous now. The [Sound of Nature] of the zombies could slow down the monsters. He could only rush out without finding anything.
Wen Shi decided to watch it for another five minutes.
Twenty minutes into the tape, a familiar name appeared.
"Jian Haiyang, male, 50 years old, died after being infected."
After the cause of Jian Haiyang's death was played, a video recording of a dormitory was connected. In the video, monsters rushed into the fourth floor. Jian Haiyang was poured with diluted Meiling liquid and was forced to lure the monsters away.
"Haiyang, you are the beautiful soul spokesperson of our factory, and you have the obligation to help everyone."
Almost the same words, same scene, but this time the protagonist is Jian Haiyang.
In the ghost box, the old man ghost was struggling frantically. He seemed to feel called, and there was a force guiding him to go out and kill people.
Unfortunately, the old man’s ghost couldn’t get out of the ghost box, and even scattered the skeleton.
Wen Shi was completely focused on the video.
How could Jian Haiyang outrun the monsters? In the video, his calves were scratched by the monsters, but the monsters did not eat him. In the following days, Jian Haiyang became more and more haggard, carrying a pile of pancakes and fruit cakes every day, and kept shouting that he was hungry.
The canteen does not allow takeaways, and the residents on the fourth floor brought the same breakfast to Wen Shi. Wen Shi guessed that they took the shuttle bus to buy it. Soon, ordinary food could not satisfy Jian Haiyang. He went out before 4 a.m. every day and brought back raw meat bought from outside. His appetite grew day by day, and he starved to death at the door of the dormitory after seven days.
"It seems that monsters have attacked normal people before. They didn't attack the players in the tunnel because they were full."
Just like the uncle in the cafeteria puts iron barrels containing corpses in the workshop every night, the monsters in the tunnel have just eaten the drivers, and the contaminated people are their first choice of food.
Wen Shi was more concerned about something else.
Before the old ghost died, he experienced a process from infection to alienation, but he still had his sanity and went out to buy food and go to get off work and come home normally every day.
The game clearly states that when the purity of the mind is below sixty, the immunity continues to decline, leading to alienation, and the person will indiscriminately attack others when hungry.
Liu Yuan and Liu Yun were only on the verge of alienation in the quality inspection area when they completely turned into mad monsters. Why would the old ghost be an exception
"Speaker."
Wen Shi's eyes darkened, and the administrator also said that Jian Haiyang was the real spokesperson for the factory before, and he must have been forced to do a lot of good things during his lifetime. This world uses good people and good deeds to measure the purity of the soul.
The window was about to collapse, and the female ghost almost stopped falling to death. She hung upside down and used her broken skull to hit the glass. Her brains continued to flow along the glass, and the fishy smell was frozen in mid-air.
Wen Shi no longer hesitated and took out the ghost box.
Almost the moment he opened it, the old ghost jumped out: "Kill, kill!"
When he saw Wen, he actually stopped.
Anyone who had died in the video would want to kill Wen Shi, and the old ghost was no exception. But it had to be said that his fear of Wen Shi was ingrained in him, and his first reaction after meeting him was to clamp his legs together.
Wen Shi lifted up his sleeves, revealing half of his fair arm: "Grab it."
Old man ghost: “…”
Damn, you want to scam me?!
Wen Shi didn't give him a chance to refuse. He just grabbed the skinny hand bones and scratched his arm hard.
[Warning, you are scratched by a monster. ]
not enough.
The purity of the mind is dropping too slowly, it has simply entered an infected state, Wen Shi needs to speed up this process.
He also let the old ghost leave a few claw marks on his back.
The surroundings were filled with spooky ghosts, and the negative energy entering the body accelerated the deterioration of the wounds. Wen Shi began to experience strong auditory and visual hallucinations, but the most unbearable thing was hunger.
Normal people and contaminated people may all become food for monsters.
It is only in a state of alienation that one is safest.
On the night when the monsters besieged the dormitory building, he once told Jian Qingrong that if he could stay in the alienated state and maintain his sanity, there would still be hope. At that time, the other party praised him for being smart, which meant that he also agreed with this view.
"Hungry. Very hungry."
Wen Shi had never been so eager for food as he was at this moment. His mandarin duck eyes glowed green as he stared at the old ghost.
“…” The old ghost crawled into the ghost box and silently closed the lid himself.
There are still seven minutes left on the tape, but Wen Shi insists on watching it. However, this time, the trouble he needs to face is no longer the ghosts around him, but himself.
[Warning, you have entered an alienated state and will not survive for more than seven days.]
The old ghost also died seven days later. Wen Shi’s spiritual purity gradually and slowly declined, and it was probably just emptied at that time.
In the 29th minute, the glass was broken, the door was knocked down, and several little ghosts crawled down from the ceiling.
Electric fans, corridor pools... all kinds of ghosts pounced, and the entire archive room instantly became a paradise for monsters. Just as they were about to start a long-lost carnival, they found... Drawing the sword and looking around, I was at a loss.
Wen Shi, who was in an alienated state, was treated as one of their own kind.
Thirty minutes are up.
"Congratulations on completing the side quest videotape. The exploration level of the sanatorium has increased by 35 percent."
Wen Shi tried hard to suppress his hunger, and his legs felt a little numb when he stood up.
He swore that he would never change his body again, but he had to renew his cat body with one click because of the hallucination state. In the transformed state, he would be more sensitive to bad auras, which could increase his safety factor.
There were still more than ten minutes left in the recording, but Wen Shi did not turn off the TV immediately. He raised his arm and shouted, "Comrades, follow me, and let's begin the real slaughter feast!"
These ghosts would never listen to him, but they were very interested in the massacre he mentioned.
Wen Shi did not forget his original intention to improve his favorability, and first sent a message to Jian Qingrong: [Are you in the physical examination area? I'm here to save you. ]
As long as the message is not passed on to any outside parties, sending the message only to the patients in the nursing home does not constitute a violation of confidentiality regulations.
A minute passed without a reply, and Wen Shi wondered if the other party's phone had been confiscated.
Not wanting to waste any more time, he brought a group of ghosts to the elevator, which had previously stopped at the fourth floor and quickly came down. After the door opened, there was a small box on the ground.
In the empty elevator, the box with a bow on it looked particularly strange.
Wen Shi touched it carefully.
[Bell: It can only play 5% of its role in your hand, it can ward off evil spirits.]
As long as it is a prop, the game will basically detect it automatically.
Wen Shi then opened the box with confidence. The small bell lay quietly in the gift box, exuding an inexplicable sense of cuteness.
"Pie in the sky?"
No, there are gift boxes, which are more like gifts prepared by humans.
Wen Shi didn't know that on the night when he used the sword to pacify the monsters, the person closest to him was using this bell to control the monsters.
Wen Shi used to wear a peace locket around his neck. Hearing that it could ward off evil spirits, he subconsciously tied a bell strung with a red string around his neck. The string was not long, just right to the middle of his delicate collarbone, complementing the cat ears on his head.
He was so hungry that he wanted to swallow his saliva at everything he saw. Every time his Adam's apple rolled, the bell would move slightly.
Wen Shi himself did not notice this scene. He just thought that the bell was quite good. After wearing it, the degree of visual and auditory hallucinations was greatly reduced. He hurried into the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor.
The elevator door could not be closed and kept giving the message: "Overload, overload, overload..."
Wen Shi curled his lips and glanced at the ghosts around him: "Let some of them go down."
The early morning subway was almost crowded with ghosts, one next to the other, and some were clinging to the top of the car, staring at each other, and no one was willing to get off.
Wen Shi was almost suffocated by the crowd. Worried that the wound on his back would worsen, he took a potion to replenish his health first.
"Overload, overload..."
The alarm sounded annoying, so Wen Shi winked at the female ghost in red, who, together with the knocking ghost, kicked the two fattest ghosts outside down.
Wen Shi took the opportunity to press the door closing button. The moment the elevator door closed, he slowly smiled.
The sanatorium sent so many ghosts at once, so it's only right to reciprocate, and I have to give something back no matter what.
Outside the elevator door, the two originally angry fat ghosts inadvertently met this creepy smile, and for some reason they felt a long-lost chill.
(End of this chapter)