The hospital's main building.
Chen Shan watched the Horse-Faced Butcher being lured away by their teammates and silently counted himself lucky.
Thankfully, this monster had no intelligence. If it had even a little brains, they would all have died here.
Beside him, Yang Yi said, "Let's go in now!"
"Mm." Chen Shan nodded, and the two of them walked through the entrance to the hospital's main building.
The online guide included a map of the main building, which they had long since committed to memory. They soon found the entrance to the basement and headed for the Horse-Faced Butcher's quarters.
Everything was exactly as described in the guide, putting their anxious minds at ease. As they walked down the gloomy corridor, both felt excited. If everything went smoothly, they would soon be able to finish this instance.
It was all so easy.
The Horse-Faced Butcher's room was easy to find at the end of the corridor. They hurried over, and when they saw that the door was open, they rushed inside.
Having a guide made things so convenient.
The guide described the heart's location in detail. As soon as they entered, they spotted the cabinet it mentioned.
The heart was inside that cabinet.
With success so close, both grew nervous again, their hearts pounding.
Everything depended on this.
If the heart was in the cabinet, they could leave the instance and return to the real world to enjoy some young models at a club. But if it wasn't, they would die here!
The two exchanged a glance and, with perfect understanding, grabbed the cabinet handles at the same time. They nodded to each other and pulled the doors open together.
The cabinet was nearly empty, containing only a black wooden box. They exchanged another glance, their hearts filled with excitement.
That was right, this was it. They had found it! The Horse-Faced Butcher's heart!
Without daring to hesitate, they immediately smashed the wooden box with a hammer. Through the cracks, they could just make out something black inside. It had to be the heart.
Yang Yi immediately poured alcohol into the box. Chen Shan flicked a lighter and set the box on fire.
With the help of the alcohol, the box quickly caught fire, and both men looked delighted.
Watching the box and its contents burn to ashes, they finally relaxed.
Now the instance was over. Everything was over!
They exchanged knowing smiles, and Chen Shan spoke first. "Once we're back in the real world, want to go relax together?"
Yang Yi smiled. So they were kindred spirits. He immediately said, "Sure, Brother Shan. Let's help each other out more from now on."
"No problem."
A while later, Chen Shan said, puzzled, "Huh? What's going on? Why haven't we gotten a notification that the mission is complete?"
Yang Yi shook his head. "I don't know. This is my first time in an instance."
"That's strange. The guide was very clear. As long as we burned the heart, the mission would be complete."
"Could the system be lagging?"
"Maybe," Chen Shan said. It was the only explanation he could think of.
Just then, a sound suddenly came from outside, the grating screech of metal scraping against the floor.
The sound was familiar, lingering in their minds like a nightmare.
Their hearts leaped into their throats, and their minds went blank.
Yang Yi's expression changed drastically. "That sound, that's..."
"It's... it's the Horse-Faced Butcher!"
Chen Shan's face was also filled with horror as a wave of fear rose from the bottom of his heart. This... how was this possible!
They had already burned the Horse-Faced Butcher's heart!
How had he come back to life?
The two looked at each other, neither able to understand what was happening.
All of this had overturned everything they knew. In an instant, their spirits plunged from heaven to hell.
"Scrape—"
The piercing sound of metal scraping against the floor drew closer and closer. The Horse-Faced Butcher had reached the basement corridor.
"What do we do, Brother Shan?"
"I don't know. I don't know either. My head's a complete mess right now!"
"Where exactly did we go wrong? No, that's impossible. We didn't make a single mistake!"
"Did the system make a mistake?" Chen Shan said, but he quickly rejected the idea himself.
"No, how could that be? The game system couldn't possibly make a mistake. In thirty years, I've never heard of it making one!"
"What do we do now?"
"Hide first!"
After speaking, Chen Shan glanced around the room. There wasn't much in it, and the only place to hide was under the bed.
He immediately crawled underneath, but as soon as he got in, he hurried back out, banging his head hard against the bed frame.
"What's wrong, Brother Shan?"
"There's something in there. A corpse!"
Chen Shan reached under the bed and dragged the corpse out.
It was a man's corpse. His skin was severely burned, with hardly a patch left unscathed.
His outer clothing had been stripped off, revealing a fist-sized hole in his chest where his heart should have been.
"He... don't you think he... he looks like..."
"The Horse-Faced Butcher!" Yang Yi exclaimed. "This corpse looks just like the Horse-Faced Butcher from the stories."
"But why are there two bosses? That's not scientific!"
"I... I have even less idea about that."
At that moment, the sound outside abruptly stopped, and deathly silence returned to their surroundings. But this silence was even more terrifying.
The guide described the Horse-Faced Butcher's habits. He never hid in corners to ambush people. Wherever he appeared, he did so openly, dragging his axe and deliberately making noise to instill fear.
After an unknown amount of time, Yang Yi could no longer bear the silence. He whispered, "Could he have left?"
"Maybe!"
Yang Yi gathered his courage, cautiously approached the door, and opened it a crack to look outside.
The room was at the end of the corridor, so even through a tiny gap, he could see the corridor clearly.
It was empty. There really was no one there.
Just as he breathed a sigh of relief, a woman's face suddenly appeared before him.
The area behind the door was a blind spot, so he hadn't seen it earlier. The woman had been hiding there the whole time.
Her sudden appearance startled him. Instinctively, he tried to shut the door, but the woman was faster. She slammed it open and lunged at him, pinning him beneath her.
"Ah—"
Yang Yi screamed and pushed the woman off him. Only then did he see clearly that she was Zhang Yunxi. She seemed to be dead.
Chen Shan, meanwhile, stared at the doorway, frozen in place. A moment later, he came to his senses and slowly backed away.
With Chen Shan blocking his view, he couldn't see what was in front of him and hurriedly asked, "What's wrong? What did you see?"
Chen Shan backed away again until he reached Yang Yi. Now Yang Yi could also see what had frightened him.
He was just as terrified.
A man wearing a horse-face mask.
It was the boss of this instance. For a moment, intense fear welled up in both men's hearts.
The boss's behavior was completely different from what the guide described. They had also failed to kill the boss by burning his heart, and a corpse of the boss had inexplicably appeared in the room. All of this was beyond their understanding.
What happened to the easy instance for beginners they had been promised? This difficulty was way too much!
The two kept backing away until they hit the wall behind them. In his desperation, Yang Yi summoned his courage and charged forward.
He wasn't trying to fight for his life. He wanted to escape, because he knew the Horse-Faced Butcher was immortal. Fighting him would be no different from throwing his life away.
He only wanted to get away from this place!
But he didn't know that, in this situation, he had no chance of escaping.
An axe glinting coldly suddenly flew out and struck Yang Yi's ankle. Its blade cut several centimeters deep, and the agony sent him tumbling to the floor.
He braced himself with his hands and tried to stand, but the Horse-Faced Butcher had already walked over to him and stepped on his palm.
Fear spread through his entire body, and despair made him give up resisting. He knew that only death awaited him.
He was right. The axe fell from above and severed his neck.
At that moment, Chen Shan stood motionless in the room, staring blankly. The enormous gap in strength left him at a loss.
No matter what he did, it was wrong, and he couldn't save his own life.
The Horse-Faced Butcher picked up Yang Yi's head from the floor and hurled it straight at Chen Shan. It struck him, then fell to the floor and rolled over to Zhang Yunxi.
He could no longer hold out. Fear and despair nearly shattered his mind completely. His body went limp, and he collapsed onto the floor.
The Horse-Faced Butcher showed no mercy. His axe flew straight out and severed Chen Shan's neck.
At that moment, system notifications rang repeatedly in Shen Hao's ears.
"Your prey is afraid of you. You have gained 10 Fear Points."
"Your prey's mind has collapsed from fear. You have gained 50 Fear Points!"
The two men had given him a total of 170 Fear Points.
He was now level 2, with 30/200 experience points.
On the floor, Zhang Yunxi's eyelids suddenly twitched, and she slowly opened her eyes.
A hellish scene greeted her. Blood covered the floor, and right in front of her, just a few centimeters away, a severed head stared straight at her!
She let out another hysterical scream.
The long scream faded, and Zhang Yunxi's expression froze, as though time itself had stopped.
Indeed, time had stopped for her, because she was dead.
She had already fainted from fright, and the moment she woke, she saw this hellish scene. It was more than she could bear.
"Your prey has died from extreme fear. You have gained 100 Fear Points."
100 Fear Points!
Shen Hao left the room, satisfied. Only two people remained, and they were even less capable of escaping his clutches.