You Didn't Add Salt, Friend

In the darkness, Yu Xing lost his sense of touch, feeling as though he were floating in someone else's dream.

Two voices appeared one after another, as if in conversation.

One voice, hoarse and low, asked, "You're my psychologist?"

The other, gentle yet unyielding, replied, "That's right. From today on, I will be in charge of your psychological intervention."

"Doctor, I'm perfectly normal. You'll probably be wasting your time."

"I will make my own judgment."

After a brief silence, the gentle voice disappeared, leaving only the hoarse one to tentatively probe:

"Doctor? Doctor? Wake up, Doctor... Heh heh, can't wake up anymore? I told you long ago not to interfere with me."

The owner of the voice became gleeful. "Now that you're in my hands, you'll pay for delaying my affairs. Your corpse... I'll take it, hahahahahaha..."

The voice ended with maniacal laughter. Yu Xing had just muttered, "His laughter sounds awful, like he's on the verge of breaking his voice and soaring like a roc," when his senses were forcibly cut off.

The metal surface against his back through the fabric of his clothes was too hard and cold, causing Yu Xing, whose consciousness was gradually returning, to frown uncomfortably.

He opened his eyes slightly, and a bright light shot directly at him. The throbbing pain in his eyes made him instinctively cover his face with the back of his hand.

The blinding white light was too intense; Yu Xing felt like he was going blind.

"Which little bastard pointed a shadowless lamp at my face..." In an instant, he identified the bright light as a surgical shadowless lamp. Yu Xing's complaint was barely audible. He checked his physical condition, finding everything normal, neither sore nor painful. He then turned his head to avoid the shadowless lamp above and sat up.

As he moved, his pants seemed to brush against something, and with a "clang," a scalpel fell to the floor.

"..." Yu Xing removed his hand, rubbed his dazed head, and quietly looked around.

Hmm.

He seemed to be sitting on an operating table... no, a dissecting table.

Some unstained gauze and scissors were casually tossed on the table. If he hadn't been careful, he might have gotten pricked.

His top and pants were common patient uniforms, a bit loose, with no signs of being unfastened. As for his body, it was still his own.

This dissecting table was located in a small room of about twenty square meters. The incandescent light above was on, making the entire room bright. He reached out and turned off the shadowless lamp, finally balancing the light in the room.

Various small instruments were connected around the dissecting table. To his right, an iron tray held a collection of more delicate knives. The scene didn't look good from any angle.

Especially the wooden shelves against the wall, where bottles and jars contained various organs belonging to unknown people, soaked in something. The smell of formalin inevitably wafted into his nostrils, further linking this room with terms like "dissection, death, murder."

Yu Xing sneezed, stimulated by the smell of formalin. He touched his nose and carefully slid off the table, stepping onto the clean floor barefoot.

"Combining the two voices from earlier and the system's role analysis, I should be that 'Doctor'." Since no one was around and he didn't see anything resembling a camera, Yu Xing moved his body freely and walked straight to a table in the corner of the room.

This table was covered with bottles and jars, some containing chemical reagents, others empty. Most peculiar was that a bottle of salt was mixed among them.

However, none of this was important. In a very conspicuous spot on the table was a small black box flashing red light, displaying [02:59:01]. The numbers were constantly decreasing, accompanied by "drip, drip" sounds, creating a sense of urgency.

Yu Xing didn't touch the box. He noticed a crumpled piece of paper underneath it and pulled it out.

[Hi~ Annoying Doctor.]

[You already know where you are, right? That's right, it's my secret garden, the place you've been trying to investigate.]

[I say, Doctor, your arrogance is truly disgusting. Now that I've brought you here, how about I give you a chance?]

[Escape through the door within three hours, and you can write a report of everything you discover and give it to your damned superior. If you fail to escape... I'll tie you back to the dissecting table and continue what I didn't finish earlier, okay?]

[Go on, be terrified, run for your life! Hahahahahaha... I'm watching you.]

"Oh, it's the usual trope. Three hours must be the game duration. The system also gave a prompt about it." Yu Xing crumpled the note after reading it and tossed it into the trash can. He ambled over to the door of the small room and turned the handle.

The door opened.

Yu Xing peeked out. Outside seemed to be a large space with ample lighting. Within his field of vision, he could see rows of iron beds for storing corpses arranged neatly in the empty hall. There were no corpses on them, only half-lifted white sheets.

"No rush, no rush, let me think first..." Yu Xing muttered, closing the door again and walking back into the room to look around. "The obvious main quest prompt is clear, nothing much to say. Let me sort out the character relationships first."

He stopped in front of the wall full of jars. "I'm the Doctor, so what's the other person's identity? It seems like a prisoner? A perverted killer?"

It was clear that his Doctor role was the disadvantaged one, essentially being led by the nose by the other person in this deduction.

Yu Xing refused to accept that.

"Understanding a person's abilities and personality first gives you the capital to resist. After all, to the friend who left the note, it's the Doctor they're familiar with, not me."

"Looking at the environment, this person is quite clean and tidies up. Yet, the dissecting table area is messy, indicating that their emotions must be different when dealing with corpses. Nervousness, excitement, and other emotions can lead to abnormal behavior. In short, the person has a special emotional connection to corpses."

"Therefore, the person is at least not in a profession that involves normal contact with corpses."

Glancing around the room, which was messy yet clean, Yu Xing's well-defined fingers tapped on the glass jars. He then casually picked up one containing a finger and opened it without hesitation to smell it.

The scent was easily identifiable to Yu Xing. He murmured, "Soaking corpses in a 3%~5% formalin solution can achieve long-term preservation. The operation is correct, which means the person who left the note... let's call them the killer for now, means the killer either knows some medicine or isn't averse to the internet and knows how to use it to aid their crimes."

Some psychologically twisted individuals are obvious at a glance; they carry an aura that sets them apart from others, obsessively confined to the "correct world" in their own minds.

There are also psychologically twisted individuals who appear normal on the surface, perhaps someone you see every day – a neighbor, a colleague, a friend.

Yu Xing believed this killer belonged to the second type, not just because of the information revealed in these minor details, but the killer's initial probing in that conversation was enough to indicate it.

"This killer has normal social interactions. While committing crimes, he needs to be wary of how society views him."

He closed the lid and put the jar back, then picked out a large one and carried it out.

This was a large jar as tall as Yu Xing's calf, and it contained human arms preserved in liquid.

Yu Xing opened the lid, rolled up his sleeves to his elbows, and plunged his clean hands directly into the formalin solution. He felt the joints of the arms in the jar.

"Huh?" His hands paused. "There's rigor mortis... the muscles are stiff and contracted, the joints can't bend. Did the owner of this arm die within the last one to two days?"

"Mmm, fresh. Looks like this killer isn't in the business of grave robbing."

Confirming this, Yu Xing restored the jar and wiped his hands on a white cloth hanging nearby.

Formalin is corrosive but highly volatile. Accidentally touching it wouldn't cause any problems, but if someone were to soak their hands in it like Yu Xing, it was best to wash them afterward.

Yu Xing searched the small room again but found nothing special. He then picked a knife that caught his eye from an iron tray and held it in his hand. He opened the door and entered the hall.

The hall was over 400 square meters. There was an iron bed for corpses roughly every three meters, and the area beneath the beds was clean, indicating daily cleaning.

"The killer must be a respectable person in his daily life." Yu Xing casually walked around and discovered that the hall connected to three areas.

One, the main door.

The main door had a password lock. With no clues yet, he definitely couldn't open it. His ultimate goal in this deduction game was to open this door and escape.

Two, a locked room.

To the left of the hall was a locked door, and he didn't know what it was used for.

Three, the kitchen and toilet.

...These two places were not combined, of course, just close to each other, and neither was locked.

In short, he surveyed the entire space. Apart from the locked room, he was certain no one else was present; otherwise, he would have seen them.

"The last sentence on the note, the killer said he's watching me?" Yu Xing pondered. In this deduction game, was the killer human, or did he exist in the form of a ghostly creature?

This couldn't be confirmed for now. He wandered around for a while and decided to search for clues in the kitchen and toilet area first.

The kitchen was large and semi-open. On the chopping board lay two tomatoes, with a whisk and beaten egg yolk beside them.

"Planning to make scrambled eggs with tomatoes? But it seems he left the salt in the dissection room. Will this taste good?" Yu Xing clicked his tongue twice.

On the other side of the chopping board, a pot of water was boiling, using one of those automatic kettles that became popular in recent years, the kind where a small light turns off when the water is boiled.

All signs indicated that someone had been here not long ago.

In fact, perhaps a minute before Yu Xing entered the kitchen, a killer had been cooking here.

Where did that killer go?

All these questions converged into a single thought for Yu Xing: "What a shame, I won't get to enjoy the sound effect of boiling water in a horror game."

He was a bit thirsty when he arrived at the kitchen, so he first rinsed his hands thoroughly under the kitchen faucet and then eagerly opened the refrigerator.

The refrigerator contained some vegetables and meat, but no drinks.

"No way, they don't even keep mineral water?" Yu Xing was disappointed and was about to close the refrigerator when his gaze fell upon a note tucked between the vegetables.

He reached in and pinched the note out. Written messily in blood-colored characters on the white paper was:

[You still have the leisure to eat and drink? I've only given you three hours!]